Money making for new players, or why can't we all be Egghebrecht (except for his exploding appendix)

Before I had the teleports and stockpiled money for MTK and daily shop sales, I hunted polar kebbits and farmed cats for money.

The cats take a bit of work, what with rescuing Fluffs' babies and eventually adopting one to become a cat in order to trade for death runes. [Please don't tell Gertrude. I've been lying to her and saying they're in my house and quite happy.] Getting the Ardy 1 cape makes it more than worth the few hours babying a kitten. I'd grow a kitten to cat a day, farm it out to West Ardy and sell off the 200 death runes for around 70k. 

When I got bored of being in Catherby, I went out hunting for polar kebbit furs with kitten in tow. The walk/run was nearly deadly (damned unicorns/bear cubs/rock crabs), but worth it. The furs were about 3500 each and I spent a good amount of time filling my inventory (27 plus a space for the kitten/cat). That was nearly 95k.

Postpartum blues

There is always some kind of down time after achieving a 99. You've been in a cycle for days/weeks/months and moving away is hard. Though I didn't like making 15k teak tables for two weeks (with a break in between), I found myself standing in Yanille bank wondering what I'm going to do. The really obvious thing is to upgrade my house now that I can build everything. The down slope is affording everything. I went to RuneHQ and used their POH mapping calculator? to come up with a new layout for the main floor and dungeon. Once I had the plans, I copied them down and listed out all the items to go in each room. I'd set a loose budget of 100M, knowing I'd be getting a demonic throne (25M) and at least one dragon (10M). My rough estimate of the expensive gear - marble blocks, magic stones, dragon(s) - is in the ballpark of 60M. That means it's time for serious money making, going so far as to try this double nat crafting thing the cool kids talk about, along with herb farming and some slayer.

Since I've been figuring out what to do with myself, I felt it was time to give up and make serious attempts at the fight caves. I asked for advice from players who kill Jad on a regular basis and they tell me I should have no problems with anything except the prayer switching. I haven't gotten to Jad yet because of my own stupid mistakes. Finishing the damned KAD is driving me bonkers; very much akin to ME2 which I only left undone for so long because it was moronically difficult. That pushes me forward. What holds me back is knowing I'm very likely to die to Jad and waste 2 hours that I could have been avoiding runecrafting and dungeoneering.

Down and dirty herb farming

Herb farming is a solid money maker because every harvest provides profit.

You don't strictly "need" all these things, but they make it easier if you're serious about herb farming for cash. I'm hoping you have the tool leprechaun filled with farming tools (rake, spade, seed dibbler, buckets).

1. Supercompost

2. Magic secateurs (Fairytale Pt 1)

3. Access to My Arm's herb patch (My Arm's Big Adventure)

4. Amulet of nature bound to an herb patch

5. Teleports to 5 herb patches 

6. Money to buy seeds or 38 thieving for master farmers

Get a hold of a bunch of pineapples for making supercompost. There's other stuff, but pineapples are the easiest and cheapest to get. Buy from GE, Arhein in Catherby (40 per day), Grand Tree shops (2 shops 10 each) or get free from Karamja, Dell Monti (KAD gloves 3) and farmed pineapple bush, then fill up all 4 compost bins. It takes about an hour for the fruit to rot.

Get your seeds. teleports, nature ammy and farming gear. Bind your nature ammy to the last patch you plant so you can get an idea of when your herbs are done growing. Remember to wear the ammy or you won't get any messages about it being grown/diseased. If you're the type who'd rather hang out near your herbs, bind the ammy to Fally or Port Phas patches and hang out in Catherby/Ardy since the latter are very close to each other. My Arm will watch over your herbs at his spot, so no worries about that. The herbs take about 70 minutes to grow, though give them 90 mins - 2 hours to be sure, especially if you don't have a nature ammy to help. 

Your plants will die at some point. If you catch the disease early, cure it and maybe keep an eye on that patch (unless it bound to the ammy). It seems like a huge deal when an herb dies, moreso with the high priced ones like snapdragons, ranarrs and dwarf weeds. Death happens. Keep in mind that an average harvest (5 herbs) will pay for the seed and earn a profit. For example, ranarr seeds cost 31k and herbs sell for 8,800 gp at mid which means you only need 4 herbs per harvest to pay for the seed planted. Look at the big picture of your farming rather than at each herb run for your profit/loss.

An Idiot's Guide to Making Money in RuneScape

Combat Way:

1. Kill something

2. Pick up whatever it drops

3. Sell the drop

Non-Combat Way:

1. Go to where the combat is

2. Pick up whatever is on  the ground

3. Sell what you picked up

Lazy Way:

1. Go to Varrock

2. Find someone with combat level higher than yours

3. Follow them until they give you money or teleport

4. Repeat until you get money

Battlestaves for profit

A staple in my money making is high alching element battlestaves after having gone through the ritual of making nature runes, making and enchanting orbs, buying the staves and jamming the orb atop one. Doing all this guarantees a steady profit of 2300 gp each staff.

There's a few bits of bother in making the elemental staves from scratch. You need at minimum: 54 crafting (putting water orb on staff), 56 magic (enchanting water orb) and 56k gp (to buy staves, more if you buy molten glass). Some of this has to be done or else it's not profitable. If you aren't into doing all this or don't have the skills, you can just go buy the battlestaves from Zaff and resell them on the GE. Wearing any variable of the Varrock diary armor improves the amount of staves you can buy each day - 16, 32 or 64 for levels 1, 2 and 3. Without it, you're only going to get 8 battlestaves a day.

Getting sand and seaweed for molten glass can be easy or troublesome. The easy method is pick up sand from Bert in Yanille, provided you've complete the quest The Hand in the Sand, then teleport to Catherby and buy seaweed from Arhein (talk to him). The other way is to scoop up buckets of sand from a sandpit (Yanille by house portal, Zanaris by cows and Entrana by hops patch) and gather seaweed from a coastline (north of Rellekka's rock crabs near Olaf or Entrana west of the law altar). Again, making the glass comes in two methods. The easy one is using a lunar magic spell, Superglass Make, and the harder is to cook seaweed on a range for soda ash and taking it and sand to a furnace.

Choosing an obelisk to enchant the orbs is personal. The air and earth obelisks are in the wilderness part of Edgeville dungeon and subjected to revenants (air) or revenants and poison spiders (earth), while the water and fire obelisks are deep in Taverly dungeon where the black dragons live (water is up a ladder between dragons and hellhounds). For myself, I make fire orbs as they're the easiest for me to get to now that I can use the agility shortcut by hellhounds. Most people tend to make air orbs and teleport back to Edgeville with a glory ammy. Beasts of burden (BoB) will carry orbs, but keep in mind it's a juggle to swap inventories.

Here is how I do it. I collect sand and seaweed every day for a week or so, then go to Moonclan island and switch over to lunar spells. I equip a fire staff since I have too many air runes, get enough air and astral runes to make all the sand and seaweed into glass, then take out 13 seaweed and 13 sand. The spell is so lovely because it converts the whole inventory and gives bonus glass per cast. Now I blow all of it into orbs and go enchant them into fire orbs. My only worry in Taverly is getting nommed by a dragon, so I keep the anti-dragon shield readied. The blade jump shortcut is fast, though watch out for the poison spiders if your combat is less than 129. I use the west bank in Falador, either using a Falador tele tab or the cabbage port of the explorer's ring when I forget a tele tab.

The bottom line: what kind of profit do I make each week? I spend 3,185,000 gp on buying battlestaves and get back 4,231,500 gp for high alching 455 fire battlestaves. My net profit is 1,046,500 gp.