OSRS 1–99 Crafting Guide

Crafting is an input-output skill: you take a raw material, apply the right tool, and produce a finished item for a fixed amount of experience. There is no random success roll on most methods — if you have the materials and the level, you make the item and bank the XP. Because each action gives a set amount, your XP per hour is driven almost entirely by how fast you can click through inventories and how short your banking trips are. That is the single most important thing to understand: with Crafting, picking a bank-side spot and minimising walking matters as much as picking the right method. A method that gives slightly less XP per action but lets you stand on a bank will usually out-pace a “better” one that forces long trips.

The skill splits into a few distinct families, and it helps to know them before you start. Gem cutting uses a chisel on uncut gems and is the backbone of fast, cheap training. Leather and dragonhide work uses a needle and thread on tanned hide to sew armour, and provides the very fastest active rates at high level. Glassblowing uses a glassblowing pipe on molten glass for relaxed, near-AFK XP. Jewellery is made at a furnace, combining a mould with silver or gold bars (and often a gemstone) — the home of most of the profitable methods. And battlestaves are made by combining elemental orbs onto a plain battlestaff for excellent value. Each family has its own pace, cost and AFK feel, which is why the right method depends on whether you are chasing raw speed, gold profit, or a hands-off background grind.

One important quirk: a few methods (cutting opals, red topaz and certain low-level gems) have a small chance to crush the gem and waste the material, so always buy a few extra of those. Outside of that, Crafting is forgiving — you cannot fail an action once your level is high enough, and there is no stamina, run energy or food cost to worry about. That makes it a perfect skill to train while half-paying-attention, and a popular choice for players who want to bank levels steadily without the intensity of something like Agility or Runecrafting. Because the inputs are all bought or gathered up front, you also always know exactly what a level will cost before you start — there are no surprises, only the trade-off between gold spent and time saved.

Crafting has no XP-boost outfit — there is no Lumberjack or Prospector equivalent, so do not go hunting for one (you can see which skills actually have one in our Skilling Outfits guide). This trips up a lot of new players who expect every skill to have a percentage-boost set; Crafting simply does not. Instead, the skill asks for a small kit of cheap, permanent tools that you buy once and keep forever. Keep a chisel for cutting gems and amethyst, a needle and thread for leather and dragonhide, and a glassblowing pipe for glass. Jewellery needs the matching mould for whatever you are making — a ring mould for rings, an amulet mould for amulets, a necklace mould for necklaces and a bracelet mould for bracelets — all bought for pocket change from a crafting store such as the one in the Crafting Guild. A threadless needle (rewarded from the Death on the Isle quest) removes the need to carry thread at all, freeing an inventory slot and saving a little gold over a long grind — a small but genuinely nice quality-of-life upgrade for leather and d’hide methods.

The one reliable temporary boost is the mushroom pie, which raises your Crafting level by +4 — the highest consistent boost in the skill, and the only consumable that boosts Crafting at all. Use it to craft an item a few levels early when you are right on the cusp of an unlock, or, as an ironman, to make armour and jewellery you have not quite reached yet (handy for getting that first glory amulet or slayer helmet a touch sooner). The boost is temporary and drains over time, so eat it right before the action you need it for. At level 99 the Crafting cape is worth grabbing: it teleports straight to the Crafting Guild, which doubles as one of the fastest banks in the game once you own the cape. The cape is purely a milestone reward rather than a boost, but the teleport is genuinely useful for future jewellery, gem and tanning runs, so most players keep it on a gear setup.

The early levels go by in minutes, and you have four sensible starts depending on whether you want pure speed, a useful product, profit, or quest progress. The fastest plain method is cutting opals: use a chisel on uncut opals (bought from the Grand Exchange) for around 20k XP/hr at low level. Going from 1 to 20 takes under ten minutes — buy about 500 uncut opals rather than the exact number you need, because opals have a chance to crush and waste the gem. The cost is almost nothing, and this is the route most people take if they just want the early levels out of the way as fast as possible.

If you would rather make something useful while you train, leather crafting is the fastest low-level XP in free-to-play. Use a needle on regular leather (with thread in your inventory) to sew leather gloves, then work up through the leather items to leather bodies by level 20. You need roughly 217 leather to reach 20, costing under 100k — a touch slower than opals but it keeps you in armour-making practice. The third option is stringing amulets with balls of wool, which earns a more modest 10k XP/hr but actually turns a profit — ruby and dragonstone amulets in particular sell for a gain, so you train and make gold at the same time. It is a great pick if you are short on starting capital.

Finally, if you are going for the quest cape anyway, questing is the most efficient early start of all. The Murder Mystery quest alone takes you from level 1 to 9 in a single reward, and a string of other low-requirement quests each hand over Crafting XP. For an ironman this is the standard opening — chaining quests skips most of the slow early grind entirely. We cover the full quest list in its own section further down, but it is worth knowing from the start that you may not need to grind levels 1–35 at all if you quest first.

Cutting gems with a chisel is the fastest experience in Crafting from level 20 right up until level 77, and it stays surprisingly cheap the whole way. After opals you start on sapphires at 20 (around 139k XP/hr in our table), then climb the standard ladder as each gem unlocks: emeralds at 27 (~170k/hr), rubies at 34, diamonds at 43 (~290k/hr) and finally dragonstones at 55, which top the gem band at around 382k XP/hr. Each gem gives more experience per cut than the last, so on paper the highest one you can cut is always the fastest — but cost flips that logic on its head.

Here is the catch that decides your route: dragonstones are extremely expensive — cutting them to 99 costs hundreds of millions of gold, because uncut dragonstones are pricey and the cut gem barely sells for more. Almost no one does that. The smart play is to pick one cheaper gem and stick with it all the way up: emeralds are the cheapest sustained option (you can lose under 10 million reaching 99), while rubies are the popular sweet spot for cost versus speed — you can reach 99 from rubies for only around 30 million, a tiny fraction of the dragonstone path, at a genuinely strong XP rate. Diamonds sit in between on both cost and speed if you want a middle ground.

The execution is simple and the same for every gem: buy your uncut gems in bulk off the Grand Exchange, stand on a bank, withdraw a full inventory, select cut-all, and repeat. There is roughly half a minute of idle time per inventory, so gem cutting sits comfortably between full-tryhard methods and true AFK — you can watch something on a second screen and still keep a high rate. It is the method most accounts will spend the bulk of their early-to-mid Crafting journey on, and our Crafting calculator will tell you exactly how many of each gem you need for your target level.

From level 54, making battlestaves is one of the most cost-effective fast routes in the entire game — it is the method to pick if you want speed without burning hundreds of millions. You combine a charged elemental orb with a plain battlestaff, and the staves unlock in order as you level: water (54), earth (58), fire (62) and air (66). The rate scales up the ladder with each tier — our table shows the band running from roughly 245k up to 337k XP/hr for air battlestaves — and you can reach 99 in under 40 hours doing the best staff your level allows.

The clever part is the cost. Water and earth battlestaves are the cheapest by a wide margin, and water can even turn a small profit on the way to 99 (a few million gold over the grind), although it is the slower of the two and takes around 50 hours. Earth is a touch faster for a small loss. Air battlestaves are the fastest of all but noticeably more expensive, so most players stick with water or earth and happily accept a slightly lower rate for near-zero cost — the difference in hours is small, but the difference in gold is large.

The method itself is quick to learn: withdraw 14 battlestaves and 14 matching orbs, use one on the other to combine them, craft all 14, then repeat. It is a touch click-heavy with a roughly 17-second idle window per batch, so it sits at the busier end of Crafting, but the value-per-XP is genuinely hard to beat. Ironmen can supply the staves by buying them from Zaff in Varrock (boosted limits with the Varrock achievement diaries) and getting orbs from PvM or charging them for some Magic XP, making this a strong self-sufficient route too.

The fastest experience in Crafting at high level comes from sewing dragonhide bodies with a needle and thread. They unlock as green d’hide bodies at 63 (~313k XP/hr in our table), blue at 71 (~360k/hr), red at 77 (~400k/hr) and black at 84 (~434k/hr, the very top of the skill’s active rates). It is important to keep straight the difference between the material and the product: you buy green dragon leather (the tanned hide) and turn it into a green d’hide body — each body uses three leathers plus thread. The leather is the tanned form; if you accidentally buy raw green dragonhide you will need to tan it at a tannery first.

Doing the best body you can unlock all the way to 99 is blisteringly fast — under 35 hours from 63 — but it is also expensive, well over 200 million gold, mostly because black d’hide bodies lose a lot of value per craft when you sell the finished armour back. The budget approach mirrors gems: pick one hide and stick with it. Green d’hide bodies are by far the cheapest, reaching 99 for around 20 million over about 40 hours; blue is a reasonable middle ground for a higher rate at moderate cost. Worth knowing for route planning: at level 77, red d’hide bodies overtake dragonstone cutting as the fastest XP in the game, so this is the natural point to switch off gems and onto hide if you have the budget for it.

The execution is the same for every tier: have your needle, thread and a stack of the matching leather, use the leather on the needle, and choose to make your full inventory at once. Like battlestaves it is click-heavy — about a 16-second idle window per inventory — so this is a focus method rather than a background one. For most players the realistic plan is gems or battlestaves through the 60s and 70s, then green or blue d’hide bodies for the final push to 99 when they want the absolute fastest active rate.

If you want to train Crafting while you do something else entirely, glassblowing is the most AFK method in the skill — roughly 50 seconds of idle time per inventory, among the longest of any Crafting method. You use a glassblowing pipe on molten glass, select the item you want, and make a full inventory at once, then walk away until it finishes. The trade-off is that the XP rates are low compared with gems, battlestaves or d’hide, so this is firmly a method for relaxed background training rather than racing to 99 — you choose it because you barely have to touch the screen, not because it is fast.

Cost stays modest — usually under 20 million to reach 99 — and the most economical items are unpowered orbs (level 46, around 92k XP/hr) and light orbs at a higher level, both cheap because their inputs are cheap and there is little difference between them. Lower-level glass items like beer glasses (level 1) and empty candle lanterns (level 4) are technically available but lose more money and are not worth doing for serious XP. Where you really want glassblowing is alongside a second activity: many players blow glass while reading, working, or doing slow tasks in another window, banking steady, hands-off Crafting XP for almost no attention. For ironmen it is also the standard mass route — cast Superglass Make on buckets of sand and seaweed bought from charter ships to mass-produce molten glass, then blow it, which we cover in the Ironman section.

From level 83, you can cut amethyst with a chisel into ranging materials — bolt tips and arrowtips lower down, and dart tips at 89. All of them give the same XP rate, around 160k XP/hr, so you pick by which is cheapest or most profitable rather than for speed. Amethyst is a strong middle option for the 80s: it is slower than d’hide bodies but often comes with very small losses or even a profit, and it gives more XP than glassblowing, making it a great way to bank levels cheaply when you do not want to spend the hundreds of millions that fast d’hide demands.

Stick to arrowtips or dart tips — they have healthy trade volumes on the Grand Exchange, so you can buy the raw amethyst and sell the finished tips without your order sitting unfilled for hours. Bolt tips and javelin heads have far thinner markets and are best avoided unless you mine your own amethyst as an ironman. The cutting cadence is identical to gem cutting, with a comfortable ~32-second idle window per inventory, so it shares the same pleasant balance of decent XP and real AFK time. Think of amethyst as the cheap, semi-AFK companion to gem cutting once you have outlevelled the standard gems but do not want the cost or intensity of dragonhide.

Crafting is one of the few skills where you can earn gold while you level, which makes it a favourite for players who hate “wasting” time on pure XP. Silver jewellery is a standout: topaz amulets (level 45) can make close to a million gold per hour, and other silver pieces — opal necklaces (commonly enchanted into dodgy necklaces) and jade amulets (used to make amulets of chemistry) — are in steady, reliable demand. You bring the matching mould, silver bars and gemstones to a furnace and click to open the crafting interface, with about a 25-second idle window per inventory. Gold jewellery works the same way and is often even better: sapphire necklaces, emerald rings and ruby amulets all sell, and it becomes seriously profitable at the top end — dragonstone bracelets can earn over 30 million on the way to 99 while still giving a respectable ~150k XP/hr. Jewellery is the rare combination of profit, decent XP and short AFK, which is why so many accounts train Crafting this way.

Beyond jewellery, three members methods deserve a look if you have the capital. Drift nets (level 26, woven from jute fibres at a Fossil Island loom near a bank) profit over 500k/hr but are slow on XP overall — great if you value gold over speed and do not mind a 200-hour journey to 99. Mixed hide armour (added in 2023) and Hueycoatl hide armour can both be highly profitable with strong XP — Hueycoatl bodies actually beat black d’hide for rate at over 500k XP/hr — but both need large starting capital and their profit swings hard with the market. Mixed hide bases come from the Hunter Guild or the GE, and Hueycoatl armour can take billions to fully craft to 99 if done in one go (most people do it incrementally). Because margins on all of these move daily, always check live prices in our GE Price Tracker before committing a long session — a method that printed gold yesterday can quietly lose money today.

Crafting has a genuinely good AFK side, which is a big part of its appeal, and the best method depends on how much idle time you want versus how much XP rate you are willing to give up. The most hands-off options are glassblowing and plain gold or silver jewellery (with no gem), both giving roughly 50 seconds of idle time per inventory — ideal for training while you work, read or watch something on a second screen. Adding a gemstone to jewellery cuts the idle window to about 25 seconds but raises both XP and, often, profit, so it is a worthwhile trade if you can spare a bit more attention.

In the middle of the range, cutting gems or amethyst gives around 32 seconds of idle time, and crafting drift nets about 26 seconds — both strike a fine balance between attention and rate. The fast, click-heavy methods sit at the busy end: battlestaves are roughly 17 seconds and d’hide bodies about 16, so they demand near-constant clicking and are not AFK at all. For the best overall blend of decent XP and real AFK time, cutting rubies or emeralds is the standout sweet spot — strong rates, very low cost, and enough idle time that you are never glued to the screen. In practice most players mix styles to match their day: gems or d’hide bodies when they can focus, and glassblowing or jewellery when they want to train Crafting in the background while they get on with something else. Knowing these idle windows lets you slot Crafting into whatever attention you actually have free.

Crafting is fully trainable in free-to-play and, with a bit of gold, it is one of the quicker F2P skills — because gem cutting is available without membership. The free path mirrors the members one without the highest tiers: cut your way up the standard gems and then settle on one for the long haul. Emeralds are the cheapest sustained option — around 170k XP/hr in our table, losing under 10 million gold across the full grind — while rubies are faster at roughly 236k XP/hr for a little more cost. Pick emeralds to save money or rubies for speed; either way, gem cutting is the clear recommendation for almost every free player.

For variety, F2P players can string amulets with balls of wool from level 1 (ruby amulets even turn a profit), and there are three quests that give Crafting XP for a small early boost — particularly useful for free-to-play ironmen who want to skip the slow opening levels. Gold jewellery is the profitable route in F2P: diamond necklaces and amulets bring in over 10 million profit on the way to 99 while giving around 100k XP/hr, so you can level and bank gold at once. Leather crafting works too (mostly making hard leather bodies once you are high enough), but it is slow and surprisingly pricey — close to 100 million for 99 — so gem cutting wins on both speed and cost. Be clear on what is locked: battlestaves, dragonhide bodies, glassblowing, amethyst, drift nets, mixed hide and Hueycoatl armour are all members-only, so the fastest high-end methods need a membership.

For ironmen, Crafting plays differently: most of your time is spent gathering materials, and only a slice is the crafting itself. It is also close to essential, since you make your own armour, jewellery, glory amulets and slayer helmet rather than buying them. The early game leans heavily on quests — The Murder Mystery, Elemental Workshop and a stack of low-requirement quests can take you from 1 to about 35 while skipping the slowest levels. From level 10 you can also spin bow strings from flax (pick and spin near Camelot), and the Guardians of the Rift minigame passively gives 3–5k Crafting XP per hour.

The most common ironman route to 99 is glassblowing at charter ships: buy buckets of sand and seaweed from a charter, cast Superglass Make to mass-produce molten glass, then blow it. Making jewellery is the other staple — gold bars come quickly from buying gold ore and using a blast furnace, and gems come from the Wintertodt early on or the Shilo Village gem mine later. Battlestaves are viable too: with the Varrock achievement diaries you can buy them from Zaff, while orbs come from PvM or are charged for Magic XP. Sandstone mining, seaweed farming and thieving TzHaar round out the supply options. Plan your material totals with the Crafting calculator so you gather exactly what you need.

A handful of quests give chunks of Crafting XP and are worth front-loading before you start grinding. The Murder Mystery takes you from level 1 to 9 outright, and Death on the Isle grants a notable ~5,000 XP plus the threadless needle. There are around ten low-requirement quests with Crafting rewards in total, and chaining them can carry an account from level 1 to roughly 35 while skipping the slowest early levels — the standard opening for ironmen and questers alike. Beyond XP rewards, Crafting gates a fair amount of content you will want: you need 55 to assemble the slayer helmet, 75 for the slayer ring and the divine rune pouch from Tombs of Amascut, 70 for Monkey Madness II (and therefore the quest cape), and 85 to build a magic pyre ship for the achievement diary cape. Quests like Sins of the Father and Dragon Slayer II also list Crafting among their requirements, so it is a skill worth keeping ahead of your quest log.

The most useful permanent unlocks are practical ones. The Crafting Guild (level 40, with a brown apron equipped, just west of Falador) gives access to a furnace, gem rocks, a tannery and an apron-and-mould shop in one spot — and once you have the hard Falador diary or level 99 Crafting, a bank too, making it a superb all-in-one jewellery and gem hub. Crafting also lets you make your own amulet of glory, games necklace, ring of dueling and other teleport jewellery (you craft the unstrung or uncharged piece, then use Magic to enchant it), which you will lean on for the rest of your account’s life. There is no single giant lump of quest XP that shortcuts the grind, so the route to 99 stays overwhelmingly method-based — quests smooth the start, but cutting gems, making staves and sewing hide do the heavy lifting.

A few habits make the grind noticeably smoother. Pick one material and commit — for gems, d’hide and amethyst, sticking to a single cheap tier (emeralds, green d’hide, arrowtips) saves enormous gold for a tiny XP loss, and chasing the highest-tier item is the single most common way players overspend on this skill. Always buy a few extra of any gem that can crush (opals and red topaz especially) so a bad streak does not leave you short mid-session. Keep a mushroom pie handy for the +4 boost when you are one or two levels short of an unlock you want. Train jewellery and glassblowing from the Crafting Guild or the Edgeville furnace for the fastest bank-to-furnace trips, and stand on a bank (or train at the Grand Exchange) for gem cutting and d’hide so your idle time is pure XP rather than walking back and forth. Small location choices like these add up to real XP per hour over a 99.

Buy your materials in big batches rather than dripping in small orders — it saves trips to the GE and stops you running dry. Before any long profit session in particular, check live prices in our GE Price Tracker, because jewellery, mixed hide and Hueycoatl margins move daily and a method that profited yesterday can quietly lose money today. Plan your exact hours, costs and material totals with the Crafting calculator so you buy the right amount the first time, and browse the rest of our walkthroughs from the guides hub. Finally, remember that every single Crafting action carries a small chance to drop Rocky, the raccoon skilling pet — so whichever method you settle on, there is always one more reason to keep crafting, even long after the 99 cape is on your back.