Tutorial Island

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Tutorial Island
Released		24 September 2002 (Update)
Members		No
Location		Misthalin
Inhabitants		Humans
Teleports		Magic Instructor
Music		Newbie Melody, Scape Cave
Map
Advanced data
Type		island

Location on World Map
Wizards' Tower
↑
Karamja	←	Tutorial Island	→	Kharidian Desert
↓
The Node

Every new Old School RuneScape player character that enters the world of Gielinor for the first time will appear on Tutorial Island, the second southernmost region of the Kingdom of Misthalin, with The Node just to the south.

The island, through the tutorial on it, is a place to learn the ropes for players that are new to the game. Players that have at least some experience and are creating new characters can begin to fine-tune those characters here.

If, at any point during the tutorial, players have not made the required response within a reasonable length of time, they will be prompted as to their next action in the controls guide in the top left corner of the game client screen. The controls guide will also inform them to follow the instructions in the chat box.

Character customisation

Upon logging in to the game for the first time after account creation, players will find themselves in a building at the center of Tutorial Island. The Character Creator interface will be open, which allows setting their character's appearance. This includes and is limited to:

• gender (male or female)
• skin colour
• the design of:
  • head (hair on scalp, or the lack thereof)
  • jaw (facial hair or not; this option is not available when the female gender is selected)
  • clothing: torso, arms, hands (wristbands or not), legs and feet (shoes)
• the colour of:
  • hair (on both head and jaw)
  • torso (which includes arms), legs and feet.

The majority of these customisation options can later, after leaving Tutorial Island, be altered through Makeover. However, only members can change the colour of the shoes and the design of the hands (whether the character wears bracelets or not).

To set the selected appearance, choose Confirm.

A new player can begin customising their character upon account creation.

Gielinor Guide

The starting building is where the Gielinor Guide resides: the first non-player character (NPC) that players will encounter and talk to.

He will welcome new arrivals to the world of Gielinor and teach how to talk to its inhabitants.

The guide will ask how much experience players have with Old School RuneScape. The answer can be one of the following:

• brand new (first time playing);
• played in the past but not recently;
• experienced player.

Only the first two options will grant players access to the task system Adventure Paths once they arrive on the mainland.

Furthermore, the guide will talk about the settings menu (options).

To continue the tutorial, the player needs to go outside, through the door, and follow the path to meet their first instructor. Left-click somewhere on the ground to move there. The arrow keys can be used to rotate the camera and change the view.

Survival: Fishing, Woodcutting, Firemaking & Cooking

The Survival Expert, Brynna, gives players the basics for the survival skills: Fishing, Woodcutting, Firemaking and Cooking.

First, she hands out an item: a small fishing net, which ends up in the backpack inventory. The small fishing net must be used with a fishing spot in the nearby pond, by clicking on such a spot, to catch some raw shrimps. Note that instructions given to your character can be seen in the top left corner.

Catching some shrimps will gain you Fishing experience, which can be seen in the skills menu or interface. There, the player can find all skills, their current levels and the amount of experience. A skill can be clicked on to open up the relevant skillguide.

Then, Brynna will give a bronze axe and a tinderbox. The axe must be used to cut a tree to collect some logs.

After that, click on the tinderbox to highlight (select) it, then click on the logs to use the tinderbox on them and to start lighting a fire.

Finally, the player must cook the raw shrimps on the fire. (Once cooked, the shrimps - and food in general - can be eaten to replenish lost health.)

Note: almost all skills that can be trained on Tutorial Island can be trained to level 3 - the highest level available here. Higher levels can only be obtained after finishing the tutorial.

Everything gathered on Tutorial Island will be lost once the player leaves the island.

Finer Cooking: making bread

The Master Chef, Lev, teaches players the finer points of Cooking. In this case: making bread. He hands the player the required ingredients: a pot of flour and a bucket of water. The flour and water must be mixed to make bread dough. The dough can be baked into bread at the cooking range.

If the player has no more ingredients, these can be replenished by talking to Lev (only if you didn't complete the music tutorial). If you didn't complete the music tutorial you can't burn your bread.

When you made your first bread you learn how to use the music player. When you complete this tutorial you can move on to the Quest Guide.

When moving to the next building, you learn how to use emotes and how to run.

Quest Guide

The Quest Guide tells the player all about quests. He covers using the quest journal and the colours that the quests on that list can have:

• Red means the quest has not yet been started
• Yellow means started but not finished (in progress)
• Green means finished

When clicking on a quest, information about that quest will be displayed. If it is red, it will indicate where to find or start it and what the requirements are. If it is yellow, it will remind you what to do next.

The starting point of a quest can be easily recognized by the quest icon that can be found on the minimap (and on the world map). Such a symbol can be seen in the house the player is in right now. (Note that there are various icons to show different points of interest, which will help players find their way.)

Finally, the Quest Guide will tell you what quests can be about and what rewards they might offer once completed.

It is now time to go down the ladder and enter some caves, where players will forge and use weaponry.

Mining & Smithing

The Mining Instructor, Dezzick, teaches players the basics of Mining and Smithing (which includes smelting).

He hands out a bronze pickaxe, which must be used to mine the nearby rocks, which contain copper and tin. If you are unsure which is which, you can hover your mouse over a rock, which will show its name in the upper-left corner. When players have mined a copper ore and a tin ore, they can use the furnace to smelt the ores, combining them into a bronze bar. Dezzick will then give a hammer, with which the player can smith the bar into a bronze dagger on one of the nearby anvils.

Note that, on Tutorial Island, players can only mine copper and tin, smelt bronze bars and smith bronze daggers. The latter is indicated in the smithing menu by the white text under the dagger.

Progressing both Mining and Smithing to level 3 here is worthwhile, as almost nowhere else in the world one can find ores, a furnace and an anvil this close to each other.

Melee combat & Ranged combat

The Combat Instructor, Vannaka, teaches the basics of the Melee and Ranged types of combat.

Pures should pay attention, as they can now make their first bit of character tweaking - effectively making or breaking their character's journey here.

Melee combat

Preparation

Players will learn about the worn inventory, where wielded and equipped items will end up and equipment stats can be shown. After the dagger is equipped, they are given a bronze sword and a wooden shield and are told about the combat interface, where the attack style that will be used in combat can be selected. Different attack styles give different types of experience, and monsters are weak to specific attack styles.

The player will soon have to kill one of the nearby rats. To do that, they can wield the bronze sword, a bronze dagger or neither of those (fight unarmed). The attack style they select will determine what skill they will be training: Attack, Strength or Defence. (Hitpoints cannot be trained on Tutorial Island.)

• Attack governs the type of weapon the player can wield and their chance of successfully hitting and damaging an enemy.
• Strength determines the potential damage of a successful hit. (Since there is no other way to train Strength without also getting Hitpoints experience, this occasion is valuable for a Melee pure.)
• Defence reduces the chance of being hit by enemy attacks and allows the player to wear higher level armour. (Since Defence adds to players' combat level but not their damage output, pures often do without Defence altogether, although a "steel pure" would have level 5 Defence and wear full steel armour - not excessively expensive to lose and a fair bit better than iron armour, in return for being one combat level higher.)

In the upcoming fight, when armed with the sword or dagger, the accurate style trains Attack, aggressive trains Strength, and defensive trains Defence. (Some other weapons, obtainable only after leaving Tutorial Island, may offer the controlled style, which allows training all three skills at once (four when including Hitpoints).) When unarmed, Punch trains Attack, Kick trains Strength, and Block trains Defence.

It is worth mentioning that players can train Attack up to level 8 on training dummies when they travel about the mainland (also without Hitpoints). It could therefore be wise to not progress Attack here in order to save time. If the plan is to train (only) Strength and Defence, it might be wise to start with the latter. As soon as level 3 Strength is reached and the character (automatically) fights on right after, they might hit for 2 Hitpoints on a rat and kill it, which would end the training (see below).

Practice

Now it is time to enter the rat pen and start training. As soon as you attack an opponent - in this case one of the giant rats - a health bar will appear above that opponent's head, and one above your own head as soon as the opponent strikes back. (Note that a fatal hit cannot be received at this time: your health will likely drop to 1 but will never reach zero. As such, eating food to replenish health is not required.)

Ultimately, the requirement is to kill one rat.

Note: If you kill a rat, the Combat Instructor will not allow you to attack another one, forcing you to continue the tutorial. If you want to train more (i.e. advance your Attack, Strength and/or Defence levels) it is suggested to deal 2 damage to a rat, run to the other side of the pit to exit combat (which enables you to attack another rat) and then repeat. When you have done this a couple of times, the chance increases you will accidentally attack a rat you have harmed before, killing it instantly. It would therefore be wise to switch worlds regularly. If another player finishes off a rat that you have already done 2 damage to, that will count as your kill, so it may also be wise to limit your damage to 1 per rat.

Note 2: While being in the rat pit, this is the player's only chance to train the Prayer skill on Tutorial Island (or to prepare for it) - despite the fact that that skill will be introduced at a later stage. Training the skill revolves around burying bones, and the only bones available to players on Tutorial Island are those dropped by the rats. Since one player can kill only one single rat and thus obtain one set of bones (granting 4.5 Prayer experience), training Prayer to level 3 (which requires at least 174 experience) here would mean having to rely on multiple other players (38 to be exact) that don't bury 'their' bones themselves. To speed up the process, it is suggested to choose a busy or crowded world or to switch worlds regularly. This still involves a lot of effort, so it could be wise to simply skip this training here and find a suitable, crowded training spot on the mainland.

If players choose the path of a pure, they may decide not to acquire any Prayer experience, as this skill contributes to their combat level.

Ranged combat

Next up, Vannaka will talk about Ranged combat, at which point the rat pit can never be re-entered. He will give the player a shortbow and 50 bronze arrows. Once again the goal is to kill one single rat, and doing so will force the player to move on.

As the instructor will give more free arrows when the player runs out of those, it could be wise to train this skill to level 3 here. To do so, repeat the steps described at the Melee section above: deal a maximum of 2 damage to each rat and switch worlds when necessary. If players repeatedly drop the arrows and talk to the instructor, a multitude of arrows may be collected.

When both the Melee and Ranged combat tasks are completed, the player may talk to the instructor to learn more about combat stats, melee combat, ranged combat and the Wilderness.

Banking, voting, account management and account protection

Next up, players will visit a bank and use a bank booth to access their bank account, where they can store their possessions.

The poll booths located in many towns across the world allow the community to vote on the release of future game-changing updates.

The Account Guide instructs players about their account (i.e. their character). He will point out the Account Management menu and the various options within it: membership, worlds, swapping worlds with the world switcher in the logout menu, the store, bonds, the inbox, the name changer and various useful links at the bottom of the menu.

The Guide will also mention account safety or security with bank PINs and authenticators. For that topic, he redirects to the Customer Support webpage.

Prayer & friends list and ignore list

In the chapel, the monk Brother Brace instructs players in the Prayer skill: the Prayer list, the use of Prayers, Prayer points and recharging those, and gaining Prayer experience by burying bones. (As explained in the combat section on this page, at this stage of the tutorial it is no longer possible to train Prayer until you travel to the mainland - unless you have gathered some bones during your time in the rat pen.)

Being the community officer, Brother Brace also instructs players in using the friends list and ignore list (befriending and ignoring other players respectively), adding and removing people from those lists, and the online and offline status of friends (represented by the colours green, yellow and red).

Upstairs in the chapel, the player can find an organ on which several tunes can be played.

Ironman Mode

When following the road to the next and last building on the island, players will come across Paul, who will introduce them to Ironman Mode.

• The player that chooses to become a standard Iron Man or Iron Woman will have restrictions imposed on them: they cannot trade, take items belonging to other players, nor accept their help. In other words, they are entirely self-sufficient and do everything for themselves.
• A second option is to become a Hardcore Ironman or Ironwoman. This means the player not only faces the standard restrictions, but also has only one life. In the event of a death that is not safe, the Hardcore status will be downgraded to a standard and the stats will be frozen on the Hardcore Iron Man hiscores.
• A final option is to become an Ultimate Ironman or Ironwoman. In addition to the standard restrictions, the player cannot use the bank. When they die, all carried items will be dropped directly to the ground, immediately up for grabs, and will remain there for an hour after death, after which the items will despawn.

As long as the player is on Tutorial Island they can switch freely between the three modes and being a normal player. Once they leave the island, they can speak to Adam in Lumbridge to switch. However, Adam will let the player switch restrictions only downwards and not upwards. (From higher to lower, the order is: Ultimate - Hardcore - standard - normal (non-Ironmen).)

Note that once a mode is chosen, players have one week to change their mind; once the week is over, players may not undo the changes.

Magic Instructor

The Magic Instructor, Terrova, instructs players in the Magic skill, the spellbook interface and its filter menu, and the casting of spells. He will hand the player five air runes and five mind runes, which must be used to cast the offensive spell Wind Strike on one of the nearby chickens.

If players drop the runes and talk to the instructor again, more runes may be collected. Players can only cast Wind Strike on the chickens once before they are instructed to move on, and additional collected runes will vanish when leaving Tutorial Island. However, players can return to the rats to train Magic up to level 3 to bypass this restriction. This will require at most 32 of each rune, since you receive Magic experience even if you miss.

Leaving the island & arriving on the mainland

Those that are not planning to stay on Tutorial Island indefinitely (see next section) and are ready to leave can speak with the Magic Instructor, Terrova. Moving on to the mainland will unlock access to the rest of the world of Gielinor, the ability to speak in chat, and the ability to further train skills.

Before teleporting you to the mainland, Terrova will ask you if you were planning to become an Iron Man. If so, he will direct you back to the Iron Man tutor standing outside Terrova's house. If not, he will point out that in the town he will teleport the player to there are many tutors who are willing to teach about the many skills the player could learn.

Players will arrive in Lumbridge, located north-east of Tutorial Island, with standard provisions. The following items are the only ones the player will own when arriving; any extra or other items collected on the island (whether held in the inventory or stored in the bank) will have disappeared.

• Carried in the inventory: bronze axe, bronze pickaxe, tinderbox, small fishing net, one couple of shrimps, bronze dagger, bronze sword, wooden shield, shortbow, 25 bronze arrows, 25 air runes, 15 mind runes, bucket, pot, one loaf of bread, 6 water runes, 4 earth runes and 2 body runes.

• Stored in their bank account: 25 coins.

Players that did not unlock the task system Adventure Paths whilst talking to the Gielinor Guide at the start of the tutorial are now standing within or in front of the walled area of Lumbridge Castle. Those that did unlock that task system (and have not chosen to play Ironman Mode) will find themselves just outside the nearby pub, near Adventurer Jon. He will immediately call the player and tell them about Adventure Paths.

Permanent Tutorial Island character

A stayer's bank.

Some players decide to make a separate account for sole purpose of staying on Tutorial Island (or creating a Tutorial Island pure). The things to do on the island are very limited.

Tutorial Island stayers can:

• Get level 3 in Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Prayer, Magic, Mining, Smithing, Fishing, Cooking, Firemaking and Woodcutting
• Collect items to their banks

Tutorial Island stayers cannot:

• Trade
• Vote via poll booth
• Obtain the Ironman/Ultimate Ironman armour
• Smith anything except bronze daggers
• Train their skills higher than level 3

Changes

Date	Changes
25 October 2018 (update)	Chopping wood and lighting a fire now comes before fishing and cooking a shrimp, and the first shrimp is no longer guaranteed to burn. Instead, the first is always successful. After that it can burn if you do more - 50% success at level 1. The furnace at mining tutorial is now left-clickable. Tutorials on music, emotes, and prospecting were removed. Learning to run was made optional. Some other minor tweaks were made to impact the user interface, dialogue and default settings.
18 October 2018 (update)	The first character met is now called Gielinor Guide instead of RuneScape Guide. Financial Advisor was replaced with Account Guide.
28 April 2016 (update)	Run energy is now restored at the end of the tutorial.
21 August 2014 (update)	Tutorial Island has been updated to provide information about in-game polls.
3 April 2014 (update)	Character customization on Tutorial island now correctly applies new hairstyles and outfits.
22 February 2013 (update)	This content was included when the Old School RuneScape servers officially launched. The respawn timer for resources and NPC's on Tutorial Island has been reduced.

Transcript

This article has an associated transcript page. Click here for the transcript.

Trivia

Total level: 56
3	10	3
3	1	3
3	1	3
3	1	3
3	1	3
3	1	3
1	1	1
1	1
5	----	----

• The maximum total level achievable on Tutorial Island is 56.
• The maximum experience achievable on Tutorial Island is 3334 experience points, although to get that much you must get lucky in Magic training.
• The highest experience one can get in a skill (except HP) is 210 for Cooking.
• The best melee weapon is a bronze sword. The best (and only) Ranged weapon is a shortbow with bronze arrows as ammunition. The best (and only) shield is a wooden shield.
• Although there is no magic weapon, the bronze dagger gives +1 Magic attack bonus, and is the best Magic weapon available on the island.
• Even though there is a poll booth on the Tutorial Island the characters can't vote because it requires higher level than the maximum level obtainable on the isle.
• On certain occasions, an NPC called Skippy can be found in the starting building where the Gielinor Guide resides. Skippy allows players to skip the entirety of the tutorial. He cannot be found there permanently, in order to decrease the amount of bots entering the game.
• Vannaka, the Combat Instructor, can also be found on the mainland as a Slayer Master.
• While players on Tutorial Island are not able to trade with other players directly or through dropping items, they are able to place items on a table to be collected by other players.

Music

The following music is beign unlocked while completing the tutorial.

Name	Unlock details	Music track
Newbie Melody	Unlocked at Tutorial Island
Scape Cave	Unlocked in the cave below Tutorial Island.