Ironman Modes

Ironman is a separate CraftScape world where you build everything yourself: no Grand Exchange, no trading, and no items from other players. You choose one of three variants in your first conversation on Tutorial Island, and that choice shapes the account. Standard ironman is the baseline, hardcore adds a single life, and ultimate takes away the bank.

Choosing your world and your mode

Ironman is not a toggle on the main game, it is its own world, picked from the lobby game selector where it is listed as Minescape Ironman. The first person you meet on Tutorial Island is Errelek, the Survival Expert, and on this world his opening conversation is the mode selector rather than the usual welcome. He says outright that this is not recommended for novice players, and that /hub takes you back to the lobby if you would rather not commit.

Three options are offered: ironman, hardcore ironman and ultimate ironman. Pick one and it applies at once, with a message confirming the change. The selector only appears while your mode is still unset, so once you have chosen, or once you have finished the tutorial, Errelek goes back to teaching skills. Skip the choice entirely and you are treated as a standard ironman anyway. After that, the only change available is downward, through Adam the Ironman Tutor.

What every ironman gives up

All three variants share the same core restrictions. The Grand Exchange clerk is not in the world and the exchange is unavailable. Player trading is off, and so is the item inbox. You cannot pick up items dropped by anyone else anywhere, including the wilderness, where normal players are allowed to loot each other's drops. You cannot cook on a fire another player lit, only on one you lit yourself.

Group content is trimmed the same way. The party room, its balloon drops and vote parties are all switched off, along with the booster shop, the /boosters command and the global boosters vendor. The candy shop that sells chests is gone too. Duels still work but staking does not: with an ironman involved, a duel is only valid with nothing on the line. You gain no combat experience from hitting other players, multi-way combat is off outside boss fights, and a friend who enters a boss lair with a party will not pull you in.

Your variant shows as an icon beside your name in chat and at the top of your scoreboard, so nobody has to take your word for it. The Cave of the Ordeals is closed on this world for every variant. None of it is optional or toggleable: it comes with the world you joined.

Shops, and where your supplies come from

Shops are the one place where ironman is gentler. Every ironman gets a private copy of each shop's stock, so you never buy against another player and never wait out somebody else's restock. That copy is refilled on the same half hourly cycle the shops always run on, which makes a buying trip predictable: what is missing is only ever missing because you took it.

Everything else comes out of the ground. Ores, logs, herbs, runes, food, seeds and every piece of gear are yours to gather, and there is no shortcut around a skill you have not trained. One selling rule catches people out: ironmen cannot sell items for tokkul, so that shop is buy only for you.

Hardcore: one life

Hardcore adds a single rule, and that rule is the whole mode. Any dangerous death revokes your hardcore status and drops you to standard ironman. You keep your levels and everything you have gathered, with one exception: gear branded for a mode you are no longer in is taken away, so the hardcore armour set goes with the status. The message says plainly that you have fallen, and your progress at that moment is what the hardcore hiscores hold from then on.

If your total level was 1000 or higher when it happened, the whole world is told: a broadcast names you and the total level you died at. The same broadcast fires if you step down deliberately, which you can do by talking to Adam and confirming twice. There is no path back up, so the decision runs one way only. The duel arena is the one exception to the death rule: dying in a duel does not cost you your status.

Ultimate: no bank at all

Ultimate keeps every standard restriction and takes away banking. Clicking a banker does not open a bank, it opens a noting interface. Hold an item and click to turn a chosen amount into notes, hold notes and click to turn them back into items. That is your entire storage system, and it only covers items that can be noted in the first place.

Anything the game would normally send to your bank is dropped at your feet instead, still tagged to you so nobody else can take it, so mind where you are standing when a large reward lands. Because nothing is stored anywhere, everything you own is carried, and any death puts your whole inventory into the grave. Quest items stay locked to you until the quest is finished, and after that an ultimate can discard one by running /drop and dropping the item within a few seconds.

Death, gravestones and the wilderness

Outside PvP areas, dying spawns a personal gravestone where you fell. Only you can loot it, and it stands for a limited time, warning you as the clock runs down, so the run back is a timed one. Untradable items and anything flagged to survive death stay with you rather than going into the grave, which is why the free ironman armour set is never at risk.

The wilderness behaves differently, and for ironmen it cuts both ways. Killed there by a monster, you still get a private grave rather than a pile anyone can take. Killed by a player, your killer receives nothing at all: the items are simply gone and no lootable grave appears. The reverse holds too, so wilderness fights on this world are fought for the kill, never for the loot.