All you need to know about the upcoming Old School RuneScape Forestry expansion.
The community has voted for introducing Forestry, with an overwhelming majority of over 90 percent of the respondents saying yes. Even though Jagex is working on bringing a new skill to Old School RuneScape, this is not it. Forestry is not a skill but an expansion to an already existing skill: Woodcutting. While training this skill, you can already gain a decent amount of OSRS gold and Woodcutting XP. However, most training methods are best done alone. Forestry comes as a patch on the social aspect of Woodcutting, but it could also influence your XP and OSRS GP gain and the economy of the game as a whole.
Why Pick A Skill Related to Woodcutting?
Woodcutting is one of the gathering skills in Old School RuneScape and, therefore, will naturally allow players with OSRS accounts for sale to earn some OSRS gold through it. While the dominant Woodcutting methods also involve dropping your inventory or burning the various types of logs for fire-making XP, other methods, such as cutting Magic logs at the Woodcutting Guild, will bring you some OSRS GP. Because any tree has a chance to get depleted when someone gets a log from it, you’re constantly at a disadvantage when other players are around since their presence will decrease both your profit and your XP per hour. Jagex first presented the Forestry expansion during the Winter Summit event in December 2022, when they spoke about introducing a new skill.
Inspired by the friendships created by socializing while fishing or runecrafting, the community demanded a way to train Woodcutting in a non-competitive manner. Changing the already existing content to allow this would have been too hard, and potentially many players would have opposed the change simply because it would change the game at an essential level. As a result, Jagex decided they could provide the social aspect and keep the content so many love by bringing a new expansion that will provide more content while woodcutting and altering only the way the trees despawn from the existing content.
After Jagex got the results from the poll and contoured some ideas, they delivered a first blog post dedicated to the Forestry expansion early this February, where they detailed the concept even further and invited the community to answer a survey and provide feedback.
Changing the Economy
Jagex stated that the Forestry expansion would also revamp the overall Woodcutting economy. One of the most expected items coming with this expansion is the Forestry kit. This will act similarly to the Tackle box you can obtain from the fishing boss Tempoross. However, you won’t need to grind hours on end to get it, but you’ll obtain it directly from the quest. You can store some Woodcutting and Forestry related items in this kit so that you can always carry these items with you at the cost of a single inventory spot or even no inventory spot by equipping the item.
Jagex also spoke about introducing new consumable items in the game, which will be obtainable through the Forestry expansion. You’ll be able to trade with other players and profit more while woodcutting. Some items will represent temporary boosts, but most of the new items you can get via the expanded woodcutting form will be consumable. This way, Jagex ensures the items will be in demand on the market, and your forestry efforts will be rewarded.
Forestry Events Are Coming Soon
Jagex is planning to bring Forestry events to most trees around Gielinor. The events will allow you to obtain more forestry currency, which you can sell on the GE for OSRS GP, and overall more loot and even more quality of life. For example, a leprechaun might appear when a tree gets depleted, giving you access to your bank so you can deposit the logs and the other loot you might have gained without running to the bank. Such events could mean more OSRS gold per hour through the loot and more XP per hour by allowing you to bank faster. Forestry is not a new skill but a significant update and expansion to the Woodcutting skill. While it’s still in development, Forestry looks promising in shaking things up.
You can unlock the Forestry expansion by completing a short quest that you can start while woodcutting. The quest will be a tutorial for the Forestry expansion in a similar manner as the Sleeping Giants quest serves as a tutorial for the Giants’ Foundry minigame.
