I was talking to a good friend yesterday about merchanting, and the crazy loon has 600+ Million gp. He was the one that gave me the advice for merchanting cannonballs, but he has many more tricks up his sleeve. I asked him if he would drop money into Smithing to get up to rune platebodies, and he said that regardless of how much money he had, that would still take too long to level up, so I thought that I should write about various ways of leveling smithing and minimizing time invested. Here are some of the most acceptable ideas in my opinion:

Making the highest level platebodies that you can:

• PROS - Quick experience and you also have less to alch when you are done, selling is also an option on the grand exchange, so one way or another you get some of your money back in the end.
• CONS - Most of your time is spend running back and forth to the bank (varrock or yanille are best), also selling in G.E. can be next to impossible for any pl8body below Adamant.

Smithing gold bars using Gauntlets from family crest quest:

• PROS - Good xp with much less running than smithing, port phasym is the best for this. Just smelt all and wait. The edgeville area may also be good, but you have to open a door each trip to and from the bank.
• CONS - Still relatively slow compared to other power leveling. Not much chance of getting any money back, unless you find a crafter, or sell for major loss in grandexchange.

Smithing Cannonballs:

• PROS - You can make your money back with this method, and port phasym is the best for this. The edgeville area may also be good, but you have to open a door each run back and forth from the bank as mentioned above.
• CONS - Slower than above two methods. Not recommended unless you don’t have much cash.

One thing that people need to think about is that smithing can be combined with many other skills such as fletching (arrowheads, darts) and ranging (cannonballs, darts, knives, arrows).

Final thought: If you have lots of money, gold bars using gauntlets is the way to go. Platebodies are quick, but time spent running makes the task tedious, and doesn’t allow you time to read or do other tasks while playing.