If you have ever looked at a free-to-play RuneScape account and thought, “Yes, I would like to spend a completely reasonable amount of my life chopping trees, burying bones, and arguing with goblins about fashion,” congratulations. You are exactly the kind of hero this guide was written for.

This guide is built for the classic Old School RuneScape F2P grind, and it covers the full free-skill journey: Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Ranged, Prayer, Magic, Runecraft, Crafting, Mining, Smithing, Fishing, Cooking, Firemaking, and Woodcutting. The goal is simple: reach level 99 in every free-to-play skill with methods that are realistic, efficient, and not so miserable that you start having emotional conversations with a willow tree.

Will this be fast? No. Will it be easy? Also no. But will these be the easiest realistic ways to make progress in every F2P skill without wasting time, gold, or sanity? Absolutely.

1. Start with quest XP before you touch the grind

The easiest XP in F2P is the XP that comes from quests. Before you settle into hours of repetitive training, grab every useful early quest reward you can. This gives you a head start in several skills and skips some of the slowest low-level content in the game.

Best early F2P quest boosts

• Doric’s Quest for a big early Mining jump.
• The Knight’s Sword for a massive early Smithing shortcut.
• Imp Catcher for free Magic XP and an Amulet of Accuracy.
• Cook’s Assistant for early Cooking XP.
• Sheep Shearer for an easy Crafting boost.
• Vampire Slayer if you want to jump straight into Attack levels.
• Dragon Slayer later for a huge Strength and Defence payoff.

This is the first big lesson of any smart RuneScape F2P guide: do not grind level 1 methods when a short quest can throw you several levels ahead for free.

2. Train melee the lazy-smart way: chickens, cows, then hill giants

For Attack, Strength, Defence, and Hitpoints, the easiest F2P route is still the classic one. Start on weak, harmless monsters with low Defence, then move to targets that give better drops and more useful side rewards.

The simple melee route

• Levels 1–20: Chickens or cows near Lumbridge.
• Levels 20–40: Al-Kharid warriors or stronghold monsters.
• Levels 40+: Hill giants for big bones and steady drops.
• Later F2P: Moss giants or ogresses when you want better loot.

Hill giants are especially useful because they do double duty. You get melee XP, you pick up big bones for Prayer, and you collect drops that actually feel worth banking. That kind of overlap matters a lot when you are going for level 99 in every F2P skill.

If you want to be efficient, focus on Strength first for faster kills, then bring Attack and Defence up afterward. In plain English: hit harder first, become elegant later.

3. Use Dragon Slayer as your combat slingshot

Once you are ready, Dragon Slayer is one of the biggest power spikes in free-to-play RuneScape. Besides unlocking key gear progression, it gives a huge chunk of Strength and Defence XP. That means your later melee grind becomes smoother, faster, and much less embarrassing.

This is one of those moments where a quest is not just “good content.” It is a time-saving machine. If your long-term plan is 99 combat stats in F2P, delaying Dragon Slayer is like refusing to use a ladder because you enjoy climbing the wall with your fingernails.

4. Train Ranged with safespots, not with bravado

Ranged in F2P can get expensive if you waste arrows and fight the wrong monsters. The easiest method is to train where you can safespot enemies and keep your food bill low.

Best F2P Ranged flow

• Early levels: Chickens and cows.
• Mid levels: Minotaurs or hill giants from safespots.
• Higher levels: Ogress warriors for strong XP and useful loot.

Cows are great early because hides give you extra value. Hill giants are even better because they overlap with Prayer through big bones. Ogress warriors become the premium F2P pick later because they offer a nice blend of combat experience and moneymaking.

In other words, smart Ranged training is not about acting like a fantasy sniper. It is about turning every arrow into progress somewhere else too.

5. Use Magic for utility first, flexing second

Magic is one of the most useful skills in RuneScape, but it can also be one of the most expensive if you just spam flashy spells because they look cool. In F2P, the easiest route is to combine free quest XP, low-cost combat training, and utility spells that keep paying off later.

Efficient F2P Magic path

• Take the free XP from Imp Catcher.
• Use low-level combat spells on chickens, cows, or weak monsters.
• Train on targets you can kill safely and cheaply.
• Use teleports and High Alchemy later to turn Magic into a practical skill, not just a damage stat.

Magic shines because it does more than level itself. It helps with transportation, item conversion, and efficient account progression. So even if it costs gold, it returns value in convenience. That makes it one of the most rewarding 99s in the game.

6. Train Prayer where the bones make sense

Let’s be honest: Prayer is the F2P skill most likely to make you question your life choices. The easiest way to train it is by collecting and burying big bones from monsters like hill giants and moss giants. It is slower than members methods, but it is dependable and cheap.

Easy F2P Prayer strategy

• Farm hill giants while leveling combat.
• Bank or bury big bones depending on your goal.
• Use Wilderness bone spots only if you are comfortable with risk.
• Accept that Prayer is a marathon, not a weekend project.

If you are aiming for all 99s on a F2P account, Prayer works best as a background skill. Train combat, gather bones, and stack progress over time. Trying to brute-force it in one burst is how people end up staring blankly at the screen like they have just paid taxes in medieval England.

7. Mine iron for speed, coal for sanity, and profit when needed

Mining is easy to understand and hard to finish. That is the RuneScape way. The fastest F2P mindset is simple: use early quest XP, move to iron as soon as possible, and only switch to slower ores when you want profit or smithing supplies.

Mining route that actually works

• Very early game: Copper and tin only if needed.
• After Doric’s Quest: Skip ahead aggressively.
• Main grind: Iron ore for fast XP.
• Alternative: Coal when you want supplies for Smithing or decent money.

Iron is the classic answer because it is fast. Coal is the practical answer because it supports Smithing. The right choice depends on whether you are chasing levels or trying to reduce future costs. Either way, do not stay on bronze-era rocks any longer than necessary.

8. Let Smithing ride on The Knight’s Sword and then mass-produce

Smithing is one of the slowest early F2P skills if you do it from scratch. That is exactly why The Knight’s Sword is so important. It launches you past the clunky early levels and lets you start training with methods that do not feel like punishment for existing.

Smithing route for F2P players

• Do The Knight’s Sword as early as possible.
• Smith iron items once you can.
• Move into steel if you want more value per bar.
• Choose platebodies and high-output items when possible for cleaner XP.

If Mining and Smithing were a married couple in RuneScape, they would absolutely fight all the time but still secretly need each other. Mining gives you control over supply. Smithing turns that supply into levels and sometimes profit. Keep them balanced and your grind gets much easier.

9. Fish for XP that also feeds the rest of your account

Fishing is one of the nicest F2P skills because it solves other problems while it levels. You get food for combat, food for Cooking, and a reliable way to build up supplies without spending much gold.

Easy Fishing progression

• Early levels: Shrimp and anchovies.
• Mid game: Trout and salmon.
• Higher levels: Lobsters for the long haul.

Trout and salmon are great because they are fast. Lobsters are slower, but they become more practical once your account starts doing tougher combat and you want better healing food. If you want a smooth F2P skilling path, Fishing is one of the least painful 99s on the board.

10. Cook everything you catch and let the range do the work

Cooking is wonderfully straightforward. Catch fish, cook fish, repeat until you either hit 99 or develop strong opinions about how many lobsters a human should be allowed to hold at once.

The easiest route is to train Cooking alongside Fishing. This cuts costs, keeps your bank stocked, and turns one repetitive skill into two productive ones. Use better cooking ranges when you can, especially early, to reduce burns and stretch every inventory further.

Cooking is also one of the easiest skills to finish in F2P because it feels useful the whole time. You are not just grinding a number. You are building an endless buffet for your future boss fights, giant-slaying sessions, and poorly planned Wilderness trips.

11. Camp willow trees for Woodcutting, then decide whether you want XP or money

Woodcutting is the poster child for laid-back RuneScape grinding. The easy F2P path is well known for a reason: regular trees early, oaks after that, then a long stay at willows. Once you can cut yews, you choose between speed and profit.

Woodcutting route

• Levels 1–15: Regular trees.
• 15–30: Oaks.
• 30–60+: Willows, especially near a bank.
• 60 or 75+ depending on your plan: Yews for slower XP but better money.

Willows are usually the answer if your goal is pure level efficiency. Yews are slower but excellent when you need to fund Magic, Ranged, or Crafting. So ask yourself one question: do you want the cape faster, or do you want your bank to stop crying?

12. Turn Woodcutting into Firemaking instead of making two separate problems

Firemaking gets much easier when you stop treating it like a totally separate skill. The cleanest F2P approach is to burn the logs you cut yourself, especially if you are already training Woodcutting hard.

This kills two birds with one inventory. You get Woodcutting XP gathering logs, then Firemaking XP burning them. It is not glamorous, but it is simple, cheap, and dependable.

Easy Firemaking rhythm

• Burn regular logs early only long enough to move on.
• Use oak and willow logs for most of the practical grind.
• Burn higher logs if you cut them naturally, but do not overspend just to look fancy.

Firemaking in F2P is mostly about rhythm. Once you settle into that loop, the skill becomes surprisingly painless. Repetitive, yes. But painless in the same way folding laundry is painless: not exciting, just inevitable.

13. Accept that Runecrafting and Crafting are the patience exam

If melee is the brawl and Fishing is the picnic, Runecrafting and Crafting are the part of the story where your patience gets audited.

Runecrafting made as painless as possible

After Rune Mysteries, the standard F2P route is to push toward body runes and stay there for a very long time. Body runes are the classic free-to-play answer because they balance accessibility, consistency, and decent long-term progress. This is not the fastest skill in the game. It is the skill that teaches you what commitment really means.

Crafting without losing your mind

For Crafting, start with the free help from Sheep Shearer, then move into leather items, silver, and jewelry methods that fit your budget. Cowhides are especially useful because they overlap nicely with early combat training. That makes Crafting one of the better examples of how a smart F2P account snowballs forward: kill cows, save hides, tan leather, craft gear, gain levels, repeat.

If you are serious about getting 99 in every F2P skill, these two skills are where discipline matters most. They are not hard because they are complicated. They are hard because they keep asking, “Do you still mean it?”

The real secret to all F2P 99s: stack your skills together

The easiest way to get level 99 in every skill on RuneScape F2P is not to train every skill in a vacuum. Stack them together whenever possible.

• Kill hill giants for combat XP and Prayer supplies.
• Fish for Cooking and combat food.
• Cut logs for Firemaking.
• Mine ore for Smithing.
• Kill cows for combat and Crafting materials.
• Use profitable methods to fund Magic and Ranged.

That is how long grinds become manageable. You stop asking, “What is the fastest XP right now?” and start asking, “What gives me the most account value per hour?” In F2P, that question is everything.

What the F2P 99 journey actually feels like

Here is the honest part nobody tells you when they hand you a shiny OSRS F2P skilling guide: the road to all 99s is not one giant victory montage. It is a weird, funny, oddly satisfying collection of tiny habits.

At first, the account feels fragile. You are counting every arrow, every law rune, every lobster, every teleport, every little stack of coins. You do not train Magic casually in free-to-play. You train Magic the way people budget groceries during a long month. Carefully. Emotionally. With spreadsheets in your soul, even if not on your screen.

Then something changes. You hit a few decent levels. Your melee stats stop feeling made of paper. You finish a quest that launches a slow skill forward. You bank a pile of yew logs or finally cook enough lobsters that your food tab starts looking respectable. Suddenly, the account feels less like a struggling peasant and more like a functioning medieval business.

That is the charm of the F2P experience. Every little optimization matters more. Catching your own fish matters. Saving big bones matters. Banking cowhides matters. Even a small quest reward feels huge because free-to-play has fewer shortcuts and fewer safety nets. Progress feels earned in a way that is weirdly addictive.

You also start building stories around the grind. Maybe you spent an entire week at hill giants and now the Edgeville Dungeon feels like your second apartment. Maybe you cut so many willows in Draynor that you can practically hear the bank booth in your sleep. Maybe Runecrafting body runes made you question the flow of time itself. That is all part of it. The grind is repetitive, yes, but it also becomes personal.

And the funny thing is, the “easy” methods are not always the flashy ones. The easy methods are the ones you can actually stick with. The route that gets you to 99 is not necessarily the one with the biggest theoretical XP burst. It is the one you can repeat over and over without burning out. In that sense, free-to-play RuneScape is less about perfect efficiency and more about sustainable stubbornness.

By the time you start approaching your final 99s, the account tells a story. It shows where you saved money, where you spent it, where you chose profit over speed, and where you finally gave in and said, “Fine, I am doing the boring method because it works.” That is not failure. That is mastery.

So yes, getting 99 in every skill on a F2P RuneScape account is a huge project. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes a slightly concerning tolerance for repetitive clicking. But it is also one of the most satisfying long-term goals in the game. Every bank tab, every quest reward, every stack of logs, bones, ores, and runes becomes part of the climb.

And when you finally reach those capes, you will not just have levels. You will have proof that you survived the strange little economy of free-to-play Gielinor and somehow came out stronger, richer, and just a bit more emotionally attached to hill giants than any normal person should be.

Conclusion

If you want the easiest road to 99 in every RuneScape F2P skill, do not think in isolated grinds. Think in systems. Use quests to skip ugly early levels. Train combat where you also earn Prayer supplies. Fish what you cook. Cut what you burn. Mine what you smith. Craft from what you kill. And when the grind gets long, remember that free-to-play success comes from consistency more than speed.

The players who finish this challenge are not always the fastest. They are the ones who build a route that keeps working on tired days, low-budget days, and “why am I still making body runes?” days. Stick with the methods that give you layered value, and every 99 becomes more manageable than it looks from the outside.