Do characters carry over when playing Old Runescape

Note: This guide is for Oldschool RuneScape only, as RS3 has many differences in training for XP as well as huge distinctions from OSRS in weaponry and combat.

It's extremely difficult to determine the exact order in which to train these two skills as each level provides minor marginal benefits which change based on the weapon you're using. It may be up to you to decide which is more important to you in terms of accuracy or damage, but there are a few things to consider to help guide you in your combat routing:

• The amount of experience it takes to increase 7 levels in a skill is roughly the same as it takes to get to that level (starting from level 30 or so). So your experience at level 60 will be 273,742 and it will take 274,211 XP to get to 67. Therefore, a relatively balanced approach is best to keep marginal benefit/level high.
• Gaining levels in strength only increases XP/hour when your maximum hit increases, so it doesn't make sense to train strength unless you are planning on doing so until your max hit increases.
• Wielding a better weapon increases both your accuracy and maximum hit, so it is highly desirable to reach the next weapon type plateau if you are close in attack level.
• Note that changing weapon types will change how many strength levels you need to increase your max hit. This also applies to certain pieces of armor such as enchanted amulets and metal boots.
• I actually do suggest training defence, as it can decrease the amount of damage you take, thereby decrease the amount of food you need to consume while training and therefore decreasing the number of bank trips you have to take. It will also open up other options for increasing damage output such as metal boots and defenders.

Using these suggestions, I would say to increase your strength until your max hit rises. Then, use a max hit calculator to check how many levels it would take to increase it again. If this is past your next weapon plateau (so if you're using adamant, that would be 40), then train attack until you reach that plateau. Then switch weapons and repeat the process. I would also train defense so that it's less than 20 levels below your attack (so mith if you're using a rune weapon), but that's up to you.

Powermining will be faster, especially if you don't have a dragon pickaxe. If you do have a dragon pickaxe, the difference isn't too big. The results aren't sensitive to moderate increases in your potential hourly income.

Method

One way to arrive at an answer is to decide, level by level, whether powermining or the Motherlode Mine will be better. (In other words, are the extra ores obtained at the Motherlode Mine worth the time spent mining?) Armed with this information, we can easily reach one of three conclusions: powermining is better at every level, the Motherlode Mine is better at every level, or each method is better at specific levels.

For each Mining level, we want to know if the ores we receive from the Motherlode Mine compensate for the extra time spent mining (compared to powermining). To figure this out, we need to know:

• the Mining experience per hour for each method;
• the ores per hour we'll receive if we go to the Motherlode Mine (MLM);
• the Smithing exp we'll get from these ores;
• and how long it would take to get this Smithing exp with no MLM ores

This way, we can figure out how much longer each Mining level takes at MLM, and how much Smithing training the MLM mining will save us, compared to if we'd powermined instead. If the amount of time saved training Smithing is greater than the extra time spent mining, it's better to spend the level at MLM; otherwise, it's better to powermine for the level.

Conclusion

To compute the time required for 70-90 Mining and Smithing with each method and each type of pickaxe, I used an R script implementing the method discussed above on data obtained from the sources listed in the next section, interpolating when the data did not have level-by-level granularity.

With a dragon pickaxe, powermining is faster, with 70-90 Mining and Smithing taking a combined 166 hours, compared to the 186 it would take with the Motherlode Mine method.

With a rune pickaxe, powermining is still faster, and the gap widens: now, powermining will take 172 hours, compared to the 204 of Motherlode Mine.

These results won't change with higher potential income per hour unless you can earn well over 350K gold hourly. The two Smithing training methods I consider are making mithril/adamant platebodies (slower but profitable) and smelting gold (faster but very expensive). Since making platebodies profits and is decent experience, it makes sense to fund gold smelting this way, rather than with some non-Smithing moneymaking method, unless the alternative method is far superior to the 120K per hour proposed in the OP.

Sources

Hourly experience rates for Motherlode Mine, iron powermining, and granite powermining: Motherlode Mine & XP Rates!

MLM ores from level 70 to 80: Loot from 70 - 80 Mining at MLM

MLM ores from level 67 to 70: Loot From 2000 pay dirt at motherlode mine 67-70 mining

MLM ores at level 91: 1h of MLM - 43k Mining Xp/308k GP Per Hour

Mithril platebody smithing XP rate and financials: OSRS Ironman - Smithing Guide (see description)

Dragon pickaxe comparison to rune pickaxe: Dragon Pickaxe - 2007scape Wiki - Wikia