The best locations are:
Prifddinas (Best for P2P with highest reqs, it’s also closest one to an anvil) Shilo Village (Second best, much lower requirements) Neitiznot Edgeville (Best for F2P and low-level members) Blast Furnace (Special furnace/minigame, best exp and money per hour)
Furnaces are mostly used in the Crafting and Smithing skills, usually in order to smelt ore into bars, or create something (like jewelry) out of them. And even though multiple furnaces can be found throughout Gielinor, it’s best to stick to the ones closest to a bank, to minimize travel times and maximize experience per hour.
Best Furnace Spots & Their Advantages
Prifddinas
Gracing one of our lists for yet another time is Prifddinas, the city of the Elves. The furnace lies on the south-easter side of the city, between the bank and the Trahaearn mine, and it’s basically the best one in the game due to this advantageous positioning. There’s also an anvil right next to it, should you want to put your freshly made bars immediately to good use. Access to Prifddinas requires completion of the grandmaster quest “Song of the Elves”.
Shilo Village
The furnace at Shilo village is essentially the same distance away from a bank (give or take a step) as the one in Prifddinas, but with a small catch. Players that haven’t completed the Elite Karamja Diary will have to pay 20 coins every time they want to use the bank (which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it’s more than zero). Other than that, it’s an excellent spot that overshadows any other furnace in the game. Access to Shilo Village requires completion of the (aptly named) intermediate quest “Shilo Village”.
Neitiznot
This one is a personal pet favorite of mine. While this furnace is a little further from a bank than the other places we’ve talked about, it’s got a little something that makes it special. If you’re playing on mobile, It’s possible to align your screen and make it so that you can click/tap the furnace and bank, without having to rotate the camera again again. This makes it perfect for players that want to get a lil’ scaping action on their phone And there’s also a cooking range right next to the furnace, giving you the option turn seaweed into molten glass all in one trip. To be able to use the furnace and bank of Neitiznot, partial completion of the quest “The Fremennik Isles” is required.
Edgeville
The Edgeville furnace has the edge when it comes to smelting in a free-to-play world. It’s the closest one to a bank by far (the second closest one in Al-Kharid is literally double the distance). Thanks to its lack of requirements, it’s also great for members that have yet to unlock any of the better aforementioned locations.
The Blast Furnace
While this isn’t exactly a regular furnace, I had to mention it since it’s fundamentally the same act of smelting, but with extra steps. The Blast Furnace is a minigame where players work together to operate a large dwarven machine, and produce metal bars at half the regular coal costs (so a rune bar would only need 4 coal). The “coal halving” ability of this method makes it the best smithing-related experience and gold per hour activity in the game. Even though it’s much more click intensive than regular smithing, the rewards definitely make it worth it. Note: even though there are basically no requirements to use the Blast Furnace, it’s best to wait until you’re 60 smithing and/or have unlocked the Ice Gauntlets, to avoid unnecessary work and payments.
Bonus Smithing Tips & Tricks
Here’s a few more things that you should know before getting your hands hot inside a furnace:
Wearing a Ring of Forging raises the chance of successfully creating an iron bar from 50% to 100%. The ring has 140 charges and needs to be replaced after they’re all used up and it breaks. Wearing the Varrock Armour from the Varrock diary gives a 10% chance of smelting two bars at once while using the Edgeville furnace. The first armour works up to steel, and each subsequent tier upgrades it further (up to rune). A Coal Bag can be purchased from Motherload Mine at the cost of 100 gold nuggets. It’s extremely useful when creating anything that requires coal, since it can hold an extra 27 coal in your inventory. The Goldsmith Gauntlets from the quest “Family Crest” greatly increase the experience of smelting gold ore into bars (from 22 to 56). While equipped, the Smithing Skillcape allows the Coal Bag to hold an additional 9 coal, and gives the same boost as the Goldsmith Gauntlets (unfortunately, they don’t stack). In a pinch, the Superheat Item spell (regular spellbook) can be used to smelt a bar on the spot. It’s also a pretty decent way of training magic and smithing at the same time! Weight-reducing gear such as the Graceful Outfit can help with keeping up your run energy, letting you run constantly to and from the bank without having to walk.
