Playing as an Ultimate Ironman is full of unique and interesting challenges, and is very different from a regular account or normal Ironman. While every player's playstyle and progress will be different, this guide aims to give general advice, tips, and suggestions for playing as an Ultimate Ironman. This page has a quick introduction to Ultimate Ironman mode, as well as some guidance on getting started on a new Ultimate Ironman account. More in-depth skill training methods, quest tips, equipment suggestions, and more can be found on their respective pages. These pages can be navigated to using the icons in the top-right of each page, or by the links further down on this page.

Before getting started as an Ultimate Ironman, it is important to understand all of the unique restrictions of the game mode. Besides the usual restrictions given to every Ironman, Ultimate Ironman are not able to do the following:

Getting started [ edit | edit source ]

Every adventure starts on Tutorial Island, where Paul can change a player's account mode to Ultimate Ironman mode. Once off of Tutorial Island, it is impossible to become an Ultimate Ironman, though it is possible to "downgrade" an Ultimate Ironman to a normal Ironman or regular account by talking to Adam in Lumbridge. Once on the mainland, it is up to the player to choose their path in terms of what skills, quests, and items they want to prioritise. Some popular early-game activities to try are as follows:

Item management [ edit | edit source ]

Because of their inability to bank items, Ultimate Ironman players use a variety of creative options to store items beyond the usual 28 inventory spaces available. The most common storage options are the looting bag, Item Retrieval Services, the player-owned house Costume Room, and various STASH units around the world. However, even beyond those, there a number of niche tools and methods for storing various items around the game.

For more information about Item Management, see Ultimate Ironman Guide/Item Management.

Money making [ edit | edit source ]

Making money on Ultimate Ironman accounts is fundamentally different from regular accounts. Ultimate Ironmen have to do activities that specifically generate coins in some way, as they cannot use the Grand Exchange to simply trade the items in exchange for coins. For example, a regular account could kill Zulrah, receive a tanzanite fang and then sell it to the Grand Exchange for 4,012,738 and the player would have that amount in coins, but an Ultimate Ironman would only get 66,000 coins from its High Alchemy value.

Because of the restrictions an Ultimate Ironman is placed under, many traditional money making methods are difficult or impossible to perform. Most money making methods typically involve casting High Level Alchemy to convert items into coins. Players should alch the items while doing other activities which can be done on the normal spellbook, do not require full inventory and have some downtime to cast the spell. Such activities include farm runs, bird house runs, questing, training Agility, training Hunter and melee combat.

At very low levels, players can also sell various alchable items to shops, but once the player can use High Level Alchemy and has the money to buy the nature runes, it is better to alch the items as it generates more profit and it can be done in "zero time". Setting level 55 Magic as a short-term goal is therefore recommended for low-level Ultimate Ironmen.

Common items that can be converted into coins:

Adamant, rune and dragon items

High-level runes; these can be sold to Ali Morrisane

Dragonhide bodies and battlestaves, and their raw materials

Rune and dragon javelin heads

Ores and bars (mainly adamantite and runite); the ores can be processed into bars in the Blast Furnace, and the bars then smithed into platebodies

High-level gems (mainly rubies, diamonds and dragonstones); these can be made into valuable jewellery

Onyx bolt tips; these can be attached to runite bolts to make onyx bolts, which can be alched for profit

Training certain skills, such as Construction, Fletching and Smithing costs a lot of money. Receiving useful supplies for those skills saves money, and that can be considered as making money effectively. Such items include:

For more information, see Ironman Moneymaking Guide that provides information about what methods are viable for Ironmen and Ultimate Ironmen.

Combat on an Ultimate Ironman can be much more difficult than on a regular account, as various equipment setups, supplies, and drops all can clutter up their limited inventory space. Even preparing for combat has its challenges, with food preparation and potion-making requiring more time and inconvenience than they would with a bank. For this reason, many Ultimate Ironman players opt to use buyable food (such as cooked karambwans, jugs of wine, and potatoes with cheese) rather than cooking it on their own. High-level players can also use noted food supplies, such as manta rays (from Zulrah or Vorkath) and Saradomin brews.

For more information about suggested equipment setups or combat training methods, the dedicated pages are as follows:

Skill training [ edit | edit source ]

Training skills on an Ultimate Ironman can be very similar to that of regular accounts or wildly different, depending on the skill and method. For example, Agility and Thieving training are done much like on any other account. On the other hand, training skills like Construction, Smithing, and Prayer must utilise creative methods to get around inventory limitations.

Because of the limitations, it is sometimes best to stick to training one skill for a long period of time. Some skill training methods require a specific inventory layout, and preparing for a certain type of inventory layout takes time. This makes switching from one skill to another inconvenient, or impossible in some cases. However, skillhopping is still possible with skills that require little to no preparation, such as Fishing and Agility.

Potentially dangerous skill training methods may require being able to fit most of the items in the looting bag. These methods include subduing Wintertodt, Slayer, killing dragons for Prayer, and chinning Ranged. Having more space is beneficial for these methods, and they can become unviable if players have a lot of extra items in their inventory. Safe methods require much less preparation and planning, because players can simply deathbank their items for extra storage and do not have to worry about potentially losing their items.

For more information about skills and their training methods, the dedicated pages are listed in the table below.

Quests and minigames [ edit | edit source ]

Many quests and minigames have various restrictions placed on the player in the process of completing them. The island of Entrana is a classic example where you cannot bring any weapons or armour to the island, not even in a looting bag. These restrictions are highlighted below in their dedicated pages.