F2P Crafting 1–99: Cutting Gems vs Gold Amulets (XP & Profit Guide)

Game screenshots and facts are cited from the Old School RuneScape Wiki (strategy, equipment, drops, and related pages). Writing is original editorial, not a copy of the wiki article.

Free-to-play Crafting sits in a strange spot. On one hand you can bankstand with a stack of uncut gems, chew through levels while watching a show, and finish 99 in under 50 hours if you don't mind losing a pile of gold. On the other hand you can run gold bars to the Edgeville furnace, make a profit on every single amulet, and still be there six times longer. This guide breaks down the two main paths—cutting uncut gems vs making gold amulets—so you can decide whether your time or your gold is the scarcer resource.

We’ll use current Grand Exchange prices from the wiki’s craft tables, compare attention levels, list every unlock from level 1 to 99, and give you a practical roadmap. Because the GE shifts constantly, treat the exact numbers as a snapshot: always check live prices before committing to a bulk buy.

Method Overview: Cutting Gems vs Gold Amulets

The two methods sit at opposite ends of the effort spectrum. Cutting uncut gems is a single-step bankstanding action: you buy uncut sapphires, emeralds, rubies and diamonds, use a chisel on them, and repeat. Every action is the same, you never move, and the only limitation is how fast you can click between inventory spaces and bank. Gold amulets are a commuter method: you withdraw gold bars, run to a furnace, smelt them into unstrung amulets, bank the amulets, and run back. That run adds time—even at the best location, Edgeville furnace, you’re looking at 14 tiles between bank and furnace—so your XP/hour takes a hit even though the per-action profit is positive.

The core tradeoff is simple: gems lose money but give much better XP/hour; gold amulets make money but are dramatically slower. Most F2P players will mix them: knock out early levels with quests and leather, then decide whether to bankroll fast cutting or slowly amass profit. We’ll get into the numbers below.

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Requirements and Early Levels

You need no quests or combat stats to start crafting. From level 1 you can do leather, but three free-to-play quests hand out a combined 950 Crafting XP, enough to get you straight to level 8 with zero supplies:

• Sheep Shearer – 150 XP
• Goblin Diplomacy – 200 XP
• Misthalin Mystery – 600 XP

After those, most guides recommend leather until level 20, because at 20 you unlock sapphire cutting. Leather itself loses money—soft leather chaps at level 18 cost 224 gp in materials and sell for 10 gp—but it’s faster than quests and sets you up for gems. You’ll need a needle and thread, which you can buy in Al Kharid or Rimmington.

Once you hit 40 Crafting you can enter the Crafting Guild (north-west of Rimmington) for a nearby clay mine, potter’s wheel and oven, but for gem cutting and gold amulets the guild is irrelevant—stick to the GE or Edgeville.

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Cutting Uncut Gems: AFK Bankstanding

Cutting gems is the fastest viable F2P Crafting method for most of the journey. You buy uncut gems from the Grand Exchange, use a chisel on them, and sell the cut version—typically for less than you paid. The whole process is one inventory click, so you can do it while watching a movie or playing another account. The wiki’s pay-to-play guide assumes 2,780 gems cut per hour without tick manipulation; free-to-play bankstanders at the Grand Exchange should expect a similar pace because the bank is right there.

Gem	Level	XP per cut	GP loss per gem	GP/XP	Attention
Sapphire	20	50	-29	-0.58	Very low
Emerald	27	67.5	-69	-1.02	Very low
Ruby	34	85	-244	-2.87	Very low
Diamond	43	107.5	-670	-6.23	Very low

Sapphires and emeralds are cheap to cut and lose only a small amount per gem, making them tolerable for early levels. Rubies start to bite, but the real cost comes at diamonds: you’ll lose 670 gp per cut for a 107.5 XP action. At 2,780 cuts/hour that’s a 1.86 million gp loss per hour at diamond level. That’s the price of the fastest F2P crafting method.

When to switch gems

• 20–27: Cut sapphires (cheap, gets you to emerald quickly)
• 27–34: Cut emeralds (still low loss, 67.5 XP each)
• 34–43: Cut rubies (85 XP each, moderate loss)
• 43–99: Cut diamonds (fastest but very expensive)

Some players skip diamonds and stick with rubies to 99 to save gold, but that adds many hours. The choice is yours: speed vs cost.

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Making Gold Amulets: Profit vs Time

Gold amulets are the classic F2P money-maker. At level 8 you can smelt a gold bar into an unstrung gold amulet for 30 XP. Using current GE prices, a gold bar costs 66 gp and the unstrung amulet sells for 152 gp, earning you 86 gp profit per amulet—a positive GP/XP of +2.87. That’s a rare combination: you make money while training Crafting.

The catch is the travel. To smelt you need a furnace, and the best spot is Edgeville furnace, which is 14 tiles from the bank. You’ll run a loop: withdraw 27 gold bars, run to furnace, smelt all, run back, deposit 27 amulets, repeat. At a relaxed pace you might do 1,200–1,500 amulets per hour, but the wiki doesn’t publish an official F2P rate. Time a few trips at Edgeville to get your own number—it will be far below the 2,780 gems/hour of cutting because of the running.

If you want slightly better profit per action, gold necklaces at level 6 give 20 XP and 107 gp profit each, but the lower XP makes them worse for training overall. Unstrung gold amulets are the sweet spot for profit and XP balance. Stringing them with ball of wool adds a tiny bit of XP (4 per amulet) and usually increases the sale value, but it requires spinning wool and adds another step—worth it if you value the extra XP, not if you want pure speed.

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Other Viable F2P Methods (Leather, Gold Necklaces, Tiaras)

While gems and amulets are the two pillars, a few other methods deserve a mention:

• Leather crafting (level 1–20): craft soft leather gloves, boots, cowl, vambraces, body, chaps. They lose money but are fast for early levels. At level 28 you can craft hardleather bodies for 35 XP each, still a loss but decent bankstanding.
• Gold necklaces (level 6): 20 XP, 107 gp profit each, commuter method like amulets. Slightly better profit but worse XP, so only for very early levels.
• Silver tiaras (level 23): 52.5 XP, uses silver bar (147 gp) and sells for 93 gp, a loss of 54 gp. Not worth it unless you have silver bars lying around.
• Gem jewellery (level 22+): sapphire necklaces (55 XP, 197 gp profit), emerald necklaces (60 XP, 225 gp profit), ruby amulets (85 XP, 235 gp profit), diamond necklaces (90 XP, 311 gp profit). These are commuter methods combining a cut gem with a gold bar and give solid profit, but they require both a gem and a bar, making inventory management slower and more expensive per action. They can be good if you already have cut gems from training.

In practice, most players use leather to 20, then choose either gem cutting (fast loss) or gold amulets (slow profit) for the long haul. The gem jewellery methods are a middle ground but rarely beat the simplicity of pure cutting or pure amulet smelting.

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XP Rates and Time to 99

Total XP from level 1 to 99 is 13,034,431. After quests and leather to 20, you’ll have around 4,470 XP, leaving roughly 13,030,000 XP to gain.

Cutting gems to 99

Using the optimal gem progression (sapphire 20–27, emerald 27–34, ruby 34–43, diamond 43–99), the total XP needed per tier is:

• Sapphire: 5,260 XP / 50 = 105 sapphires
• Emerald: 10,494 XP / 67.5 = 155 emeralds
• Ruby: 30,115 XP / 85 = 354 rubies
• Diamond: 12,984,092 XP / 107.5 = 120,782 diamonds

Total gems: 121,396. At 2,780 cuts/hour, that’s 43.7 hours. That’s the fastest realistic F2P crafting grind. If you use rubies all the way from 43–99 instead of diamonds, you’ll need 152,754 rubies (since ruby gives 85 XP), which takes 55 hours but costs far less. So the diamond route saves about 11 hours at the cost of roughly 50 million gp extra.

Gold amulets to 99

From level 8 (900 XP) to 99 you need 13,033,531 XP. At 30 XP per unstrung gold amulet, that’s 434,451 amulets. If you smelt 1,200 per hour, that’s 362 hours; at 1,500 per hour it’s 290 hours. Either way, it’s over six times slower than cutting gems. However, you’ll earn 86 gp profit per amulet, totalling about 37.5 million gp profit on the way to 99—assuming prices hold.

So the ultimate tradeoff: 44 hours and lose ~50 million gp (cutting diamonds) vs 300+ hours and profit 37 million gp (gold amulets). Your decision depends on whether you can fund the loss or prefer to grind profit.

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Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Not checking GE prices before buying. The tables above are a snapshot; gem margins can swing by 10% in a day. Always recheck the uncut/cut spread and gold bar/amulet spread.
• Using a slow furnace location. Running from Al Kharid bank to furnace costs you dozens of seconds per trip. Edgeville is the only real choice for amulet smelting.
• Cutting diamonds without calculating the total loss. Many players start diamonds because “it’s fastest” and then quit when they see their cash stack evaporate. Do the math first.
• Ignoring early quests. Three quests give you level 8 for free. If you skip them, you waste time and money on leather or worse methods.
• Stringing amulets without considering the time. Stringing adds a second step and requires wool; if you’re going for 99, the extra XP is rarely worth the slowdown unless you’re doing it purely for profit.
• Overlooking gem jewellery as an alternative. If you already cut gems, turning them into necklaces or amulets can recover some of your losses while still giving decent XP. The profit can offset the cutting loss.

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When Buying Gold or a Service Is the Honest Shortcut

Let’s be real: F2P crafting is either expensive or painfully slow. If you want the 99 cape without spending 300 hours running to a furnace, cutting diamonds is the only fast path—and it drains over 50 million gp. If your bank can’t absorb that, you have two choices: grind gold amulets for profit (which takes months) or inject gold from outside the game.

Buying OSRS gold is against Jagex’s rules, but it remains a common practice among players who value their time more than the risk. For those who are comfortable with third-party marketplaces, purchasing gold to fund diamond cutting turns a 44-hour loss-making grind into a straightforward goal: you spend real money to skip the profit grind, then finish 99 in under two days of playtime. Similarly, some players buy a crafting boost or an account with high crafting to skip the entire process. We cannot encourage breaking Jagex’s rules, but we acknowledge that many players weigh the time saved against the risk.

If you want to fund your gem supply or simply see what your gold is worth, our live rates are below.

View live gold rates

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Sources

• Crafting
• Free-to-play Crafting training
• Pay-to-play Crafting training
• Ironman Guide/Crafting