Early Game Survival: The Key to Success

The early game in Ironman mode can be brutal, as you're starting without any help or resources from other players. Your primary goal is to get self-sufficient as quickly as possible while building a solid foundation of skills and equipment.

Here are the critical early-game survival tips for Ironman mode:

Focus on Questing and Key Rewards

Questing is your best friend early on. It provides essential experience for RuneScape gold various skills and unlocks critical game content like better equipment, access to new areas, and useful rewards. Some quests are especially beneficial for Ironman accounts:

Cook's Assistant: A simple quest that unlocks access to cooking ingredients and provides some early experience.

Doric’s Quest: Grants free experience in mining and unlocks Doric's Anvil, a great place to smelt and smith early.

The Restless Ghost: Completes early prayer training and grants experience.

Imp Catcher: Provides access to air, water, earth, and fire runes, which are essential for your magic training.

Rune Mysteries: Unlocks Runecrafting, a critical skill for an Ironman since rune crafting is required to create your own runes.

Additionally, certain quests unlock new areas that are essential for progression, such as The Grand Tree (which grants access to the Tree Gnome Stronghold) and Lost City (to access the Dragon longsword and other Dragon-related content).

Make a Sustainable Resource Gathering Plan

You can’t rely on other players to provide resources, so you’ll need to gather everything. Prioritize essential resources early on:

Woodcutting: Woodcutting is an excellent early-game skill for gathering logs, which are useful for Firemaking, Fletching, and Construction. A bronze or iron axe is sufficient initially, and your goal is to quickly access yew logs for future crafting needs.

Mining: Mining allows you to gather ores for smithing, which is essential for gear upgrades. Copper and tin are the first ores you’ll mine, and you’ll eventually move on to iron, coal, and mithril.

Fishing: Fishing is a reliable source of food, and early access to shrimp and anchovies can get you through the initial stages of combat. Eventually, aim for salmon, tuna, and lobsters as you progress.

Woodcutting and Firemaking: These two skills are perfect early-game activities. You’ll need logs for both skills, and Firemaking can be trained while you cut logs, making it a natural combo.

Herblore: While this can be a grind later, early on, herb farming and the creation of basic potions such as strength, prayer, and combat potions will help you survive longer in combat scenarios.

Start with Easy Monsters for Combat Experience

In the early game, you’ll need to train combat skills to unlock better equipment and increase your survivability. Start by targeting lower-level monsters, such as:

Chickens and Cows: These creatures drop feathers and bones. Chicken bones can be used to train Prayer, while cowhide is a valuable resource for crafting.

Goblins: Easy to kill and drop low-level armor like iron or steel that will be useful for your defense.

The Stronghold of Security: This is a must-do as it gives you access to free combat experience as well as a reward of 10,000 coins. It’s also a safe area to kill creatures for low-level experience.

Make Sure to Gather and Use Bones for Prayer

Prayer is one of the most important skills for surviving tougher combat in OSRS. As an Ironman, you need to gather bones from every monster you kill. Start with easy monsters like chickens, goblins, and cows, and then use the bones to train Prayer. Protect from Melee and Protect from Missiles are some of the most essential Prayer abilities, and leveling up Prayer as soon as possible will help you immensely in later PvE and PvP situations.

To make training Prayer more efficient, you can:

Train Prayer by Buy OSRS Fire Cape burying bones.

Use a Gilded Altar at a player-owned house for efficient Prayer training.