Construction is one of the most useful skills in OSRS as your house essentially becomes a hub for transportation as you quest, skill, and PVM all over Gielinor.
In this Construction Guide, I’ll show you how to get started with Construction training, including all the useful plugins and settings, as well as how to progress quickly and on a budget.
How to Train Construction
Skip ahead to the training methods, or learn the basics below.
- Starting off (levels 1-52)
- Fastest way to 99 Construction
- Budget Training Path (Oak Planks)
Get a house first
To start training construction, you first need a house. You can purchase one from the estate agents found in major cities.
Buy a house from one of the estate agents in Varrock or Falador for 1,000GP. Alternatively, you can complete the ‘Daddy’s home’ miniquest which will reward you with a house and bump your construction level to 8.
The base home is located in Rimmington. You can easily get there by purchasing ‘Teleport to house’ tablets from the Grand Exchange.
Go traditional or Mahogany Homes
There are two ways to train construction:
- Traditional training, which involves building the same furniture over and over to rapidly gain experience
- Mahogany Homes, a construction minigame in which you build and renovate homes of NPCs around Gielinor
This guide covers traditional training, for Mahogany homes, check out either my written guide or video guide below.
How Traditional Training Works
To start training construction via the traditional method, enter your house in building mode.
You can either right-click on the house portal, or you can toggle ‘build mode’ in your house settings.
Un-noting planks
If you are below 55 construction, your house should be located in Rimmington, as this spot has an NPC next to the house portal that can un-note your planks for you.
All you have to do is use your planks on Phials and press ‘3’ to exchange all. This way you never have to bank to train construction.
Demon Butler
If you have more than 55 construction, you should hire a ‘demon butler’ from the servants guild in Ardougne.
Similarly to the NPC outside Rimmington, you can use your planks on your butler to have him un-note them for you.
Note: you need 2 bedroom + beds in your house to be eligible to hire a demon butler.
Set a target level
Most players don’t aim to reach 99 Construction due to the expense of this skill. You can get a fully equipped home as early as level 85 Construction. We refer to this as a ‘Max House’ in the community and it’s a much cheaper grind than going all the way to 99 Construction!
The idea is that you use boosts to unlock higher-level furniture such as:
- Ornate Jewellery Box (91 Con or 84+7)
- Occult Altar (90 con or 84+6)
- Ornate Rejuvenation pool (90 con or 84+6)
To boost their construction level, players use the Crystal Saw (which gives a +3 boost) in combination with Cups of Tea (+3) or Spicy Stews (+5).
More on boosting, house layouts, and max house is covered in my Max House Guide.
Install plugins
Construction recently saw a QOL update that allows for plugins to be used!
Here are two Runelite plugins essential for training construction as efficiently as possible:
- Menu Entry swapper
- Construction QOL (Plugin hub)
If you aren’t using Runelite yet, go here first.
Menu Entry Swapper
This plugin is native to Runelite, just make sure you have it enabled and also make sure you toggle ‘customizable left-click’ on in the settings.
With this plugin, we can modify the left-click of any furniture spot to ‘build’. That way we don’t have to right-click when we train construction.
To swap this interaction: hold SHIFT then right-click on a furniture hotspot, and select ‘change left-clicking setting to ‘build’.
Then build the object and do the same thing for Remove as well.
Keep in mind you will have to repeat this for every new building hotspot.
Construction QOL
This plugin has to be installed from the Plugin Hub, which you can find by clicking the right-most icon of your plugin menu.
Construction QOL is simple: it allows you to change the input keys of a construction menu.
For example, if I want to build a Mahogany table, I have to press 6, as it’s the 6th entry in the menu.
But when with Construction QOL, I can change this to 1 by setting my input ‘6’ and output ‘1’ in the plugin settings.
This way, I can press 1 to build my furniture, which I also use to remove furniture and talk to my butler, handy!
Okay now that we have a house, a training method, training goal, and plugins, we can get started with the guide!
Starting off (levels 1-52)
This section functions as a starter guide for construction training via the traditional method.
I’ll show you step-by-step how to progress between levels 1-52 Construction.
After that, you can continue with the ‘fastest path’, ‘budget path’ or start training via Mahogany Homes.
1-15 Building with Regular Planks
For the first 15 levels, we will focus on building furniture in the base room of our house (the parlour) using Regular planks & Steel nails.
Make sure you have bought a home from the Estate Agent, and travel there via a ‘Teleport to House’ tablet which you can buy from the Grand Exchange.
Your inventory should look as follows:
- A hammer
- A saw
- 86 Regular planks (Noted)
- 400 Steel nails
- Your cash stack
Start outside of your Player-Owned-House and use your noted planks on Phials in the general store next door, hold ‘3’ to un-note all.
Then, right-click on the house portal and enter via build mode.
Now, build a ‘crude chair’ in the chair hotspot of your parlour.
To build furniture, right-click ‘build’ on the hotspot and select furniture piece from the menu. To enable left-click building, check out the plugin section of this guide.
Then, remove the chair.
To remove furniture, right-click ‘remove’ on the hotspot and hold ‘1’ to confirm. To enable left-click removal, check out the plugin section of this guide.
Repeat this 4 more times, which should progress you to level 4 Construction.
Next, build 19 wooden bookcases until you reach 15 Construction.
Whenever you run out of planks, exit the house portal and use your noted planks on Phials to un-note them.
Planks needed: | 86 Regular planks |
Nails needed: | 400 |
Approx time: | 5 minutes |
15-33 Oak Furniture
Now that we’ve unlocked Oak Furniture, purchase 270 Oak Planks from the Grand Exchange and return to your house.
Build a workshop (10K) in your house.
To build a new room, right-click on the door hotspot and select the room from the menu (these cost money!)
Then start by making 3 repair benches in the workshop.
Following that, build 12 Crafting tables until you reach level 22 Construction.
Then, build a dining room (5K).
Here, build and remove 39 Oak dining tables.
Once you reach level 31 Construction, finish by building 10 Carved Oak dining tables which should level you to 33 Con.
Planks needed: | 270 Oak planks |
Approx time: | 15 minutes |
33-52 Oak Larders
Purchase 1,760 Oak planks from the Grand Exchange.
Remove your parlour room, and build a kitchen in its place, make sure to rotate it clockwise so that the larder spot is within closest distance of your house portal.
Build 220 Oak Larders which should put you at 52 Construction.
Don’t forget to menu-entry-swap the build & remove options as explained in the Runelite settings!
Planks needed: | 1,760 Oak planks |
EXP Rate: | 400k exp/hr |
Approx time: | 30 minutes |
Fastest way to 99 Construction
Here’s how you can get 99 Construction as fast as possible using Mahogany Planks starting at level 52 Construction.
This path will cost you 68M to get to 84 Construction, or 210M to get to 99 Construction. For a budget alternative, skip ahead to the next section which uses Oak Planks.
These calculations include plank + butler cost.
52-77 Mahogany Tables
Use the house viewer to move your dining room so that it is closest to the house portal.
Buy 9,660 Mahogany planks from the GE.
Start building 1,610 Mahogany tables until you reach level 77 Construction.
Once you reach level 55 construction, travel to Ardougne and hire a Demon Butler from the Servants’ Guild.
Note: you can only hire a butler if you have 2 bedrooms in your house WITH beds.
From now on, use your noted planks on your butler and press 1 to un-note them.
You should also install the ‘Construction QoL’ plugin from the plugin hub (explained in the plugin section earlier) and change the input to 6 and output key to 1. As illustrated below:
This way you can build Mahogany tables using your ‘1’ key.
Your sequence should be as follows:
- Build 2 Mahogany Tables (hold 1 to build and remove)
- Use your noted planks on your butler (hold 1).
- While you wait for your butler to return, build 2 more tables.
- Repeat!
This sequence can also be seen in my video here.
Planks needed: | 9,660 Mahogany planks |
EXP Rate: | 850K exp/hr |
Approx time: | 2 hours |
77-99 Gnome Benches
At 77 Construction, Gnome benches are a faster alternative to Mahogany tables. That being said, they are more click-intensive so many players choose to stick to Mahogany tables instead.
If you get the sequence right and don’t miss any ticks, you should be able to get up to 1M exp/hr.
Gnome benches are built in the Superior Garden.
You will need to build 13,761 Gnome benches requiring 82,566 Mahogany planks.
Make sure to entry-swap the build options and use the Construction QOL plugin settings: input 1, output 1.
The sequence is as follows:
- Build the 1st gnome bench (hold 1)
- Build the 2nd gnome bench (hold 1)
- Speak with butler (hold 1)
- Remove bench (hold 1)
- Build bench (hold 1)
- Remove bench (hold 1)
- Build bench (hold 1)
- Remove bench (hold 1)
The video below shows the ideal sequence.
I made that video before you could use the Menu Entry Swapper, with the left-click swapped you can get up to 1M exp/hr!
Planks needed: | 82,566 Mahogany planks |
EXP Rate: | up to 1M exp/hr |
Approx time: | 12 hours |
Budget Training Path (Oak Planks)
This path uses Oak Planks for a more budget approach to Construction Training. It’s obviously slower, but still faster experience than Mahogany Homes.
This path will cost you 25M to get to 84 Construction, or 116M to get to 99 Construction.
52-74 Oak Larders
Continue building Oak Larders until you hit 74 Construction.
You can either hire a demon butler at 55 Construction or save some money and continue using Phials until you reach 74 Construction.
74-99 Oak Dungeon Doors
Once you reach 74 Construction, build a dungeon underneath your house.
To build a dungeon, first build a staircase in a quest or skill hall of your house and set the orientation to ‘climb-down’.
Then, build a dungeon underneath.
In the door hotspot of this dungeon hall, build Oak Dungeon doors all the way to 99 (or your goal level).
To call your servant down here, go into your house settings and click the ‘call servant’ option.
Cost Calculator
Costs in this guide may not line up with what you end up paying due to the prices of planks constantly changing. To combat this, I made a simple calculator that outputs the full cost of 1-84 & 1-99 using both the oak plank and mahogany plank method.
Here’s the calculator.
Construction Tips
Train in the House Party World
During the early levels, train construction in W330 so you can enter someone else’s house via the Advertisement board and use their stamina restoration pool whenever you run out of energy. You can also use their jewellery box to easily travel to the Grand Exchange to get more planks.
Call your servant via building options
If you need your servant, don’t go looking for them, instead go into your building options and tap the ‘call servant’ button.
Use the House Viewer to move rooms
You can use the house viewer in your building options to move, and rotate rooms.
And that’s pretty much it for Construction Training in OSRS! I hope you found it helpful. If you would like to know how much this will cost you, check out the construction calculator before you start training.
Also, check out my Max House Guide for an efficient layout for your Player-owned-house.
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