Essence pouch

Essence pouches are bags that can hold varying amounts of rune, pure, daeyalt, or guardian essence for use in the Runecraft skill. Essence pouches allow the player to take larger loads when crafting runes or mining pure essence, which saves a significant amount of transit time.

Essence pouches are made from superfluous organs of creatures from the Abyss. As such, most pouches are dropped by monsters in the Abyss and the Abyssal Area, accessible after completing Enter the Abyss or by fairy ring code ALR, and can also be received from the Guardians of the Rift minigame as loot from the Rewards Guardian.

Pouches degrade with use, and must be repaired by visiting the dark mage in the centre of the Abyss (or by contacting him with the NPC Contact Lunar spell) or they will vanish. Alternatively, Apprentice Cordelia can repair pouches at a cost of one abyssal pearl, though this service requires 25 abyssal pearls to unlock first. Note: You do not need to bring your pouches to have them repaired; pouches that are stored in your bank will also be repaired. Abyssal pearls must be in the inventory.

Essence pouches cannot be used for carrying more Runecrafting cores, dense essence blocks, or dark essence blocks.

It is not possible to boost your Runecrafting level in order to use a higher levelled pouch.

When a player dies while carrying essence pouches, the pouches are dropped on the floor, only visible to the player that died with them.

If a pouch with essence inside were to be dropped, all essence would disappear from the pouch and would not be retrievable. Multiple pouches of the same size can't be obtained with the drop trick.

Type		Runecraft level	Capacity	Cumulative pouch capacity	Cumulative extra inventory capacity	Uses before decay (approx.)	Dropped or obtained by
	Small pouch	1	3	3	2	No decay	Abyssal guardian, leech, walker, Dark mage, or through searching the Rewards Guardian
	Medium pouch	25	6	9	7	45	Abyssal guardian, leech, walker, through completion of Temple of the Eye, or through searching the Rewards Guardian
	Large pouch	50	9	18	15	29	Abyssal guardian, leech, walker, or through searching the Rewards Guardian
	Giant pouch	75	12	30	26	11	Abyssal guardian, leech, walker, or through searching the Rewards Guardian
	Colossal pouch	25-85	8-40	8-40	7-39	8-40	Created using all previous pouches and an abyssal needle

Obtaining

All essence pouches (excluding colossal pouches) are dropped by abyssal leeches, guardians, and walkers. They live in two areas of Abyssal Space, one accessed through the Mage of Zamorak in level 5 Wilderness north of Edgeville, and the other via fairy rings. Essence pouches (other than the colossal pouch) can also be obtained from the rewards guardian.

The pouches are dropped in increasing size. If you have a small pouch, which the dark mage can give for free, in your inventory or bank, you will get a medium pouch as a drop from an abyssal creature, and so forth. Once you have all four pouches dropped by the abyssal creatures, they will no longer drop pouches. Note: Players do not need the required Runecraft level to use a pouch in order to receive one as a drop. A player does not need to have previous sizes of pouch in their inventory to receive a pouch of the next size.

There is an excellent spot located in the south-western most portion of the Abyssal space where there are good hiding spots in an area thick with leeches. Using the fairy rings to reach the Abyssal Area (code: ALR) is a safer option than entering the Abyss with the help of the Mage of Zamorak. A ring of life and a one click teleport make this method much less risky. Food such as lobsters are effective as long as the Guardians and Walkers are avoided. The pouches have a higher drop rate in the Abyssal Area.

Tip: The creatures in the Abyss do become tolerant after some time spent around one place. So if your defences are weak, you may find a hiding spot and wait until the creatures become tolerant and then only target the weak leeches. However, the tolerance only works locally, meaning that when you move to a different part of abyss, the creatures become aggressive again.

In order to obtain a colossal pouch, the player must create it using a small, medium, large, giant pouch and an abyssal needle. This requires 25 Runecraft and 56 Crafting. Players cannot receive additional essence pouches if they own a colossal pouch.

Degrading

While the small pouch does not degrade, the medium, large, giant, and colossal pouches will degrade over use. Each degradable pouch can be filled with a variable amount of essence before it degrades. When they do, the capacity of the pouch is reduced by a smaller variable amount of essence depending on the pouch tier (see table below). Pouches degrade on filling them, not emptying them, and degrade on a per essence basis. For example, a giant pouch filled with 1 essence does not degrade as much as one filled with 12 essence. Each pouch has a threshold associated with how much essence it can hold as it degrades. For each essence stored in a pouch, the game chooses a random value between 0 and 3 to add to the pouch's threshold counter. As this counter increases, the amount of essence the pouch can hold will decrease as such:

Times Degraded	Medium pouch	Large pouch	Giant pouch	Colossal pouch
0	6 (<400)	9 (<400)	12 (<200)	40 (<320)
1	3 (400-799)	7 (400-599)	9 (200-299)	35 (320-564)
2	Destroyed (800+)	5 (600-799)	8 (300-399)	30 (565-744)
3	N/A	3 (800-999)	7 (400-599)	25 (745-869)
4	N/A	Destroyed (1000+)	6 (600-799)	20 (870-949)
5	N/A	N/A	5 (800-999)	15 (950-994)
6	N/A	N/A	3 (1,000-1,199)	10 (995-1,014)
7	N/A	N/A	Destroyed (1200+)	5 (1,015-1,020)
8	N/A	N/A	N/A	Destroyed (1,020+)

Consequently, the pouches degrade within approximately:

• 45 full uses (270 essence) for the medium pouch
• 29 full uses (261 essence) for the large pouch
• 10 full uses (120 essence) for the giant pouch
• 8 full uses (320 essence) for the colossal pouch

Degraded pouches will continue to degrade and lose essence capacity until they disappear or are repaired. However, if a player is wearing a Runecraft cape, Max cape, or any Max cape variant, then their pouches will not degrade upon filling them (though they will not automatically be repaired). Additionally, in Guardians of the Rift, wielding an Abyssal lantern lit with Redwood logs prevents pouch degradation, though it also requires 90 Firemaking.

There are three ways to repair pouches:

• Talk to the dark mage in the Abyss, and he will repair them for free. It is not required to have the pouches in one's inventory; he can fix pouches even if they are stored in the bank. For an Abyss runecrafter, it is recommended to just mend the pouches during a usual Abyss trip, but players who don't feel comfortable with the Abyss can leave their pouches in the bank, so there is no risk of losing them. All pouches are repaired at the same time by the dark mage even if they have not visibly decayed.
• Players who have access to the Lunar spellbook can use the NPC Contact spell to contact the dark mage and have him repair their pouches from afar. This saves the player a potentially dangerous trip to the Abyss.
• Talk to Apprentice Cordelia in the Temple of the Eye, and she will repair them at the cost of 1 abyssal pearl, after having paid a one-time fee of 25 pearls for this feature.

It is also possible to destroy a degraded pouch, and then obtain a new, full-capacity pouch from Abyssal monsters. This is not recommended, since it would generally be much faster to simply go to the dark mage.

Changes

Date	Changes
8 January 2025 (update)	The left-click/tap option on Runecrafting Pouches will now dynamically swap between “Fill” and “Empty”, depending on their status and what you have in your Inventory.
7 December 2022 (update)	Essence Pouches have been added to the Guardians of the Rift loot table.
18 May 2017 (update)	Emptying the contents of essence pouches into the inventory can now be done by holding down shift and left-clicking it if shift-click dropping is enabled.
23 February 2017 (update | poll)	Essence pouches will no longer degrade if a Runecrafting skillcape or Max cape is worn while filling the pouch. Existing pouches which are degraded will not be repaired in any way with this change, but they will also not degrade any further whilst a Runecrafting skillcape or Max cape is worn.
27 February 2014 (update | poll)	When a player dies while carrying essence pouches, the pouches no longer vanish automatically. They can now fall to the floor, visible only to their owner.
9 May 2013 (update)	Empty essence pouches that were being fussy with which types of essence they would accept will take all types once again.