The Skillz – SmithingSmithing is probably one of the hardest skills in RuneScape to raise. Why? Because you get hardly any experience for doing anything in the skill, much like summoning.

In this article we’re going to do the usual and talk about how to start Smithing and some of the best ways for training Smithing. We’ll also look into what perks having a high Smithing level gives you.

To start, we shall look into the…

Tin for Copper

Tin and copper are what most people have to use in order to start Smithing. In fact, everyone in RuneScape has used tin and copper to smith their first item. (This is because in the tutorial you have to smith it) Even so, its not that bad of a metal to start out with, especially since you’re required to (unless you surpass this requirement by doing certain quests and using the genie’s lamp).
One thing you must remember when smithing is this: All items give the same experience per bar. This means that you’ll get the same experience from a Bronze Platebody as you would get from smithing 5 daggers. Why smith higher level items you ask? We will talk about that later.

To start Smithing, you’ll need to mine a good amount of tin and copper. These ores can be acquired by mining at certain mines. Once you have an equal amount of both tin and copper, you will need to go to a furnace to smelt the two ores together to create a bar.

Furnaces are located all around RuneScape. The first one you’ve seen was probably the furnace across from Lumbridge’s General store. There are also furnaces in Falador and Ardougne as well as many other areas which could be dangerous or require a quest to get to. There are certain strategically good furnaces which are close to banks which are very good to use, these we’ll talk about later.

Once you find a furnace, take out equal amounts of Tin and copper from your bank and click ‘Smelt – Furnace’. A menu will come up showing all of the types of metal which can be smelted at a furnace. If you’re just starting smithing then you’ll only be able to smelt bronze which is on the far left. If you right click the bronze bar then another menu will open asking how many you would like to smelt. The options are ‘1, 5, 10, and X’. Choosing ‘X’ will allow you to type any number (Up to a max of 10 digits I believe) and then hit enter and your character will smelt that many, provided you have the correct supplies in your inventory.

Once you have smelted all your ores, you’ll have bars. You will get one bar for every ore you’ve smelted. Smithing Tin and copper is one of only two ores which does not give you one bar for every ore. Instead it gives you one bar for every two ores, thus if you smelt 14 of each ore(totalling 28) you will receive 14 bars. Iron is the other ore which works differently. Iron has a 50% chance of failing to smelt. This means that about every other iron ore you try to smelt will fail and you won’t get a bar of iron from it. There are two ways to avoid this, one is to use a Ring of Forging and the other is to use the spell Super Heat.

Once you have your bars of bronze, you’ll be able to bring them to an anvil. Anvils are located all around RuneScape just like furnaces. The first anvil you’re likely to see is one of the two in Varrock. There is one just south of the western bank and one just south of the eastern bank, both are good to use for smithing. There are many other anvils around RuneScape including one in Seers’ Village, Burthorpe, and Yanile.

You’ll need to bring your bar (or bars) and a hammer to the anvil of your choice. Once at an anvil you can use the bar on it and a menu will come up showing you which items you have the level and supplies to smith. Remember, each item gives the same experience per bar so it doesn’t matter what you make, just pick an item you need or want and select “Smith 1,5,10”.

And now you have a bronze item!

Where to smelt? Where to smith?

The best known place to smelt ore is in Port Phasmatys. To enter here, you must worship the ecto-functus to get ecto-tokens to pay the entrance fee. Alternatively you can do the Ghosts Ahoy! quest and enter Port Phasmatys for free. You’ll also need a ghost speak amulet to talk to the bankers easier so you’ll need to have completed The Restless Ghost. The furnace here is just across the street from the bank which makes for very fast banking.

Another good place to smelt is on Neitiznot, one of the Fremennik Islands. Here the furnace is just east of the bank. You do not have to complete The Fremennik Isles quest to gain access to Neitiznot, you only have to start it and do a little bit.

Now, about anvils…

The most commonly used anvil is in Varrock, this is for two reasons. A ) Because its a Free to Play anvil, B ) Because its a big city in RuneScape, C ) Because it has no quest requirements, and D ) Because right across the street from this anvil is the western Varrock bank. The Grand Exchange is also just north of this anvil so if you’re buying smithing supplies from the Grand Exchange then you can easily check them or put another offer up.

The next good place to smith is in Yanile. This anvil is also just south of a bank. The main reason some people don’t use this anvil is because its out of the way. For anyone who hasn’t done the Watch Tower quest this town can be annoying to get to. The best way to get to it if you can’t teleport to the Watch Tower is to run east from Castle Wars or go to the Fairy Ring south of the Gnome Maze (CIQ).

Now there are a few ores, like adamantite and runite, which are very annoying to smelt using a furnace since you can only smelt 2 or 3 bars at a time. To do these ores in a more efficient way, you can use the spell Superheat (1 Nature Rune, 1 Fire Rune). Casting this spell on an ore instantly turns it and the supplies needed into a bar while granting you the equivalent smithing experience and an additional 53 magic experience. In addition to making it easier to smelt Adamantite and Runite, Superheat also gives you a 100% success rate when using it on Iron ore. Though this seems like a waste it could be better then using a bunch of Rings of Forging.

Now let’s talk about…

Some of the best ways to raise Smithing

One of the best known ways of raising Smithing is to buy or mine alot of Iron ore and then to smelt it in a furnace while wearing a Ring of Forging or by Super Heating it. Since either way gives you a 100% chance of success it just depends on whether you wish to use a ring which gives no extra experience or use a spell which does.

After you have around a thousand iron bars you go to either the Varrock anvils or the Yanile anvils and smith Iron Throwing Knives. The reason we do throwing knives, though they’re low level, is because they give just as much experience as making an iron platebody would. Also throwing knives stack which means you can make as many as you want and only ever take up one space. Or you could wield them every time before you bank, then you would have 27 spaces for bars instead of 26. Some people think making platebodies is faster, maybe it is, but you still have to bank all those platebodies…and then get rid of them all. There’s usually a fairly good market for iron throwing knives.

I haven’t calculated the costs of buying iron ores/bars to what selling knives would be so I’m not sure if you would make or lose any that way. I do know, however, that throwing knives are excellent to use for training Ranged. They’re fast, hit good, and you can wield a shield with them. They’re ideal for use on mid level monsters.

Another very common way of getting smithing experience fast is to smelt gold ore with the Gold Smithing gauntlets from the Family Crest quest. These gloves give you 56.2 experience when you smelt gold ore instead of the usual 22.5, that means the gloves give 150% more experience then normal. Since gold can be mined fairly easily or bought from the Grand Exchange this is a fairly good way of getting smithing experience.

Another good way of getting smithing experience is by making cannonballs out of steel bars. Doing so will give you 25 experience for every batch of 4 balls you make. You must have completed the Dwarf Cannon quest in order to make cannon balls and you must also have a cannonball mould.

Now let’s look at the…

Perks to Smithing

Ahh, what good is this annoyingly boring, hard to do, costly skill? Well for one its not necessarily costly, two its not that hard to do and three…OK so it can be boring but you haven’t seen the rewards high level smithing can give you.

Firstly, as your smithing level increase you’ll find that you can repair your barrows items for less then it would normally cost. This only applies when you repair your barrows items on your armor repair stand or on someone else’s armor repair stand. With 99 smithing you can cut the cost of repair by half.

Secondly, I doubt there isn’t one Legend who hasn’t wanted a Dragon Square shield. (Well there might be now that Jagex is adding so many items which beat Dragon items.) Whether or no, the Dragon Square is still the best shield in Runescape for melee. The only way to acquire a Dragon Square shield is for it to be made by combining the right and left half of the shield on an anvil. Doing so will give you 75 experience points and the best shield in the game. Yes I know you can buy Dragon Square shields from the Grand Exchange or other players but for that person to have gotten the shield they must have gotten it from someone who repaired it or they repaired it.

Thirdly, I know many people in RuneScape like to use the Godsword. The only way to get a Godsword is to combine the 3 pieces together on an anvil. To do this you need a smithing level of 80. Combining the three neutral pieces will give you 200 experience, adding any hilt does not give you any experience.

Fourthly, the DragonFire Shield is a very powerful shield which is made by combining a Draconic visage and an Anti-Dragon Fire Shield on an anvil. Doing so will require a smithing level of 90 and will grant you with 2000 experience points. If you do not wish to build the shield yourself or do not have the level then you can pay 1,250,000 to Oziach in Edgeville to have him combine them, but where’s the fun in that?

The End

What? Already?

Hmm, let’s see if I forgot anything…

Did you know that if you do the Barbarian training Mini-Quest you can smith spears and one handed spears? These one handed spears are called ‘Hastas’ or ‘Hastea’ for plural. Hastas are just as good as normal spears and can be poisoned with everything a normal spear can be poisoned with, the only thing different is that they allow you to wear a shield also.

There are, of course, various quests you can do to gain smithing experience, you can view these here.

Remember, you get smithing experience per bar, not by item. It does not pay to build a higher level item which costs more, you’ll get the same experience as a low level item of the same metal.