Smithing

Smithing is a skill where players can make armour and weapons themselves instead of buying them. Smithing is considered one of the most profitable skills as players can make excellent profits from selling their bars. Because of this, smithing is also one of the more popular skills.

Smithing involves two things. First, players have to smelt the ores they recieve from mining. Second, players can then use the bars they recieve from smelting on some anvils to make items.

Smelting
Smelting in RuneScape is when a player puts ores in a furnace and produces a bar. This bar can then be smithed into an item.

In order to smelt, players first of all need ores. Ores can be obtained from mining rocks. Once a player has the amount of ores the want, they can then smelt them.

To smelt an ore, players need to find a furnace. When they've found a furnace, a player can then smelt in two different ways. One way is to use their ores on the furnace and produce one bar at a time slowly. The other way, and much faster way, is to click on the furnace, right-click on the ore they want to smelt, click on 'Smelt X', and then type in how many they want.

Free To Play Furnaces
Below is some information about furnaces available in the free worlds. There are only four furnaces on free servers. Of these furnaces, the Al-Kharid furnace and the Falador furnace are recommended.

Pay To Play Furnaces
Below is some information about furnaces available in the member worlds. Members can use the four furnaces on the free servers or use the other seven furnaces in the member parts of RuneScape.

To smelt ores, click on a furnace and right-click the metal bar you want to create. Click whichever option you want, and you'll start smithing.

With a high enough magic level, it is also possible to smelt ores using the "superheat item" spell, but the required Nature runes are expensive, and have better uses. If you have a high enough Runecrafting level and are a member, you can Runecraft them at the Nature altar on Karamja.

Forging
In order to smith your bars, you must have a hammer (sold at general stores) and be next to an anvil. Use the bar with the anvil and a menu of smithable items will show up. Items with the bar amout in red means you do not have enough bars to create the item, and items with grayed-out names mean you do not have the required smithing level. Click the item of your choice to begin smithing, and right-click the item if you wish to make more than one.

Anvils may be found in several places, as well as more that are not shown:
 * Doric the Dwarf's house, north of Falador - Doric's Quest is required before you can use his anvils.
 * In the Dwarven mine, near the general and pickaxe stores.
 * In the Draynor sewer dungeon - not recommended to use unless your combat level is high enough for skeletons and zombies to become non-agressive towards you.
 * Varrock contains many anvils. The western anvils are just south of Varrock's west bank, while another is conveniently located in the armor shop.

Smithing experience
Higher metals give higher experience, but use more coal. The list below gives smelting and smithing exp per bar For free-to-play players, Steel is probably the best value for building experience, while members that can afford to burn up rings of forging will find that a full load of iron for a full load of ore tips the balance strongly in favour of Iron. Gold is also excellent experience per ore, just for smelting bars, but the ores are slow to mine - a problem with all ores above Iron.

An alternate view: Hey! Wasn't steel supposed to be better?
 * Iron, at a 50% success rate, makes (on average) 14 bars from 28 ores - total exp 525
 * Iron, with a ring of forging, makes 28 bars - total exp 1050
 * Steel makes 9 bars from 9 iron and 18 coal - total exp 495

Taking another example, twelve runs to and from the furnace or anvil enable you to smith 4 full loads of iron, with 2 smelting loads to each smithing load or 3 loads of 27 steel with 3 smelting loads to each smithing load, giving 4200 experience for Iron and 4455 experience for Steel. Since Iron is faster to mine than coal, Iron is still pretty good value for smithing exp without the ring of forging.

Without being a truly dedicated smith, it is possible to reach the ability to smith "full steel", to make armor that you don't mind losing when you die.

Smithing for profit
While smithing to gain experience is about getting through it as fast as possible, and getting rid of the finished items at any price, getting the most gold pieces for your efforts requires a different approach. Where the anvil is a short walk from a specialist store, checking the stock before you smith can ensure you smith at a good profit.
 * You can sell to other players, particularly items smithed on demand.
 * You can sell to a specialist or general store. The specialist stores pay better, unless already overstocked.
 * A magic level of 55 and a supply of Nature runes, enables the High Alchemy spell to be used to convert an item to gold at the best specalist store price. At a lower level (21) the Low Alchemy spell can be used, but only gives the best general store price.

Steel platebodies have a great price of 1200 gp at Horvik's armor shop in Varrock, falling by 40 gp for each additional one in stock. You can also smith them on the anvils in the shop. Players may also wish to use High Level Alchemy, resulting in 1200 gp for each platebody with no price reduction. Swords and Longswords can be sold at the Varrock sword shop. On free-to-play worlds, the general store in Varrock can be very busy, often so full that there is no space to sell anything.

Using Doric's anvils, you have a shield shop, mace shop, and a chainmail shop at your disposal in Falador.

Using the Dwarven Mines anvils, the nearest shop is the Helmet Shop in the Barbarian Village. There is also a general store in Edgeville, north of the Barbarian Village, that is rarely busy.

In Al-Kharid, there is a Scimitar shop and the Plateleg and Plateskirt shops. Since these are nowhere near an anvil, they are unlikely to be overstocked. If you choose to go there, take a mixture of legs and skirts as 5 of each at the two shops, will pay better than 10 at one. In fact, don't "take" anything for the journey, as there is a bank there.

The High Alchemy table
Some items omitted, since they would not be a normal part of "production smithing".

While the value per bar is given only for Steel, the same ratio seems to hold good for most metals, but the value can fall rapidly if you are selling into an overstocked store. In some cases, it can be better to unload a mixed batch of stuff for 2/3 of the price at a general store that isn't too busy.

It's easy to see that daggers are miserable value, especially as they are usually overstocked at the sword shop, as they are the first item you can make in any metal. Surprisingly, swords are better value than long swords, though take longer to sell at good prices, since you get one for every bar.

It should also be noted that not all the items listed have a specialist store available in free-to-play, though that does not prevent the use of high alchemy to obtain the equivalent price. Also, many of the stores do not carry the full range of metals, specialist stores will only accept the range of items they display.