OSRS Hardcore Ironman Guide

Have you done all that there is to do in OSRS? Or are you just looking for a way to challenge yourself in the game? If that’s the case, then it might be time to prepare for doing a Hardcore Ironman run. An OSRS account like this is sure to give you a new challenge in the game.

This guide will show you everything you need to know to get through this challenge in OSRS.

Before we dig deep into some amazing tips and tricks for a Hardcore Ironman run, here’s what makes a Hardcore Ironman run different from a regular account in OSRS.

Hardcore Ironman Restrictions

Hardcore Ironman restrictions in OSRS are the same in regular Ironman. The major difference is that Hardcore Ironmen only have one life. If you die, you’ll lose your Hardcore Ironman status. This simple but significant change will force you to be more careful when it comes to quests, boss fights, and raids.

The good news is that there are what’s called as “safe deaths.” Deaths like these are often in minigames and certain instances. Dying here won’t remove your Hardcore Ironman status. Below is a list of all the safe deaths.

• Barbarian Assault

• Camelot training room

• Castle Wars

• Chambers of Xeric

• Clan Wars

• Dream World during Lunar Diplomacy

• Emir's Arena

• Fishing Trawler

• The Fremennik Trials (only during the 4th phase of the Koschel the Deathless fight)

• Inferno

• Last Man Standing

• Magic Training Arena

• Nightmare Zone

• Pest Control

• Death within a player-owned house

• PvM Arena

• Soul Wars

• TzHaar Fight Cave

• TzHaar Fight Pit

• Random Event 

• Rogues' Den (maze)

• Zulrah (only from the Resurrection reward if you finish the Elite Western Provinces Diary)

Other than this, you’ll simply need to keep in mind the restrictions in an Ironman account as well. Here’s a full list of things to consider.

1. Trading with other players isn’t allowed. However, quest-related items are still tradeable. You can accept bonds as well.

• You can’t use the Grand Exchange for buying and selling items other than bonds. You can purchase bonds but you can’t sell them. Ironmen will see a unique interface when interacting with bonds inside the GE.

2. You can’t pick up drops from other enemies that other players kill. This includes PvP instances.

• You can’t get any loot from monster that are attacked by other players. Even if the player doesn’t deal any damage with their attack, you can’t get items from the enemy anymore. If the monster was attacked or affected by other monsters, then you’re still going to get loot.

• To prevent tanking, players who get hit by enemies too much won’t get loot as well.

• If you’re doing Achievement Diary tasks that ask you to kill specific monsters, you can’t ask other players for help. If other players damage your target, they won’t count towards your achievement diary count.

3. You can’t get any combat XP from PvP instances. The only exception here is the base Magic XP that you can get from casting spells.

4. The Accept Aid feature won’t be activated in an Ironman account.

5. The POH or player-owned house of other players are going to be off-limits.

6. Buying items from other players and their overstocked shops won’t be allowed. The same goes for using higher sell prices in understocked shops to make money.

7. Items from the Falador Party Room balloons aren’t going to appear.

8. Receiving rewards from the reward chest inside Group activities while inside the Nightmare Zone isn’t allowed. The only exception is the scroll of redirection.

9. Receiving rewards from group bosses isn’t allowed if you took the fight with the help of other players. However, there are a few exceptions to this:

• Tempoross, Wintertodt, and Zalcano - or bosses that are called as skilling bosses

• Callisto, Venanatis, Vet’ion - or multicombat wilderness bosses

• Bosses inside raids. Specifically inside the Chambers of Xeric, Theatre of Blood, and Tombs of Amascut

• Moons of Peril - Blood, Eclipse, and Blue Moon

• Nex

• Nightmare

• Revenant maledictus’ Forinthy Surge buff

OSRS Hardcore Ironman Combat Training

Combat training becomes a significant challenge in a Hardcore Ironman account. This is where a lot of players get stuck at because they want to play it safe. Below are the best ways to train the combat skills in the game.

Melee

Melee training is the easiest as you can train multiple Skills here. Namely, Attack, Defense, and Hitpoints. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the riskiest to train because it puts you directly in front of enemies from training. You can begin by doing the quests below:

• Waterfall Quest: No requirements, Rewards 13,750 Attack experience, 13,750 Strength experience, No combat levels required, Evadable

• Death Plateau: No requirements, Rewards 3,000 Attack experience, No other experience rewards, No combat levels required

• Vampyre Slayer: No requirements, Rewards 4,825 Attack experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat level 34

• Tree Gnome Village: No requirements, Rewards 11,450 Attack experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat level 112 (safespottable)

• Fight Arena: No requirements, Rewards 12,175 Attack experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat levels 44, 63, 137 (safespottable)

• The Grand Tree: Requires Agility 25, Rewards 18,400 Attack experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat level 172 (safespottable)

• Holy Grail: Requires Merlin's Crystal, Attack 20, Rewards 15,300 Defense experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat level 127 (flinchable)

• Haunted Mine: Requires Priest in Peril, Crafting 35, Rewards 22,000 Strength experience, No other experience rewards, Requires combat level 95

• Dragon Slayer I: Requires 32 Quest points, Rewards 18,650 Strength experience, 18,650 Defense experience, Requires combat levels 3, 19, 22, 24, 43, 82, 83

• In Aid of the Myreque: Requires In Search of the Myreque, Crafting 25, Mining 15, Magic 7, Rewards 2,000 Attack experience, 2,000 Defense experience, 2,000 Strength experience, Requires combat levels 35, 54, 50s/75

These quests either have low of easy requirements, making them perfect for getting your melee Skills up a few levels.

The safest way to start training your melee skills is against the ammonite crabs on Fossil Island. Their high health and low damage make them safe and highly efficient for training. While there are other monsters that offer more XP, the ammonite crabs are usually the best for Hardcore Ironmen playing it safe.

Another alternative would be to train in the Nightmare Zone. Just make sure to use normal rumble so that you have offer more control over the difficulty of the instance. With absorption potions, you can also make this training more AFK.

Magic

For Magic, make sure to do these quests first:

• Imp Catcher: Rewards 875 Magic experience

• Witch's Potion: Rewards 325 Magic experience

• The Grand Tree: Requires Agility 25 (boostable), Rewards 2,150 Magic experience

For the first levels up to 43 Magic, the safest way to train Magic would be by casting strike spells. You can focus on fighting ammonite crabs just like in Melee for a safe and efficient way to train. The runes of Strike spells are cheap as well so you don’t need a lot of investment for this.

Make sure to use the elemental staff as this is the best for splashing these types of spells. Aside from ammonite crabs, other enemies you can focus on are zamorak warriors, blue dragons, and twisted banshees.

Once you hit level 43, you can move to casting Superheat Items instead. This is also a part of Smithing training. Particularly, focus on superheating gold ore into gold bars. You can mine the ores for this part of the training or you can buy them instead.

From 55 onwards, your best bet is to use burst or barrage spells against bosses like the Kraken and Zulrah. 

Ranged

For Ranged, you’re going to want to start your training by doing the following quests: 

• Death to the Dorgeshuun: Requires Thieving 23, Agility 23, and The Lost Tribe, gives 2,000 Ranged XP

• Horror from the Deep: Requires Agility 35, Rewards 4,663 Ranged XP

• Heroes' Quest: Requires Quest points 55, Cooking 53, Fishing 53, Herblore 25, Mining 50, many quests, Rewards 2,075 Ranged XP

• Temple of Ikov: Requires Ranged 40, Thieving 42, Rewards 10,500 Ranged XP

• Zogre Flesh Eaters: Requires Big Chompy Bird Hunting, Jungle Potion, Ranged 30, Smithing 4, Herblore 8, Rewards 2,000 Ranged XP

• Animal Magnetism: Doesn’t have Ranged XP but it does give you Ava’s gear which can be good for Ranged training. 

Actual training starts after you’ve gotten the Dorgeshuun crossbow and bone bolts. You can get these after beating The Lost Tribe.

There’s really not a lot of special things about the Dorgeshuun crossbow other than the fact that it has low requirements and the bolts used are relatively cheap. To level up, you can either fight ammonite crabs or do Pest Control which will help you net the void knight equipment.

At 55 onwards, the best and safest training method has to be chinning. Specifically, use carnivorous chinchompas against maniacal monkeys that you can find on Ape Atoll.

OSRS Hardcore Ironman Skilling

Playing the game with a Hardcore Ironman account varies heavily from a regular Ironman and especially on a regular account. To make it easier for you to understand, we’ve dedicated an entire section for Skilling.

Agility

Due to the fact that you have to avoid enemies mostly, Agility is one of the best Skills to level up first. This will grant you access to many shortcuts that can significantly cut your traveling time.

The good news is that training Agility remains the same as with a normal account. You can focus on doing the Agility courses but the Agility Pyramid is the best early on if you want to make extra money. You can get up to 200,000 per hour here.

If you want something AFK, head to the new shortcut near Barrows. You can pass through it with 72 Agility. You can AFK train this spot by adjusting your camera so that the wall is always visible. Just click on the wall again and again to gain Agility XP.

Once you hit level 80, head to the Rellekka Agility Course for maximum stat gain. Make it a priority to get the marks of grace for the graceful set as soon as you can.

Construction

Training Construction remains the same as you would on a regular account. However, the challenge lies in collecting the resources you’ll need for this Skills. You’re left with two options for this: either get the logs on your own or you can collect them from managing Miscellania.

Collecting logs on your own is the better option as this will help you train Woodcutting at the same time. However, it can be risky as some of the high-level trees are located in areas with enemies.

Managing Miscellania is the safer route but this won’t get you Woodcutting XP. The goal of Hardcore Ironmen is to choose the least dangerous road all the time seeing as they only have one life.

You can skip several levels early on by challenging Wintertodt and repairing the braziers but this would mean having a high Firemaking level first. It’s also worth noting that before you do this, you’ll need to have your own house first before you can get XP from the braziers.

Cooking

You can level up Cooking early on by doing a few low-risks quest. Namely, do Gertrude’s Cat, Cook’s Assistant, Recipe for Disaster (only the Dwarf and Goblin Generals subquest). Doing these will get you to level 18.

The safest way to train after doing the quests is by focusing on fishing trout and salmon. You can find these in Shilo Village. This will also help train your Fishing Skill. Once you get a ton of fish, cook them either in the Rogues’ Den or inside the Hosidius kitchen.

If your hands are quick enough, you can get extra Cooking XP with 3-tick barbarian fishing using a knife. While relatively safe, this method isn’t efficient if you fail and end up eating the roe. If you haven’t mastered this, go for the cooking method above instead.

After you hit 65 onwards, you can start by cooking pineapple pizzas next. If you do this in the mess hall, you don’t need to get the ingredients for it but you do need to have 45% Hosidius Favor. This method is also click intensive but it doesn’t put you in harm’s way at least.

Crafting

Like with Cooking, you will want to start Crafting training by doing a few quests first. Namely:

• Sheep Shearer: Rewards 150 Crafting experience

• Goblin Diplomacy: Rewards 200 Crafting experience

• Misthalin Mystery: Rewards 600 Crafting experience

• Dwarf Cannon: Rewards 750 Crafting experience

• Recipe for Disaster/Freeing the Goblin generals: Rewards 1,000 Crafting experience

• Murder Mystery: Rewards 1,406 Crafting experience

• Observatory Quest: Rewards 2,250 Crafting experience

• Elemental Workshop I: Requires Crafting 20, Mining 20, Smithing 20, Rewards 5,000 Crafting experience

• Elemental Workshop II: Requires Elemental Workshop I, Magic 20, Smithing 30, Rewards 7,500 Crafting experience

These are easy to do and while there is combat involved, they shouldn’t be hard to do if your combat level is good enough.

There are actually a few good methods you can do for Crafting. 

• Glassblowing - This is one of the most common ways to train Crafting. For this, you’d want to get large amounts of buckets of sand and giant seaweed first. It also requires finishing Lunar Diplomacy and then getting 77 Magic for the Superglass Make spell.

You can get sand from the sandstone in the Quarry. There’s a Sandstorm west of the mine that you can use to grind the stone. As for the seaweed, you can get them from the seaweed patches in Fossil Island’s underwater area.

• Making Jewelry - A lot of players opt for this method as it gives a lot of Crafting XP. With the help of high alchemy, you can also make a decent profit by selling the jewelry at Davon’s Amulet Store or Grum’s Gold Exchange.

• Making Battlestaves - Another way to make good profit while training Crafting is by making battlestaves.

Farming

Starting out, make sure to do these quests first: 

• Goblin generals subquest of Recipe for Disaster: Requires Cooking 10, Rewards 1,000 Farming experience

• Fairytale I - Growing Pains: Requires Lost City, Nature Spirit, Rewards 3,500 Farming experience

• Forgettable Tale...: Requires The Giant Dwarf, Fishing Contest, Cooking 22, Farming 17, Rewards 5,000 Farming experience

• The Garden of Death: Requires Farming 20, Rewards 10,000 Farming experience

• Garden of Tranquillity: Requires Creature of Fenkenstrain, Farming 25, Rewards 5,000 Farming experience

• Enlightened Journey: Requires Quest points 20, Firemaking 20, Farming 30, Crafting 36, Rewards 3,000 Farming experience

Tree runs are still the best way to train Farming even on a Hardcore Ironman account. If you have the extra gold for it, you can pay farmers to look after your tree so that you don’t have to do more work. 

Alternatively, you can do herb runs as well. You can do tree runs and herb runs consequently if you want to as both provide good Farming experience. For maximum efficiency though, try to go for Herb runs as the items you get from these will let you train Herblore at a more reasonable price.

Firemaking

Firemaking is one of the easiest Skills to train for Hardcore Ironmen. It’s also an important one as it will let you do Wintertodt ]more easily.

Start by going to Lumbridge Castle and head to the top most area. You’ll find a few logs here that you can light for Firemaking XP. If you run out of logs to light, you can switch worlds for even more spawns. You can do this until you reach level 15 Firemaking.

From there, cut oak logs for Woodcutting Xp. Light them as you go and try to get to level 35 Woodcutting. Switch it up by focusing on teak logs next until you reach level 50.

Once you hit level 50, make sure to start doing Wintertodt next., Aside from giving you vital resources, this will also help you level up other Skills.

Fishing

Training the Fishing Skill on a Hardcore Ironman account shouldn’t be hard. In fact, it’s done as you would on a normal account. There’s very little risk in Fishing.

Before anything though, make sure to  do the Sea Slug quest for a huge XP gain.

Fletching

You can start Fletching training by cutting down regular trees and then turning the logs into headless arrows. Attach feathers to them and you’ll get Fletching XP.

If you’ve completed The Tourist Trap, you can start doing darts. What’s great is that you can get Smithing XP from the Blast Furnace if you opt to get your iron ore this way. Fletching iron darts can be done while doing other activities as well.

If you’ve been doing Managing Miscellania, then there’s a good chance that you’ve gotten a ton of maple logs as well. You can fletch these into unstrung maple longbows for XP.

Herblore

Herblore training sucks for Ironman, and farming can be pretty annoying too. Fortunately, these days there's an incredibly useful method in the game that makes both skills a lot easier: farming contracts. 

Before you can really capitalize, you need to get to 62 Farming, which means a trip to another major piece of farming content, the Tithe Farm, which coincidentally just got a number of updates in a very recent game patch.

Now, what makes farming contracts just that good for training Herblore and Farming? Seed packs. As a reward for completing farming contracts, you get seed packs, which come in three tiers and can contain pretty much any seed under the sun—from big tree seeds like dragon fruit and magic tree seeds, even spirit tree seeds, to herb seeds like ranarr and snapdragons.

So the Tithe Farm is not some people's favorite activity in the game. It's definitely not something you want to do as a regular training method for farming, even on an Ironman. It's just so much more efficient to do farming in the background as a daily task with your normal plant runs and whatnot. 

In saying that, farming contracts are a huge part of Ironman progression for both Farming and Herblore, and they get really good at level 62 when you can unlock medium contracts, boosting with a garden pie. 

On top of that, there are a couple of really handy unlocks from the Tithe Farm, so it makes sense to do the Tithe Farm now, get it out of the way while benefiting from the quick farming levels to get to 62 Farming, and at the same time getting some of those useful unlocks.

A couple of really nice little features they've added are: you can take more than 100 seeds in at once so you can do multiple trips in one go without having to leave the instance. 

Just plant a total of 20 plants, clicking on each patch one at a time. You don't even click on the ground or click on the watering can onto the plant, which can technically increase your speed by a tick or two for every plant, but even without that, you can finish this cycle without any plants dying. 

As part of the most recent update, herb boxes similar to Nightmare Zone have been added to the store, a nice little boost if you want to make sure herbs are always stocked up. They've also doubled the number of Bologa's blessings you can get from the store from 10 to 20, which is incredibly useful to help getting more Grapes of Zamorak to make wine of Zamorak in the future.

Hunter

The Hunter Skill is trained similarly as you would on a normal account. You should train it until you have enough to catch chinchompas which will be good for Ranged training. You can get to 99 Hunter by focusing on herbiboar tracking.

Make sure to switch to red salamanders and red chinchonmpas instead of black salamanders and black chinchompas. The red variants are much safer to catch.

Mining

Same training method applies from regular accounts. However, try to get gemstones which can be used for Crafting training, as well as volcanic ash for Farming training. In the case of the later, you can do Volcaninc Mine and use your points to get volcanic ash.

You can eventually start doing Blast Mine. The most cost efficient way to get these is by getting the ones dropped from Wintertodt. These can also drop from the Chambers of Xeric but it’s a much more difficult quest that isn’t used for training.

Runecrafting

To unlock this skill, you’ll need to do Rune Mysteries first but oddly enough, the quest itself doesn’t reward you with any XP. For questing, do these instead: 

Enter the Abyss: Rewards 1,000 Runecraft experience

• Temple of the Eye: Requires Runecraft 10, Gives 4,210 Runecraft experience during the quest and rewards 5,000 Runecraft experience after the quest (9,210 Runecraft experience total)

• The Ascent of Arceuus: Requires Client of Kourend and Hunter 12, Rewards 500 Runecraft experience

• The Eyes of Glouphrie: Requires The Grand Tree, Construction 5, Magic 46, Rewards 6,000 Runecraft experience

One of the safest and fastest ways to train Runecrafting is by crafting lava runes. These have high XP rates per essence but the problem is that this will require a ton of emeralds. This method is very expensive and it’s more costly knowing that the lava runes themselves are useless. You’ll also need to have the Magic Imbue spell which isn’t that big of a problem. 

If you lack the gold to train this way, you can focus on crafting lava runes through the Ourania Altar. While this method yields lower XP compared to lava runes, you can at least get more useful runes from this one.

Slayer

To get to level 9 Slayer quickly, make sure to finish the natural history quiz. Other than that, you should train your combat skills considerably well first to make Slayer training less risky. Ideally, you should have at least 90 combat and good gear for it. Remember, you only have 1 life in a Hardcore Ironman account so you need to be well-grinded.

Now, for the training itself, you generally have to take on the following tasks up until you reach level 58 Slayer:

• Ankous

• Banshees

• Bloodvelds

• Black dragons

• Blue dragons

• Dagannoth

• Fire giant

• Greater demon

• Jellies

• Kalphites

• Trolls

From 58 onwards, you’ll have more freedom when it comes to the Slayer tasks you do. Just progress through the level fighting increasingly difficult Slayer monsters. Again, make sure to play it as safe as possible.

Smithing

You can start Smithing training by doing these quests first: 

• The Knight's Sword: Requires Mining 10, Rewards 12,725 Smithing experience

• Sleeping Giants: Requires Smithing 15, Rewards 6,000 Smithing experience

• Elemental Workshop I: Requires Mining 20, Smithing 20, Crafting 20, Rewards 5,000 Smithing experience

• Elemental Workshop II: Requires Magic 20, Smithing 30, Rewards 7,500 Smithing experience

• The Giant Dwarf: Requires Crafting 12, Firemaking 16, Magic 33, Thieving 14, Rewards 2,500 Smithing experience

• Heroes' Quest: Requires Quest points 55, Cooking 53, Fishing 53, Herblore 25, Mining 50 and a number of quests, Rewards 2,257 Smithing experience

• Freeing Pirate Pete (Recipe for Disaster): Requires Another Cook's Quest, Cooking 31, Rewards 1,000 Smithing experience

If you have the time and requirements for it, try to finish Family Crest as well. This doesn’t give any Smithing XP but it does give you the goldsmith gauntlets which boosts any XP you gain by 2.5.

At the start of your Smithing journey head to the Ardougne mine and look for Iron Ore to mine. You can then superheat the iron ores to make them into bars. This is a good method as you get to train Mining as well. If you don’t want to mine, just buy the ores from Ordan. Don’t sell the iron dart tips you make here as these can be used for Fletching training.

From 40 onwards, train your Smithing via Blast Furnace. If you have the goldsmith gauntlets, you can get to 99 much quicker. The process here is simple, buy the gold bars from Ordan and smelt them into gold bars via the Blast Furnace.

Thieving

From levels one to five, just start in Lumbridge or pretty much anywhere in the game where you’ll find men and women. Lumbridge is typically the best spot, and all you have to do is pickpocket them until you reach level five. 

It should honestly only take a couple of minutes to get to level five. Be warned, you will probably be failing a lot at a lower level, but when you get the coin pouches, you can get 28 at a time, open them up, and then keep pickpocketing again. This should not take very long.

Once you hit level five Thieving, make your way over to Ardougne and start stealing from the baker stalls. This is where you can get a lot of good food if you are a low-level Ironman. You can bank the food right here, running back and forth, especially if you need bread for some quests.

Once you hit level 25 Thieving, you can start stealing from fruit stalls. Keep in mind you will need 15% Hosidius favor to do this. The best way to get here is by putting your house there or using a Xeric's talisman, then running up into the market where the fruit stalls are. The best way to do this is by luring the guard dogs into one of the buildings by attacking a dog, running into a building, and closing the doors. 

At level 55 Thieving, you unlock Ardougne knights, one of the best ways to make money, especially as an Ironman. If you don’t want to do Ardougne knights right away, you can try Master Farmers. Master Farmers are located in various areas, but thieving them in Ardougne with the Ardougne cloak is recommended. Master Farmers give a lot of nice herb seeds for Ironman accounts. If you have the rogue's outfit, you can do Master Farmers all the way to level 99, though it will be slow. You will bank many seeds, probably enough to get to level 99 Herblore.

Pyramid Plunder is my favorite Thieving training method. You can access it after completing the Icthlarin's Little Helper quest. The best way to get there is by taking magic carpets or walking. Pyramid Plunder is interactive and rewarding, offering a chance to get the Pharaoh's scepter, which is used to make the Dark Altar in your POH. 

The mini-game involves running through a dungeon, unlocking doors, and looting urns. Focus on looting the last two floors you can access. Some say to wait until level 91 Thieving to come here, but I disagree. You can come whenever you want, even at level 55, and continue until you have a high enough level for other methods.

Woodcutting

Start in Lumbridge with your bronze axe from Tutorial Island. I really recommend you set yourself a goal of getting 50 Firemaking. Start by chopping the regular trees in the forest up to Draynor. Stay here, chop the regular trees, and once you hit level 15, you can switch to oak trees, which are more AFK-friendly. Better places to chop oak trees include Draynor or Varrock, where there are nearby banks.

To make it feel less like grinding Woodcutting, train your Firemaking to level 50 simultaneously. This will allow you to unlock Wintertodt, which is crucial at the start of the game. Additionally, train your Fletching with the leftover logs, which will boost your total levels. By this point, you should have reached level 30 Woodcutting and can chop willow trees. Chop and burn them until you achieve 50 Firemaking to unlock Wintertodt, then save the logs for Fletching or other uses.

For willow logs, you can chop them in Draynor Village or at Barbarian Assault. The latter is less crowded and has a nearby bank chest, making it an excellent spot for training Woodcutting. Some players stay here until level 35, when you unlock teak trees, one of the best methods for experience. To chop teak trees on Ape Atoll, complete the Monkey Madness I quest, use a Grigri to avoid poison, and chop teaks for efficient XP. Alternatively, you can grow teak or mahogany trees on Fossil Island for banking purposes.

From level 60 to 99, you can AFK at the Woodcutting Guild, where you get a +7 invisible boost to Woodcutting. Chop yew trees for Fletching XP and money until level 90, then switch to redwoods for the best AFK experience, yielding up to 70k XP per hour. Redwoods are also great for Firemaking XP if you burn them.

If you want faster XP, stick to teak trees. Woodcutting and Fletching can be highly profitable, making it a worthwhile skill to train during AFK time.

General Tips For Hardcore Ironman

Before you go, here are a few general tips for Hardcore Ironmen that you should consider. These will make your journey a lot easier.

1. Play Like An Ironman

One of the biggest mistakes you can make while doing a Hardcore Ironman account is treating it like any regular OSRS run. Don’t get careless or too greedy in combat as that could result in you losing your Ironman status quite quickly. What does playing like an Ironman mean? 

In order to increase your likelihood of success on your hardcore Ironman, you need to adopt a focused and vigilant playing style, which isn't the typical way most of us are accustomed to playing RuneScape. Usually, RuneScape is played in a leisurely, casual, and laid-back manner that doesn't require significant amounts of focus or concentration. This generally works well for most players, but we’re not saying that nothing in RuneScape requires focus—bossing or Pking, for example, certainly do. 

However, RuneScape is generally a game that is played semi-AFK, whether you're multitasking with multiple accounts, watching something on another browser, or doing homework. These play habits can be quite dangerous for certain aspects of playing a hardcore Ironman. 

As such, we recommend trying to break some of these habits and conform to a style better suited for your hardcore account. In the casual play style most of us are used to, dying on something like a Slayer task because you weren't paying attention is no big deal. 

It's a slight inconvenience, but you can just run back, and pick up all your stuff, and there's no real consequence. This play style makes it quite easy to make these sorts of mistakes, and the consequences aren't severe enough for people to change their habits.

Take Zulrah as another example. The fact that players can reclaim items for free after dying allows them to farm it without worrying about suffering greater consequences from dying. If this were changed and there was a sterner consequence for dying, such as a fee for reclaiming lost items, then people would be much more careful when fighting the boss, putting a lot more focus into what they are doing. Comparing the consequence of this scenario to your hardcore status, losing the status is a greater punishment than a fee to collect lost items. 

Therefore, treat this accordingly. Is it really worth taking a high risk for only a moderate reward? Is the slight chance of a rare clue scroll reward really worth entering the wilderness and jeopardizing the countless hours you have put into your account? You can judge your own risks, but we would still highly recommend playing your account as safely as possible by avoiding playing too casually and putting thought into the methods you can use to increase your account's safety.

2. Use Protection Prayers

Use protection prayers at all times during dangerous combat. It may seem like a waste of prayer, and that's because it probably is in a lot of cases, but in the long run, it could very well save your status. 

You are almost certain to disconnect (DC) on the journey to a high Slayer level, so the only way to really ensure your safety is to leave protection prayers on during high-level Slayer. Prayer flicking seems extremely tempting, but this won't help you in the event of a DC, so I don't recommend it if you really want to maximize your safety. 

Why take avoidable risks after investing so much time into your account? This idea can pretty much help justify every single tip in this guide.

3. Turn Up The Volume

To enable this, make sure that you have the sound effects volume turned on, which is the middle setting in the volume menu. Don't worry as much about area sound volume, as this is far less important and will get annoying after a while. The reason this is important is it allows you to actually hear when your character is being damaged. This could be super helpful if you aren't paying full attention to your character, as the sound effect will alert you to any potential danger. 

One example of when this feature is very important is Wintertodt. Since there are so many players within the same area, it can be extremely difficult to keep track of your health bar just by looking at the cluster of countless other HP bars of all the other players. 

This is why having your game sounds enabled can help alert you to when the Wintertodt is damaging your character. Without sound, it can be very easy to let your guard down and die due to not knowing that your character is taking damage. 

Keep in mind that there are lots of other situations where having sounds on can benefit you. So as a good habit, we recommend leaving the sounds on at all times when playing your hardcore Ironman.

4. Do The Hard Stuff First

One risky strategy that a lot of fellow hardcore Ironmen try is grinding non-dangerous skills before actually buckling down on training their combat, which to me isn't the safest approach to starting your account. We’ve already mentioned how the argument "why take avoidable risks?" can help justify every part of this guide, but it could not be more relevant than it is to this specific tip. 

Why spend weeks grinding non-dangerous skills at the beginning stage of your account only to risk all your work once you start doing more dangerous activities? 

We recommend focusing on questing and combat before going for any high-level skills. I would specifically recommend getting hitpoints, defense, 43 prayer, and adequate defense gear to ensure that you get your account to a fairly safe status before beginning other activities. Some goals that we would advise getting out of the way early on are certain quest bosses, Wilderness activities such as getting a god cloak, protection prayers, and prayer potions.

5. Logging Out vs AFK

Make sure that you log out instead of going AFK when you leave your computer. It would be pretty embarrassing if you lost your status due to going AFK and dying to a monster, so eliminate this possibility by simply getting into the habit of logging out instead. 

Logging back in only takes a few seconds, so there really isn't much of an excuse not to do this. Even if you're almost sure that going AFK in a certain area is safe, you would probably be surprised at the strange ways players have died from leaving their account logged in. 

Surely going AFK by a farm patch is safe, right? Wrong. Some NPCs have a ridiculously long wandering range, and all it takes is one devious player to find a way to lure them towards you.

6. Wear A Ring Of Life

This is an enchanted diamond ring that will automatically teleport you to safety if your hitpoints fall below 10%. This means that someone with 10 HP would be teleported at one hit point, someone with 50 HP would teleport at five or fewer, and so on. Many players already know that wearing a Ring of Life is a good safety precaution when engaging in reasonably dangerous situations like bossing or questing, but we recommend wearing it in all situations, even seemingly non-dangerous ones. 

Continuously wearing a Ring of Life is a very good habit to get into on your hardcore Ironman, as you never know when it could save you from a disconnection. Because of this, we would value a Ring of Life over all other rings, excluding a few specific situations, such as safe, AFKable combat training methods like Nightmare Zone, where you might instead wear a Berserker ring.

Another thing to mention about the Ring of Life is that it is very easy to obtain, even on a low-level account. Besides making them at level 43 Crafting and 57 Magic, you can get one for free as a reward from the Lost Tribe quest, which has low requirements and can be completed quite early on. Just make sure that you get yourself a good life source. 

Another way of obtaining them is by catching magpie implings with 65 Hunter. We  highly recommend prioritizing getting yourself a Ring of Life as quickly as you can because you never know when you may need it. 

If you disconnect in a dangerous situation without a Ring of Life, you're almost guaranteed to die, but if you do have one equipped, you at least have a decent chance of survival. 

7. Preparation Is Key

Always be prepared by keeping a teleport on your character at all times. Having an emergency teleport is a very wise idea and is yet another good habit to develop while playing your hardcore Ironman. 

Two great teleports that are easy to obtain at a low level are the Ectophial from the Ghosts Ahoy quest and the Ardougne Cloak 1 from completing the easy Ardougne Achievement Diary. The Ectophial is a one-click teleport, which means it is slightly faster than other teleports, making it great for more dangerous combat or quests. For skilling and other less dangerous activities, the Ardougne Cloak 1 is slightly better because you can equip it and save an inventory space.

Once you progress further into the game, you will likely encounter more monsters that inflict poison, such as arachnids. For these activities, the best possible teleport would probably be a basic house tab, as being in your house prevents you from dying to poison. 

If you use another teleport and find yourself out of immediate danger but still poisoned, you could still potentially die due to not being able to access food from your bank in time. For this reason, house tabs are probably the safest teleport you can use.

Ready For Hardcore Ironman?

A Hardcore Ironman account in OSRS is sure to give you a new adventure in the game. If you want to start playing one right now, we have all sorts of accounts at RPG Stash which will allow you to test different builds for this playstyle.