OSRS Early Game Money Making Guide

Onur Author

Created - 19.12.2024 Updated - 20.12.2024

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Runescape is notorious for its economy and the overall difficulty of accumulating wealth in the game. This is especially true for newer players or for low-level accounts. Just like in real life, however, once you start accumulating some gold, it will start to have a snowball effect. Having more gold in this game will always allow you to make more gold. There are many ways for you to make money in Old School Runescape. This guide will take a look at the easiest methods that you can use to make some easy money in OSRS. If you want the easiest method of all, however, you can check out our store for easy and fast OSRS gold purchases!

Let’s start by looking at some early game methods that will boost your bank value.

Picking up Ground Items

Since this is a guide designed for new and low level players, we will start from the beginning and look for methods that have no starting item or cash requirements.

Ground items are referred to items that periodically spawn on the ground. These items will always keep respawning making them an easy way to start making some gold to get supplies for different methods. It is good to note that these types of methods are slow but consistent. We will take a look at two items for this method, both can be found in the Wilderness. Don’t let the Wilderness scare you as you will probably not bump into any PKer whilst doing this method. Matter of fact it is super helpful that these items are in the Wilderness since you can bring along a looting bag to store 28 more items per trip, which you can’t do outside of Wilderness. To get a looting bag for free, you can kill rats that can be found near the Ferox’s Enclave. The drop rate is pretty high so you should get this item within 2-3 minutes of killing level 1 rats. Do not do this method without having this item.

Red Spider Eggs

Recommended setup:

• Looting bag
• Some food, like trout
• Teleport to a bank like the ring of dueling

Red spider eggs can be found in the Edgeville dungeon, in the red spider section next to Black demons. Simply make your way to Edgeville and go down into the dungeon and the Wilderness through the metal gate. Walk further in past the thugs and you should see this area. There is a total of 6 red spider eggs spawns in this room so start picking them up. After picking all of them hop to a different world and repeat the process until you have a full bag of red spider eggs. After this teleport to Grand Exchange to sell your spoils.

Each red spider egg is currently worth around 400 gold so you can expect to make around 20K per trip using this method. You can invest in an amulet of glory after the first trip to teleport straight to Edgeville for further trips. This method can make up to 190K per hour if you consistently do it but we don’t recommend this as we are only showing this method for you to have some early game cash for other methods.

Steel Platebodies

Recommended setup:

• Looting bag
• Some food, like trout
• A bronze or Iron sword for cutting webs
• A teleport that can be used at level 30 Wilderness, such as a glory
• A burning amulet

This item has a spawn in deep Wilderness, inside the lava maze. To get to the spawn you can use a burning amulet to directly teleport to the start of the Lava Maze. After that simply cut the web and make your way towards the end of the Lava Maze. The steel platebody can be found near the Muddy Chest. 

There is a demon that is aggressive near the platebody so you will need to have it de-aggroed for you to properly do this method. To do this turn on the NPC aggression timer plugin in runelite and wait 10 minutes in the area. Plugin will make it so that you can see the aggression timer and the aggression borders which you need to stay in. After 10 minutes you can loot the steel body and start hopping worlds. 

Each still platebody is worth around 900 gold in the Grand Exchange so making a full trip will net you 44.1K profit. If you want to, you can also sell this to the general store found in the bandit camp in Wilderness for Alch Value which is 1.2K gold. This will require you to hop worlds as you sell them for maximum profit but can net you 58.8K gold instead.

What To Do With Your Starting Cash?

The methods above will allow you to have some sort of starting cash but what now? How can we use the money we have just made to our advantage to make even more money? Well, we have a few methods for you to use at this stage:

Buying Beer

Yes, buying beer is actually profitable in OSRS and the requirements are pretty easy:

• 15K Starting Cash
• Completion of the quest “Children of the Sun”
• Stamina potions and weight-reducing armor (not required)

With the introduction of Varlamore, a lot of new money-making methods arrived to Runescape. Accessing this area of the game requires the Children of the Sun quest. If you haven’t done this quest it is pretty easy and we have a guide on it which you can check out by clicking here.

Once you arrive at Varlamore, make your way to the Quetzacalli Gorge and you will notice a bar really close to a bank. This will be our ticket to making more money. Simply get your cash stack and run to the pub. This pub has an infinite amount of beer in stock so you don’t even need to hop worlds. Simply buy out all the beer for 2 gold each and run towards the deposit box which is only 22 tiles away from you. Bank everything and repeat!

This method will net you a 487K GP per hour.

Creating Black Candles

The black candle trading method is highly specialized due to the item's unique characteristics in RuneScape. Since black candles cannot be traded through the Grand Exchange and are only required for a single quest, they typically have little practical value. However, their appeal lies with collectors who actively seek rare and distinctive items for their personal collections, creating a niche market despite the candle's limited utility. For this method you will need:

• Partial completion of the quest “Merlin’s Crystal” stop at the black candle part.
• Insect repellent which can be found in Catherby
• Around 800 buckets
• Empty candle lanterns (same amount as buckets)

You will need to manually fill your buckets with wax using the beehives located near Catherby. After filling all your buckets with wax, you will need to go through the dialogue options with the candle maker to receive your candles. This process is annoying as there is no “make all” option but the payoff is great. Once you have obtained all your black candles simply place them inside your empty lanterns and sell them using the Grand Exchange. The selling process will take some time but you can expect to get around: 2-3M per hour.

Be warned as the trade volume for this item

Planting Flowers

Our next method is an interesting one. There are two items in the game that we can use for this method, so pick the one that is the cheapest. One is mithril seeds the other is the adamant seeds. Planting these seeds can be done almost anywhere and each seed will yield a random flower. There are rare flowers as well being the black and white flowers which are worth way more than any other flower that can spawn. 

Simply buy these seeds from the grand exchange, around 200K gold investment should be good and start planting them near a bank. After each plantation, there will be an option to pick up the flower. Always pick it up, as if you don’t, you will never be able to pick it up off the ground. Bank when full and sell them all in the Grand Exchange. The selling process can be a little bit slow so be patient because the gold per hour you can expect to get from this method is around 1 million GP!

Making Gloves of Silence

Gloves of Silence is a Thieving item that increases your chances of pickpocketing. Here is what you need for this method:

• Around 1K dark kebbit fur
• Rings of dueling
• Law, fire, and air runes for Varrock teleport
• Stamina potions

The cash you will need for this method is around 340K gold. Also, keep in mind that the trade volume for both the dark kebbit fur and gloves of silence is pretty low so you might need to wait to buy and sell these items. Once you have all the items required, follow these steps:

1. Teleport to Varrock
2. Run south-east and enter the gate near the tea shop
3. Go to Asyff’s cloth shop and right-click to select “fur clothing”
4. Right-click on the gloves of silence and select "buy 10" until you use all your materials
5. Teleport to Castle Wars to deposit your gloves and repeat this process
6. Don’t forget to drink your stamina potions when necessary

Doing this method for an hour will profit you 390K gold!

Selling Ranged Items

This method involves taking advantage of another shop in OSRS. This shop is a Ranged shop that buys Ranged-related items for a higher price than the Grand Exchange. We will need around 100K gold for this method. Here is a list of items you can sell to the shop:

You should try to buy a little bit of all of these items since you can sell more that way before hopping worlds. Once you buy the necessary supplies, make your way over to Rimmington and start selling them to the shop. You must sell 10 at a time before hopping worlds to make a profit. To make this process easier you can use the menu entry swapper plugin to set the left-click option to “sell 10.” You must also make sure that nobody else besides you is doing this method.

The profit you can expect for an hour of doing this method is around 900K!

Methods That Can Be Done After Having Over 1M

Congratulations! If you are following along with this guide, you have probably already made over a million gold pieces, or maybe you already had some starting cash to begin with and were wondering what you can do with it without having stats. The following methods require little to no skills at all but require some decent starting capital to do.

Buying Kegs of Beer

The drunkenness continues as we once again return to buying more alcohol. This method has some requirements but they are not that bad:

• Around 1M gold investment
• Weight-reducing clothes and stamina potions (optional)
• Completion of the quest “The Fremennik Trials”
• Completion of the Fremennik Easy Diary

This method is pretty simple. In the longhall of Relleka, there is an NPC called Thora the Barkeep who sells kegs of beer. Get your cash stack and simply buy out the shop and deposit the items using Peer the Seer. This requires the Easy Fremennik Diary; if you don’t have this diary, you can skip this money-making method altogether.

You can make around 750K profit per hour using this method as around 100 trips are possible per hour!

Filling Bullseye Lantern

Filling bullseye lanterns is another niche thing you can do in this game to make some money. This method involves purchasing empty bullseye lanterns alongside swamp tars and filling the lanterns up. Here is what you need:

• Around 600K gold to purchase 1K lanterns and 1K swamp tars
• Weight-reducing clothing (optional)
• POH in Rimmington
• A teleport to a bank like the ring of dueling and a teleport to your house like the house tablet

To fill a bullseye lantern, you will need to use a lamp oil still. There are two of these tables in the game: one in Rimmington and the other in Dorgesh-Kaan. We will be using the one in Rimmington to make our lives easier. Simply get an inventory of your bullseye lanterns, bring along your swamp tars, teleport to your house, and make your way to the Chemist’s house. Use the lamp oil still to fill all the lanterns. Bank using your teleport and repeat this process.

Doing this method should net you 663K gold per hour!

Tanning Dragonhide

This method is an ancient one that new players still do to this day. This method involves buying dragonhides from the Grand Exchange and tanning them in Al Kharid. The items needed are:

• Around 5M gold starting cash
• Weight-reducing clothing and energy potions

There are four different types of dragonhide that you can tan. You should always check their prices and select the most profitable one. The most profitable one currently is the green dragonhide, so we will use that. Buy around 3.5K green dragonhide, which should last for an hour, and make your way to Al Kharid. Bring along your cash stack as well and visit the tanning shop. Right-click to tan all your leather and repeat this action.

Doing this method for an hour will yield around 510K!

Opening Crystal Chests

This method also involves you to run back and forth between a chest and your bank, well more like teleporting back and forth. Here is what you need for this method:

• Around 10M gold to buy around 420 Crystal Keys
• Level 10 Construction and your house needs to in Taverley
• Around 60 House tablets

Once you have all the items required, take out 10 crystal keys and teleport outside of your house then run towards the crystal chest located inside the house nearby. Open the chest until you use up all your keys, if your inventory gets full you can drop the elemental runes.

Doing this method for an hour will yield: 943K!

Making Guthix Rests

This method requires you to partially complete the quest “One Small Favour”. You need to do the part that teaches your character how to make a Guthix rest. You will need the following for this method:

• Level 18 Herblore
• Around 600K to purchase:
• 1250 Bowl of hot water
• 1250 Empty cup
• 2500 Guam leaf
• 1250 Marrentill
• 1250 Harralander

Here is how you make this tea:

1. Use your bowls of hot water on empty cups to create cups of hot water.
2. Use 2 guam leaves, 1 marrentill, and 1 harralander on the cup of hot water to create a 3-dose Guthix rest.
3. After creating all of them, take them to the Bob Barter to decant them into 4-dose variants.

After doing this for an hour you can expect to get 700K Gold!

Grinding Unicorn Horns

We are now arriving at the non-skill-requiring methods that require a lot of capital instead. For this method, you will need around 3.1M gold to purchase 9K unicorn horns. After buying the horns you can simply bank stand in any bank and grind them to dust using a pestle and mortar. There are two ways to do this method. The fast way is by consistently clicking back and forth between your pestle and mortar and the unicorn horns to grind multiple at a time. This method is click-intensive but yields a lot more profit per hour. The other way is the lazy way where you can click once and let the game grind the rest of the inventory for you.

Doing this method should net you around 500K gold per hour! (Fast method: 1.1M per hour, lazy method 100K per hour.)

Making Redwood Pyre Logs

This is yet another very simple money-making method that requires a quest. Here is what you need:

• Completion of the quest “Shades of Mort’ton”
• Around 6M gold to purchase:

• 1400 Sacred oil (4)
• 1400 Redwood logs

This method is really simple after you have completed the quest. Simply withdraw 14 logs and sacred oils from your bank and use them on each other to create redwood pyre logs. Doing this for an hour will net you around 1M GP per hour!

Crushing Bird Nests

This method also has no requirements, so if you have the capital for it, you can start doing this on a new account. For this method:

• You will need around 25M gold to buy 5K bird nests, which should last for an hour
• A pestle and mortar

Just like the grinding unicorn horns method, this method can be done in a fast way where you spam-click between the pestle and mortar and the bird nests, or the lazy way where you click once and let the game do the rest.

Doing this the fast way will get you around 1M GP per hour, whereas the slow way will get you 390K per hour.