Old School Runescape - 3 Ways to Get Bonds (Premium) With F2P

Playing OSRS without paying for a membership (bond) is known to be very painful, useless and boring. You can’t access 90% to 95% of the content without being a member, so it is really out of the question to play without a bond. Don’t worry though, cause we’ll show you how to get one just by playing the game!

You can read the importance of OSRS Bond article for more information regarding the membership.

Although it requires real money to buy a membership, you can buy it for ingame-currency (3~3.3M gold). So the first thing comes to your mind is how to gain the 3M gold without being a member, which i’m going to explain in this guide.

There are many methods to gain money in the F2P servers, but most of them are boring and not worthy in terms of time. So i’m just going to point out the best 3 methods to get your first bond, one of them requires medium requirements in terms of levels etc, and the other two are accessible at any level, but one of these two requires some gold to do it.

1 – Picking Cowhides 

This method doesn’t give you high profits but enough gold to invest in the other methods. It’s really simple and requires nothing but killing cows located northeast of Lumbridge.

Cowhide Farming Northeast of Lumbridge, Old School Runescape

These cows will always drop cowhides. Simply you will have to pick the cowhides and sell them at the Grand Exchange located northwest of Varrock.

Grand Exchange Northwest of Varrock, Old School Runescape

But mostly the players over there are just killing cows for EXP which means they are not interested in the cowhides, so you can simply pick them instead of killing cows by yourself thus it saves your time

Cowhide Grinding, Old School Runescape

So lets make it clear, all you have to do is picking cowhides until you make a full inventory, bank them in Lumbridge bank and repeat until you have a decent amount of cowhides to sell them at the Grand Exchange.

Lumbridge Bank To Cowhides Farming Route, Old School Runescape

You can alternatively tan the cowhides at the Al Kharid Tannery, turning them into soft leathers for 1 gold coin each which increases the price of each cowhide by 40~30 coins, but in my opinion i think it’s time consuming and not worthy since you can make more inventories of cowhides during that time.

Al Kharid Tannery Map Location, Old School Runescape

Tanning Process, Old School Runescape

The price of the cowhides at the time of this guide is 113 gold each, but it varies between 95 and 120 gold each, so making a full inventory (28 slots) gives you around 3k gold and it takes 2 to 3 mins to make a full inventory.

2 – Buying Runes From the Shop 

This method requires nothing but decent amount of gold to invest in, i would say 50K to 100K gold is enough to start investing in, which is acquirable by using the cowhides method.

The idea of this method is to buy runes from the Magic shop at a low price, then sell them at the Grand Exchange for a higher price. That’s because the Magic shop is selling a limited number of the runes, thus it’s price is lower than these at the Grand Exchange. So to make the most out of it you will have to hob between worlds to obtain more runes from the Magic shop until the previous Magic shop resets and so on.

There are many locations for the magic shop, but i would say the best one in terms of not being crowded is the one located at Port Sarim. Some players prefer the Varrock’s magic shop since it is closer to the Grand Exchange, but it is really crowded. You can also check the rest of the locations via this Link.

Port Sarim’s Magic Shop, Old School Runescape

Varrock’s Magic Shop, Old School Runescape

Magic Shop, Old School Runescape

The price margin for each rune isn’t great but since you are selling thousands of runes, the profits are going to be great. You can expect 200K~250K gold per hour.

3 – Wine of Zamorak 

Well, this method is kinda complicated in comparison to the previous methods, but it’s the best one in terms of profits, you can get your first bond in 6~7 hrs using this method !

The Idea of this method is to grab Wine of Zamorak which spawns at the Chaos Temple and sell each Wine of Zamorak for 2K gold at the Grand Exchange.

The requirements:

1. Level 37 magic or higher to cast Telekinetic Grab and Falador Teleport
2. 500 total level to access to the upstairs of the Chaos Temple
3. Food and decent level of hit-points because the Monks will attack you downstairs.
4. Wizard’s Mind Bomb to restore your magic level once the monks downstairs reduce it
5. Water runes, Law runes and a staff of air to cast Telekinetic Grab and Falador Teleport
6. Zamorak robe top & bottom to access to the upstairs and to prevent the Monk from attacking you upstairs only.

You can buy all of the previous requirements from the Grand Exchange, then teleport to Falador and walk north till you reach the Chaos Temple.

Chaos Temple Map Location, Oldschool Runescape

In the Chaos Temple there are two floors, each floor contains 1 Wine of Zamorak which re-spawns every 20 seconds. To pick Wine of Zamorak you will have to cast Telekinetic Grab spell, which requires level 33 magic.

But the downstairs contains aggressive Monks which will attack you and reduce your magic level once you cast Telekinetic Grab on the Wine of Zamorak, so you will have to spam clicking on the ladder right after grabbing the wine to prevent further damage, reset the Monks and to grab the other Wine of Zamorak upstairs.

Chaos Temple, Old School Runescape

Once you get upstairs you will have to use Wizard’s mind bomb to restore your magic level to be able to cast Telekinetic Grab again, but this time the Monk upstairs will not attack you since you are wearing Zamorak robe top & bottom.
Repeat the process until you have a full inventory of Wine, then teleport back to Falador, bank the wines and go back to the Chaos Temple.

Chaos Temple To Falador Bank Route, Old School Runescape

By doing this, you can expect 400K~600K per hour which is the highest profit you can get in the F2P worlds.

So by doing one of these methods or all of them step by step, you can get your first bond in 1~3 days without paying real money for it. Once you get your 14-days membership, you will be able to make tons of gold by unlocking many money making methods.

You can also check out our beginner’s guide if you are new to the game.