Dailies. We’ve all done them. Some of us do all of them, all of us do some of them.

I suppose I should explain what a Daily is because some people might not have heard the term yet. A Daily is a task or thing that can only be done a certain number of times per day.

Ok, good, now that we have that down let’s talk about them.

Miscellania

I think we’re probably all pretty familiar with this one. It’s actually one of the most profitable dailies. Throw some cash in(over 75k at least), set your pawns to gather something, and then come back the next day and reap the rewards. Note that it costs 75k a day, but when set to harvest the right things your pawns will gather more than that in resources.
When gathered daily it probably takes about 5 minutes to get your resources. You can easily leave it for a week though if you put enough cash in. It takes about 15 minutes after a week, so that’s more efficient.

Buying Battlestaves from Naff

This is a pretty good quick profit, especially if you’ve done some of the Varrock Diary. Normally he will sell you 8 noted staves for 7k each. The quantity goes up the more achievements in the Varrock Diary you do. The great thing about this. though, is that you can nearly always run up to the Grand Exchange and instantly sell the staves for a decent profit.
Time? Around 5 minutes.

Seaweed and Pineapples from Arhein

This might not seem like a Daily, but it is. You can buy 80 seaweed and 40 pineapples from him everyday for peanuts. That’s nearly 3 batches of supercompost worth of pineapples and the seaweed could be used for glass. Or you could sell both on the Grand Exchange for a decent profit.
It only takes about 5 minutes to buy these. You have to talk to him though.

Free Essence from Wizard Cromperty, in Ardougne

This requires doing the Ardougne Medium or Hard tasks. He’ll give you either 100 or 150 respectively.
It takes less than 5 minutes as you can just right click and ‘Claim’ it.

Evil Trees

Mmm, Evil Trees. Now this is perhaps a more classic Daily. Y’all probably know you can kill two Evil trees per day. The hard part is finding them. They respawn 2 hours after the last one is killed. If you’re a friend of spirit trees you can ask them for hints on where the evil tree is growing. Each hint only has 2 possible places I think, so not too terribly hard to find. Alternatively you can also use the spirit trees to instantly teleport to the evil tree once it’s fully grown. The rewards for this can vary in usefulness and value, but the experience from higher level trees is usually fairly good.
It can take quite a long time to kill a tree depending on how many people are there. I would say probably 20 minutes to an hour on average. That would be 40 minutes to two hours if you did both trees everyday.

Shooting Star

Mining Shooting Stars can certainly be fun but it can take some time to figure out where it landed. The only efficient way is to be in a chat with a few buddies so you can spread out. This way becomes fairly efficient.
It can take some time to mine the star once it lands depending on your team. I would say schedule at least 30 minutes, sometimes more sometimes less.

The Jade Vine

Perhaps little known, but a Daily nonetheless. It takes about 12 hours to grow and a further 12 to go wild. So about once a day you could kill it for slayer experience.
I haven’t fought it since the Combat Update but I would expect it to take about 15 minutes to kill, with the right equipment.

Killing Bork

Then there’s also killing the Big Ork in the Chaos Tunnels Daily. Amazing how there’s always one there even when we kill him 365 days a year. Anyway, he drops some alright charms and gems and is probably a 15 minute fight.

Kill the Pheonix

I don’t see why so many of these Dailies require us to kill things. I mean, if we’re killing the same thing day in and day out are we really KILLING it? Seems like we’re only defeating it. Pah, oh well. The Pheonix gives some alright experience and some quills as a reward. From what I remember it can take a few minutes to get through the tunnels so I’d say a good 15 to 30 minutes for this one.

Free sand from Bert

Nice thing about this Daily is if you’re on Lunar Magic you can just do NPC contact and it takes about a minute to get your 84 sand.
Otherwise you have to walk there, which takes about 5 minutes from either Yanille teleport spot.

Lumbridge Ring Spells

You can do 30 Low alchs, 15 high alchs, and 27 superheats depending on which level Lumbridge ring you have. These can be useful, but kinda time consuming.
I’d budget 15 minutes to use all the spells.

Pineapples from Dell Monti

We’re not talking American canned fruit companies here. Dell Monti is a friendly pirate in Brimhaven who gives away 40 pineapples a day to those who have completed the easy Karamja tasks. That’s nearly 3 batches of supercompost.
5 Minutes is all you need for a brisk walk from Ardougne and a quick chat with this landlubber.

Free Flax from Geoffrey, better known as ‘Flax’

Depending on which Seers’ Village achievement diaries you’ve completed, Geoffrey will gives you between 30 and 200 flax. Kinda nice since picking it can be a bit annoying.
It takes only a few minutes, perhaps 5?

Skill Assisting

Skill Assisting! Granted, this requires at least 91 if you want to do it the easy way and help with effigys. Once you have the right 91+ skills it takes only a few minutes to do 30k worth of assists. 30k per day times 7 days equals 210k free experience per week. This is perhaps one of the best dailies to do once you can.
Unfortunately it can take quite awhile to assist some skills, so the length of this daily can be anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour, with 15 probably being the norm.

Mine 50 Red Sandstone near Oo’glog

This one is for higher level players for sure, or those with high mining and crafting. If you’ve done As a First Resort down in Oo’glog and have 81 Mining then you can mine 50 red sandstone a day. You can then turn this into robust glass and if you have 89 crafting you can turn it into a Potion flask. Potion Flasks sell for over 1k on the Grand Exchange. This is because they hold 6 doses of potion. Useful for longer fights perhaps?
It takes around 15 minutes to mine all 50 sandstone.

In the end…there can be only a lot

I’ve only mentioned 15 of a very large pool of Dailies. The 15 I mentioned would take about 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete, assuming you were relatively fast and had decent luck. That’s not counting small distractions between destinations if you were going from one Daily to another.

I also have not discussed things such as the Squeal of Failtune or the Wicked Hood, among many other Dailies.

I also did not mention any Weeklys like the Circus, or Penguins, or the Dahmaroc Statue, or Tears of Guthix, or Fish Fingers-I mean Flingers, or or or….

Thou gettist mine point.

If someone was to try to do every single Daily and Weekly thing in Runescape they would spend so much time doing all of those that they would never spend any time on their own goals. It’s easy to see how, really. The things I mentioned alone were over 3 hours. Jagex won’t let you be logged in for more than 5 hours consecutively and there are many Dailies I didn’t mention. I’m sure Dailies alone could take more than 5 hours.

And then you’ve still got Weeklies to squeeze in as they can fit. Perhaps 1, maybe 2 or 3 each day?

So, in the end?

I think it comes down to this: Pick and choose.
Some Dailies won’t appeal to everyone. Some are more combat oriented, some are more skill oriented. Let’s say they’re about even and this cuts the list in about half. Let’s say, for example of course, that it cuts our estimated time in half. So instead of having over 3 hours of Dailies, we’ve got a little over an hour and a half. That’s still 1.5 hours each day to spend just on dailies. Now, say you’re a Skiller. I’m sure there are some of those dailies that just don’t fit your skills for whatever reason. Either you don’t train that skill or you’re already max so it doesn’t matter.

Same goes for the Combatist. There are going to be some Dailies in their category that they just don’t like. So let’s say that about half of the Dailies that would fit your general style, you don’t really like so you don’t do them. That means you do about 25% of all the available Dailies, but you like all the ones you do. And they only take 30-45 minutes, maybe an hour on bad days. This is a much more reasonable time, especially so for those who only get on for a few hours each night.

I think ultimately how many Dailies and Weeklies you do will depend on how much time you play. If you play a lot, you’ll do a lot. If you don’t play much, you’ll limit which you do to those that really fit you.

I do have one question though, that I’ve been wanting to ask and I’ll leave you with it:
“Do you think Jagex adds some of these Dailies and Weeklies just to waste our time and prevent us from doing other things? Or do they honestly mean to help us when they add them?“