Welcome to our Old School RuneScape mining guide! We will be covering everything from the best ways to level up in each level to which equipment is best to use. Keep reading and you will soon be a pro miner. Without further ado, let’s get into it!
Equipment
The only item you are going to need to mine is a pickaxe. There is a certain attack level required to wield a pickaxe but you can still use the pickaxe for mining without the attack level requirement. You should use the best pickaxe available to you for the fastest mining speed. Using the infernal pickaxe to mine is recommended as it is the fastest. When using it, there is a 30% chance the ore will automatically combust, consuming the ore. This will grant you some passive smithing experience, which is very useful when creating tools such as the pickaxe you will be using.
It will also reduce the number of ores that need to be dropped. You will have to reach level 85 smithing in order to make an infernal pickaxe, so it’s good to train this skill as well. If you need currency for better tolls, you can buy OSRS GP from GamerTotal. In addition, we recommend searching for information to find the best way to train the smithing skill.
Your infernal pickaxe could be charged with dragon or smoldering stones; with smoldering stones usually being the better bet as they are cheaper. There are some other methods where using the crystal pickaxe is better, but you should only use it if you have enough crystal shards for it. They are usually expensive and hard to come by, but if you have enough, there is no fault in making a pickaxe with them.
Getting the fastest experience – levels 1-30
In order to get mining experience in the most effective way, you have to make sure to drop ore after you mine it. This can be done holding the shift key. It is important to enable shift dropping in your settings so you are able to do this. If you are a mobile player then you can use the tap-drop option. This is also known as powermining. All the early levels can be skipped by doing quests that grant mining experience.
Completing Doric’s Quest, The Dig Site, Plague City, The Giant Dwarf, The Lost Tribe and Another Slice of H.A.M. grant a total of almost 30,000 experience! Completing these quests will allow you to use the adamant pickaxe right from the start. They will also shoot you from level 1 to 37, which is amazing as they have fairly low requirements. At this point, it is best to mine copper and tin ore, which can be found pretty much anywhere.
Level 15-45
At this point, your fastest option is mining iron ore. At level 45, 3-tick mining granite becomes faster. Although, this is assuming good performance and can be very difficult to do, so mining iron is a very safe bet. It also gives very high rates of experience at relatively advanced levels. If you plan on not using tick manipulation, or do not have enough experience in it, then the best method is to mine iron ore up to level 70. If you wear Varrock armor 1 or anything better, it will increase the overall mining experience as it gives a 10% chance of mining two ores at once.
From levels 15 to 60, the best way to mine iron is to find a location that has three iron rocks in a triangular shape. This will allow you to mine without moving and to drop the ore while waiting for the rock to respawn. This method is much quicker and there are currently 9 locations where you can do this, one of which is the Al Kharid mine. When you are more comfortable with tick manipulation, it is better to move on to 3-tick mining granite at the quarry as this offers the fastest experience in the game. The four granite blocks are located in the south west area of the quarry. You should spend your time there, dropping the ores as you mine them.
Closing off
Thank you for reading our OSRS mining guide! We hope that it was helpful, enjoyable and informative. Remember that it is important to always play around for yourself and find which method suits you best. Enjoy gaming!
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