Please Whitelist This Site? I know everyone hates ads. But please understand that I am providing premium content for free that takes hundreds of hours of time to research and write. If I can't make at least a little bit of money to support my family via this site, I'll have to stop working on it. One alternative is to become a RuneScoop member. It's cheap, you get access to all of the site with no ads, and you help keep the lights on around here. If you want to use this site for free, I'd be grateful if you could add RuneScoop to the whitelist for Adblock. To do so, just open the Adblock menu and select "Disable on Runescoop.com". Or go to the Tools menu and select "Adblock Plus Preferences...". Then click "Add Filter..." at the bottom, and add this string: "@@http://*runescoop.com/*". Then just click OK. Thanks for your understanding! Sincerely... Qeltar, aka Charles, your hard-working host and RuneScape guide-writer extraordinaire. :)

RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Skill Optimization Guide for RuneScape       >  The RuneScoop Skill Optimization Guide for RuneScape - Reference

Explanation of Skill Optimization Guide Activity Description Pages Selection Assumptions for Equipment and Supplies

The activity description pages give you essential information about various training opportunities within each skill. But what most experienced players really want to know about most of all is how various skill activities compare to each other. To achieve that essential goal, each skill has a set of activity index pages, which allow you to quickly contrast training alternatives based on a set of criteria important to most players.

Each skill’s indexes use the same basic structure, containing one row per activity and columns that are described below. For F2P skills there are two set of index pages—for F2P and P2P versions of the activities—while for P2P skills there is only one. There are often more indexes in P2P than F2P, since there are more options at more levels.

Note that some activities may have additional important level activity variants defined that are not put into indexes. For example, Fishing level 76 is important for fishing shark, but not particularly relevant to other activities in that skill.Every set of indexes has a separate table for each of the levels defined for that skill. For skills that are trained continuously—where skill performance increases every time you gain a level, like Fishing or Mining—I have defined a set of standard levels to make comparison easier. These are levels 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 85, 90 and 95.

For other skills, where gaining levels just unlocks new content—like Herblore or Crafting—the levels are chosen based on important numbers that make better training options available. These generally correspond to levels in the skill where new items are unlocked, such as level 81 to make Saradomin brew potions. However, in some cases an index is provided that corresponds to a level in a different skill that changes that skill in some way. A notable example is that level 47 Summoning allows you to use magpie pouches, which greatly enhance the profitability of passive skill activities. Since I assume roughly even level advancement, level 47 is important for many skills, even if nothing is unlocked in that skill at level 47.

For most players, the best way to use the indexes is to choose the one that corresponds to your level in that skill. If there isn’t an index that matches your level, use the highest level one below your level.

All of the activity index tables have the following columns:

• Skill: The name of the skill. This is somewhat redundant (since the name of the skill is already in the title of the page) but is included for clarity.
  
  
• Activity: The generic name of the activity. This is a clickable link so you can quickly get to the detail page of any activity that interests you.
  
  
• Activity Level: The level of the activity. This will generally be the same for every entry in a given table.
  
  
• Minimum Level: The minimum level required to be able to perform this activity (primary skill only).
  
  
• F2P/P2P?: Whether this is an F2P or P2P version of the activity.
  
  
• Multitask Rating: A rating from 1 (Extremely Low) to 10 (Exceptionally High), that indicates approximately how suitable I feel the method is to being done while engaged in other activities, either within RuneScape or in other windows on your computer. This is often important to players who do boring things like fishing or cutting wood while talking to friends, catching up on forum postings or whatnot. Just to be clear, though: I do not advocate macroing, “AFKing” or playing RuneScape away from the computer.
  
  
• Skill Activity Speed (SAS): How fast this activity allows you to train the skill in question, expressed in XP per hour.
  
  
• Skill Activity Profitability (SAP): How much money you make (positive figures) or lose (negative figures) per hour when engaging in this activity.
  
  
• Skill Activity Efficiency (SAE_100k, SAE_250k, SAE_500k and SAE_1M): These are the efficiency ratings for this skill for four different levels of opportunity cost—larger numbers (or smaller negative numbers) are better.

See the discussion of skill activity ratings for details on SAS, SAP and SAE.

By default, all indexes are sorted by SAS, which shows the fastest activities first. You can sort the tables as you like provided that you have Javascript enabled on your browser. I recommend choosing the opportunity cost figure that best reflects the value of your time when working just to earn money, and sorting the tables using the most relevant SAE column.

To change the order of the table, simply click on one of the other column headings—once for ascending order, or twice for descending order. For example, if you want to see all the methods sorted so the most “multitaskable” ones are at the top, just click the “Multitask Rating” header twice.

You can also sort by two columns at once by clicking one, holding down the <Shift> key and clicking another. For example, to sort by multitasking rating and then SAS within each multitask rating, click the “Multitask Rating” header, then hold down <Shift> and click the “SAS” header.

Explanation of Skill Optimization Guide Activity Description Pages Selection Assumptions for Equipment and Supplies