Old School RuneScape: A Complete Beginner’s Guide

Old School RuneScape drops you on an island with a handful of tools and almost no direction. That openness is the appeal, and it is also why most new accounts stall in the first week. This guide covers the decisions that matter early, in the order you will face them.

Finishing Tutorial Island

Tutorial Island teaches the interface rather than the game. Work through every instructor, because a few of them hand over items you would otherwise have to buy: a small fishing net, a tinderbox, a bronze pickaxe and a starter set of runes. None of it is valuable, but replacing it costs time you do not need to spend.

When you finish, you choose between a members world and a free-to-play world. Free-to-play is a genuine game rather than a demo, so there is no need to subscribe on day one. Play until you hit a wall you actually care about.

Free-to-play or members

The free game gives you a smaller map, a capped skill set and a much shorter quest list. Members opens most of the world, every skill, and the large majority of the quests. The honest test is whether you are enjoying the loop. If you are still logging in after a week, subscribing removes most of the friction you have been feeling.

What to train first

Combat carries the early game. Attack, Strength and Defence unlock better gear and let you fight things that drop items worth having, which in turn funds everything else. Train them together rather than pushing one to an extreme.

Alongside combat, two gathering skills pay for themselves almost immediately. Mining and Fishing both produce items you can sell or use, and both give you something to do while you learn the map. Woodcutting is the third common starting point and is the least demanding of the three.

Quests are not optional

New players routinely treat quests as side content. They are not. Quest rewards in Old School RuneScape include experience lamps, skill unlocks, access to areas, and equipment you cannot otherwise obtain at low levels. A player who has done the right early quests will be far ahead of one who has ground the same hours in combat.

The specific quests worth prioritising are covered in the early quest guide for this World.

Early mistakes that cost the most

• Ignoring the Grand Exchange. Check what an item sells for before you spend an hour gathering it. Some of the most tedious early activities are worth almost nothing.
• Buying gear too far ahead of your level. Equipment has level requirements. Expensive items you cannot wear are dead money.
• Training one skill to exhaustion. Broad early levels open more of the game than a single high number does.
• Skipping quests. The single most common reason a new account feels slow.

Where to go next

Once you are comfortable moving around and fighting, the next two questions are which quests to do and how to make your first reliable income. Both have their own guides in this World.