RS3 Ironman Mining and Smithing Guide

Maximizing efficiency in RuneScape 3 (RS3) as an Ironman means mastering both mining and smithing. These skills are essential for gathering materials, creating equipment, and sustaining your combat progression. The challenge lies in the restricted access to the Grand Exchange, forcing you to gather all resources on your own. However, this guide will help you optimize the mining and smithing process, ensuring you get the most out of your efforts. Whether you are aiming to craft your own armor or weapons, or simply want to power through the levels, this guide will outline everything you need to succeed.

Prioritize Your Mining Tools:

At the core of your mining journey is the pickaxe. Upgrading your pickaxe at regular intervals is crucial to increase your mining speed and ore gathering rate. Early on, you can start with bronze or iron pickaxes, but upgrading as soon as possible to a steel pickaxe at level 6, mithril pickaxe at level 21, and finally the adamant pickaxe at level 31 is vital. The best pickaxes like Rune, Dragon, and Crystal pickaxes will speed up your experience gains dramatically, so work on unlocking them as you progress.

Optimal Mining Locations:

To maximize your efficiency, you need to choose your mining locations carefully. Ironmen often rely on:

• Copper and Tin (levels 1-15): Start mining copper and tin in areas like Lumbridge Swamp or Burthorpe to create bronze bars.
• Iron Ore (levels 15-45): The Mining Guild offers a great location for iron ore mining because of its high density and proximity to a bank deposit box, allowing for quick trips to deposit ores.
• Coal (levels 30-60): Coal is essential for creating steel bars and higher-level ores. The Coal Trucks and Mining Guild are popular locations.
• Mithril and Adamantite (levels 55-80): At this point, the Mining Guild is your friend for consistent resource gathering.
• Runite Ore (level 85+): Runite ores are in high demand for their high-level smithing products, and you can find them in Wilderness resource areas or Mining Guild.

Smithing Strategy for Ironman:

Smithing is a companion skill to mining, as it allows you to process the ores you mine into useful items like armor, weapons, and ammunition. For Ironmen, this is critical as you can't simply buy what you need from the Grand Exchange.

• Bronze and Iron (levels 1-30): Early on, you will smith bronze and iron items. Focus on creating the most valuable items available for your level to maximize experience.
• Steel (levels 30-50): Steel bars are made by combining coal and iron, and they provide a solid path for both experience and gear upgrades. At this point, making steel platebodies is a highly efficient method.
• Mithril and Adamantite (levels 50-70): Transitioning into mithril and adamantite smithing will significantly increase your experience per bar. Creating mithril platebodies and later adamant platebodies will become the most efficient methods for leveling.
• Runite (level 85+): When you reach runite smithing, you can create some of the best gear available to Ironmen. Craft runite platebodies for massive experience and gear progression.

Experience Boosting Methods:

• Mining Urns: Use mining urns to gain additional experience while mining. Each urn can give up to a 20% experience boost, and as an Ironman, every bit helps.
• Superheat Item Spell: As you collect ores, you can use the Superheat Item spell to instantly smelt ores into bars. This helps you save time by cutting down on trips to the furnace and allows you to train Magic at the same time.
• Burial Armor (Smithing Rework): The 2019 smithing rework introduced burial armor, a powerful method of training smithing. Craft burial armor from any metal and deliver it to the artisans to gain huge amounts of experience. As an Ironman, this method is invaluable since it doesn't require large amounts of additional resources, only bars.

Mining and Smithing Dailies and Challenges:

Taking advantage of daily challenges is key for gaining additional experience without needing extra time or effort. Completing the mining and smithing challenges every day gives significant experience rewards, and sometimes even resources, which are especially valuable for Ironmen who are always short on supplies.

Additionally, Divine Locations can help you gather resources faster. You can use Divine Rock locations to gather ores daily. Divine Locations are limited but offer a free, low-effort way to boost your mining and smithing resources.

Equipment Crafting:

One of the advantages of Ironman mode is the need for self-sufficiency. Creating your own equipment through smithing is vital, especially when high-level monsters drop fewer items suited to your build. Make sure to craft:

• Bronze/Iron Gear: Early-game survival depends on this basic gear.
• Steel/Mithril Armor and Weapons: Your next major upgrade set.
• Adamant and Rune Gear: For mid- to late-game content, rune weapons and armor will be key to survival.
• Runite Weapons and Armor: The pinnacle of self-made Ironman gear for combat.

Unlocking Masterwork Armor:

Masterwork armor is the ultimate smithing goal for an Ironman. This process is resource-intensive, requiring tons of materials and high-level smithing, but the payoff is worth it for the best melee armor in the game.

• Materials Needed: Large amounts of runite, orichalcite, and necronium bars.
• Refining: Create masterwork armor pieces by refining these bars. The gear offers unmatched defense and durability.

Summary of Key Items for Ironman Mining and Smithing:

Skill Level	Mining Tool	Ore to Focus On	Smithing Products	Location Suggestions
1-15	Bronze/Iron Pickaxe	Copper & Tin	Bronze Bars & Gear	Lumbridge Swamp, Burthorpe
15-45	Steel Pickaxe	Iron	Iron Bars & Weapons	Mining Guild, Varrock Southeast
45-60	Mithril Pickaxe	Coal	Steel Platebodies	Coal Trucks, Mining Guild
60-85	Adamant Pickaxe	Mithril	Mithril Platebodies	Mining Guild, Wilderness
85+	Rune/Dragon Pickaxe	Runite	Rune Platebodies	Mining Guild, Wilderness Resource

By following this guide, you will have a clear roadmap to mastering the mining and smithing skills as an Ironman in RS3. These skills are the backbone of your survival and progression, making them vital to your success in the game.