OSRS 1–99 Hunter Guide

Every Hunter method, from level 1 to 99, comes down to the same loop: set a trap, wait for a creature to wander into it, then check the trap to claim your experience and loot. What changes from method to method is the equipment and the creature. A bird snare catches birds, a box trap catches ground mammals and chinchompas, a net and rope catch lizards and salamanders, a butterfly net and jars catch butterflies, and a noose wand is used to track and catch the faster kebbits. You earn experience only when a creature is actually caught — an empty or sprung trap gives nothing — so the entire skill is really about keeping your traps full and resetting them as fast as possible.

The single most important mechanic is how many traps you can run at once, because it directly multiplies your catches per minute. You begin able to lay only one trap, and you unlock an extra trap at Hunter levels 20, 40, 60 and 80. Varlamore added a fifth trap slot at level 80, so a maxed Hunter juggling chinchompas or salamanders is managing five traps at a time. Each of these breakpoints produces a noticeable jump in experience per hour, which is why so much of the optimal route is built around reaching the next trap tier. A Hunter potion temporarily raises your effective level by +3, and the classic use is to reach a trap breakpoint a few levels early — for example running four traps at level 57 instead of waiting for the natural unlock at 60, or five traps at 77 instead of 80.

Beyond trap count, you can nudge your catch rate up on certain traps by baiting them with the right item or by smoking them (lighting them to mask your scent), and many creatures are easier to catch if you step off the trap before they approach, because some animals will not enter a trap you are standing on. Failed catches sometimes destroy your trap or scatter your equipment, forcing you to pick it back up and re-lay it — managing that downtime is the real skill in the click-intensive methods. None of this is complicated once you have done it for a few minutes, but the trap-count breakpoints and the off-the-trap habit are worth internalising early because they shape every method that follows.

Hunter has no single "best tool" the way Woodcutting has a best axe. Instead, each creature type needs its own piece of equipment, and you carry whatever the current method demands — a big part of preparing for a Hunter session is packing the right traps. The bird snare is your level 1 starter for catching birds, and you can hold and lay several once your trap count rises. The butterfly net, used with butterfly jars to store the catch, is equipped from level 15 for butterflies like ruby harvests; unusually, butterfly catching is instant rather than trap-based, so it pairs well with another trap running in the background.

Small fishing nets and ropes are the two-item kit for every lizard and salamander — you lay them over a young tree to make a net trap. The box trap is the most important trap in the entire skill: it is unlocked by completing the Eagle's Peak quest, and it is the only way to catch ground mammals, jerboas and — crucially — chinchompas, which carry both the fastest experience and the best profit. If you only clear one quest before training Hunter seriously, make it Eagle's Peak for the box trap.

For higher-level methods you also use a noose wand, paired with a teasing stick, to track and catch the fast-running kebbits, and a magic box at level 71 to trap imps for their random loot. Every trap can be bought from the Grand Exchange, but a dedicated Hunter shop is often more convenient and is essential for ironmen who cannot trade other players: Aleck's Hunter Emporium in Yanille, the Nardah Hunter Shop, and Imia's Supplies inside the Hunter Guild all stock the basics, including bulk packs of box traps and magic boxes. Keep a few spare traps in your inventory on any method, because failed catches and PKer interruptions have a habit of eating your supplies.

The Guild hunter outfit is Hunter's experience-boost set, the skill's equivalent of the Lumberjack outfit for Woodcutting or the Angler outfit for Fishing. Wearing the full four-piece set — headwear, top, legs and boots — increases your catch rate by 2.5%, which feeds almost directly into faster experience across nearly every method in the skill. Like the other skilling outfits it is a one-time grind for a permanent boost that pays for itself many times over on the road to 99, so it is worth picking up as early as you reasonably can. It also raises your chance of receiving rare creature parts from Hunters' Rumours by 5%, which speeds up the very activity that awards the outfit.

You earn the pieces from Hunters' Rumours, the contract-style activity run from the Hunter Guild, which opens at 46 Hunter. A Guild Hunter assigns you a specific creature to catch until it yields a unique part, you hand it in, and you are rewarded from a loot table that includes the outfit pieces, quetzal whistle teleports back to the guild, and other goodies. Because the rewards are random you will collect the set gradually rather than all at once, but rumours give competitive experience while you do it, so the time is rarely wasted.

There is a genuinely useful quirk to the set worth knowing. Because the per-piece bonus is rounded in your favour, once you own all four pieces, equipping any single one grants the full set bonus. That means you can wear, say, just the boots for the 2.5% effect and fill the other three armour slots with weight-reducing clothing or transport gear — a real advantage on the running-heavy methods. It is comfortably the single best value upgrade in the skill, and you can see how it stacks up against every other experience set in our Skilling Outfits guide.

One of the most persistent myths about Hunter deserves clearing up before you spend any gold: camouflage gear does not boost your catch rate. The Larupia, Graahk and Kyatt hunter sets are made from the furs of the creatures they are named after, and they look the part, but their only real effects are reducing the damage you take from aggressive Hunter creatures and counting as warm clothing at the Wintertodt. Jagex confirmed through Mod Ash that the camouflage and distance code these sets were meant to use simply does not work, so they have no effect on how often you catch anything. Buy them for Wintertodt or to survive an aggressive area if you like, but never expecting more Hunter experience — the Guild hunter outfit above is the only set that boosts your catch rate.

The consumables that genuinely move the needle are the Hunter potion and the stamina potion. A Hunter potion raises your effective level by +3, and the standard use is to reach a trap-count breakpoint or unlock a creature a few levels early — running four traps from 57 rather than 60, or catching a creature that would otherwise want a level or two more. The boost is temporary and drains over time, so on a long session you sip it periodically to stay above the threshold you need.

Stamina potions matter because Hunter is a running skill — you spend a lot of time darting between traps, chasing butterflies, or jogging between herbiboar trail objects, and that burns run energy fast. Pairing a Graceful outfit (or any weight-reducing gear, which you can wear thanks to the single-piece Guild outfit trick above) with the occasional stamina potion keeps you moving and makes the active methods far less of a slog. Check live prices on potions and supplies with our GE price tracker before you stock up for a big grind.

The fastest possible start has nothing to do with traps at all. Head to the Varrock Museum, go one floor down, and speak to Orlando Smith to begin the Natural History Quiz. You answer the questions on each display case — RuneLite highlights the correct answers by default — and on completion Orlando rewards you with 1,000 Hunter experience (and the same in Slayer), jumping you straight to level 9 in a few minutes. It is the closest thing Hunter has to free levels, so grab it on day one.

From level 1, the earliest trap method in our table is bird snaring crimson swifts at around 7,000 XP/hr. You lay a snare on a marked patch, wait for a bird to be lured in, then check and reset it. It is slow, but it is a perfectly valid way to get rolling on a fresh account, and the early levels pass quickly regardless of rate. The bigger jump comes at level 15, when the butterfly net lets you catch ruby harvest butterflies for around 20,000 XP/hr. The real trick is to catch butterflies while your bird snares are working: butterfly catching is instant, so you can chase the butterflies near your snare and only step away to reset the snare when it fires. Stacking the two roughly triples your effective early rate, and it is the standard way good players blitz these levels.

A second source of experience should be running in the background the whole time: birdhouse trapping unlocks at level 5 and is covered fully in the AFK section, but the short version is that it gives free experience on a timer regardless of what else you are doing, so set up your first birdhouse run as soon as you can reach Fossil Island. If juggling two trap types at once feels fiddly, there is no shame in simply snaring birds and netting butterflies until level 21, where the next clear table upgrade — trapping red crabs — opens up. Whichever you choose, plug your level into the Hunter calculator to see exactly how long each early step should take.

The quickest path to 99 is a ladder of active methods, each one stepped onto the instant it beats the last. Following the rates in our table, the spine of the route looks like this:

• Level 21–39 — trapping red crabs on the Varlamore coast for around 31,000 XP/hr. You bait the crab burrows with fish offcuts and check them as the crabs scuttle in. It is a clean, safe method that carries you comfortably through the 20s and 30s.
• Level 39–43 — box-trapping embertailed jerboas in Varlamore for around 50,000 XP/hr. This needs the Eagle's Peak quest (for box traps) and Children of the Sun (to enter Varlamore). Your trap count rising from two to three at level 40 gives the rate a noticeable bump mid-method.
• Level 43–49 — falconry on spotted kebbits near the Piscatoris Falconry for around 55,000 XP/hr. Falconry is a change of pace — you hire a falcon from Matthias, send it after a kebbit, and retrieve it to claim the catch, with no traps to manage at all. You just need a few hundred coins to rent the bird.
• Level 49–73 — tracking razor-backed kebbits with a noose wand for around 135,000 XP/hr. This is the standout of the entire route and the one many players miss: it offers enormous experience for the level and carries you through a huge swathe of the grind. You follow the kebbit's tracks, catch it with the noose wand, and repeat.
• Level 73–99 — black chinchompas, the fastest experience in the game, covered in its own section just below.

Two methods sit just off the main line as strong alternatives rather than the optimal spine: carnivorous (red) chinchompas from level 63, which are safe and profitable but slightly slower than black chinchompas, and herbiboar from level 80, which is far less click-intensive and makes money on the side. Both get full sections below. Remember that the headline numbers above are the active, focused rates our table tracks — if you cannot click constantly, the AFK and alternative sections trade some speed for a great deal more comfort, and mixing methods is completely normal.

From level 73, black chinchompas are the fastest Hunter experience in the game, and they remain the meta all the way to 99. They are box-trapped in the Wilderness, which is the catch — this is dangerous territory where other players can attack you, so you bring nothing you are not willing to lose: cheap teleports, a stack of box traps, and not much else. Keep one eye on the minimap for incoming PKers and hop worlds or teleport out the moment one appears. The upside is that the catch is also the product: black chinchompas are a premium Ranged training item, so this method largely funds itself.

Your experience rate depends heavily on whether you tick-manipulate, and our table bands show exactly how it scales. Catching black chinchompas normally gives roughly 145,000 XP/hr at level 73, climbing to about 167k at 80, 197k at 90 and 225k near 99 when you 3-tick your trap placements. If you go a step further and bring a bow (or, more effectively, a membership alt account) to shoot the stray chinchompas that wander away from your traps — forcing them to respawn near your traps for another chance — you can push the absolute ceiling to around 250,000 XP/hr. That figure is the top of the whole skill, but it demands flawless focus and a second account, so most players sit comfortably in the 145k–225k solo band.

Here is how 3-ticking works in practice. You use the menu-entry-swapper plugin to set your box trap's left-click option to "reset". The instant you collect a caught chinchompa, you begin a 3-tick action with an item that starts the cycle — cleaning a grimy herb is the popular choice, since you can carry spare grimy herbs cheaply and it does not matter if the action finishes. Your character then re-lays the trap faster than a normal click would, and you immediately move to the next trap to repeat. The same trick speeds up resetting a trap that a chinchompa dismantled. It is genuinely demanding to sustain for long sessions, so a very common compromise is to run chinchompas without ticking — still excellent experience, far more relaxed — and only switch on the tick rhythm when you can give it full attention.

Two methods in our table are genuinely AFK, and they are the answer for anyone who wants to train Hunter while working, watching something, or training another skill. The first is birdhouse trapping, unlocked at level 5 and worth an effective rate of around 25,000 XP/hr. The idea is simple: you build or buy four bird houses, fill each with 10 seeds — cheap hammerstone, hops, flower or allotment seeds all work — and place them at the four birdhouse spots on Fossil Island. Then you leave entirely. Every 50 minutes the houses finish filling with birds, and you return to collect the birds' nests (which can contain seeds, rings or clue scrolls) and your Hunter experience, then re-lay them. Because the timer runs no matter what you are doing, birdhouses are effectively free experience layered on top of any other activity — the only "skill" is doing the run quickly with a Digsite pendant and the Fossil Island mushtree teleport network. It is the most efficient low-effort Hunter in the game when stacked with something else.

The second AFK method is maniacal monkeys on Ape Atoll from level 60, which requires the Monkey Madness II quest. Our table lists this around 70,000 XP/hr, and it scales with your level — closer to 50k when you first unlock it and climbing toward 110–120k as you approach 99. You set deadfall traps baited with bananas, then go AFK for 30 to 60 seconds at a time before checking and resetting them. Bananas can be bought in baskets from the Grand Exchange, or made endlessly with the Bones to Bananas spell from the bones scattered around the area, which is the ironman-friendly approach. Getting there involves a gnome glider to Ape Atoll and a Kruk monkey greegree (from Monkey Madness II) to cross the monkey bars, but once you are set up it is the most relaxed steady experience the skill offers. A third, near-AFK option — herbiboar — gets its own section because it also makes money.

At level 80, herbiboar on Fossil Island is the favourite way for many players to finish the grind — low effort, no PKers, and a steady supply of herbs. Our table lists it at around 150,000 XP/hr, climbing from roughly 137k at the level 80 unlock toward 171k near 99, which is faster than red chinchompas and only a little behind tick-manipulated black chinchompas without any of the click intensity or Wilderness risk. It requires the Bone Voyage quest to reach Fossil Island, and that is its only real barrier.

Herbiboar does not use traps at all. Instead you solve a short tracking puzzle: you click a starter object near the mushroom meadow, your character searches it and reveals the first step of a trail, and you follow the trail from object to object until a herbiboar appears at the end, which you then click to harvest. The RuneLite Herbiboar plugin highlights the starter objects and the correct trail tiles, which turns what could be a fiddly puzzle into a near-mindless rhythm of clicking the next marker. The pace is gentle enough that it feels closer to AFK than to chinchompas, even though it technically needs steady input.

What truly sets herbiboar apart is the herb loot. Every catch drops a handful of grimy herbs — ranarrs, snapdragons and the rest of the table — so you are simultaneously training Hunter and stockpiling Herblore ingredients, and you pick up a trickle of passive Herblore experience from the herbs you clean. Bring magic secateurs for one extra herb per catch and a herb sack to hold the overflow, and consider a few stamina potions for the running between trails. Ironmen in particular treasure herbiboar as one of the best renewable herb sources in the game, and it is well worth at least trying on your own journey to 99 even if you intend to finish on chinchompas.

Hunter is one of the more profitable gathering skills, precisely because so much of what you catch is wanted by other players for their own training and bossing. The headline product is the chinchompa. Red and black chinchompas are thrown explosives that hit every target in a small area, making them a top-tier Ranged training item and a strong consumable at certain multi-target bosses. Because of that demand, training on chinchompas flips the usual gathering-skill economics: instead of paying for your experience, you are producing a valuable item the whole time, so the grind effectively pays you. Black chinchompas command the highest price per catch, with red chinchompas a more affordable but still profitable alternative, and the plain grey chinchompa from lower-level methods sitting at the bottom of the ladder.

The standout profitable-and-safe method is carnivorous (red) chinchompas from level 63, which keeps the chinchompa income while avoiding the Wilderness entirely — the reason ironmen and risk-averse mains lean on it instead of black chinchompas. Beyond chinchompas, Tecu salamanders in Varlamore (level 79) occasionally drop a usable salamander you can sell, and imps caught with magic boxes at level 71 yield random loot from their drop table, including the handy Imp-in-a-box banking item. None of these are get-rich-quick methods, but they meaningfully offset the cost of training, which is rare for a skill.

Prices on every one of these products shift constantly with demand, updates and the wider economy, so any specific gold-per-hour figure goes stale almost immediately. Rather than chase a number that will be wrong next week, check the current value of chinchompas, salamanders and herbs on our GE price tracker before you commit to a method for money, and browse our wider guides hub for how Hunter products feed into Ranged and Herblore training.

Plenty of methods are not the very fastest experience but earn their place for safety, profit, or simply variety to break up the grind. The most significant in our table is carnivorous (red) chinchompas from level 63. Box-trapped like their black cousins but outside the Wilderness, they scale from around 85,000 XP/hr at level 63 up to roughly 220,000 XP/hr near 99 with tick manipulation, or about 140,000 XP/hr without ticking. That makes them a genuine rival to black chinchompas for anyone who would rather not risk PKers, and they keep the chinchompa profit, so for safety-conscious or ironman accounts they are arguably the better default at the high end.

The classic net-and-rope methods — salamanders and lizards — sit just behind the kebbit and crab rates and are a fine change of scenery. Swamp lizards in Morytania open at level 29 (after Priest in Peril), red salamanders near the Ourania Altar at level 60, and black salamanders at level 67, the last of which are in the Wilderness and so carry the same don't-bring-valuables warning as black chinchompas. Tecu salamanders in Varlamore (level 79) are a newer option that scales toward the 110k–150k range once you reach five traps at level 80, with the bonus of an occasional sellable salamander. There is also imp trapping with magic boxes at level 71, which is slow for experience but a fun, profit-leaning curiosity.

Finally, two crossover methods train Hunter and Fishing together. Aerial fishing on Molch Island (35 Hunter, 43 Fishing) and drift net fishing on Fossil Island (44 Hunter, 47 Fishing, requires Bone Voyage) both award two skills at once. Neither is the quickest pure-Hunter experience, but drift netting in particular is one of the most efficient ways to push both skills simultaneously, so it appeals to players working toward a max cape. Treat everything in this section as a way to add variety or chase a specific benefit rather than as your main line to 99 — the fastest route still runs through kebbits and chinchompas.

A handful of quests are close to mandatory for an efficient Hunter grind, and clearing them up front saves a lot of backtracking. Eagle's Peak (requires 27 Hunter) unlocks the box trap, and box traps gate most of the fastest route — without them you cannot trap jerboas, ground mammals, or either colour of chinchompa. It is a short quest and gives a small Hunter experience reward on completion, so there is no reason to put it off. Children of the Sun is a brief, very low-requirement quest that opens Varlamore, home to red crabs, embertailed jerboas, pyre foxes and Tecu salamanders — a huge chunk of the modern route runs through that region.

Bone Voyage unlocks Fossil Island, which you need for both birdhouse runs and herbiboar, two of the most useful methods in the skill, while Monkey Madness II unlocks the AFK maniacal monkeys on Ape Atoll. Priest in Peril — a quest almost every account completes anyway — is what opens Morytania and the swamp lizards. None of these are long or difficult, and together they unlock the overwhelming majority of worthwhile Hunter content.

Beyond quests, the Hunter Guild becomes available at level 46 and is the hub of modern Hunter training. Its main draw is Hunters' Rumours, the contract activity that rewards the Guild hunter experience outfit, quetzal whistle teleports, quetzal feed, and — very rarely — the Quetzin pet. Done efficiently, rumours offer competitive experience while you collect the outfit, so they are well worth weaving into your training once you hit 46. And do not forget the simplest unlock of all: the Natural History Quiz at the Varrock Museum, which everyone should complete on a fresh account for the instant jump to level 9.

A few habits make the whole skill smoother and faster. The most important is to always run the maximum number of traps your level allows — reaching the breakpoints at 20, 40, 60 and 80 is the single biggest rate increase in Hunter, and a Hunter potion can buy you the next tier a few levels early. Next, reset every trap the instant it fires; an idle, already-sprung trap is pure wasted experience, and on multi-trap methods your rate lives or dies on how quickly you cycle them. Lean on RuneLite plugins — NPC indicators to tag butterflies, the Herbiboar plugin for trails, the menu-entry-swapper for chinchompa ticking — and wear Graceful or other weight-reducing gear so the constant running does not leave you stranded with no run energy. Finally, remember to stack birdhouse runs on top of whatever else you do; that free hourly experience adds up over a full grind to 99.

Hunter has two pets. The Baby chinchompa is the standard skilling pet, with a chance to drop on any successful catch. Your odds scale with both your Hunter level and the experience the action gives, which means the high-experience methods — chinchompas above all — roll for it most often, so the fastest route is also the most pet-efficient one. The Quetzin is a separate and far rarer pet available only from Hunters' Rumours, a prize for players who spend serious time on the contract activity. Neither pet is guaranteed at any point, so treat them as a happy bonus rather than a goal to grind toward.

When you are ready to map out your own journey — whether you are chasing the fastest 99, the cheapest path, or the most relaxed one — our Hunter calculator turns your current and target levels into an exact method-by-method plan with experience and time estimates. Pair it with the live rates in the table below and you will know precisely how many crabs, kebbits or chinchompas stand between you and the Hunter cape.