Method Description, Instructions and Tips for Success

General Description

The Blast Furnace is a minigame in which a team of players cooperates to run a furnace that smelts large numbers of ores into bars at once. The goal of the minigame is not speed per se, because the high capacity of the furnace is offset by its distance from a bank. Its main advantage is lower cost, as you need only 2 coal per mithril bar instead of the usual 4. There are anvils nearby to use your smelted bars for Smithing XP, but for making money, you want to bank the bars, so the objective is to be as efficient as possible in how you travel to the furnace, use it and then return to the bank. Be sure to follow the directions here carefully, as they are the result of many hours of testing to avoid problems such as finding your inventory full of ore and not being able to put it into the furnace.

The addition of a dwarven mine cart route between the Keldagrim and the Grand Exchange has cut down on the formerly long run to the Keldagrim bank, and removed the need for energy potions. You can further increase the number of bars you make per hour by making use of beast of burden familiars, with higher level ones allowing you to make more bars on each run.

You should use the furnace on World 58, the official Blast Furnace event world. Try to help out others who are running the furnace -- too many people are "freeloaders" who load in their ore and expect others to do the work for them. So pick up a shovel or a hammer or a bucket when it is necessary and pitch in.

The September 2009 change to player-specific stores means you now have an alternative to using Ordan to unnote ores -- you can sell them to the store and buy them back again. This ends up costing slightly more than unnoting the ores, but saves a noticeable amount of time at an additional cost of only a few gold pieces per bar, so it is the method I recommend.

Bear in mind that the numbers described here are estimates, because the exact amount of time needed for each run is variable, depending on where in the cycle the furnace is when you load your ore.

Specific Method Details

First, prepare for this activity by logging in to World 58, the official Blast Furnace world. Equip a charged amulet of glory, and teleport to Edgeville. Withdraw a stack of coins and a spirit terrorbird pouch, and summon the familiar. Set your Summoning interface button to "Take BoB".

For each run, withdraw 76 noted coal, then an inventory of unnoted mithril ore. Store 12 of these in the war tortoise, then take out more mithril ore to fill your inventory. Run northeast from Edgeville to the bridge, cross, go under the wall to the Grand Exchange, and click just south to get to the trap door. Click it and travel to Keldagrim. When you arrive, run northeast to the blast furnace minigame area, and go inside.

Run up the ramp to the conveyer belt, then click it to put the 26 ore from your inventory on it. Run down the ramp and trade Ordan. Sell him all 76 coal you brought with you. Then click "Buy 50" to buy back 27 unnoted coal, and run back up the ramp and load them on the conveyer belt. Repeat this one more time (to make 54 so far), then buy the last 22 and put them on the belt so you have loaded exactly the 76 coal you brought with you. This represents the coal for the first load of ore you already loaded into the furnace, plus the mithril ore you have not yet put in. Now use the "Take BoB" button again to take the second batch of 12 mithril ore and try to load them on the conveyer. If other players have been running the furnace successfully, you may already have your first 26 bars made, and the game will let you load your second set of ores. Go down to the dispenser, withdraw 26 bars from it and store 18 of them in your tortoise. Help other players run the furnace until your second batch is done. When it is, withdraw your second set of 12 mithril bars, teleport to Edgeville, bank and repeat. Don't forget to swap out your amulet of glory when it is out of charges.

Sometimes when you try to put the second set of 18 ores into the furnace after the coal is added, only a few bars will go in, and the game will complain that you can't put in any more. If this occurs, it means your first batch of ore isn't processed yet, so go down from the conveyer and help run the furnace until your first batch of bars is ready. When it is, take out exactly one bar, because you can't put more ore in the furnace if you have 28 bars in the dispenser. Then load the remaining mithril ore into the furnace, withdraw the bars from the first batch and store them in the terrorbird. Help run the furnace until your second batch of bars is done, collect them, teleport to Edgeville and bank there.

Assuming the furnace is running properly, it should take 4 to 4.5 minutes to do a full load of bars.