8 years after release, one of Runescape’s hardest modes has its first truly max-level player

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Iron Hyger has earned their name

Runescape
(Image credit: Jagex)

A Runescape player has managed to maximise every skill in one of the MMO’s most grind-intensive modes, a world first eight years in the making. 

As flagged by Jake Lucky on Twitter, levelling each skill to its limit in Runescapre’s Iron Man mode means earning 200 million experience points across 23 different skills – like attack, defence, magic, and so on. 

Runescape is a grind-heavy game as it stands, though the Iron Man mode released eight years ago pushes those time commitments even further. There are no player-to-player trades, no picking up drops from others, and no loot share whatsoever. You also can’t get experience or loot from PvP, rewards from multiplayer minigames are minimal, and dungeoneering has to be done solo – you can find the complete list of restrictions here. 

Essentially, anything and everything that’s remotely convenient from regular Runescape is given the boot, and you need to get every resource yourself. So it's no wonder it took eight years for Iron Hyger to emerge as the mode’s first truly max-level player. 

Runescape's leading iron man even caught the attention of developer Jagex, too, who posted the following message in-game: "Congratulations, Iron Hyger, for being the first Iron Player to hit 200 million in every skill. Now you can finally play the game!"

Outside of Runescape's Iron Man mode, it's been a busy time for the game elsewhere, too. Runescape Fresh Start Worlds wasn't warmly embraced at launch but was soon made "better for all players" – not that it stopped Old School Runescape players from smuggling gold into Fresh Start Worlds and immediately getting banned everywhere.

Elsewhere, these Old School Runescape players claimed a record 16 billion gold bounty after a PvP stakeout 600 days in the making.

Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.