How to Get Your Easiest Skill Cape Without Going Broke
Let’s be honest: everyone’s first skill cape in *Old School RuneScape* is usually Cooking. Why? Because it’s fast, relatively cheap, and you can basically do it while watching Netflix. But even though it’s the “easy” 99, I see people making some pretty big mistakes—like burning thousands of gp on sharks when they shouldn’t, or getting stuck on slow methods just because a wiki told them to.
I’ve hit 99 Cooking on three different accounts now (don’t ask why, I have a problem), and I’ve learned exactly how to balance speed with your bank account. If you want that purple cape without crying over your gold stack, here is my personal “Human” guide to 1-99 Cooking in 2025.
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🍳 The Golden Rule: Don’t Burn Your Profits
Before we start, you need the **Cooking Gauntlets**.
Seriously, if you try to do this without completing the *Family Crest* quest, you are just throwing money into a fire. These gauntlets lower the level at which you stop burning specific fish. Without them, you’ll be burning sharks well into your 90s, and that is where the profit goes to die.
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🐟 The Levels 1-35: The “Just Get It Over With” Phase
The start is always the worst. You’re cooking shrimps and sardines like a peasant.
* **1-20:** Shrimp and Sardines. You can catch these yourself in Lumbridge if you’re broke, but just buy them on the GE. It costs nothing.
* **20-35:** Trout and Salmon. People usually drop these at the Barbarian Village fly-fishing spot. If you want to be extra cheap, just go there and pick up what people leave on the ground. It’s free XP!
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🔥 Levels 35-68: The Wine Meta (The Fast Way)
If you have a bit of cash and want to fly through these levels, **Making Wine** is the secret.
It is insanely fast XP (up to 400k-500k per hour).
**How to do it:** Buy Grapes and Jugs of Water. Combine them. You’ll get “Unfermented Wine.” Wait about 12 seconds, and a massive XP drop will hit you all at once. It’s the most satisfying feeling in the game.
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🦈 Levels 68-99: The Home Stretch
This is where the real grind happens. You’re going to be staring at a range for a long time.
1. The Hosidius Range (Mandatory)
Do not cook in Catherby. Do not cook in Lumbridge. Go to the **Hosidius Kitchen** in Kourend. This range has a built-in 5% bonus to your success rate. Combined with your Cooking Gauntlets, you will almost never burn a fish again.
2. The Fish Rotation:
* **68-80:** Lobsters/Swordfish. Boring, but stable.
* **80-90:** Monkfish. This is the sweet spot. They are decent XP and usually don’t cost much.
* **90-99:** Sharks and Sea Turtle. This is where you actually start making a little bit of profit back. If you have the gauntlets and the Hosidius range, your burn rate drops to zero around level 94.
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📈 “Are We There Yet?”
Cooking is a marathon, not a sprint. The worst feeling is sitting at level 92 and realizing you’re only halfway to 99 (yes, 92 is half of 99 in terms of XP—the math in this game is brutal).
To keep myself sane, I use the [LevelTimer OSRS 99 Calculator](https://leveltimer.com/osrs-99-calculator/). I put in how many sharks I have left to cook and my average clicks per hour. It tells me exactly how many hours of Netflix I need to watch before I get my cape. Seeing that “Time to Max” tick down is the only thing that keeps me from logging off.
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🏁 Final Advice for 2025
* **Check the Prices:** The GE prices for raw vs. cooked fish change every day. Sometimes you make 50gp profit per shark, sometimes you lose 10gp. Always check before you buy 50,000 of them!
* **AFK is Key:** Cooking is meant to be a secondary activity. Put the game on half your screen and watch a movie. If you try to 100% focus on the cooking animation, you will burn out by level 80.
Get that cape, wear it with pride, and enjoy the easiest skill trim in the game.