Runecrafting has been my lowest skill for quite some time and this is about to fix it. Turns out there is quite a fun and even lucrative mini-game for gaining loads of runes and runecrafting experience.

Quest: Temple Of The Eye

First, before I could join the real thing there was a short quest that had you do some of the basics that would be required for playing in Guardians of the Rift. It had a bit of a strange start with me talking with a wizard who told me I had aligned myself with the wrong people. Those people however gave me access to the Abyss. Inside the abyss is around where all of this takes place.

To make up for my past misdeeds I agree to go back to my old ways and present a Mage of the Zamorak with an amulet. I knew there was some bad blood between the two caster groups. I just did not think either one of them cared about my activities.

Mage of the Zamorak was quite suspect of the amulet I gave him. It became quite clear to them where I had acquired the amulet. There was however a bit of a mystery to the amulet as well and that was more than enough to get my foot into the door.

The group was at least willing to allow me to speak with the Dark Mage. She is in the middle of the abyss and is the person you need to speak with to repair pouches after they have been used so many times. While I won’t be using any pouches in the mini-game. It’s good to know I have access to her as well having been to her location at least once now.

I then had to solve a puzzle that required me to do some trial and error. Once I was done, I was allowed to leave. Then, I was handed a note which I ended up turning over to the wizards.

The information I gave the wizards allowed them to gain access to the abyss. They then took me along with their group to explore a section of it. The giant room I found myself in ended up being where the main mini-game for Guardians of the Rift takes place.

Due to what the wizards were doing a rift ended up opening up. Along with it a guardian whose purpose was to close it. This gave me some very basic information about how the rift works. Not quite like how the real one would be played out. However, a basic enough run down I was able to take it from there.

I ended up having to go around doing some of the basic activities. Such as powering up a barrier with cells. Creating a guard to fight off spawns that come out of the rift. Along with things like mining fallen guardians for shards.

I even got to enter one of the portals that took me to the mind alert. There I exchanged the guardian essence I had crafted into runes. I was also granted stones for each essence I imbued at the altar. This was then in turn used to give the guardian power once I left the alert area.

Once all was done things ended and I was returned to the wizard's basement where they had planned everything. Now a portal was open for me to use to return to the waiting area for Guardians of the Rift.

My reward for helping them ended up being a 5k runecraft experience and a medium pouch. The pouches can hold essences but since they only get so many uses before needing to be repaired. I decided I'd wait till I had a better solution in how I was going to go about quickly getting them repaired.

It was cool to get a little bit of the lore behind the mini-game and get to do some of the basic things before going out and playing the mini-game with a large group of people. With that out of the way, it was now time for the real thing.

Guardians Of The Rift

If it’s one thing I've started to enjoy about OSRS is just how fun they can make so many different activities. While I've played in a few mini-games now at this point. I’ve found most of them to be enjoyable. This one is more so than the rest of them. As it was quite relaxing and rewarding to partake in.

I ended up switching over to some of the worlds that Guardians of the Rift is dedicated to. While you can play the mini-game on any world you tend to not have enough players and while some mini-games are amazing to try and solo. This one it seems being with a massive amount of people makes it easier.

With it being my first time. I just decided to follow where most of the people playing were going. I did stop at a table to pick up ten uncharged cells to use on the barriers once I had one charged up.

It seems not all mining of the shards is equal. Everyone ended up going to a spot that was in the middle of the arena. There was a bit of a crawl down into the pit where there were some larger fallen guardians I could mine for shards.

You also get a short amount of preparation time before the game starts. During that time, you can do things like mine shards. At the time I only had a rune pickaxe. Once I get my mining up and can use a dragon pickaxe, I'll be able to mine even more shards in the same amount of time given.

When I had collected around 95 or so shards, I noticed everyone started making a run for it towards the crafting table. Where you can turn the shards into essence. It seems many start making their way to this spot with around 60-45 seconds or less to go from the start of the game.

In later games, I'd come up with my strategy when it was best to start heading towards the crafting table. I did not have a bunch of pouches with me to fill. So I'd wait sometimes around the 25-second remaining mark before making my way.

Once the game starts two portals are open at a time to head into alerts. One is for elemental energy (air, water, earth, fir) and the other one is for catalytic energy (mind, body, cosmic, chaos, nature, law, death, and blood). You might notice there are a lot more types of catalytic than elemental.

Since I was just starting with 38 Runecraft my options were a little more limited than many playing in this mini-game. While I could access any of the elemental portals. I could only enter into the mind, body, and cosmic for catalytic.

This is rather important to note. When it comes down to claiming rewards you get one point for each 100 energies of either elemental or catalytic. To claim the reward, you needed one point from each to claim it. Thankfully these reward points are stored so if you get a bit off balance that is fine.

I did attempt each game I played to have both elemental and catalytic within the same 100’s. That was a bit more challenging on my end since I could not access most of the catalytic alerts when those portals were open.

Once you click on the alert and exit you are returned to the temple. From there you run up to the guardian and turn in the guardian stones you got which get turned into power and points.

Depending on the level of the portal you went into you also have a power cell. Those power cells are then used to repair or power up the barriers. You can also use them to summon guardians to fight.

It became quite easy to realize if you did not have an overcharged cell which I could only get from entering into the fire alter. As the ones, I did not meet the requirements to enter. It was best to not use the lower power cells to create guardians. How powerful the guardian is depending on the cell it was made out of.

Once that was all done it was time to rise and repeat with the remaining shards I had. Often I'd be waiting on a catalytic portal that I could use to be up so I would not miss out on getting some points from those.

A nice side benefit as well is you are crafting runes. It was just tempting to only do catalytic runes as those are the higher value. Elemental ones are quite worthless these days selling only for a couple of gold instead of a hundred or more the catalytic ones sell for.

At the end of my first game, I had 185 elemental energy and 101 catalytic energy. This meant I got 1 point for each type. In another sense I thought about it I wasted 86 energy that was not going to get converted into another point.

After the first game, I took a small break to take in the experience. I then headed back in for another one. This time I spent more time mining shards at the start. I also realized I made some mistakes in the first game as well.

One really important thing I noticed is every so often a portal opens up that allows you to farm a massive dead guardian. Instead of mining shards from them you then need to craft those into essence. They give essence and a few at a time per pickaxe swing. Saving quite a lot of time and helping to boost your energy scores quickly.

This ended up being something I'd keep an eye out for. I have even gotten to the point where I know when to craft my essence or mine some shards while waiting for one of these portals to open.

As with every run, I'd run out of shards anyway. So, it seemed any moment I might be ideal I should be mining shards that are next to the crafting tables. Even if they seem to give fewer shards than were everyone mine at the start.

In my second and may runs after that I was able to end with at least 200 elemental and energy as long as I picked up the special portals. If I missed them then I was usually getting 300 and some points instead of over 400.

After I racked up some points from quite a few runs. I decided to start doing some turn-ins to see my rewards. Some harder drops are things like the abyssal needle, a pet, and pearls. The pearls can be exchanged for a runecrafting outfit.

For the most part, I just get lots of runes. I have even gotten a few of the different-sized rune pouches. However, without an easy way to repair them, I've decided to just not use them since I can’t mine fast enough anyway to have all the extra shards I'd be using in a single game while using them.

Final Thoughts

I ended up increasing my runecrafting from 38 to 51 making it no longer my lowest level skill. While I did not earn a crazy amount of gold from all the runes I looted. I was rather thrilled to have over 2k nature runes that I'll be using at some point.

Once I get my mining skills up a bit. I have plans to make a return to do quite a lot of Guardians of the Rift. Hopefully, by then I'll have the spell for talking to NPCs at long range to repair my runecraft bags as well.

Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Old School RuneScape.