You've just downloaded Old School RuneScape. Maybe a friend told you about it. Maybe you saw someone streaming it. Maybe you're nostalgic for the days when MMOs actually made you work for your accomplishments. Whatever brought you here, welcome. You're about to step into one of the most rewarding â and occasionally frustrating â games ever made.

Let me be straight with you from the start: OSRS is massive and overwhelming at first. That's not a bug, it's a feature. You'll have moments where you're staring at a skill menu wondering what half of these things even do. You'll get lost in Morytania and spend twenty minutes trying to figure out which door is which. You'll accidentally spend your entire bank on something that costs 500gp at the general store. All of this is completely normal. It's basically a rite of passage.

But here's the thing â when you finally learn how everything connects, when you realize that the banking system is actually elegant, when you get your first achievement under your belt, it's chef's kiss. That feeling of real progression, of actually earning something rather than having the game hand it to you? That's why people have been playing this since 2013, when Jagex brought back a 2007 backup as a joke. It wasn't supposed to last. But it did. And it thrives.

This guide is written by someone who's been there. I've made every mistake you're about to make. I've also figured out the fastest way to avoid most of them. So let's get you started the right way.

What Even Is OSRS?

Old School RuneScape is a 2007 version of RuneScape that was released in 2013 and has been updated by its community ever since. It's not the "old" game pretending to be modern â it's a game that respects its roots while constantly evolving.

The graphics are from 2007. Let's talk about this head-on: they're pixelated, they're low-poly, and if you're coming from World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV, it's going to feel like a visual downgrade. But here's what matters: the gameplay is deeper than most modern MMOs. You're not fighting auto-combat NPCs with predictable mechanics. You're constantly making decisions about prayer, gear switches, positioning, inventory management. The simplicity of the visuals is almost a superpower â it lets you focus on what actually matters.

If cutting-edge graphics are non-negotiable for you, OSRS isn't your game, and that's okay. But if you can get past the aesthetic, you're in for something special.

Tutorial Island: Just Get Through It

When you first log in, you'll spawn on Tutorial Island. This is a tutorial, so let's be honest: it's a little slow and hand-holdy. The good news? It's short. It teaches you the absolute basics: how to move, how to click things, how skills work. You literally cannot fail it.

Here's all you need to know:

Click on things when the tutorial tells you to
Don't stress about making "optimal" choices on your character â you can change everything later
Your starting outfit and items don't matter; you'll replace them within hours
The tutorial takes about 15-20 minutes; just knock it out

The only thing worth mentioning: you'll learn about experience and how different actions train different skills. That's the core loop of OSRS. Everything you do trains something, and you're always progressing at something.

Once you finish, you'll be dumped into Lumbridge, which is the starting town. Congratulations. The game actually starts now.

Your First Hours in Lumbridge: Breathe and Explore

After Tutorial Island, you'll be standing in Lumbridge with about 50 hit points, nothing in your bank, and roughly 25,000 questions. This is perfect. You're supposed to feel a little lost.

Here's what you should do in your first few hours:

Talk to people. No, seriously. Click on NPCs and read what they have to say. There's a whole storyline built into the world, and a lot of NPCs give hints about what to do. The Duke of Lumbridge will literally point you toward early quests. Cook will teach you about cooking. The fishing spots south of town will show you how to fish. The game is actually pretty good at guiding you if you pay attention.

Do a few basic tasks. Chop some wood, cook some food, do some fishing. These skills are easy and will give you a feel for how OSRS works. Don't stress about being efficient yet. Just explore.

Visit the Grand Exchange. It's in Varrock, which is just north of Lumbridge. It's the player-driven marketplace, and it's absolutely essential to understand how it works. We'll get into details later, but for now, just know it exists.

Accept that you're going to look confused for a while. You are. Everyone does. The wiki is your best friend. Seriously. Use it constantly.

The Quest Grind That Isn't Really a Grind

Here's something OSRS does better than almost any other MMO: quests actually matter. They give real rewards, real experience, and real progress toward important goals.

Forget about grinding combat stats right now. This is the mistake most new players make, and it's actually painful to watch. You'll train Attack to 40 by hitting cows for eight hours when you could have done it in eight minutes with quests.

The early quest line is pure quality-of-life. Here are the ones you absolutely should do, in order:

Waterfall Quest â This is the single best quest in the early game. It gives you 30 Attack and 30 Strength instantly. No combat required. You just solve a puzzle. Do this as soon as humanly possible. It takes about 10 minutes if you don't think too hard.

Witch's House â Another quick freebie. 325 experience in four skills. Takes five minutes. Seriously, just do it.

Tree Gnome Village â You get 11,450 Attack and Strength experience. This now makes you relevant for actual combat training. It's worth it.

Fight Arena â After this, you'll have 40+ Attack and Strength, which opens up actual decent gear.

The Grand Tree â This unlocks access to important areas and gives you good experience. By now you're starting to feel like an actual player.

Monkey Madness I â This is the first slightly complicated quest, but the reward is so good. You get 50,000 experience in Attack, Strength, and Defense, plus access to better armor.

After these six quests, you'll have invested maybe two hours and be sitting at around level 40-50 in combat stats. If you had trained by hitting cows, you'd still be at level 20 and have wasted a full day.

This is why questing is the fastest path early. Embrace it. Make it part of your daily routine.

Understanding Skills: Don't Drink the Poison

OSRS has 23 skills (well, 24 if you count Archaeology, but that's a whole thing). You don't need to train all of them equally. In fact, you shouldn't.

Here's the breakdown:

Combat Skills â Attack, Strength, Defense, Ranged, Magic, Prayer, Hitpoints. These are important because they make you actually viable for the rest of the game. You need at least okay levels in a couple of these to do anything. Start with Attack and Strength â they're the fastest to level early and are useful for literally everything.

Support Skills â Cooking, Firemaking, Herblore, Prayer. These support your combat. You'll cook food for healing, train Herblore to make potions that boost your stats, use Prayer for protection prayers. These are mandatory if you want to do anything difficult, but you don't need them at 99 right away.

Money-Making Skills â Fishing, Cooking, Mining, Smithing, Crafting, Runecrafting. Some of these make actual money early (fishing), others are money sinks that you gradually get better at. Don't worry about making millions yet.

Useless-For-New-Players Skills â Slayer. Wait, no, Slayer is actually amazing. But it requires high Combat stats first, so save it. Fletching, Agility, Thieving â these are late-game skills that new players shouldn't stress about.

Here's my honest advice: focus on getting Attack, Strength, and Defense to around 40-50 through questing and combat training. Do Waterfall Quest immediately. Get Cooking and Fishing enough to sustain yourself. Ignore everything else for your first week.

Don't try to be a completionist right away. That's the poison. New players who try to level everything equally end up burnt out and broke. Pick a path. Focus on it. Expand later.

The Grand Exchange: Your New Best Friend

The Grand Exchange is the beating heart of OSRS. It's where players buy and sell everything. Understanding how it works is non-negotiable.

Here's how it functions: You can buy items from other players, sell items to other players, or place buy/sell orders for specific prices. The prices are determined by supply and demand. If everyone's buying it, the price goes up. If everyone's selling it, the price goes down.

For new players, here's the actual guide:

You need an item? Go to the Grand Exchange, search for it, and look at recent prices to understand what it costs
You're selling something? Don't just accept the default price. Check the "limits" and recent sales
You don't need to flip (buy low, sell high) for profit yet. Just use it as a shop
Don't get scammed. Use the Grand Exchange. Not player trades. The GE is safe.

As you get better, you can start flipping â buying items when they're cheap and selling when they're expensive. This is a legitimate money-making method, but it requires patience and game knowledge. Don't try it your first week.

Your First Real Goals (And Why They Matter)

Okay, you've done the tutorial, you've done the early quests, you're starting to feel like an actual player. Now what?

The game doesn't have a linear progression like most MMOs. There's no "level 60 zone" forcing you to stay within one area. Instead, OSRS players tend to work toward specific milestone achievements that unlock new content.

Here are the big early ones:

Fighter Torso (40+ Attack, Strength, Defense) â The chest piece is free-to-earn armor from the Barbarian Assault minigame. It requires some effort but is genuinely good gear. It's a statement that you've unlocked real progression.

Barrows Gloves (175 Quest Points) â These gloves are one of the best pieces of gear in the entire game, even at endgame. Getting them requires doing 175 quest points, which is basically just following the quest line. Do this and you'll have something even veterans respect. You can get quest services to speed this up, but doing it yourself teaches you the game.

Fire Cape (70+ Ranged, Prayer) â This is from the Fight Caves, a challenging but doable minigame. It's not just good gear â it's a symbol that you've actually learned to PvM (Player vs. Monster). This is the first time you'll feel like a "real" player, not a tutorial guy.

These aren't the only goals, but they're milestone-worthy. Work toward them. Each one teaches you something new about the game and unlocks new content.

Making Money When You're Broke (Spoiler: You Will Be)

At some point, you'll need money. Your armor costs something. Your food costs something. Potions aren't free.

Here's what actually works for new players:

Fishing â Go catch lobsters or swordfish in the water. Sell them at the Grand Exchange. It's AFK, you don't need high stats, and it's reliable. Not fast, but reliable.

Cooking â Buy raw meat, cook it, sell it. Or cook your own fish. You'll make 100-200k per hour if you're efficient.

Herb Runs â This is the secret tech for new players. Every 80 minutes, you can plant herbs at different gardens around the world, wait for them to grow, and harvest them. This requires some stats and a quest or two, but once you set it up, it's passive income. You'll make 500k-1m per hour of actual game time with minimal effort.

Slayer â Once you hit higher combat levels, Slayer is the money maker. But not yet.

Here's the reality: early game money-making is slow. You won't be making millions. You'll be making thousands and slowly building a bank. This is normal. Don't feel like you're falling behind. You're learning the game, which is worth more than any bank balance.

If the grind is truly unbearable and you just want to skip the early poverty, MyPvM offers gold at reasonable prices. We won't judge. The early game is rough sometimes, and some people just want to skip ahead to the fun part.

Ironman vs. Mainline vs. Pure: Know Your Path

OSRS has different account types, and you should understand them before committing to one:

Regular Account (Mainline) â This is what you're playing. You can trade with other players, use the Grand Exchange, ask for help. This is the recommended path for new players. No shame in it.

Ironman â You can't trade with anyone. Everything you own, you gathered or made yourself. It's the ultimate self-sufficiency challenge. Don't do this as your first account. Seriously. I've watched too many people start as Ironman and quit after two weeks because they're broke and can't ask anyone for help.

Hardcore Ironman â You're an Ironman, but if you die once, your account is permanently flagged as "dead" and you lose all the prestige. Only absolute veterans should attempt this.

Pure â You deliberately avoid leveling Defense to stay at low levels for PvP. This is advanced and requires understanding game mechanics most new players don't know yet.

Start as a regular account. Learn the game. Maybe later you'll want the challenge of Ironman or the adrenaline of PvP on a Pure. But for now, just play normally.

Setting Up RuneLite: The Actual Game Changer

Okay, here's a secret that would've taken me weeks to discover on my own: RuneLite is a free client that makes OSRS infinitely better. It's not cheating. Jagex officially supports it. Use it immediately.

Here are the essential plugins for new players:

Quest Helper â Shows you exactly where to go and what to do for quests. This single plugin will save you hours of wiki reading. Turn it on. Never turn it off.

Ground Items â Shows you what items are on the ground around you. You'll pick up so much gold and useful stuff you'd otherwise miss.

GPU Rendering â Makes the game look way better without taxing your computer too hard. Seriously, this changes how the game looks.

Tile Indicators â Shows you exactly which tile your character is standing on. Useful for everything.

NPC Aggression Timer â Shows you when NPCs will stop being aggressive to you (useful for training).

These aren't mandatory, but they transform the experience from "frustrating" to "actually enjoyable." Install them your first day.

Your Community: You're Not Alone

This is what separates OSRS from single-player games: there are thousands of players doing exactly what you're doing right now.

Join a Clan â A clan is basically a player-run guild. You join, you get access to a Discord, and suddenly you have people to talk to, ask questions, and occasionally boss with. Find one that's new-player friendly. Check the subreddit for clan recruitment threads.

Hang Out in Discord â The OSRS community has massive Discord servers. Questions you have? Someone's answered them already, or someone will answer them right now.

Reddit â r/2007scape is where the community hangs out. Memes, questions, dramas, patch discussions. It's actually a great resource, and the community is weirdly helpful to new players.

In-Game Chat â Don't be afraid to ask questions in-game. Yeah, you'll get some trolls, but most people remember being new and will help. Seriously.

The OSRS community isn't perfect, but it's one of the best gaming communities out there. Use it. You're part of something bigger now.

Common New Player Mistakes (So You Don't Have to Make Them)

I'm going to save you some pain here. These are the mistakes I see every new player make:

Training Defense without a plan â Defense is important, but some people train it to 99 thinking it'll make them invincible. It doesn't. You need Attack and Strength too. Balance your training.

Ignoring quests â I mentioned this already, but I'm saying it again. Quests are the fastest path to progression. Every single guide will tell you this. Listen.

Buying gear you can't afford â You don't need 50m worth of gear to be viable. A 500k setup is perfectly fine. Don't bankrupt yourself trying to look cool. Gear is replaceable. Your motivation to keep playing isn't.

Skipping Prayer training â Early on, Prayer feels expensive and pointless. It's not. Once you hit 40 Prayer (which takes like three hours), you unlock Piety, which literally doubles your damage output. It's one of the best investments you'll make.

Trusting random players with your items â The number of new players who drop their items with a stranger and get scammed is honestly sad. Use the Grand Exchange. It's there for a reason.

Buying gold from sketchy sites â OSRS gold sellers are... not great. If you're going to buy gold, use MyPvM. We're vetted, we're reliable, and we won't get your account banned.

Spreading yourself too thin â Don't train Cooking, Fishing, Mining, Smithing, Crafting, Herblore, Prayer, and three combat skills simultaneously. Pick a main goal. Focus on it. Everything else is secondary.

FAQ: Questions You Probably Have

How long does it take to be "good"?

Define "good." If you mean "viable for most content," you're looking at 40-60 hours of focused play. If you mean "competitive for high-level bossing," you're looking at 200+ hours minimum. The game doesn't have a finish line â it has a journey that some people are still on after 13+ years.

Can I solo everything, or do I need a clan?

You can absolutely solo 95% of the game. Some bosses and activities are easier with friends, but there's nothing you need other players for. That said, the social aspect is half the fun.

Is this game pay-to-win?

Not really. You can buy membership (about $12/month) which unlocks more content, and you can buy bonds (in-game currency) with real money, which can be traded for in-game gold. But none of this gives you damage boosts or exclusive gear. It's more like "pay-to-play-more-content" than "pay-to-win." A free player with good knowledge will beat a member with a big wallet in PvP.

What's the skill grind actually like?

Okay, this is honest: getting from level 1 to 50 in most skills feels fast and rewarding. 50-70 starts to feel grindy. 70-99 is where you either love the game or hate it. Some skills are fun (Slayer, Questing), others are literally just clicking the same thing 500,000 times (Fishing at high levels). This is why most players have multiple accounts â they avoid the grinds they hate.

Should I watch guides for everything, or should I explore?

Both. Do tutorials and guides for mechanics you don't understand. But don't spoil every quest or secret. OSRS is massive partly because there's genuinely stuff to discover. That first time you find a hidden shortcut or an NPC tells you something useful? That's an actual moment of joy. Don't rob yourself of that by watching a guide.

Ready to Skip the Grind? We Can Help

Look, we get it. The early game is rough. You're poor, your gear is garbage, and everyone around you seems to know what they're doing. Some people love that journey. Some people want to skip ahead to the part where they can actually play the game.

If you're in the second camp, MyPvM offers quest services, power leveling, and affordable gold. You don't have to grind your way to 40s in combat stats. You don't have to spend a week on the Prayer grind. You don't have to be broke.

Skip the suffering, keep the fun. That's the philosophy.

The Real Talk: Why OSRS Is Worth It

At this point, you might be thinking, "This all sounds like a lot of work." It is. OSRS demands something from you that most modern games don't: respect. It demands that you learn the systems, that you make real decisions, that you earn your accomplishments.

And that's why it's worth it.

When you get your first Fighter Torso, you'll feel like you actually did something. When you finally beat the Fire Caves and equip that Fire Cape, there's a moment of pure triumph that clicking a boss down in a modern MMO will never give you. When you figure out a money-making method that works for you, and suddenly your bank isn't a joke, it feels like you've actually built something.

The game is also just fun, in a way that's hard to explain until you're doing it. The community is genuinely great. The content is actually creative and weird. You can set your own goals and progression is completely up to you.

Yeah, the graphics are old. Yeah, the interface takes getting used to. Yeah, you'll get frustrated sometimes. But you've also found one of the best-designed MMOs ever made, a game that respects your time and rewards your effort.

Welcome to OSRS. You're in for something special.

Now go do Waterfall Quest. Seriously, right now. You'll thank me in eight minutes.