OSRS Smithing: Giants' Foundry vs Blast Furnace Gold to 99

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.

Smithing is one of Old School RuneScape's most straightforward buyables—feed ore into a furnace, collect bars, and repeat until the cape is yours. But the method you choose changes everything: total cost, clicks per minute, hours to 99, and whether you can actually enjoy the grind. Two paths dominate for main accounts: the fast, expensive Blast Furnace gold-bar conveyor and the slower but more engaging Giants' Foundry minigame. This guide compares them side by side using the wiki's published XP curves, cost tables, and unlock requirements so you can pick the one that fits your playstyle, attention span, and coin pouch.

We'll cover requirements, mechanics, realistic time-to-99 from common starting levels, common mistakes, and when buying gold or a service is the honest shortcut rather than a rule-breaking fantasy.

1. Who This Guide Is For and the Core Tradeoff

If your main account is already bankrolled from bossing, flipping, or flipping gold on the market, Blast Furnace gold bars are the fastest route to 99 Smithing—assuming you can tolerate 300+ clicks per minute on a crowded official world. If you want to train Smithing with less wrist strain, earn a little profit on the side, or unlock useful rewards like the colossal blade and smiths gloves, Giants' Foundry is the better long-term choice. This guide assumes you are a normal account with access to the Grand Exchange, not an ironman locked out of trading.

The core tradeoff is speed versus intensity. Blast Furnace gold with goldsmith gauntlets peaks at around 375,000 XP per hour, but it burns gp and demand constant, precise banking. Giants' Foundry tops out near 276,000 XP per hour using expensive addy/rune alloys, but mid-tier mithril/addy blends land around 135,000 XP per hour while often breaking even or profiting. The choice hinges on how much you value your time and how much clicking you can stand.

2. Requirements and Early Setup for Both Methods

Before comparing methods, make sure you can access both pieces of content. Questing early levels is the most efficient way to skip the slow low-level grind: The Knight's Sword, Sleeping Giants, Elemental Workshop I and II, The Giant Dwarf, Heroes' Quest, and the Freeing Pirate Pete subquest together grant 36,982 Smithing XP, putting you at level 39. From there, smithing two iron platebodies gets you to 40, where Blast Furnace gold unlocks. If you skip Heroes' Quest, you only need 20 iron platebodies after the remaining quests to hit 40.

The Blast Furnace is located in Keldagrim, while Giants' Foundry sits in a cave under the Giants' Plateau. Use the minigame teleport or grouping tab for instant access to Giants' Foundry; for Blast Furnace, the Keldagrim minecart network or a glory teleport to Al Kharid plus a run east gets you there. On Blast Furnace worlds, the furnace is operated by dwarven workers for a fee, so you never have to fix pipes or pump the bellows yourself.

3. Giants' Foundry Mechanics: Preforms, Refinement, and Quality

Giants' Foundry is a short minigame loop. Talk to Kovac, choose your moulds for the sword parts, then deposit two types of metal bars into the crucible. The alloy mix determines your base metal score: common choices are 14 mithril + 14 adamant (highest cheap blend) or 19 mithril + 9 adamant (cheaper but slightly lower score). After pouring the preform, you refine it using three stations: the trip hammer, grindstone, and polishing wheel. Each successful action grants a small 3.2–4.5 Smithing XP and heats the sword; the heat bar must be kept in the green zone. Every mistake (overheating, cooling too much, using the wrong station) reduces the final quality by 5 points.

Sweet spots occasionally appear on each station. Hitting one doubles the XP of the next action, so paying attention to the interface can meaningfully speed up your XP per hour. Once the sword is complete, cool it in water, pick it up with a bucket or ice gloves, and hand it to Kovac for a large XP drop. The final quality is mould score + metal score - mistakes, and the turn-in XP is based on that quality. A perfect sword maxes at 199 quality and awards 25,230 Smithing XP.

4. Blast Furnace Gold Bars: The Classic 40–99 Machine

Blast Furnace gold bars are the traditional fast method. On a Blast Furnace themed world, stand between the bank chest and the conveyor belt, withdraw 27 gold ore, place them on the belt, wear goldsmith gauntlets and ice gloves, then collect the bars from the dispenser and bank them. The loop is extremely short—under three seconds per cycle—but it demands constant clicks and precise positioning. With goldsmith gauntlets, each gold bar grants 56.2 Smithing XP instead of 22.5, turning gold ore into one of the highest XP per hour activities in the game.

The published experience rates from the Blast Furnace page are 5,600–6,600 bars per hour for gold with gauntlets, which works out to 314,700–370,900 XP per hour. Tick-perfect players can push beyond 420,000 XP per hour, but that assumes near-zero banking delays. Without gauntlets, you drop to 130,500–154,100 XP per hour, which is still respectable but roughly 2.5x slower.

The cost side is where Blast Furnace gold hurts. Jagex's own comparison lists gold at Blast Furnace with gauntlets at a -3.5 GP/XP ratio; a full 13 million XP grind would burn roughly 45 million coins in gold ore, not counting the 72,000 gp/hour coffer fee or stamina potions. This method is purely a buyable: you trade gp for speed.

5. Head-to-Head: XP/hr, GP/XP, and Intensity Comparison

The table below uses Jagex's released comparisons from the Giants' Foundry patch notes and the Blast Furnace experience table. Actual rates vary with your focus, ping, and current market prices, so treat these as planning numbers, not guarantees.

Blast Furnace gold clearly wins for raw speed. Giants' Foundry wins for cost and engagement, especially at the medium tier where you can often profit while still gaining 135k XP/hr. The highest GF tier is fast but loses money slightly more than Blast Furnace? Actually it loses more (-6.6 vs -3.5), but it is still slower. So if you want speed, BF gold is better; if you want profit or semi-AFK, GF mid is the pick.

6. Unlocks That Shift the Balance: Moulds, Gauntlets, and Perks

Both methods have upgrades that drastically change their efficiency. For Blast Furnace, goldsmith gauntlets are the single most important unlock—without them, gold smelting is almost three times slower. Ice gloves or smiths gloves (i) remove the need to cool bars manually, saving a tick per cycle. The Smithing cape perk at 99 acts as goldsmith gauntlets, but by then you're already done. The coal bag is not needed for gold, but if you later switch to hybrid mithril/addy bars, it becomes essential.

For Giants' Foundry, moulds are the equivalent of gauntlets. Foundry Reputation is earned at the end of each sword, equal to the final quality. Spending reputation on moulds raises your base mould score, which directly adds to the final quality and therefore the turn-in XP. The wiki's expected XP per bar table shows that with 14/14 mith/addy, unlocking moulds raises the assumed rating from 133 to 153, lifting XP per sword from 13,278 to 16,570—a 24.8% increase. Other combinations like 19/9 mith/addy or addy/rune see similar gains. Prioritise moulds that offer the largest score boost for your chosen alloy tier, not random cosmetic pieces.

Additionally, smiths gloves from the Giants' Foundry reward shop can be combined with ice gloves to create smiths gloves (i), which combine both effects: they cool bars instantly and count as goldsmith gauntlets for extra XP at Blast Furnace. This is a nice quality-of-life upgrade if you plan to alternate between both methods.

7. Realistic Time-to-99 and Cost Breakdowns

Let's put these rates into real hours. From level 40 (37,224 XP), 99 requires 12,997,207 XP. From level 70 (737,627 XP), it's 12,296,804 XP. From level 85 (3,258,594 XP), it's 9,775,837 XP. Using the typical rates above:

• Blast Furnace gold with gauntlets (350k/hr average): 40→99 = 37.1 hours; 70→99 = 35.1 hours; 85→99 = 27.9 hours.
• Giants' Foundry highest tier (~250k/hr): 40→99 = 52.0 hours; 70→99 = 49.2 hours; 85→99 = 39.1 hours.
• Giants' Foundry medium tier (~135k/hr): 40→99 = 96.3 hours; 70→99 = 91.1 hours; 85→99 = 72.4 hours.
• Giants' Foundry lowest profitable tier (~85k/hr): 40→99 = 152.9 hours; 70→99 = 144.7 hours; 85→99 = 115.0 hours.

Cost-wise, at -3.5 GP/XP, Blast Furnace gold to 99 from level 40 costs roughly 45.5 million coins in gold ore. Giants' Foundry highest tier at -6.6 GP/XP would cost about 85.8 million coins, but it's slower—so you'd only choose that if you specifically want GF rewards or avoid BF world crowding. The medium GF tier often breaks even or profits a small amount, meaning you can reach 99 with a net gain or at worst break-even, but it costs you 60 extra hours compared to BF gold.

8. Common Mistakes That Tank Your XP or Bank

• Forgetting goldsmith gauntlets at Blast Furnace. You'll get 22.5 XP per gold bar instead of 56.2, turning a 37-hour grind into 90+ hours.
• Not using ice gloves or a bucket at either method. At BF, you'll wait for bars to cool; at GF, you can't pick up the sword without them.
• Soloing Blast Furnace on a non-themed world. The manual operation wastes more time than the coffer fee would have cost.
• Using suboptimal alloy ratios at Giants' Foundry. 14/14 mith/addy is the sweet spot for mid-tier XP; 10/18 or random mixes may lower quality and profit.
• Ignoring sweet spots at GF. Missing doubled XP actions can cost several thousand XP per sword over a session.
• Not unlocking moulds before heavy GF grinding. Moulds add up to 25% more XP per sword, so spend early reputation on them.
• Buying expensive high-tier alloys for GF without a plan. Addy/rune swords give great XP but lose money; if profit is your goal, stick to steel/mith or mith/addy.

9. When Buying Gold or a Boost Is the Honest Shortcut

Smithing is a buyable skill: the fastest method literally consumes gold ore you pay for. If you earn more than 3.5 gp per XP by doing your normal money-making activity—say you can make 5 million gp/hour bossing—then buying gold ore and smelting at Blast Furnace is mathematically more efficient than earning that ore yourself via slow PvM or skilling. Many players buy OSRS gold to fund the ore, potions, and coffer fees, then do the clicking themselves. That is not against the spirit of a main account; it's trading gp you've earned elsewhere for a faster skillcape.

If the clicking itself is the problem—some people physically cannot sustain 350 actions per minute for 37 hours—an account levelling service can handle the grind while you're offline. This is a legitimate service offered by marketplaces, not a cheat or bot. You provide the account, they play it within the rules, and you log back in to your 99. The cost of such a service is usually a fraction of the gp you'd spend on gold ore if you did it yourself, though you should verify the service's reputation and safety before trusting your account to anyone.

If you just need the gp to fund your own training, view live gold rates on our market page and compare with the Grand Exchange. Whether you buy ore, bars, or a full service, treat it as an investment in your time.

10. Sources

• Pay-to-play Smithing training
• Giants' Foundry
• Blast Furnace