Strategies for Ironman Mode

This article is a strategy guide for Ironman Mode. Information on mechanics, setups, and tactics is on this page.

Smithing as a skill primarily serves as support for melee. Early on it can provide weapons and armour, later on masterwork armour and armour spikes.

Equipment

This is a condensed version of Pay-to-play Smithing training#Useful items. Note that improving progress speed will also improve experience per hour.

Image	Item	Explanation	Obtaining	Category
	Blacksmith's outfit	Each piece of the blacksmith's outfit increases Smithing experience by 1%. Wearing a full set will give an extra 1% bonus experience, for 6% bonus experience in total. The helmet add-on also gives a 1% chance to get double bars while smelting and adds a teleport option to the Artisan's Workshop.	Respect (Artisans' Workshop). XP-wise this is the best investment per respect.	Experience, resources
	Varrock armour	Gives a chance for bonus bars while smelting and double progress while smithing. 1 unlocks a 4% bonus for bronze, iron and steel. 2 unlocks a 3% bonus for mithril and adamant. 3 unlocks a 2% bonus for rune, orikalkum and necrite. 4 unlocks a 1% bonus for bane and elder rune. With the New Varrock achievements these effects can be provided without needing to wear the armour as well as doubling the effectiveness.	Varrock achievements, New Varrock achievements	Resources, progress
	Smelting gauntlets	Smelted bars are automatically sent to the metal bank.	Family Crest reward	Other
	Scroll of efficiency	For every bar used while smithing this gives a 2% chance to return it.	Bought for 20,000 at 55 and .	Resources
	Crystal hammer	Gives a 1% chance for double progress while smithing.	Sing a crystal tool seed with 80 or 7,500.	Progress
	Invention perks	Requires a hammer-tron or an augmented crystal hammer. Tinker perk is an all around boost to progress, the rapid perk makes progress a lot faster but also makes smithing more active, and the breakdown perk provides some free components while smithing. Additionally, Wise can be put on an offhand for up to 4% additional experience for a limited time per day.	22 for augmented tools, 95 (unboostable) and 85 for ancient tool gizmo shells.	Tinker: progress Rapid: progress Breakdown: resources Wise: experience
	Superheat Form	Makes smelting speed 1 tick faster (reducing the time per bar from 2.4/1.8 seconds to 1.8/1.2 seconds) and heat levels impact smithing speed less, making smithing less active. The grace of the elves necklace halves the prayer drain rate.	The Light Within and 91	Other
	Perfect juju smithing potion	Gives a 5% chance to double progress for 1 hour per dose (4 hours per dose of perfect plus potion).	82 to add harmony moss to a juju hunter potion (3) or 99 to add harmony moss, a crystal tree blossom and an overload (4) to a crystal flask to make the perfect plus potion.	Progress
	Powerburst of masterstroke	Multiplies progress by 10 for the next 4 swings (30 second limit) on a 2 minute cooldown.	108 (boostable) and 106 (unboostable) to create.	Progress
	Smithing autoheater/Advanced smithing autoheater	Adds 30%/60% heat when heat runs out at the cost of 5/50 coal. Useful for smithing with minimal inputs.	Bought for 4,000/40,000 at 35/70 and .
	Urns	Provide 20% extra smithing experience, or 25% with an urn enhancer, but only for smelting bars or corrupted ore. Smelting is a very small percentage of experience while making burial sets so this is primarily useful for corrupted ore.	4, 17, 35, 49, 80 respectively.	Experience
	Smithing cape	Gives double progress whenever at full heat.	99	Progress
	Orthen furnace core	Gives free resources, makes Breakdown give 5% bonus experience for 5 minutes (making this more efficient than an off-hand with Wise if the buff can be maintained), stops superheat form from draining prayer points and gives the scroll of efficiency a 2.5% chance to return bars instead of 2%.	Made at 99 and 102 with a number of resources (see page) including 200 tarromin incense sticks and vital sparks (88 ).	Resources, experience
	Inspire Genius	Players with level 118 Archaeology can activate the Inspire Genius relic power at the mysterious monolith for a 2% experience increase to experience in smithing.	118 required. Costs 5,000 chronotes and 250 relic power to swap in.	Experience

Training the skill

The smithing skill is straightforward to train. Making the highest level armour and turning it into burial armour is generally the best way to gain experience. Always train at the Artisan's Workshop for the respect and possibly the luminite injector buff (often active on world 70).

When smithing, it is possible to stock up multiple items in a row to smith by right-clicking the forge.

1-10 Bronze

It does not matter which item is smithed in terms of experience, so smith 73 sets of bronze arrowheads to help with fletching.

10-30 Iron and steel

Smith 79 iron bars and 114 steel bars worth of items. It does not matter for bar efficiency what item is made, but making iron/steel platebody + 1s requires the least activity or make arrowheads for fletching.

Alternatively, complete The Knight's Sword to skip most of this.

30-40 Mithril

Smith 191 mithril bars worth of items. Again, mithril platebody + 2 will require the least activity.

40-99 Burial sets

At this point the eastern half of the Artisan's Workshop opens up, where burial armour can be made. Making burial items improves the experience per bar by 50%. Making burial sets improves the experience per bar by a further 1.67%-3.33% (depending on the number of solemn smith upgrades bought). Besides orikalkum it is always the most efficient to do the highest level bar.

Levels	Bars needed	Burial sets	Other burial items
40-50	248 adamant bars	5 adamant burial sets	1 adamant burial full helm
50-70	1744 rune bars	18 rune burial sets	1 rune burial full helm
70-80	1648 necronium bars	8 necronium burial sets	7 necronium burial gauntlets
80-90	3152 bane bars	16 bane burial sets	1 bane burial platebody
90-99	5056 elder rune bars	13 elder rune burial sets	1 elder rune burial full helm

Making elder rune from 90 to 99 is slightly faster than making bane from 90 to 99, including time to mine, which would require 7216 bane bars (37 sets plus 7 gauntlets).

Note that due to experience boosts these numbers will likely be too much, use Calculator:Smithing to get a better approximation for the number of bars needed. In general, the optimal strategy is to make the displayed number of burial sets minus 1, and then use other burial items to fill up the rest of the experience to the next metal type.

In the past, corrupted ore provided a decent alternative to bane and elder rune. However, due to nerfs this is no longer the case and it is around half as efficient as bane or elder rune in terms of smithing experience per hour after taking mining into account.

Spending respect

The following order gives the biggest experience boost per respect available:

1. Start with the blacksmith's outfit, including the headgear. This gives extra experience and also extra bars, reducing time mining. This costs 300% respect or 3,000,000 experience.
2. Get the solemn smith upgrades, increasing experience per bar by 0.33%. This costs 300% respect or 3,000,000 experience.
3. Get quick repairs and repair expert for some additional experience. This costs 20% respect or 200,000 experience.
4. Get ceremonial sword orders for 10% additional experience from ceremonial sword random events. This costs 100% respect or 1,000,000 experience.
5. Get ceremonial swordsmith I-V for 1% additional experience from ceremonial sword random events (multiplicative with the orders upgrade). This costs 150% respect or 1,500,000 experience.
6. Finally, the remaining upgrades do not affect experience. They are in no particular order:
   • The dwarven cannon upgrades, which also affect the Oldak coil and kinetic cyclone. This costs 250% respect or 2,500,000 experience.
   • The dwarven instinct aura, which gives some free resources. This costs 200% respect or 2,000,000 experience.
   • The cosmetic armour sets which are required for the trimmed completionist cape. This costs 300% respect or 3,000,000 experience.

The total cost for all smithing upgrades is 870% respect or 8,700,000 experience. The remaining articles cost 750% respect for a total of 16,200,000 experience to get everything, not counting bonus and reward experience.

Milestone rewards

Every level will also improve smithing rate.

Level	Reward
10,20,...,90	Smith your own weapons and tank armour.
90	Armour spikes
99	Smithing cape for quicker smithing.
99	Masterwork armour