This place has been a blast for quite a few different activities. It even caused me to go out and train a few different skills just to meet some level requirements. This is one of those places I go to make some quick gold or AFK some combat experience.
Fixing The Museum Camp
When you first get to the island it is quite lacking in things like having a bank or a wash station to clean fossils with. You also discover there is an activity board that rewards you with fossils for doing certain things. One of them is fixing up and building up the camp.
So, I went around and built a well, cooking pot, loom, spinning wheel, and bank chest. Once I had a bank chest this place became quite an attritive one to come to daily and find something to work on. Usually, I came here to grind Ammonite Crabs or to farm birdhouses.
Ammonite Crabs
I’ve talked about these things in the past and I'll talk about them again. I lost count of how many times I've come out to the island just to AFK at the Ammonite Crabs. If these things were all you got from unlocking Fossil Island that in itself would have been worth it.
Any time I find myself wanting to get some combat experience such as melee. Along with just not feeling up for taking on slayer tasks. This is just a nice chill place to head out to. Even more so after I unlocked a quicker way to get here.
I’ve lost count of how many attacks, strength, health, and defense levels I've gained from grinding this spot. While the loot usually sucks. It’s just been my spot to go. As these things can’t kill me and they have 100 health I get quite a few hits on a single one before they die.
Digsite Pendant
This is one of those things I'm kicking myself in the backside for not working out quicker how to obtain one. The Digsite pendant can directly teleport you to Fossil Island to the house that is on it.
Originally when I looked into getting one, I thought I had to clean fossils I looted while I was on the island. That to me made perfect sense and seemed like a great reason to be doing that.
It turns out you get the clean necklace while not on the island itself. Instead, after you have unlocked the island from my understanding it then becomes a possible drop while cleaning artifacts in the museum.
As soon as I realized my mistake I ran over to the museum and I ended up cleaning five inventories worth of stuff till I found the necklace. I then showed it to a worker who thought the enchantment to turn ruby necklaces into the Digsite pendant. I then made quite a few of them.
No more am I having to run all the way out to the boat and then board the boat to get to the island. Two clicks and I'm now on the island. I wish I had gotten this sooner. I would have been going to the island six more times a day if I had just for birdhouse runs alone.
Bird House Runs
There are four places you can place a birdhouse on Fossil Island. They are even quite easy to get to. These things can be done every 50 minutes and once you can use Digsite pendants there is no reason to not be hitting them up quite a few times a day.
Sure, they do cost a little to craft. The ones I made require a mahogany log to craft. They also require a clockwork but you get them back every time. The only other cost is 10 seeds and I'm paying like 2 gold a piece for those.
Once they are ready to looted, I just go around and collect them. Then I craft new ones as I go and refill them with birdseed. At my hunter level, I get 700 hunter experience per birdhouse. That alone is great.
Most of the time I'm getting 0, 1, or 2 bird nests per bird house. In some runs, every single one of them will have 1 to 2 nests. In other runs, I might only end up with 2 nests. It's a bit random on that part.
These bird nests can also contain rings, eggs, seeds, and clue scrolls if they are not empty. The ring drops are quite worthless. While it’s nice to get an egg or a clue scroll, I don’t care much about getting those.
There can however be some decent money if you luck out with getting a good seed. Sure, most of them might only sell for a couple of gold. I have however gotten two Dragonfruit tree seeds. They sell for 190k gold. Then you have things like redwood going for 20k and magic seeds for 75k.
If you are really lucky you get a sprit tree seed. These can't be sold but you can use to in certain locations to have another location you can travel using sprit trees. I’ve looted one of these seeds so far from bird nests.
Even if you only get a couple of bird nests each run. Each one alone sells for 8k gold. On some runs that only take me minutes to do, I could end up with six bird nests netting me 48k gold.
While it’s amazing when a single run can net me 2,800 hunter experience, and up to 250k gold worth of stuff. Even when I'm just getting 20k in loot these are so quick to do I don’t mind it just for the experience.
Northern Reaches Region
The island is broken down into different regions. Each region has its own set of tasks to work on. Most of these regions' first task is just unlocking the giant mushroom that is used as transpiration to get around to each of the regions.
In this region, the mushroom was located in a giant house. In that house, there was also a diary I had to find. I also needed to feed an enriched bone that grants prayer experience to a machine there. The problem ended up being getting the enriched bone.
You need to toss fossils you loot on the island, calcium, and phosphate into a machine that ends up making an enriched bone. The phosphate and calcium I would end up getting from farming Ammonite Crabs.
My first attempt at playing the mini-game to enrich a fossil into a bone ended up failing. Which meant I wasted a fossil. I did not know I had to pop bubbles that would end up running the process if I did not. Along with I did not have enough of the other materials. The whole thing was a mess and I'd wait a while before attempting a successful run which did happen later weeks after my first attempt.
With that out of the way, I found this region to cover a lot more than what it looked like it would on the map. Not only were there above-ground places to do activities. There ended up being an entire underwater area with stuff to do as well.
I ended up having to drift net fish, collect mermaid tears, and harvest seaweed that I grew in that underwater area. While the mermaid tears can be used for some rewards it was such a pain just to collect one of them, I don’t see myself going back to farm hundreds.
There was also the rather easy task of just needing to enter into a cave. If only they were all like that. The creatures down there looked quite tough so I did not stick around to try and farm any of them for loot.
East Mountains Region
This place had the least number of tasks to do in it. Which is a bit of a shame as I was hoping to have an excuse to do a bit more exploring around. For the most part, the top part is a giant volcano and there is also a volcanic mine to visit as well.
This place even has two birdhouse locations right next to each other as well. So, it’s no shock that ended up being a task for this region.
Perhaps the longest task I had to wait to work on was using a shortcut on the volcano itself. This required level 64 agility. At the time I was around 58 agility. One late night when I was getting close to finishing off most of the tasks on this island, I decided to do a bit of grinding to get a high enough level to finish this off as well.
At one point went down into the volcano. I found out there was some kind of mini-game down there. I could not exactly work out what I was supposed to do let alone if I even had the right tools on me to do it. Since no one else was down there I only needed to enter the area for the task. I quickly left.
Southern Swamps Region
The swamp has given me some issues and that is putting it lightly. It is also the only region I have an unfished task at. It however seems like it will be a while before I get that task out of the way.
In the swamp, there is this tar monster that can pop up and it is quite a nasty thing to deal with. It has almost killed me a few times. The only way to deal with it is to stun it. That however requires some preplanning as you need to stun a swamp snake and then you use it as a hoop to roll at the tar monster stunning it for a short amount of time.
That alone has been the main reason I tend to stay out of the swamp for the most part. The tar monster loves to lurk around where the mushroom teleport is as well. Which is how I ended up discovering the first time and almost getting killed.
When not dealing with the tar monster there are these giant plants with stingers on them. As you walk past them, they can at random strike and poison you. I was in here once running from the tar monsters which led me to eating all my food. I thought I was safe with just a couple of health left and the darn plant poisoned me and took me out.
One of the activities here was just filling a pit with mushrooms. It was almost as strange as needing to go find a lost diary here as well. While these sound like simple tasks, they can be quite deadly.
I also needed to cut a Sulliuscep which needed level 65 woodcutting. This ended up being the reason why I ended up checking out what Forestry was just so I had a non-boring way of grinding my woodcutting up to 65 to then do this task.
The one task I've failed at twice now has been to kill the Deranged Archaeologist. On my first attempt, I was quite a low level so I was not shocked when I failed. On my next attempt I was quite geared out and it turns out trying to kill him using melee did not work out so well.
It looks like I'll have to level up my range combat at some point and attempt him again one day. While I could also try magic. It seems he has quite some high defense to range and magic. I’m not sure I want to travel through the swap with a magic set on and I'll be needing all my inventory spaces for potions and food for this one.
Turning In Fossils
From doing some creature hunting on the island to the many tasks I finished I ended up collecting quite a few fossils. Those fossils could be cleaned and then placed in the Varrock Museum.
The museum has a massive basement section that can house quite a few different displaces. Every time I fill up a display that takes a few of the same size bones I get two kudos. It seems like I'll need to do an insane amount of grinding to fill all of these up.
Final Thoughts
While I was hoping to have all the tasks on the island done by now at least most of them are done. I see myself returning here almost daily in the future just for further birdhouse runs. At some point, I'll find something to replace farming Ammonite Crabs for combat experience since their loot is terrible. I see this island being quite useful for me for quite some time to come. It was so worth unlocking this place.
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Old School RuneScape.Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about
