An issue I keep running into in Old School RuneScape as a free-to-play player is the highly packed worlds, I end up finding myself stuck on. Thankfully there is a bit of a solution to this. There are worlds that you can still access as free-to-play that also have a restriction.

Some worlds have 500 and 750 skill level requirements to be able to join them. The world I've been joining tends to have 1k players at all hours of the day. Many times, I even have to attempt many times to get into it.

There are less crowded worlds for free-to-play players than just the top one that many end up joining. They are usually, however, in other countries or have some strange thing I don’t quite know much about going on. Even then they can range in 500+ players at many different times a day. With any lower-level area, I want to skill in being highly packed and resources being a bit of a fight to come by.

The solution is getting into skill-level requirement worlds. I have sometimes seen during the middle of the week as low as ten players in such a world. On a busy weekend, they could have 100-200 players during that player base prime time.

For most of what I'm doing, I am also just fine playing in other regions and worlds. There is a bit more lag but if I'm just fishing or something like that. I don’t even notice it. The lag comes into play if I'm in a highly compensative area where it matters. Then it’s just more of an annoyance of something already being taken.

I ended up not being that far away from reaching this goal. I did end up taking longer than I expected as when I looked over my total skill level, I did not realize I needed to look at the “non-member” skill levels to get onto these restricted skill level worlds. So, my count would end up being a little off.

I decided since I wanted to try using ranged combat to do some farming in the future. I might as well get started on leveling it up now. I only had level 8 or so. In the short term, I wanted to take it at least to level 40. At a later point, I'll be needing at least level 60, but that grind was for another day.

I went over to the grand exchange and started buying up all the different gear I'd be needing from level 8 to 40 for range. That way no matter where I was at, I’d just need to hit up a bank to pick up upgrades or resupply on things like arrows.

I also put some buy orders on the market slightly lower than the average for arrows. Since I was not in a hurry, I had no issue waiting for a bit. I went over to the ranger shop and got some arrows. However, the more you buy and the lower supply a vendor has the higher the price goes. Vendors restock over time. Any time I hit the vendor up there were always people at them buying everything up to a certain price point.

The first place I went to was over to the dairy cow pen near Lumbridge. In the past, I had completed a quest that allowed me to open the gate between Lumbridge and Al Kharid for free. This allowed me to quickly bank and later tan up all the cowhide I would end up looting.

One of the reasons I picked cows to farm at the lower levels is cowhide was selling for 130 or so gold. I would end up not only looting any cowhide I'd get from farming cows. I was also going around picking up the cowhide all the other players were just leaving behind.

While the dairy cow pen was quite crowded. It was rare I had to wait around to attack a cow for experience. This was also one of those rare exceptions that having a lot of players in one area ended up working out for me.

As soon as I filled up my inventory with cowhide each one filled up an inventory space as they don’t stack normally. Then I'd run down quickly to the bank in Al Kharid and dump it off. I’d then run back.

In between the cows and the bank were a lot of goblins that an insane amount of people farming. Sometimes people would leave behind chest pieces that sold for 500 gold. In those cases, I'd quickly drop a cowhide of 130 gold for a chest. I ended up looting an extra couple thousand this way which more than covered my arrow costs.

For a range class in Old School Runescape that is one of my costs to keep in mind. Since I'm a lower geared player I'm having to manually collect all arrows I use before they get removed as a drop on the ground. There is also a chance that each arrow will break when used.

The good news is at least I could make hundreds of bronze arrows last me quite some time. I was also getting them for around 1 to 3 gold each. So, it’s not like my cost was high. I think I only spent like 100 gold on some starting gear to level up the range as well.

I ended up farming cows till a little after level 20. I know the gold per hour was not that great. It was, however, a lot better than other stuff I could have been doing. Earning the 9 million gold I need for a game-time band sounds like it’s going to be quite a struggle. For now, at least I'm just earning a little side gold doing something I'm having fun doing.

I only stayed a little longer to get more cowhide. While it was tempting to want to use it to level up some crafting skills further. I’ve already done a bit of that in the past. I’d end up just doing better selling it.

So, I took an inventory full worth of cowhide over to the tanner in Al Kharid. I could for one gold each turn the cowhide into just soft leather. I could also turn the cowhide into hard leather at the cost of three gold.

Soft leather sells for less than hard leather. It, however, has a higher turnover rate as it is more in demand. However, since I farmed my cowhide I have empty Grand Exchange slots open to sell. I opted to make all my cowhide into hard leather. This meant instead of making 29 more gold per hide I was making 52 gold each more instead. While not a massive amount of further profit. It was at least rather quick to do.

It is even tempting to buy cowhide and tan it myself and resell it at a higher amount. If I end up doing that, I'd end up splitting it up into soft and hard leather. For now, I'll just keep my eye on supply and demand.

Once that was all done I listed more stuff on the Grand Exchange for sale. Along with switching over to my next tier up in gear. I headed over to the barbarian village. There was very little worthwhile loot to be had here.

I focused on just getting into ten further levels to level 30 range. More times than not I fought the highest-level barbican in the area called Gunthor The Brave. Outside of looking at around 2k gold worth of runes, the loot was dreadful.

Let's just say I could not wait to get out of this area. The bright side of things is Gunthor took a few arrows to kill each time. I could also fight him at range without taking any damage. I just needed to keep an eye out for when he was killed so I could go collect my arrows before they faded away. Along with being disappointed by whatever loot he dropped.

I was then off to hunt large frogs in Lumbridge Swamps. I was quite shocked by how swamped this place was by players. As far as I could tell, running to a bank took a couple of minutes so I did not save any loot unless I needed to make a run up to the Grand Exchange to list more stuff.

There is a shortcut to the bank in Al Kharid. I however can’t access that shortcut as it’s showing crossed out on the map. I can only assume that it is for members' use only or a skill they use that I don’t have level up because I can’t.

I was however fine with not running to bank stuff to sell for later. The Giant Frogs dropped big bones. They are decent as far as free-to-play is for leveling up prayer. I needed to level both for my goal of 500 and further levels for some goals I have in the prayer skill. You bury the bones you loot for prayer experience.

I ended up selling the bones for around 250 each when I left to go elsewhere. That is a bit more than cowhides but these frogs also took longer to kill. I also did not find a quick place to bank them anyway. It was at least nice to more than cover all my costs up to this point with just a couple of inventories full of big bones.

Big bones were also something I farmed for in the past a few years ago when I was leveling up the melee. That was, however, in a different spot. Since I'm in range gear these ended up being a lot better choice as they don’t do a lot of damage to me. I did not even bring any healing food. I’d just let natural healing take care of me. Sometimes I'd just go on a break and that was as much healing as I needed.

I then hit what I thought was level 500 and I needed to go into the worlds that had a level requirement. It turns out they only count “free” skills and for that, I was only at 492. I ended up staying at level 30 in range before heading off to get some better gear.

That is also when I decided I was just going to level up woodcutting and fire-making to get myself to the true level 500 I needed. Both of these skills were quite low for me and quick to level up a couple of times. It did not take long before I reached that 500 “free skill” goal.

Final Thoughts

With this short-term goal now done. I now have access to a couple more worlds that have lower player populations. For instance, at the time of taking this screenshot, there were only 76 players on this one world I could now use. At least twenty of them, if not more, had to be AFK at the Grand Exchange.

Hopefully, now I'll have some areas I'd like to grind either all to myself or with a lot fewer players. I also can’t wait to get on one of these during the middle of a dead week and there only be 10-40 players If I'm lucky. I’m sure somehow, they will all be at the same extract spot I want to grind at.

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Information

Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Old School RuneScape