8 most expensive skills in Old School RuneScape

Training skills in Old School RuneScape can be a delicate balance. Often, the game rewards players for investing a ton of GP into skills, in turn allowing them to train with faster XP rates.

Some skills are guilty of this more than others. The eight most expensive skills in Old School RuneScape might all have profitable training methods, but if you want to hit 99, you’ll need to dish out some cash to speed things up.

Construction

Construction might be one of the easiest skills to 99 in Old School RuneScape, but it’s certainly not the cheapest. Training this skill to max level can cost you upwards of 200 million GP if you’re looking for a fast method. Even then, choosing lower XP rates won’t exactly save you money.

Construction is unavoidably one of Old School RuneScape‘s biggest money sinks, but at least you get to build a cool house along the way.

Crafting

There are many ways to make money training Crafting in Old School RuneScape. Sadly, none of them are fast XP. If you want to level up your Crafting skill to 99 within a reasonable timeframe, you’ll need to cough up a ton of GP to do so. The fastest XP is making Black Dragonhide Bodies, which only becomes available at Level 84. But what’s the cost to get 99 from that point? You’re looking at around 80 million GP.

Alternative methods include cutting gems and making battlestaves, but even those won’t come cheap. If you can spare the GP, save your sanity by training Crafting the fastest way, as it can be a tedious one to max out despite burning a huge hole in your wallet.

Farming

Interestingly, Farming is among both the most expensive and profitable skills to train in Old School RuneScape. This is entirely down to your choice of method. Planting herbs will make you money, but planting trees will yield much more XP at a cost. Farming tree runs earn you upwards of 200,000 XP each time, but reaching 99 will likely cost you 120 million GP in total. This also factors in the cost of protecting your trees to ensure they grow each time.

My advice? Pay the money. Farming is a skill you can max out in just over two months, if you’re consistent with two tree runs a day. Cheap out, and you can expect to spend triple that amount of time waiting to hit 99, and that’s assuming you’re consistent!

Fletching

If you want to reach 99 Fletching, you’ll likely be making the best Darts possible. On the plus side, it’s very AFK. There’s one big caveat, though – the price. Fletching Rune Darts from 81, Amethyst Darts from 90, and Dragon Darts from 95 will cost north of 200 million GP, a truly miserable price to pay for one of the fastest 99s in the game.

Most players who max out Fletching probably do so in a more long-winded way, saving themselves a ton of GP in the process. That said, it remains one of the most expensive skills in Old School RuneScape when using the best method.

Herblore

If you’re doing it fast, at no point is Herblore a cheap skill to train in Old School RuneScape. But at Level 81, when you gain the ability to make Saradomin Brews, it becomes farcically expensive. Most will likely do this method all the way to 99, spending an eye-watering 150 million GP along the way. That’s around 60,000 Saradomin Brews in total.

As with any skill, Herblore has profitable options at the cost of XP per hour. Only you can decide how much the time is worth to you.

Prayer

Anyone remotely familiar with the skills in Old School RuneScape won’t be surprised to see Prayer make this list. It’s a skill you just don’t get anything back from, making every action you take a money sink. Worse still, it massively rewards you for using more expensive materials. You want to use lit Gilded Altars in a player-owned home here, offering a full inventory of Dragon Bones or Superior Dragon Bones each time.

Using Superior Dragon Bones, you can spend upwards of 50 million GP per hour. Yes, the XP is absurdly fast, but you’ll be left in dire financial straits afterward.

Ranged

Ranged is one of the most useful 99s to have in Old School RuneScape. The fastest way to get there is by using Black Chinchompas on Maniacal Monkeys (after starting Monkey Madness II). This can earn you about 900,000 XP per hour, making it a ludicrously quick training method.

However, throwing those Black Chinchompas will see you spend around 30 million GP when all is said and done. That doesn’t include the cost of buying solid Ranged gear either, which is an investment that you can at least recoup.

Smithing

20 million GP is the approximate cost to reach Level 99 Smithing by smelting Gold Bars at the Blast Furnace. It’s not the fastest skill in Old School RuneScape, but that’s the price if you want to speed it up a little.

Unfortunately, anything other than this method takes a painfully long time to hit 99, so it’s probably best to swallow the cost in this instance.