Pure essence is a type of essence that can be crafted into any type of rune through the Runecrafting skill, as opposed to rune essence, which can only create up to Body runes. It can be used on free to play worlds, although can only be mined on members worlds.
Players can runecraft only Air, Mind, Water, Earth, Fire, and Body runes with a regular rune essence. Members can create all types of runes with pure essence. It can be stored in an Abyssal parasite, Abyssal lurker and Abyssal titan if the player has the required summoning level of 54, 62 and 93 respectively.
Obtaining pure essence
A player mining in the Rune essence mine
Members with a Mining level of at least 30 will mine pure essence instead of rune essence (both granting 5 xp) on member worlds at the Rune essence mine, after completing the Rune Mysteries quest. To access this mine, which contains four rocks with an unending supply of essence, players must get teleported by one of the five NPCs who are able to do so. It is possible for players with a high Mining level and a high level pickaxe to mine upwards of 2,100 pure essence an hour, resulting in an approximate 63,000 coins per hour profit at current prices. At level 30 with a mithril pickaxe, players mine approximately 700 pure essence an hour, resulting in an approximate 21,000 coins per hour profit at current prices. If mining Pure essence, players should consider taking weight-reducing clothing, or energy-boosting items and pouches so that more pure essence can be mined per hour. The best place to mine essence is by going to Wizard Distentor who is located in the magic guild in Yanille, but this requires 66 Magic. Players without this level should go for Aubury in Varrock. However, players can also go to Brimstail at Gnome Stronghold, Sedridor at Wizards' Tower, Wizard Cromperty in Ardougne, the Runecrafting Tutor in Burthorpe, or the rune essence mine at Lunar Isle.
Members can also receive pure essence throughout The Great Orb Project minigame's rounds. Furthermore, they may purchase pure essence with the Runecrafting guild tokens received after each game at a cost of 1 essence per token.
Pure essence also can be obtained relatively fast as a reward from Temple Trekking or Burgh de Rott Ramble, if the player plays at least on the medium paths and picks pure essence as a reward.
Members who own an Ardougne cloak 2 may receive a daily 100 pure essence from Wizard Cromperty (the time resets at midnight GMT). He will give 150 pure essence to those who own an Ardougne cloak 3.
Members who own a Wicked hood can pull 100 pure essence per day out of the hood, provided they have "fed" the hood an Omni-talisman once. This amount increases by 25 for each piece of the Wicked robes set bought for a maximum of 175 pure essence daily.
Although not a quick way to gain pure essence, players can find pure essence if they send squads to look for it in Mobilising Armies.
The essence may only be mined by players in member worlds, however it can still be bought in the Grand Exchange on free worlds. Non-members can also obtain it from Treasure Hunter, although it is an uncommon reward.
Dropping monsters
- For an exhaustive list of all known sources for this item, see here.
| Source | Combat level | Quantity | Rarity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Glacor | 112 | 62â100 (noted) | Common |
| Fungal Mage | 116 | 25 (noted) | Unknown |
| Abyssal demon | 140 | 60 (noted) | Common |
| Gargoyle | 134 | 35 (noted) | Common |
| Minotaur | 20; 75 | 5â10 (noted) | Common |
| Corporeal beast | 210 | 2,500 (noted) | Common |
| Nex | 220 | 4,800 (noted) | Common |
| Jungle strykewyrm | 134 | 60 (noted) | Common |
| Desert strykewyrm | 148 | 120 (noted) | Common |
| Ice strykewyrm | 152 | 200 (noted) | Common |
| Banshee | 54 | 13 (noted) | Common |
| Mighty banshee | 130 | 23 (noted) | Common |
| Ankou | 86; 88; 90 | 15 (noted) | Uncommon |
| Rare drop table | N/A | 500â15,000 (noted) | Uncommon |
| TzHaar-Mej | 124 | 4 (noted) | Rare |
| Abyssal walker | 77 | 1; 5; 10; 25 (noted) | Common |
| Abyssal leech | 72 | 1; 5; 10; 25 (noted) | Common |
History and update
Pure essence was released on 20 April 2006 to counter free-to-play macroing accounts that mined Rune essence and sold it for high prices with Real world trading (RWT). After that, members needed Pure essence to craft runes that were only craftable by members. Since they were the majority of the buyers, the demand for Pure essence went up, while the demand for rune essence (which uses were limited to the six basic runes) dropped. This benefited member essence miners and non-member runecrafters, while it hurt non-member essence miners and member runecrafters. Additionally, non-members who had bought essence before the update lost money value due to the drop in price of Rune essence. Members who had previously bought Rune essence were saved from this blow because all their essence was automatically converted into Pure essence.
However, real world traders obtained member accounts in order to mine and trade Pure essence (now higher in price than Rune essence), and because many of them used fraudulent credit card numbers to pay for those accounts, the Pure essence update became one of the causes of the RWT credit card fraud problem, suggesting that the update had a reverse effect than that originally intended.
On 10 December 2007, many macro users disappeared from the game following a swift series of changes designed for their elimination, which caused the price of pure essence to skyrocket from a low of 80 coins to more than 140 each. The price then dropped when The Great Orb Project minigame was released since one of the buyable rewards was pure essence.
On 4 April 2011, with the release of Livid Farm, pure essence began to rise in price due to more people buying it to craft astral runes. The price of pure essence had continued to rise over a week later.
After the "Bot Nuke" update the price fell, due to the large amount of Runecrafting bots that were disabled, even though there were a relatively large number of essence mining bots disabled as well.
After the Runespan update, the price dropped further. Though some had expected the price to rise, the use of Runespan as a training method reduced the demand for pure essence for use in training. The demand for most runes is easily met from the various runeshops and monster drops. Many monsters drop pure essence further tilting the balance towards the supply side.
After Rune Memories players can access the Rune Chest which gives players pure essence for levelling Runecrafting. This has brought the price down due to huge amounts of pure essence coming to the game through the chest. As of 20 December 2014, pure essence was 15 gp each while the inferior rune essence was 25 gp each, making pure essence the go-to runecrafting rock for all members, even if they crafted lower-tier runes that could also be crafted with rune essence.
