TruthScape.com - Moneymaking Analysis of RuneScape Non-Combat Skills

Armed with the ability to break down and analyze multi-step processes, we can take a realistic look at RuneScape skills to see which ones really are good moneymakers and which are not. There are many factors that determine the earning capacity of each skill—such as a player’s level in the skill, how he or she choose to train and so forth. Yet on the whole, the matter boils down to the same simple mathematics we’ve seen so far in this section—subtract the value of the inputs from the value of the outputs, and you get your answer.

Let’s start by examining the many non-combat skills in RuneScape and their potential for making money. As we’ll see, there is quite a wide disparity in earning ability from one skill to the next.

This is almost purely a support skill, and so has very little moneymaking potential in its own right. The skill neither generates resources nor processes inputs into outputs; in fact, it has very few real outputs. Sure, you can get a few herbs from the Agility Arena in Brimhaven or some gold and maybe even a Pharoah’s sceptre from Pyramid Plunder if you’re lucky, but these are rather insignificant, all things considered.

The practical way to make money from Agility is indirectly, by exploiting the area access and shorcuts it provides to augment moneymaking in other ways. For example, if you have level 70 Agility you can use a shortcut in the Taverley dungeon to access the blue dragons’ lair quickly to make money killing dragons or even gathering blue dragon scales. High-level players with that same 70 score can also access Saradomin’s Encampment in the God Wars Dungeon to try for a valuable Saradomin godsword.

Construction is a notorious money sink to train, and provides virtually no moneymaking abilities even at high levels. Yes, you can make flatpacked furniture, but there’s no demand for it. Another option is to create teleport tablets using a study lectern. Under certain conditions it is possible to make money with this, but it’s typically not that much, and you don’t need your own house for this anyway.

Cooking is either a money-losing skill or a money-making skill, depending entirely on how much time and effort you are willing to put into it. For most people, training Cooking results in a loss, because they are trying to get XP with little work by cooking simple items like raw fish. Since so many people are trying to level in the same way, the prices of cooked fish are uniformly below those of raw fish, resulting in a loss for every item cooked.

Alternative food items, though, can represent some moneymaking potential, though they are certainly nothing you’ll get rich from. For example, there’s always demand for tuna potatoes because they heal 22 HP in one bite, and they do sell for more than their ingredients cost; the drawback is that they are very slow to make. Similarly, high-level chefs can make items like summer pies, though these sell for a fraction of what they once did.

This is a very diverse and complex skill, and that makes assessing its moneymaking potential rather difficult. In general, though, the skill has poor moneymaking potential, because most finished craft goods either cannot be sold in bulk, or sell for less than the cost of raw materials. As with Cooking, Herblore and other skills, this occurs because so many players want to train the skill and are willing to absorb a loss to do so.

This is a skill where money can be made, however, by the clever player. If you aren’t in a big rush, and you’re willing to take the time to explore roads less traveled, you can make a few bucks from Crafting. It does take some patience and creativity, and you have to adjust to changing market conditions, but it definitely is possible.

As just one example, you can make a few coins by playing the Shades of Mort’ton minigame, building the temple to get Crafting XP and sanctifying olive oil into sacred oil for resale. There are also certain types of jewelry that can be sold for a small profit depending on market conditions, and in the past I have occasionally been able to earn money making glass using the special Lunar Magicks spell Superglass Make.

Farming can either make you millions or lose you millions, depending entirely on the approach you take. Overall, though, this is one of the few bona fide excellent moneymaking skills in the game, despite being much maligned and ignored by a large percentage of RuneScape players. (Or perhaps is it a great moneymaker in part because most players don’t train it?)

If you concentrate on the best moneymaking aspect of Farming—growing herbs—you can do very well. You don’t have to be high level either; even a level 9 Farmer planting guam seeds can earn a tidy sum of cash. At higher levels, ranarr and snapdragon farming can make you millions over time. You can also earn a lot by making supercompost, and by picking valuable types of produce like papayas, coconuts and cactus spines.

On the flip side, all bets are off if you try to powerlevel the skill. Some players blow millions trying to get a Farming skillcape, spending as much as 100,000 each on tree seeds that produce no real output to speak of. Allotment seeds are also generally a money loser, because too many items like watermelons and strawberries are produced each day relative to the number of people who want them.

Firemaking is a consumption (input only) skill: you use materials to light fires, and really get no output (alright, a few ashes, but they aren’t worth much). There is no moneymaking potential in this skill, other than indirectly through minigames that involve it.

The opposite of Firemaking, Fishing is a production (output only) skill, one of a few fundamental skills used to general basic resources—in this case, of course, mainly raw fish. Since it has no inputs and produces useful products, it is inherently a moneymaking skill; at the same time, the market has balanced it out over time, so you will never make a lot of money with a lobster pot or harpoon.

This was the skill I used to show the folly of not examining the steps involved in skill-related production. As I demonstrated, Fletching is not a good moneymaking skill; it either makes a small amount or loses money. In my opinion, the only practical reason to raise this skill is to get it high enough to let you make bows, crossbows, arrows, bolts and other items you want for your own uses.

Herblore is another skill that is often regarded as a way to make money, but where the value of the inputs to the skill almost always exceed the value of the outputs. If trained slowly, it can be leveled with only a minimal loss, or even making a small profit, but it becomes very expensive if you try to powerlevel it. Like Fletching, the main motivation to raise this skill should be self-sufficiency in terms of being able to make potions for one’s own use.

Hunter is a production skill that should be a good moneymaker, but suffers from Jagex giving it only a very small number of consumable products for which there is any demand. If you want to make money from it, you are pretty much limited to hunting chinchompas or red chinchompas. This, in turn, means there is huge competition for these limited resources, making any attempt to get these critters an exercise in frustration. You can still make decent money from this, but it comes at a cost.

The only other real way to make money from Hunter is via the Impetuous Impulses minigame. If played the right way, this can be a decent money earner, but only at higher levels.

As I mentioned in the skills overview, Magic is a rather unique skill in that it is roughly evenly split between having combat and non-combat uses (though Summoning is now similar in this respect). I’ll discuss the latter here, and the former in the next topic on making money with combat skills.

Non-combat Magic is one area where creativity makes the biggest difference between being able to make money at it and just breaking even. For example, many people train Magic using High Alchemy, but since this is so popular, the price of common alchable items always rises to remove any profit from the process. In contrast, more obscure methods—such as using Telekinetic Grab to get wines of Zamorak from the chaos temple—can be decent money-earners for low-level players. Likewise, enchanting jewelry is no longer a good way to make money, but enchanting unpowered orbs can make money depending on market conditions.

It is also possible to make money through magic indirectly, though this has changed over time. At one point, earning infinity armor at the Mage Training Arena was a decent way to earn some coins while raising the skill, but recent drops in the value of that armor has made the proposition much more difficult.

This is another of the basic resource production skills, and can be a good moneymaker if you choose the right items to mine. Even at mid-levels, there is always strong demand for coal and gold ore, while at the highest levels, good moneymaking rates are possible with runite ore.

Along with Farming, Runecrafting is one of the best moneymaking skills in the game—at least, once you get to level 44. What’s interesting about this is that it is not a basic resource skill like Mining or Fishing, but a simple transformation skill like Herblore, Smithing and Crafting, none of which are good earners. Normally a skill this easy to do and that is so well-known for making money would lead to more people to start training it and drive out the profit from the skill, yet this has not happened with Runecrafting.

Many years ago, Smithing was apparently “the” skill with which to try to make money; this was before my time, but whatever it was like back then, it sure isn’t a great moneymaker now. You can make money with the skill, but only if you are willing to work rather hard for little monetary gain and not a lot of XP—for example, you can earn money making cannonballs, but the process is extremely slow. Smelting ores can also earn money, but again, this is tedious and time-consuming. If you want to train the skill at even a moderate pace you will lose money.

Creativity does help with this skill, especially learning to watch the markets and react to trends. For example, when crossbows were updated, for several weeks it was very possible to make good money smithing mithril and addy crossbow bolts, before too many people started doing it.

This is probably the most complex skill in the game to analyze in terms of moneymaking ability. Not only is it large and complicated, but it is also one of only two skills that are split fairly evenly between non-combat and combat uses; the latter are discussed in the next topic.

Overall, Summoning has a great deal of moneymaking potential from a non-combat standpoint. While many people focus on how much it costs to train the skill, they don’t pay attention to the various ways that familiars can be used to earn money. Good examples would be the spirit spider, which can generate lots of red spiders’ eggs every hour; the macaw, which can earn you lots of money from herb drops; and the granite lobster, which can forage sharks and swordfish while you fish yourself (see Figure 131).

**Figure 131: Granite Lobster Output**
Summoning makes you money indirectly, by using the abilities of familiars. This is what I got from one granite lobster while fishing for sharks myself; there’s a bit of luck involved so I don’t always get this much, but I always get enough to make using it worthwhile! And it has other abilities too.

There are also many ways that Summoning earns money indirectly, by facilitating other activities. In particular, beasts of burden allow you to stay longer in dungeons and keep more drops. At higher levels, reports I have read suggest that familiars like the unicorn stallion can revolutionize boss monster hunting due to the large amount of healing it provides.

Thieving is a resource gathering skill that is “mostly output only”: you occasionally need small amounts of food or other inputs to enable you to steal goods, but this is a relatively minor factor overall. Since it is a production skill, you can certainly make money at it, and creative players will do much better than those who stick to the old standbys. But even at the high end, there aren’t a lot of ways to make a lot of money through Thieving.

Woodcutting is very similar to Fishing in how it works, and also in its moneymaking capabilities. Like Fishing, it is a resource gathering skill with effectively no input costs, and you can make decent money from it even at the mid levels. And also like Fishing, while you’ll earn a steady income from Woodcutting, you will never make really good money from it.