Wintertodt — 500 Points, Then Crates
Wintertodt is the early-game Firemaking money maker. Subdue the storm on the prison roof, hit at least 500 points for reward cart rolls, and open crates for seeds, herbs, logs, fish, ores, and gems. Unique chase items (tome of fire, pyromancer pieces, phoenix) are rare — your baseline GP is boring skilling loot that still sells.
Skip if: you already have better mid-game methods unlocked and only need FM XP elsewhere, or you refuse to wear warm clothing and keep dying to cold.
Crate loot × GE; high skill levels skew loot
Hard entry requirement
Below 500 = no rewards that game
Per reward roll (not per game)
Hard gates
- 50 Firemaking to enter the prison
- Access to Great Kourend / Wintertodt Camp (games necklace teleport is standard)
- Axe + tinderbox (or bruma torch once unlocked from crates)
- Food for cold damage until warm gear is sorted
Recommended
- Warm clothing pieces (or pyromancer outfit as crates drop) — less food, more points
- Knife for fletching bruma roots into kindling (more points per root)
- Higher HP and other skilling levels — crate loot tables scale with your levels when you open crates
- Games necklace with charges; bank next to the reward cart
- Games necklace → Wintertodt. Bank food/warm gear. Enter the doors when a round is available.
- Chop bruma roots at the trees. Optionally fletch into kindling for better points-per-action.
- Light / repair braziers and feed them roots or kindling. Heal pyromancers when they go down if you need points and the brazier side is covered.
- Stay above 500 points before the kill. Extra points past each 500 threshold add more reward rolls (2 rolls at 500, +1 guaranteed per extra 500, with partial chance between thresholds).
- After the storm dies, leave, search the reward cart outside, bank crates. Open crates at a bank when you have a stack — loot tables use your skill levels at open time.
Mass worlds are fine for learning. Solo/low-pop can mean more personal contribution and points if you know the loop; it is slower kills if nobody else is feeding braziers.
- Consume: food (less with warm gear), games necklace charges
- Tools: axe, tinderbox/bruma torch, knife
- Sell: seeds, herbs, ores, logs, fish, gems from crates; burnt pages / pyromancer pieces when they drop
- Keep pyromancer outfit pieces for warmer games and the set effect — do not alch them early
Almost no buy-in cost beyond food and a cheap axe. Profit is outbound loot only.
Baseline GP is crate common loot — GE-dependent and average-driven. Uniques (phoenix 1/5,000 per roll, dragon axe 1/10,000, tome of fire 1/1,000, warm gloves / torch / pyromancer at 1/150 each) are RNG spikes, not your hourly floor.
- More points → more rolls → more chances at both commons and uniques
- Higher Herblore/Farming/etc. when opening crates improves herb/seed/ore quality
- Log 50+ crates before judging average value — single crates lie
- Track phoenix dry streaks on the pet odds calculator; use the Wintertodt calculator for XP/points planning
- Never leave a game under 500 points on purpose — zero cart rewards
- Fletch kindling when you can keep up; raw roots are fine while learning
- Warm gear ASAP — food cost and downtime both drop
- Open crates after skilling levels go up if you are close to a breakpoint
- Bank crates noted; open in bulk next to a GE for sorting
- Bruma torch frees the tinderbox slot once you have it
- Dying to cold with empty food and calling the method "unplayable"
- Sitting at 400 points when the kill is imminent
- Pricing phoenix into average GP/hr after one dry week
- Opening crates at low skilling levels then wondering why loot is trash
- Ignoring braziers entirely and only chopping — points suffer in most setups