Tan Leather: the best-known Lunar money maker
Tan Leather turns up to 5 hides into leather per cast, with no tanner and no tanning fee. It needs 78 Magic, the Lunar spellbook from Lunar Diplomacy, and the hard Fremennik diary. Each cast costs 5 fire runes, 2 astral runes and a nature rune and gives 81 Magic xp. A fire staff or tome of fire covers the fire runes.
The spell works on cowhide (right-click the spell to choose soft or hard leather), snakeskin, and green, blue, red and black dragonhide. Dragonhides are where the money is: a few hundred coins per hide is a common gap between hide and leather, while cowhide and snakeskin are usually close to break-even or a loss once runes are counted. The table shows each hide separately so you can see which one leads today.
The spell casts every 3 ticks, and fast players tan thousands of hides an hour, so the buy limit is the real constraint. Green and blue dragonhide are capped at 13,000 every four hours and red and black dragonhide at 11,000, which is roughly an hour and a half of casting. After that, switch to another hide or another spell.
The other spells
| Spell | Magic level | Runes per cast | Magic xp | Items per cast |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Humidify | 68 | 3 water, 1 fire, 1 astral | 65 | Every empty vessel or clay in your inventory |
| Spin Flax | 76 | 5 air, 2 nature, 1 astral | 75 | 5 flax |
| Superglass Make | 77 | 10 air, 6 fire, 2 astral | 78 | Whole inventory of sand and seaweed |
| Tan Leather | 78 | 5 fire, 2 astral, 1 nature | 81 | 5 hides |
| Plank Make | 86 | 15 earth, 2 astral, 1 nature | 90 | 1 log, plus a coin fee |
Humidify (68, Dream Mentor) fills every empty vessel in your inventory at once and turns clay into soft clay. Humidifying clay is the usual money row, because soft clay is bought for Crafting and Construction; filling buckets, jugs and vials makes a little too.
Spin Flax (76) spins 5 flax into bow strings per cast and gives 15 Crafting xp per string on top of the Magic xp. It is slower than the other spells (5 ticks per cast) but bow strings sell in huge volumes to fletchers.
Plank Make (86, Dream Mentor) converts one log into a plank per cast and charges a coin fee lower than the sawmill: 175 coins for oak, 350 for teak and 1,050 for mahogany, against 250, 500 and 1,500 at the sawmill. The profit is that saving minus the runes, which makes it close to break-even on most days but a solid Magic xp method that pays for itself. Builders who need planks will find the Construction calculator useful for working out how many.
Superglass Make is covered on its own page, Superglass Make profit, because its yield depends on the seaweed you use.
Reading the profit columns
Profit per cast takes the product at its current mid price after Grand Exchange tax, minus the inputs and the full rune cost at mid prices too. If you use a staff, your real cost is lower than a full rune count; astral and nature runes are the ones that matter. Profit per hour multiplies by a realistic casting pace, so very fast players earn more per hour but hit buy limits sooner. Check the nature rune price when comparing Tan Leather and Plank Make, since both use one per cast.
All of these spells give steady Magic xp while paying for themselves, which is why the Magic training guide recommends them between 68 and 99. The Magic calculator tells you how many casts you need to reach your target.