OSRS revolves heavily around gold and using that gold to boost your account in various ways. As such, it is always a good idea to invest in certain skills that can make you a lot of money. Unless you want to buy OSRS gold, it’ll be profitable to level the skills in this guide – but do note that it’ll take a LOT of time to level anything in this list to 99.
Some Disclaimers
The Moneymaking Meta changes often in OSRS and the skills in this guide might provide different amounts of money depending on when you read this. Some are more stable and generally reliable, but others might vary depending on the economy.
Smithing
Smithing is probably the skill that you should focus on getting to 99 first. Smithing can take up to 50-70 hours to level to 99, depending on the methods you use. Once you get to level 50, you should focus on leveling it by using the Blast Furnace to smith Mythril Bars.This can get you about 500K per hour, which is quite a decent sum since you’re taking out two flies with one hit – leveling smithing and making some money. Once you’re at 70 this turns to Adamant bars, which is 600K per hour. At level 85, you can start smithing Rune Bars which ends up being around 1M per hour which is quite the jump from the previous two milestones.
Tanning Leather/Magic
Now, Magic probably wasn’t your first guess when you were thinking about profitable skills – but yes, using the Tan Leather utility magic which you get at level 78 can easily make you 1+M Per hour. It takes a while to level magic, but you can do it in multiple ways and once you get to 78, you can level to 99 just by tanning leather, which can make you upwards of 100M during that leveling time alone. I don’t have to tell you how useful magic is for other things, do I? Having 99 Magic isn’t just a great way to make money, but it’s amazing for many other things and since it usually costs money to level Magic, using Tan Leather to not only level it, but make money while doing it is an amazing combo. It’s not the FASTEST way to level magic, mind you – but it only slightly falls behind some of the other methods
Thieving
Ah, Brynjolf would be proud. Thieving is easily one of the top 3 methods of making money in OSRS and while it is slightly harder to level than some other skills, it is also quite profitable as well. If you’ve got no levels in thieving, getting to 20 can be a breeze as you can do three quests that give a lot of experience and have no requirements. These quests are: Biohazard, Hazeel Cult and Fight Arena. Once you hit 38 in Thieving, you can start farming… Master Farmers (heh) all the way up to 84 where you can get to the meat of the matter – Vyres and Elves. Pickpocketing these two races is still one of the top methods of earning money in OSRS, and leveling from 84 – 99 using this method can net you some impressive amounts of money.
Conclusion
The skills you should focus on might vary from person to person, and if you don’t like thieving – you obviously don’t have to do it and can focus on something else. However, speaking of proficiency, usefulness, and effectiveness – these three ways come to mind. You can always buy an OSRS account with all the skills maxed, but if you want to level them yourself – we believe that these are the ones you should focus on.