Current Events > Thinking of grinding sandstone in OSRS

(+) Yeah! (+)

A 10kg block of sandstone sells on the GE for about 2,000 coins. The expected yield of each trip to the sandstone mine in the Al Kharid desert is around 20-23 blocks of sandstone, with room for waterskins and money for the flying carpet in an inventory of 28. That means if we lowball the figure of sandstone per trip at 20 blocks, you're bringing in roughly 40,000 gold per trip.

In comparison, Adamantite bars fetch around 1,800 gold per bar on the GE. Smith them into items, and the value drops even more. That's assuming your smithing level is even high enough to smelt Adamantite bars in the first place - you need to be level 70 for that. They're valuable items, but they fetch less than sandstone. And cannonballs? the go-to revenue stream for lower level miners? Just under 200 gold per ball, meaning less than 800 gold per steel bar.

So it stands to reason that mining sandstone is the best way to accumulate wealth as far as mining goes. RNG is involved, but at a high enough level, it's a fairly reliable yield that's extremely profitable.

So why stockpile wealth on oldschool Runescape?

In my experience, skilling requires a lot of cash.

The best way to smith ore in OSRS is the blast furnace. If you're not in a clan, and you don't know any other players - and even then, if your agility isn't high enough - you can't use the furnace, because it has agility requirements and you need 4 or so other players to operate it. But you can log into a blast furnace world where you pay roughly 80,000 gold an hour for NPCs to operate the blast furnace.

The blast furnace is great because you only need half the amount of coal to smith ore as you would need to smith normally - an Adamantite bar usually costs 6 coal to make, but at the blast furnace you only need 3 coal per bar.

So that rate of 80,000 gold an hour almost certainly pays off every time you use the furnace. But you don't necessarily want to dig into your capital - so you can supplement your blast furnace use with sandstone mining.

Speaking of coal - you need a lot of coal to smith ore in OSRS. The thing is, it takes fucking ages to mine enough coal to produce anything on a reasonable scale, so one way you can get around that is by buying coal on the GE.

But the thing is, coal sells for anywhere between 150 and 200 gold a piece. So if you want to buy coal at a serious level, you've got to pay out the ass for it.

One piece of 10kg sandstone sells for roughly 2,000 gold. One piece of coal sells for roughly 200 gold. So you're getting ten coal for every block of sandstone. For every hundred blocks of sandstone you sell? You get a thousand coal. So on, ad infinitum.

So in order to further level up your mining and smithing, gold is a big help.

And while the yield isn't as good as sandstone mining, by smithing ore and making armor sets and stuff with it? You can go on to sell that on the GE and further pad your coffers. The thing is, however, that with how much coal costs on the GE and how much it costs to use the blast furnace, you're probably going to sell the finished product at something of a loss. You're either spending 1,200 worth of coal per Adamantite bar, or you're spending 600 gold + however much you decide to spend on the blast furnace to produce them in bulk. The profit margin just isn't there.

But mining sandstone takes the edge off, because you can put the earnings from selling sandstone directly into buying coal, or paying for the blast furnace. It still requires effort, but for 40,000 gold per trip to the sandstone mine, it's a worthwhile investment when it comes to leveling up your smithing. And that bleeds into other skills like ranged, where you can smith your own crossbows and bolts.

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are you zezima

Kaiganeer posted...

are you zezima

If I was zezima I'd probably be talking about runite bars instead of adamantite


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Forgettable posted...

but why are you trying to 99 smithing?

Mining and smithing are my favorite parts of the game. I'm not trying to 99 either of them, but I do want to get to the point that I'm making adamantite sets and runite full helms.

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