Crafting revealed!

posted by on 30th November 2007, at 10:06pm

Crafting recently became my third skill that I obtained level 99 in. Only a few months earlier, crafting was my worst ranked skill (now that would be ranging). I was level 62 crafting, and I saw that green dragonhide bodies could be made at level 63. So I put my pen to the desk and started to write out some numbers and to my amazement, I could actually get 99 crafting without losing a dime, contrary to hearsay that crafting made you lose a large sum of money, similarly to prayer. Even high level crafters had told me this.

So what is the secret, exactly? Patience, of course, but you also have to know how, where, and not necessarily when to buy things, but the best times are good to know. It is easier than you’d think.

The easiest way to 99 crafting is most definitely making green dragonhide bodies (though I did blue most of the way, which I will explain why later). However, there is a bit of preparation that has to be made prior to your crafting spree. In order to gain profit, you must first either mine or buy pure essence. I bought about 63k of it. I did not want to factor the price of essence into the equation of profit made from the dragonhide, so I caught red chinchompas and sold them for about 6.5 million. That way, I can (hypothetically) disregard the price of essence from my earnings. At the time, essence was about 100 each, give or take 10 gp either way, so I bought them for 100 each.

After I amassed the pure essence needed, I crafted them. Every single one of those essences became a Nature rune. That got me close to 800k runecrafting experience, which is a very nice bonus to the crafting experience I will be getting shortly. Let’s not forget about the 63k alchs I had to do, which got me heaps of magic experience as well!

I had just over 11 million cash in my bank at this time, and when I finished I had just over 20 million. This amount is nothing compared to the total amount of cash you’d need to buy 99 crafting all at once. I realized this while doing my calculations, so that didn’t bother me. I had a plan. I would buy the maximum amount of dragonhides I could with that amount of cash, craft the bodies, high alch the bodies, and get all my money back plus a bit of profit that started off around 300k each time I recycled my money, but as that profit accumulated over the levels, I was able to buy more hides at once therefore increase the profit returned each time. It was nice, really.

There were some strict limitations on the prices I had to buy things for. If you want to get 99 crafting this way, I will tell you this time and time again—never, and I mean NEVER buy already tanned hides. The prices will be much more than the untanned ones, and it only costs 20 gp to tan them, whereas the tanned hides’ prices on the market are 200-300 more than the untanned hides.

The thing you need to know before I tell you the prices is that you should calculate the number of hides you can get by dividing your total amount of cash by the price of the dragonhide plus 20. This allows you to have just enough money left over to be able to tan all of your hides.

If you plan to make green dragonhide bodies, buy the hides for 1500 gp each. This means the cost of each body is 1520 x 3 (you have to account for tanning price), which is 4560 gp per body. Green d’hide bodies alch for 4680 gp each, leaving you 120 gp profit per green body made. Not much, but crafting isn’t exactly a skill that was made to gain profit this way.

One note before I continue on about blue dragonhides. I chose to do blues for most of the way to 99 because the green dragonhide market is infested with scammers, macroers, and gold farmers. They love to farm green dragons because the bones and hides are both worth a lot. The only times I bought green hides, even though they sell much faster than blues, was when I was unable to craft blues, and to get from 98 to 99 faster. Also another reason is that I gained more profit per blue d’hide body made rather than if I had done greens.

I bought blue dragonhides for 1800 each. As you know it takes three hides to make a body, meaning the cost of a blue dragonhide body is 1820 x 3, which is 5460. Blue d’hide bodies alch for 5616 each, leaving you with 156 gp profit per body.

When buying hides, I had to be on a very strict budget. I got scammed a few times while buying greens because I just was being careless, but since then the trade system has been updated to nearly eliminate the ability to scam the way they did then. Since I realized I had gotten scammed a few times and lost fair amounts of cash, I never went up on the price I offered. I always made sure, double, triple check the second screen if necessary on large amounts (large amounts I consider anything where I put up more than about 100k).

I bought both colors of hides standing in front of the East bank in Falador in World 2. The forums never had a large amount being sold, and even if it did, it wasn’t for the price I was asking for (remember, you can’t stray from the price or else you may lose money. There is a very slim margin of leniency and the prices I asked were reasonable for the seller). The forums are also significantly slower than the real-time trading of World 2.

The “when” question about buying hides isn’t really that big of a factor, but there usually were more sellers on the weekends. I didn’t really note the times, but I’d assume a time where it is most comfortable for most of the people in the world to be able to play. Sometimes it would take me multiple days to acquire all my money’s worth in hides, sometimes only hours, sometimes I got lucky and bought them all at once (when I had a lower amount of money).

Now the actual crafting. The way I did it I feel is the quickest way and you see your experience going up a lot sooner than if you tan them all at once, then craft them all at once standing in a bank. I would buy around 1k thread at once (this was before the shop update, after it I just flat out bought 30k at once so I never had to return to the shop), and I would bring a needle, all my cash needed to tan my hides, and a placeholder item so I have 24 spaces left in my inventory, otherwise I’d have a stray leather just sitting there being useless. At the Al-Kharid bank I would withdraw all the hides I could and run to the tanner (or walk if I was letting my energy recharge), and walk back to the bank. But they key thing is, as I was walking back to the bank, I crafted the bodies. I discovered this technique when I was observing El N Frit craft, who at the time was rank 4 crafting in all of RuneScape. I feel, and I’m sure you’d agree, it’s much nicer to see your experience go up by nearly 2k each round rather than see it do nothing for God knows how long it takes to tan them all. I didn’t actually put it to a test, but I’m almost 100% positive this way is faster than tanning them all at once and crafting them later.

Well, that’s it for crafting. It’s not that hard, it just takes a somewhat decent amount of cash to get you started and as I said before, patience to complete. I made the amount of Nature runes for the amount of green d’hide bodies I had to make to get 99, and I did blues most of the way (which give more experience), so I had a few Natures left over. I haven’t used them yet, but I plan to continue crafting until I use up every single one of those runes. Maybe sometime in the future if I ever want to go for a crazy amount of crafting experience, I will use this exact same method. The reason I will not use the Grand Exchange is as simple as the reason I did not use the forums—it is nowhere near as fast paced as World 2’s market.

If you did get this far, I thank you for reading and I wish you the best of luck crafting if you decide to do it this way. Happy gaming!


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