Starting out as a Mage in Runescape

My secondary ("newbie") character is combat lvl 25 now and I've gathered about 50 mind runes and various fire and earth and air runes while fighting goblins and other monsters, so I figure maybe it's time to advance some mage levels.

From my mining of tin and copper ores and smelting into bronze bars which were turned into various bronze armors and weapons, I had gathered a little over 10k in the bank after selling everything at their proper specialty stores around the land. I brought that with me and headed to the rune shop south of East bank in Varrock.

Since my secondary player is on a free world, I found that the rune shop was really low on mind runes - they must be in high demand. I hopped worlds a few times and found that on each world, mind runes were quite depleted. I did manage to buy 100 of them however, so I took those and figured it would be a good start.

I also bought an air staff from the staff shop in the northwest corner of Central Varrock - it cost just under 1000 coins but will save me from having to use up air runes, which are a constant piece of a lot of the low-level mage spells.

Setting Your Primary Spell To Cast

As a Mage, you are expected to be using a staff of some kind when executing your spells. Like a warrior without a weapon to smash, slice or cleave you, a Mage without a staff is nothing.

If you can get an air, water, earth or fire staff in Varrock, do that - whichever elemental staff you get, the staff makes it so you don't need those specific runes in order to cast spells which call for them. The staff takes care of, say, your 'air runes' needs when wielded.

Another key thing about the Magician's staff is that with it wielded and with adequate other runes in their inventory, players can set their "default spell" to cast and fighting will become a lot more automatic than if you were not wielding a staff. If you've been frustrated at the process of casting spells to kill an opponent, this is the key you were missing.

Got The Runes and Staff, Where To Kill?

Personally, I'm a multi-tasking player. I like to not only build my mage skill, but also gather items that can be resold at a future time for when I need some quick cash. So, I decided my first round of mage killing would take place near Lumbridge, taking on cows, and gathering up the cow hides left laying around.

By the time my inventory was full of cow hides, I had advanced to magic level 7 and was allowed to fire off water blast spells - but I didn't have any water runes on me, they were back at the bank. I headed over to Draynor to store my items in the bank, and then I figured I'd visit the other Rune Shop which is located in Port Sarim.

Port Sarim - Less-Visited Rune Shop

Port Sarim Rune Shop is quite a bit less visited than the Varrock Rune Shop, and as a result, I found there were over a thousand mind runes awaiting purchase. I bought about 250 and then headed out to spend some of them with my water and earth runes once again.

East of Draynor is a great place to practice ranged and magic attacks - there are lvl 24 Jail Guards you can attack from behind a fence, and as long as you stay behind the fence and can fire on them, you'll kill them and they won't be able to take a single swing at you. A lot of Runescape Rangers and Mages use this strategy long into the high levels, so keep it in mind.

Unfortunately, Jail Guards don't drop anything but bones, so even though I stayed there and trained up to mage lvl 15 (I can now do fire blasts), I moved on to find something that offered more than just experience and training and prayer experience from burying their bones.

Remember those lvl 9 Wizards that smoked my metal-clad body when I was first training as a warrior? Well, a fellow Mage wouldn't smoke me when I'm wearing my mage outfit, so I went over and paid them another visit.

I am pleased with their drops, so I think I'll stay here a while to train. Here are the things I'm picking up after killing the Wizards:

• Earth runes (5)
• Coins (1-18)
• Staff
• Chaos runes (2)
• Wizard robe top (blue)
• Wizard hat (blue)
• Water runes (12)
• Mind talisman

I'm sure there's more they drop that I didn't get to see. At any rate, don't go home without a full inventory from there, even if it's just a bunch of staves to sell at the general store for a few coins.

The first real "goal" I have for my secondary character in terms of Mage is getting to lvl 25 and to where she can teleport to Varrock. Teleports help shorten transportation time something wicked, and even if she can only teleport to one city for now, that's great.

But, it will have to wait for another day, because it's time to go.