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The ZMI Ourania Altar - Recommended Method for Runecrafting The ZMI Ourania Altar - Comparison to Other Runecrafting Methods

As I discussed in my overview topic, Runecrafters are primarily in this to get experience points, runes (for their own use or for money), or both. Thus, the value of the Ourania altar can largely be judged based on what runes you get, how much time it takes to get them, and what the costs are associated with getting them.

Let’s take a look at some numbers!

First and foremost, Jagex has done a great disservice to this update by saying that the runes you get from the Ourania altar are “completely random” (their words). This is not true at all! Sure, the exact number of any rune type you get on any given trip has a random component, but these variations even out after only a few trips. What really controls the runes you get is not luck—it is your Runecrafting level. Again, this is somewhat like the Fishing Trawler; sure, you don’t get the same number of each fish every time, but someone with level 90 Fishing is not going to haul in a load of shrimp and mackerel. The same goes here.

Since the update is new there isn’t a lot of data available yet, but I have compiled some data for myself (level 60 Runecrafting), and added to it some run totals from a level 75 and a level 91 crafter. The numbers in Table 2 and Figure 34 show the percentage of each type of rune obtained from about 10 trips to the altar; as you can see, this altar is only “somewhat random”.

The bottom line is simple: the higher you raise your Runecrafting level, the better the runes you get.

The altar gives double the normal Runecrafting XP for the runes that you end up crafting. Thus, just as you get better runes at higher levels, you also get better XP. This is very significant for higher level crafters, because it means they get XP slightly faster each time they go up a level; no longer must they stagnate with the same XP rate no matter how much they advance in the skill.

In Table 3 I have taken the data from the three levels of Runecrafters (60, 75 and 91) and computed how much it works out to in terms of Runecrafting XP gained per 1,000 pure essence. As you can see, it is a significant amount of XP.

Of course, this compares to 9,000 XP, 9,500 XP and 10,000 XP for making nature, law and death runes the conventional way, respectively. Not only do you get more XP, but you get an increasingly greater amount of XP as you level up.

Okay, so you get lots of XP per rune, but how long does it take? After all, if it takes forever to make the runes then it doesn’t buy you much. Fortunately, there’s good news here too.

I conducted extensive tests and found that using my method, it consistently took me about 1 minute and 45 seconds per trip, on average. This includes all of the time required to get out essence, fill pouches, teleport, run to the altar, craft, empty pouches, craft again, teleport back and bank. It also includes the time needed to heal damage, restore run energy and pray to restore prayer points. It does not include preparation activities like turning on Lunar Magicks, nor the time needed to repair pouches.

I obviously could only time myself, not the higher level crafters, but the time required is not a function of Runecrafting level. The main difference in time related to levels is that I can only craft 41 essence per trip, while those level 75 and above can craft 52 since they can use a giant pouch. The extra pouch will make Runecrafting faster overall, though it does increase the amount of time needed per trip very slightly since it requires extra times opening the bank. I simulated this, however, and it’s only about an extra 10 seconds for three trips.

Adding in a “fudge factor” of 5 minutes per hour for restoring pouches and other uncertainties that might lead to slowdowns, I compute about 31.4 trips possible per hour with three pouches, and 31.0 with four pouches. This leads to the approximate XP rates shown in Table 4.

Okay, so the XP is good, but can you make any money at it? Let’s take a look at the costs associated with the method and the value of the runes produced, and find out. Note that I always compute costs based on the value of the items used, whether or not they are purchased; this is the only fair way to compute the profit from an activity. For example, if you mine your own essence then it’s true that you save 100 per rune created, but that 100 is actually gained by the mining activity, not the Runecrafting.

The costs per trip associated with crafting with this method include the following items:

• Pure Essence: Assuming a value of 100 each, this is 4,100 or 5,200 per trip, depending on whether three or four pouches are used.
  
  
• Ourania Teleport Runes: The astral and law runes needed for each teleport are worth around 600 gold.
  
  
• Dueling Rings: You get eight charges per ring and they are really cheap these days, often 1.5k or lower. Assuming 1.6k for simplicity, that’s just 200 gold per trip.
  
  
• Super Energy Potions: These can be found for 1.5k each for 3-dose, so that’s 2k for a 4-dose, and one is used every three trips. Cost is about 665 per trip.
  
  
• Food: The cost here is negligible if you use cheap fish; about 50 per trip.

So, the total cost is 5,615 per trip for three pouches and 6,715 per trip for four. This yields an hourly total cost of around 176k for three pouches and 208k for four pouches.

Now, the value of the runes produced. This will of course be random to some extent, but using typical rune prices and the empirical rune percentage figures in Table 2, we can determine the approximate average value of the runes crafted for each 1,000 pure ess, just as we calculated an average XP value per 1,000 ess. Then we determine how much we make per hour, and subtract the cost per hour to figure out typical profit. This is shown in Table 5.

The bottom line is clear: at level 60 you roughly break even, with profit slowly increasing as you gain levels and get better runes. At level 75, when you can use the fourth pouch, you can make some decent money in addition to very good XP.

The ZMI Ourania Altar - Recommended Method for Runecrafting The ZMI Ourania Altar - Comparison to Other Runecrafting Methods