Runescape Runecrafting Guide

By Zacheris

Intro to Runecrafting

Runecrafting is an useful skill in Runescape. It allows a person to take a rune essence and change it into a rune, a profit of over 200gp per essence when one begins to craft Law runes or 500 if you're lucky enough to be able to double-craft nature runes. Runecrafting is mainly for gaining cash, however, it can also easily be used to avoid having to avoid buying your own runes. Either way, it will either save or make you lots of money and is therefore well worth levelling.

Runecrafting Tools

Tool Name	Use	Location
Air Talisman	Entering the Air altar	Rune Mysteries quest, Drop from Lvl 2 Goblin
Mind Talisman	Entering the Mind altar	Drop from Imps, Wizards
Water Talisman	Entering the Water altar	Drop from Wizards
Earth Talisman	Entering the Earth altar	Drop from Men and Women
Fire Talisman	Entering the Fire altar	Drop from Guards
Body Talisman	Entering the Body altar	Drop from Guards
Cosmic Talisman	Entering the Cosmic altar	M.O.M, Caskets from Fishing, Drop from Lesser Demon
Chaos Talisman	Entering the Chaos altar	Drop from Lesser Demon, Level 45 Skeleton
Astral Talisman	Entering the Astral altar	Lunar Diplomacy
Nature Talisman	Entering the Nature altar	Drop from Moss Giants, Banshees
Law Talisman	Entering the Law altar	Troll Stronghold Quest
Death Talisman	Entering the Death altar	Mourner's End Part 2

Now that you have your talisman, you’ll need some essence, something you should be aware of from the get-go is that there are TWO types of rune essence, Regular Essence (Mined on f2p worlds) and Pure Essence (Mined on member worlds). There are two differences between these:
1. Essence can only be used to create the f2p runes (All up to and including bodies) whereas Pure Essence can make anything
2. Pure essence, from players, costs upwards of 100gp each whereas regular essence costs closer to 20gp each.

Your best bet for obtaining high amounts of essence is the eith the Runescape Forums or Varrok bank. However, if you really want to, you can go mine your own, there are several ways to get Entrance to the rune essence mine.

Speak to the Rune Shop owner in Varrock.
Speak to Distenor the mage guild.
Speak to the wizard in the basement of the mage tower.
Teleport in Tree Gnome Village, look for the green arrow on the minimap.

Recommended are the Rune Shop in Varrock or for those who can access it, the mage guild route is faster. Now all we need is an altar. To find them, right click on the talisman and click Locate, it will give you the direction in which the altar is. When you find it, click on the talisman and use it on the Mysterious Runes. You will now be in a different area, click on the altar near you inside the henge and you will craft all of your essence into runes.For your convenience, the altar locations are listed below.

Altar	Level Required	Location
Air	1	Southwest of Falador
Mind	2	North of Faldor, close to wilderness.
Water	5	Lumbridge Swamp
Earth	9	North East of Varrock
Fire	14	Near the Al Kharid Duel Arena entrance
Body	20	North West of Barbarian Village
Cosmic	27	Inside Zanaris (Do Lost City quest to gain access)
Chaos	35	Low level wilderness, North West of Edgeville
Astral	40	Moon Clan island
Nature	44	North of Shilo Village
Law	54	North Eastern corner of Entrana
Death	65	Temple of Light, under West Ardougne

Now, this is where things get weird and complicated. There are these wastes of time known as Combo-Runes. Generally speaking, these are useless. Unless you are a hardcore Pker or for some other reason need to optimise your inventory, stay away from these.
These are the combo runes, the levels required and what they are made from.

Type	Level Required	Contains
Mist	6	Water + Air
Dust	10	Earth + Air
Mud	13	Earth + Water
Smoke	15	Fire + Air
Steam	19	Fire + Water
Lava	23	Fire + Earth

Keen mages among you will notice that there is one very good combo rune, Muds. With these, you can cast the binding spells with no rune loss. If you have lava runes (You should seriously consider quitting) and you use a spell which uses 3 fire runes, but no earth runes. You will still lose 3 lava runes. However, there is worse to come. In order to create combo runes, you must sacrifice a talisman for every load. What were jagex thinking? Say you are idiot user #1 and you want to make lava runes. You have two options, go to the earth altar and bring a fire talisman and fire runes along with your ess, or go to the fire altar and take an earth talisman and earth runes along with your ess. Then craft away. You are now the proud owner of lava runes. Another note, when making combo runes, you can fail at it just like when smelting Iron ore, meaning that it only is succesful 50% of the time.. To remedy this, make necklace of binding (enchant an Emerald necklace).

Now that we know of all the possible runes, the location of the temples and what we need in order to craft, we should now consider how best to optimise our crafting. Firstly, you’ll want a tiara. These save you an inventory slot and allow one the pleasure of one less click per run. Instead of using a talisman on mysterious ruins, you just click the ruins and hey presto. To get a tiara, grab a silver bar and a tiara mould (Al Kharid crafting shop) and head for the nearest furnace. Make yourself a tiara. Next, take your tiara along with the talisman of your choice to the matching altar. Use the talisman on the alter (Not the mysterious ruins) and hey presto! Instant talisman! Now that we have that over with, you’ll be wanting pouches. To get these, do the Zamorak mage miniquest and kill leeches (They die fast, and everything has the same drop rate) in the abyss until they drop you some essence pouches, there are four types.

Name	Number of Essence held	Level to Use
Small	3	1
Medium	6	25
Large	9	50
Giant	12	75

Exactly why you need a high rune crafting level to reach into a bag and pull out essence is beyond me. Pouches speed up solo rune crafting by a large amount, at level 50 you can almost craft double the normal amount per run. So, we have our tiaras, our pouches, and our essence. Now we consider the routes to take.

Air Rune Crafting
1. Falador East bank to the altar, run both ways.
2. Draynor to altar, glory amulet teleport back.

Mind Rune Crafting
1. Run from Falador West bank to the altar and back.
2. Same as 1, but teleport back.

Water Rune Crafting
1. Run from Draynor bank and back.
2. Same as 1, but glory amulet teleport back to Draynor.

Earth Rune Crafting
1. Run from Varrok east bank and back.

Fire Rune Crafting
1. Run from the duel arena bank and back.
2. Run from Al Kharid bank and back.
3. Ring of dueling teleport to duel arena, craft runes, ring of dueling teleport to castle wars, bank and repeat.

Body Rune Crafting
1. Run from Edgeville and back
2. Run from Edgeville and glory amulet teleport back

Cosmic Rune Crafting
1. Run from Zanaris bank and back.
2. Abyss run.

Chaos Rune Crafting
1. Run from Edgeville and back
2. Abyss run

Astral Rune Crafting
1. Run from Moon Clan bank to altar, teleport back using Lunar Magic

Nature Rune Crafting
1. Run from Shilo and back.
2. Withdraw noted essence and GP. Sell essence to general store north of the altar, buy it back (Un noted now) run to the altar, craft, run back to the store, repeat.
3. Start in Al Kharid, use the glider to go to Karmanja, run to the altar, glory amulet tele back to Al Kharid.
4. Ring of Dueling teleport to duel arena, glider to Karmanja, craft runes, Ring of dueling teleport to castle wars, bank and repeat.
5. Abyss run

Law Rune Crafting
1. Run from Falador, boat to Entrana, craft and run back.
2. Same as 1, but use a Falador teleport.
3. Start in Draynor, go to the altar and glory amulet teleport back to Draynor
4. Abyss run

Death Rune Crafting
1. Use Abyss, never even consider any other way

So, what’s the best way to get experience? Fire runes. Under 30 seconds per run combined with pouches is a winning combination. The only problem is keeping up a supply of rings of dueling for all the teleporting. One ring gives 4 runs.

Quick FAQ
Q. Why didn’t you list the Abyss run for everything.
A. Because it’s not worth it for everything. I only listed it for runes which took longer to craft without it.

Q. Why did you say combo runes suck!? Blah blah
A. In my opinion, they do. Except mud runes, but they still aren’t worth it. There is no spell (Other than the binds) which will use an equal number of elemental runes, therefore, you will always waste runes by using combos.

Q. Why the prejudice against lava runes? You love your mystic lava staff!
A. So? There’s no spell that uses both fire and earth runes. I use the lava staff because it doesn’t produce waste, also, it lets me use Snare and Fire Blast/Earth Wave without the need for fire/earth runes.