UIM Guide

Playing as an Ultimate Ironman you are unable to use a bank, which effectively means that you are limited to your 30 slot backpack and equipment. To succeed in this mode you have to think outside the box and more often than not commit to doing a certain method for long periods of time as every skill has a certain amount of preparation required so skill hopping will be very inefficient.

Equipment

Asterix (*) means that the item can be bought from a store or picked up from the ground spawn.

Melee Weapon

• Dragon 2h sword (99/99, 1/4096 from KBD) > Dragon Battleaxe* (69/75, requires Legend's Quest) > Dragon Sword* (71/71, requires Lost City) > Enchanted Battlestaff (50/50, requires Scorpion Catcher) > Rune Long Sword* (49/49, requires 32 QP)

Ranged Weapon

• Magic Longbow (33 Range Power, 85 fletching, 50 ranged) > Before that, use the best longbow available to your level. If you buy out both arrows and bolts it's advisable to use crossbow for the earliest levels as they're stronger than the available bows (Crossbow (10 Range Power) vs Longbow (8 Range Power)) and using up all the bolts before higher level bows outscale the crossbow.
• Rune Arrows - (75 Fletching) Arrowheads can be purchased from Hickton's Archery Store in Catherby
• Adamant Arrows - (60 Fletching) Arrowheads can be purchased from Hickton's Archery Store in Catherby

Magic Weapon

• Enchanted Battlestaff (50/50, 20 magic, requires Scorpion Catcher) > Elemental Battlestaff (35/35, 20 magic) > Elemental Staff* (7/3, 20 magic)

Shield

• Dragon Square Shield (50 Armor) > Rune Kiteshield (46 Armor, Fire giant loot or 96(+1) smithing) > Rune Square Shield (38 Armor, Fire Giant loot or 92(+1) smithing). The best shield sold in a store is Iron Square or Anti-Dragonfire shield (both 8 Armor).

For fighting dragons use the Anti-Dragonfire shield, you can switch to a better shield after absorbing the first hit, but keep the Anti-Dragonfire shield on just in case.

Helmet

• Dragon Medium Helm (34 Armor) > Rune Full Helmet (30 Armor, Greater or Black Demon loot or 91(+1) smithing) > Rune Med Helm (22 Armor, Black or Lesser Demon loot or 87(+1) smithing) > Adamant Full Helm* (19 Armor)

Amulet

• Charged Dragonstone Amulet (10 Aim, 6 Power, 3 Armor , 3 Magic, 3 Prayer) - Best to use in most situations. Gives teleports to certain areas.
• Amulet of Strength (10 Power) - Best to use while training melee stats or before the Charged Dragonstone Amulet is obtainable.

Cape

• Mage Arena Cape - (0 Armor, 10 Magic)
• Legend's Cape - (7 Armor)
• Skill Cape - (6 Armor) + cape perk

Armor

• Dragon Scale Mail (10/6, 95 Armor) > (Rune Chain Body* (65 Armor) = Rune Plate Mail Body* (80 Armor)
• Monk Robe Top* (0 Armor, 6 prayer) - Used for the prayer bonus.

Legs

• Rune Plate Mail Legs* (49 Armor)
• Monk Robe Bottom* (0 Armor, 5 prayer)

Boots - Don't

Gloves (You can't use gloves together with full plate armor)

• Klank's Gauntlets or Family Crest gauntlets (2/2, 8 Armor).

Ring

• Ring of Avarice for auto-looting of stackable items such as runes, arrows, and gold.
• Ring of Wealth for higher chance of a Dragon Square left half and Dragon Medium Helm drop

Storage

Suicide

Never a viable option. If you need to get to Entrana to get the feather for Hero's Quest it is quicker to drop items on the ground in Port Sarim and get the feather. If you don't take too long your items will still be there. For any other trip to Entrana you're better off selling/alching your gear and buying it back later.

Certificates

If you want to store some of your stuff on a RuneScape Classic UIM, you have to put in the work, but sometimes it's worth it. Certing items changes 5 of an unstackable item into a stackable note that you can then uncert at the same NPC. You can cert all kinds of various things (ore, bars, logs and potions) but since you still have to carry that cert in one of your inventory slots and can only uncert at specific, sometimes far away NPCs, think hard before deciding to cert your items. In my opinion the only items worth considering for certing are:

• Prayer Potions - Sidney Smith (Yanille)
• Super Strengths - Sidney Smith (Yanille)
• Cooked Lobsters - Niles (Draynor), Seth (Brimhaven), Orven(Fishing Guild)
• Cooked Sharks - Owen (Catherby), Padik (Fishing Guild)

Important Quests

Questing is the base on top of which a character is built in Runescape, and the rewards and unlocks are usually greatly beneficial. There are however some quests you should be wary about when playing an Ultimate Ironman:

• Temple of Ikov - requires 20 unnoted Limpwurt Roots.

• Demon Slayer - requires 25 unnoted Bones. The bones do not have to be given in a single inventory.

• Lost City - requires you to go to Entrana.

• Heroes' Quest - requires you to go to Entrana.

• The Holy Grail - requires you to go to Entrana. This is only for one short conversation, you you might be able to risk dropping your items on the floor or suiciding before boarding the ship.

• Family Crest - requires you to go to the Wilderness.

• Tourist Trap - do not complete this quest if you want to use the Prototype Dart fletching method

Training

This section will describe all the skill training methods with the max total level in mind.

Melee

• 1-20 Chickens
• 20-60 Quests or kill Chaos Druids / Darkwizards for nature and law runes.
• 60-99 Blue Dragons for prayer

Ranged

• 1-20 Chickens
• 20-99 Fire Giants / Caged Blue Dragon
  • Since all monsters have 0 range defence you are fine with ranging fire giants or blue dragons even at low range levels.

Magic

• Magic is a very passive skill. Wind strike -> Fire strike for early levels, then superheating and teleporting should get you all of the magic xp needed for 99.

Fishing & Cooking

• 1-30 Raw Shrimp in Draynor, make fires by the fishing spot, cook and drop.
• 30-40+ Fly fishing in Barbarian Village then cooking on a fire nearby. This is faster than lobsters at lower levels, so do it for as long as you have feathers.
• 40-65 Fishing and Cooking or Fishing and selling lobsters in Catherby.
• 65-99 Fishing, Cooking, and Certing lobsters in the Fishing Guild. If you want more fishing xp you can do swordfish/tuna instead and drop them instead.

• 80+ Fishing, Cooking and Certing Sharks in Catherby/Fishing Guild. Do only if you want certed sharks for KBD.

Woodcutting & FM

Try not to do much of Woodcutting without a Rune Axe. You can get it on lower levels by ranging or maging Fire Giants.

• 1-25 Regular Trees
• 25-50 Oak Trees
• 50-65 Willow Trees
• 65-75 Maple Trees
• 75-85 Yew Trees
• 85-99 Magic Trees

Fletching

Fletching is only done with woodcutting for early levels, so you can skip using a Rune Axe if you don't have one as it won't have as much of an impact.

• 1-10 Arrow Shafts
• 10-20 Longbow
• 20-25 Oak Shortbow
• 25-35 Oak Longbow
• 35-40 Willow Shortbow
• 40-50 Willow Longbow
• 50-99 Prototype Darts
  • Prototype Darts - Prototype Darts are made during the Tourist Trap quest. DO NOT complete the Tourist Trap or you won't be able to use this method. Prototype Darts give (12.5*fletching_lvl) xp, which means (62.5*fletching_lvl) xp if you are on x5. That means at level 50 they give 3125xp each and at level 98 they give 6125xp each.
  • After creating the first one for the quest purposes you can create next ones without the need for bronze bars, which makes this method especially UIM friendly as the only item required is feathers, which only take one inventory slot. You will need approximately 50k feathers to be safe, so start buying them whenever possible to prepare beforehand.

Crafting

• 1-10 Sheep Shearer
• 10-15 Goblin Diplomacy
• 15-22 Murder Mystery
• 22-99 Bowstrings in Tree Gnome Stronghold. Pick flax then climb the ladder next to you to the spinning wheel and spin bowstrings. You will have to drop all your bowstrings. This is the fastest crafting experience available, with the downside being it only trains crafting.

• If you have Goldsmithing gauntlets you can mine gold ore and smelt it into amulets. This trains crafting and smithing at the same time (and mining, but mining is a passive skill). The best places to do this is in the Crafting Guild and teleporting to Falador to smith.

Smithing & Mining

• 1-15 Buy Bronze Bars at Shantay Pass, smith in Varrock. It should only require two inventories to get level 15.
• 15-99 Superheating iron in Port Khazard. This requires 43 magic, a fire staff, nature runes, hammer & a rune pickaxe.
  • After mining the iron rocks in Port Khazard, superheat the iron into bars, smith them on a nearby anvil and drop the platebodies. You could make iron arrowheads instead of platebodies, but it's a lot slower and combined with the fact you can only make arrowshafts from regular logs and fletching is one of the fastest skills anyways, I think it's not worth it.
• If you pick goldsmithing gauntlets, you can smelt gold into jewelry. Check crafting for details.

Mining that you have to do for all the iron ore and Rune Essence makes Mining a completely passive skill.

Agility

• 1-15 Gnome Course
• 15-35 The Grand Tree Quest
• 35-55 Barbarian Course Low Wall
• 55-99 Wilderness Course

• 55-99 Barbarian Course Low Wall. (Consider this method if you have a rare item such as a Dragon Med, Dragon Square or Dragon2h and you absolutely don't want to lose it to PKers.)

Agility is the only skill that absolutely doesn't care about your inventory (with a small exception of Wilderness Agility), so you can do it if you get bored of your current method at any time.

Thieving

• 1-25 Men
• 25-50 Farmers
• 50-60 Warriors
• 60-70 Guards
• 70-80 Knights
• 80-99 Watchmen

• 70-99 Knights - this is especially good if you have low combat stats.
• 85-99 Warriors - this is an extremely afk method.

• You can also thieve from Heroes instead of Watchmen if you need more gold or death runes, although Watchmen are faster xp/h.

Runecrafting

• 1-9 Air Runes. Mine your essence at Wizard's Tower, walk to Air Altar and craft runes. Will only take two trips.
• 9-99 Earth Runes. Welcome your new home. Earth Runes are the fastest RC xp available to UIM because of the earth altar's proximity to an ess mine teleport (Aubury). You can speed the process up by ~30% if you use Varrock Teleport.

• If you need Nature Runes for Smithing training, you can craft Nats at 44 Runecrafting and Double Nats at 91. The best way to craft them is to mine essence at Varrock, TP to Ardougne, sail to Brimhaven, walk to the nature altar and create runes and teleport back to Varrock. This requires a staff of air, water runes, law runes, a pickaxe, a nature talisman and gold for the ship. Alternatively instead of teleporting to varrock you can use a glory amulet to teleport to Draynor and mine at Wizard's Tower. It's also a very long walk so it might be only worth doing at level 91+ Runecrafting. For your earlier nature rune needs just telegrab them in the wilderness or kill darkwizards, chaos druids or blue dragons.

Harvesting

• 1-9 Potatoes
• 9-20 Garlic
• 20-61 Corn
• 61-99 Herbs, Limpwurt Roots, Snape Grass

Clipping Herbs and harvesting limps/snape grass is the main method of training herblaw which means harvesting should be a passive skill past 61, but if somehow you get to 99 herblaw without 99 harvesting you can pick red cabbages and white pumpkins to finish it up.

Prayer

• 1-20 Bury every bone
• 20-30 Restless Ghost Quest
• 30-99 Big Bones from any giants, Dragon Bones from Dragons. You can also do Boneyard.

Killing Blue Dragons in Taverley dungeon while training herblaw is a good method to use up the prayer, super attack and super strength potions you will create. This requires level 70 agility for the shortcut, Anti-Dragonfire shield and monk robes and of course your weapon, amulet etc. Boost your attack and strength with the potions you made and kill Blue Dragons using Paralyze Monster until you run out of prayer potions. Bury the bones. The only drop worth picking up apart from bones is Nature Runes.

Killing Black Dragons is only a good idea if you want to trade in prayer xp/h for some good loot, but with prayer being one of the slowest skills it's generally advised to stick to Blue Dragons. Black Dragons also reside in Taverley Dungeon but if you want to kill them using potions created while training herblaw then you would fill up your inventory too much for future herblaw training. If you decide on killing them, then the drops worth picking are any rune items to alch, Nature, Law, Death and Blood Runes, as well as their Coal and Silver certificates.

Red Dragons aren't worth killing.

Herblaw

Herblaw is trained solely by clipping herbs in Taverley and creating potions with them. Because of Jatix's herblaw shop, proximity to a sink and proximity to most of the secondaries, this place far outperforms any other herblaw training method. You need to have at least 61 harvesting and Herb Clippers to effectively train herblaw here. You don't need the Hand Shovel. To fill vials, start the Witch's House quest, then search the doormat for a key. After buying empty vials from Jatix, fill them up in the Witch's House. You need to finish Druidic Ritual to be able to train Herblaw and finishing the quest will land you at 10 Herblaw.

Secondaries and how to efficiently obtain them:

• Eye of Newt - Secondary for Guam and Irit potions, buy at Jatix
• Limpwurt Root - Secondary for Tarromin and Kwuarm potions, harvest nearby (42+ harvesting)
• Snape Grass - Secondary for Ranarr and Avantoe potions, harvest nearby (61+ harvesting)
• Wine of Zamorak - Secondary for Dwarf Weed potions, telegrab nearby (or kill all monks and pick up)

You can also kill a unicorn nearby for the horn - secondary for Marrentill potions, and pick up blue dragon scales in the Taverley Dungeon (70agility required), but these are not efficient. If you are getting wines for Dwarf Weed potions get one or two spare ones to save you future trips.

Drop Marrentills, Harralanders and Cadantines as secondaries for these herbs are not nearby.

Certing

If you want to cert your prayer potions or super strengths as opposed to using them up instantly at Blue Dragons you can do that by teleporting to Watchtower, Certing, Teleporting to Falador and walking to Taverley. This greatly reduces your herblaw xp/h, especially because you have your inventory cluttered with runes (Earth, Air, Water and Law) and is only advised if you plan on stacking supplies for KBD or other high level combat.