Ironman Mode Discussion and Information Sharing

[Dakahn]

Since there are getting to be more people playing ironman mode in the clan, I figured it would be nice for us to have a place for us to post questions, advice, and resources that we have used.

Here are a few of the resources I've used to answer some of my own questions, but there is no need to follow them religiously, as they are designed with the end goal of maxing in minimal time and as such include some pretty try-hard methods.

General Ironman maxing guide This is a very tryhard guide, but I will mention a few of the main places I have deviated from it below.
Quest and Comp cape from scratch guide This is useful if you want to utilize questing xp to the maximum. Feel free to skip quests/comp requirements as you want, its just a good way to have a checklist to work through.
Invention Components This is not tailored for ironmen in any way, but gives a good starting point to look for where you can get components.

I am going for the untrimmed invention cape and because of that have changed up how I've done alot of the progression, but I can point out what some useful goals that I have gone for that assisted alot.


First off is dailyscape. Dailyscape is beyond boring, but is especially useful at the start of ironman mode. Some notable dailies are listed below. Feel free to pick your poison and only do them as much as you can stand them.

Nemi forest: prayer, farming, dungeoneering, and mining xp on top of rep towards eventually rerolling raid loot
Big chinchompa: The best method of training hunter till crystalizing grenwals
Guthixian caches: because divination is slow
Jack of trades aura and vis wax: This gives daily xp in a skill of your choice. Herblore will generally be the skill you want to put it in, but it can help with alot of other skills that are hard to train as well. Vis wax combinations
Shooting stars: I only did this in the very early game, but it gives 50k coins, some cosmic runes, and some gold ore on top of a mining buff that gives a chance to mine double ores for a period of time.
There are many other dailies and they are listed in the ironman guide above, but these are some that I have done more than others.


Weeklies:
Meg: located in ports, she gives an xp lamp and some coins each week for minimal effort
Agoroth: free bonus xp
Tears of guthix: xp based on your quest points in your lowest skill
Familiarization: I suggest starting off going for the summoning resource boxes until you have the whole summoning outfit, then start doing this for the triple charm ticket once you have high enough combat to utilize it
Broken home hard mode: this takes about 40 minutes or so to get a large xp lamp once you have completed all the challenges for it. I suggest completing the challenges anyway, as this is how you get the asylums surgeon ring, one of the best rings in the game.
Shattered worlds weekly challenges: This is for higher combat ironmen, but this will help you along with unlocking those abilities and reducing that grind.


Monthlies:
Troll invasion
God statues: If you do the same statue in one location for four months straight you get the god chisel, which gives 1% bonus construction xp.
Underwater clam: because there are never enough alchables or fortunate components



Useful grinds:
Menaphos and shifting tombs are a worthy goal due to being very good optional training methods to break the monotony. Unlocking Menaphos has minimal requirements, but shifting tombs requires 50 in agility, crafting, prayer, runecrafting, dungeoneering, theiving, construction, and divination. Also note that the xp you get from tombs increases once you have all of those respective skills above 70, and then 90. Additionally, Menaphos has the best fishing in the game for ironmen, as the xp is comparable to barbarian fishing, while still providing food that will be useful for slayer.

Temple trekking gives a great method for getting crafting xp through silver bars. I recommend crafting unstrung unholy symbols and keeping them for disassembly once you unlock invention. Additionally you can get bowstrings and melon seeds.

Deadliest catch unlocks the use of bank deposit boxes, one of which is located next to three teak trees on ape atoll. This allows for grinding woodcutting and construction more conveniently.

Kingdom of Miscelania is an amazing god send that bestows great amounts of resources upon you. Prioritize maple and mahogany logs. Maple logs are useful for all sorts of skilling and mahogany logs are preferred because invention now has a way to turn logs into planks without any gp cost. Feel free however to go for the other resources as you see fit. Herbs aren't too efficient, but do build up over time and help with the abysmal herblore grind.

Skilling outfits can also be unlocked through various mini games. What is worth it is up to you, but the ones i definitely suggest unlocking are the summoning outfit as mentioned above, diviners outfit through caches, runecrafting outfit through the runespan, construction and woodcutting outfit through temple trekking, and the cooking outfit through gnome restaurant.

Lategame you will want the sunspear to grind prayer, firemaking, farming(through seedicide), and combat at vyrelords, so the vampyre questline is someting to aim towards. Another lategame goal is sliske's endgame for 1.25m worth of xp lamps.



Unlocking invention:
Invention is a really useful tool, but is very difficult to unlock. Here are some methods of training and tips that I have found useful for myself.

Don't follow everyone's advice to make broad arrows for fletching right off the bat. Making maple shortbows and shieldbows provide an amazing source of components that you will not regret later.

Unfortunately, yes... the best method for training smithing is mining thousands upon thousands of iron ore to use at artisans. Your other options are to unlock prif and get superheat form to train smithing at concentrated gold deposits, or to get pvm drops to smith.

Crafting has a few options for training: Dungeoneering crafting is "optimal", but is also is mindnumbingly boring. There are guides to dg crafting in the ironman guide linked above. Temple trekking provides an immense source of precious and enhancing components while also obtaining some other useful rewards. Harps in prif are also an option after 75 if you have that unlocked.

Divination... just do caches. Wait to gather energies until 90+ divination in my opinion. (90 if you want to be impatient, 95 if you can stomach everyone going cres at the same time for that long)

For components I do shop runs at the white knight armory and a few other locations. If you need specific components feel free to ask. Some notable things are that I did daily shop runs to a slayer master before I unlocked invention for slayer gems and insulated boots and additionally kingdom provides alot of logs for simple components.



Random tips:
You can get lockpicks by catching young implings far sooner than anywhere else. This allows you to unlock the gates in the thieving guild to speed up those early levels. Puro Puro (the swirling wheat tornadoes that lead to a imp catching minigame) is the best place to get the lockpicks.

Always extend dungeoneering dailies with vis wax. The xp is so glorious.

The camouflage outfit fragments drop at a significantly increased rate from shifting tombs, so if you want to rush that outfit I suggest getting theiving to 70 before (so you can start getting fragments) before grinding shifting tombs at all.

You can get a t82 offhand, the khopesh of kharidian, from shifting tombs. The mainhand is from the sophanem slayer dungeon.

Magic is the best combat to train first, at least until 55, so that you can unlock high alchemy (you can purchase the runes you need from the magic guild in yanille).



If you have any suggestions or feel that I forgot something feel free to let me know. I'm looking forward to seeing what methods other people have done and learning some new helpful tips, so please share!

I will work on making some more posts in the future under this thread, Including gear progression and further expansion upon what has already been stated here. I have spent many hours researching alot of facets of ironman progression and would be happy to share.

[Cally Raven]

Excellent idea! Thank you!

[Mr Wyrd]

You say "Invention is a really useful tool".
I can't understand why. Explain please?

[FatFingers23]

Holy cow dude you went over and beyond with this! Thanks man gave me a lot of good ideas.

[Dakahn]

I say that invention is a useful tool because you train it through all other skills and it enhances them. Such buffs as dps increases and skilling buffs through gizmos and augments I see as assisting those skills as well.

[Aerumnous]

Amazing guide!

Maybe I should log into my ironman again.

[Dakahn]

Another tip I forgot to mention is that you can get devotion, sacrifice, and tuskas wrath at the tuska's minigame with no skill requirements. They can help out alot with making ability bars.

Grind out your first prayer levels at the nexus in lumbridge swamp. It's pretty much dead content, so you will only be able to do the afk portion of it, but it is still faster than burying bones. I think it can take you to 41 prayer from lvl 1.

[Deep_Pain]

Great guide, I do keep meaning to start an ironman, but I really don't play enough atm.. one day!