Shooting Stars Guide OSRS – AFK Mining for Stardust & XP

A Shooting Star crashes onto every world roughly every 90 minutes, landing at one of 82 possible locations across Gielinor. Crashed stars spawn at sizes 6 to 9 only, and every layer takes 7 minutes to deplete before dropping to the next size down.

As you mine, you’ll earn Mining XP and stardust — a secondary currency you can exchange for rewards. You’ll gain a flat 32 Mining XP per stardust regardless of star size, and the mining success rate is identical across all sizes, so you’re no longer penalised for mining a lower-tier star.

Your Mining level must be at least 10 times the star’s current size. Since stars now spawn at sizes 6–9, you’ll need at least 60 Mining to mine the top layer of a freshly landed star, though you can still mine the lower layers as it depletes.

You’ll earn roughly 750 stardust per hour depending on your Mining level, pickaxe, and how efficiently you hop between stars. Trade your stardust to Dusuri at the Mining Guild entrance in Falador.

Your first purchase should be the Celestial ring at 2,000 stardust. It provides an invisible +4 Mining level boost, which directly improves your mining speed everywhere.

You can also pick up clue geodes while mining stars, which have been re-added as a possible reward. Note that crashed stars landing in Prifddinas no longer drop crystal shards.

• Mining Level: 60+ (to mine top layers of size 6–9 stars)
• XP / Hour: 20–30k
• Stardust / Hour: ~750
• AFK Time: 7 min per layer

Who Is This Method For?

Shooting Stars are perfect for players who want low-effort Mining XP while doing something else — second-monitor gaming, watching a show, or playing an alt account. For pure AFK mining, this method is hard to beat.

If you’re looking for fast XP, methods like Volcanic Mine or Blast Mine will be quicker. But if your priority is minimal attention for steady progress, Shooting Stars are the way to go.

The easiest way to find active stars is through the Star Miners Discord. It shows every newly discovered star along with all currently active stars, their world, location, and current size.

If you want live data directly in your RuneLite sidebar, install the Star Miners plugin from the Plugin Hub. It pulls from the same data source and lets you contribute scouting data back to the community.

Equipment and Inventory

Bring your best pickaxe, the full Prospector outfit if you have it for the XP bonus, and an Amulet of Glory for the increased chance at gems while mining.

A gem bag is useful for storing the uncut gems you’ll receive. Fill the rest of your inventory with 4–5 fast teleports to common star locations. House teleport tabs, Myth cape, Drakan’s medallion, and Morytania legs are all solid choices.

Focus on a handful of star locations you can teleport to quickly. When a new high-size star gets called out in the Discord or plugin, hop to that world and head to the location. This minimises downtime between stars and keeps you mining the highest sizes for as long as possible. As a bonus, the rework means random events and the dwarf multicannon can no longer interfere near a landing site.

You can expect around 20–30k Mining XP per hour depending on your pickaxe and the sizes you’re mining. It’s not the fastest XP method in the game, but nothing else gives you a full 7 minutes of AFK time between clicks — that’s what makes this method so valuable.