Getting started

Make your character

Create a character through your website account and choose Regular, Standard Ironman or Hardcore Ironman. Ironman means earning your own supplies and rewards; Hardcore adds a status you lose on an unsafe death. Read Ironman before choosing. A Regular character cannot become an Ironman later.

Choose your appearance in the character designer. Characters use Classic or Remastered art.

Tutorial Island

You design your character on Tutorial Island's landing (105, 856). One welcome screen then offers two choices:

• I'm new - teach me the basics: the island's tutors walk you through the basics.
• I've played before - start in Lumbridge: you get the starter kit and the island's combat experience, and go straight to Lumbridge (120, 648).

If you close the screen without choosing, it comes back at your next login, and the Void Guide offers it too.

On the island a panel gives one instruction at a time and marks exactly what to click. The Void Guide welcomes you, then each station teaches one thing:

The Boatman then rows you to the Pit (below). The tutors hand you what each lesson needs. While you learn here your first try at each gathering, cooking and smithing lesson always succeeds, your first arrow always lands, and so does Wind Strike until the Magic lesson is done. If you die on the island you keep your items and return to the landing. You cannot teleport off the island while its tutorial is running: from the Travel lesson on, Home Teleport takes you back to the landing. Anywhere else it is free and takes you to Lumbridge, or to the Pit while you are working through it.

You can skip at any time with the panel's Skip button, the Skip tutorial setting, the Void Guide or ::tutorial skip. Skipping on the island gives you the starter kit and the combat experience its lessons would have given, then takes you to the Pit, in front of the Pit Master.

The Pit

The boat, or a skip, puts you in front of the Pit Master's booth by the ramp behind Draynor bank (212, 647). If you skipped the island he asks once whether you want to start at the Pit or skip it too; Skip the Pit takes you to Lumbridge (120, 648). Talk to him, then walk down onto the sand and fight Big Ross. If he knocks you out you wake beside the booth with everything you had and can go straight back in. A win opens a chest with a Pit lamp (experience in a combat skill you pick), a better sword and a little extra.

Seven more fighters follow, each with a trick of their own. Before each fight the Pit Master asks for a combat level and an errand: mining copper, chopping logs, picking pockets, catching and cooking fish, helping the Sawyer patch his rowboat (The Leaky Rowboat) and finishing a Slayer task. Until you meet them, his Fight next challenger is greyed out with the reason; press it and he offers a training trip to where you can, such as the chickens in Lumbridge castle courtyard, and the panel's small Back to the Pit brings you back from there. The panel shows each step. While you are working through the Pit, death and Home Teleport bring you back to it. Beat the Champion for the title the Pit Champion, or tell the Pit Master you are done; after either, death and Home Teleport take you to Lumbridge again.

On the mainland

Characters who reached Lumbridge on the guide before the Pit opened follow the same panel to their first quest, The Leaky Rowboat. On The Leaky Rowboat it marks every step as you go. After the quest it sends you to combat level 4, if you are not there already. When both are done you get the title the Adventurer and a full pool of rested XP (see Quality of life), and your goal cards open (see below). Skip on the mainland simply stops the guide where you stand. ::tutorial shows your current instruction.

If you wander a long way off during your first quest or a goal path, the panel tells you to cast Home Teleport and marks the spell. In the Wilderness, where the spell does not work, it tells you to walk south instead.

Your starter kit

Everyone gets the classic starter kit once, when the Boatman takes you across, when you skip, or when you choose the Lumbridge start: Bronze Axe, Tinderbox, Net, Bronze Pickaxe, Bronze Long Sword, Wooden Shield, a few basic runes and some food. Tools you already own are not given twice.

The island's lessons also leave you with a Hammer, a Shortbow and some Bronze Arrows, a Saw and the Bronze dagger you smithed. Whatever you deposited in the Banking lesson stays in your bank.

Characters made before Tutorial Island keep the starter path they chose and the kit it gave them. Path and style kits are no longer given.

Path	Built around	Extra kit
Warrior	Attack, Defense, Strength	Iron Short Sword, five Cookedmeat
Forager	Fishing, Cooking, Mining	Fishing Rod, 25 Fishing Bait, Hammer, 50 Coins
Arcanist	Ranged, Magic	50 Air-Rune, 30 Mind-Rune, 15 Fire-Rune, Shortbow, 50 Bronze Arrows, Wizardshat

Choices for a fresh character

• Ironman: Standard, Hardcore and Fallen characters can permanently become Regular at the Ironman Registrar in Lumbridge (119, 653). They ask twice. See Ironman for the restrictions and what surrender means.
• Border Vow: a character still at combat level 3 can swear it at the Border Warden in Edgeville (225, 437), or by using a Border Card he sells for 50,000 coins. You pick a build and the Vow sets your stats to it: at least 30 Attack and 10 Strength, up to 20 Defense and up to 68 Ranged, with Hits to match. You also get the title Border Warrior. From then on you can never pass combat level 38. It cannot be undone.

Your website account

You make characters through your Void MMO account on the website, and each one is linked to it. A linked account:

• holds up to 10 characters;
• shares subscription time: each Subscription card adds 7 days for every character on the account (see Cards and subscriptions);
• lets you ::commend helpful players;
• shows a NEW tag above its first character for that character's first 10 hours played.

Quest Helper

Open the Helper tab in your Stats panel, or click a quest in your quest list and choose Track directions. Starting a quest tracks it for you if nothing else is tracked. The helper shows each step, the items you need, buttons to walk there or show the route, and markers in the world. It points at the dialogue option that moves the quest on.

The Void quests begin with A Rift in the Records from the Void Archivist in Lumbridge (127, 650). See The Void quests and the Margin for the rest.

Your first hour in Lumbridge

Follow the panel's current step rather than buying a pack full of equipment. A useful first loop is:

1. Finish the island's lessons and the Pit, or skip them, and cross to Lumbridge.
2. Gather wood and fish, light a fire and cook food. Keep food with you before trying combat.
3. Put supplies you do not need in the bank. Equip your weapon before fighting, and bury the bones afterwards.
4. Help the Sawyer in the sawmill behind the general store at (142, 643) with The Leaky Rowboat (the Pit sends you there before Sir Brannock's fight): chop a log, saw a repair plank, fit it to the rowboat from the south bank and return any borrowed tools. The Sawyer lends a saw or axe if you lack one. The Quest Helper shows each step with the items it needs.
5. Open the world map, try a nearby destination, and use ::g when you need help. ::welcome reopens the welcome information.

Cook's Assistant, one of the retired original quests, can no longer be started from the castle cook.

Your next goal

If you stayed with the panel through your first quest and combat level 4, up to three cards open. Each one starts a guided path on the same panel. The XP and Slayer points are real, and each path ends with a title.

Finish a path and the cards come back with what is left. Close them and they ask again at your next login. I'm good ends them with You're all set. Have fun! Skip stops a path where you stand, and the cards return at your next login.

The Skill path uses the furnace hut north of the castle, which now has an anvil (130, 629), with copper and tin rocks outside its south door. Anyone can use them. Until you reach a piece's Smithing level the panel asks for daggers, and on this path one click keeps you mining, smelting or hammering until the panel moves on.

You can always choose for yourself instead:

Pale ore needs only 1 Mining. The three pale rocks across Lumbridge's river can be reached by the bridge, or by the new stepping stones at 10 Agility. The island's Alchemy lesson binds one rune; the Alchemist's novice quest still introduces binding your first runes on the mainland, and you do not need to solve the book's later riddles to begin.

Older characters

Characters still in Wisp's Garden, the old Wisp tutorial or the older Lumbridge guide are settled as if they had chosen the Lumbridge start when they next log in: they get the starter kit once, if they never had it, and play on from the mainland. Characters that already finished are not changed.