Runescape Game Play

A Rough Guide To Herblore

The problem is with a guide on herblore is that there are so many different ways to train it. I Have 99 herblore and I will give you a guide as to how I managed to get the coveted 99 cape.

Ok the first thing people ask when they see the cape is
“How much did it cost to get 99 herblore”?
The answer to that is
“No idea”

The reason is I didn’t start off with a wad of cash and just buy all the herbs 2nds and water filled vials from the start. If I am honest I have spent a lot of cash on the skill, mainly on the water filled vials and seconds rather than the herbs, however I have bought thousands of herbs as well.

Obtaining Herbs

The 1 skill that is under-rated as a money maker is farming, The reason is buying a seed is generally the price of 4 herbs and on average I am collecting 6.5 herbs per patch (I’m currently lvl 96 farming) and farming really does help your herblore skill if you manage to do 3-4 farm runs per day the herbs will really rack up fast. On average I will farm at least 150 herbs per day.

All my seeds and most of my other herbs come from drops from monsters so I don’t really pay for them I get them from slayer normally as most slayer monsters drop herbs.

So as you can see gauging a total I have spent on herblore is very difficult.

The skill has changed so much now due to the removal of unided herbs. I used to buy unided herbs when I was a lower lvl but now that as all changed as unided herbs have been removed from game and now you have grimy and clean herbs. I would recommend buying some lower lvl herbs probably the best xp ones you can make.

Water filled Vials

Well Typical Jagex has changed the Waterfilled vials Just as I was writing this guide, so I will leave in the bit below I know its not relevant now but its still how I raised my skill so you will see my struggle lol.
Ok now as they infinity status has been given to waterfilled vials now there is no need to world hop to buy lots of them and therefore the price of waterfilled vials I predict will plummet as its just to easy now to gather them in large quantity and probably they will settle around the 100 gp mark (my guess) as high lvl herblore people want them in large bulk and it will still be good cash for lower lvl players.

Pre-update 02-10-07
The water filled vials is a hard one, they are Sold All Over Runescape in Shops such as shilo shop, ardy shop and empty ones are bought in taverly. However I did buy these mainly from players, I would be picking them up at 200-250 each and bought 5-10k at a time. The problem at the moment is people have decided to merchant them and prices are now as high as 400 each! One thing I would consider doing and have done myself if make them from molten glass and get craft xp, or buy empty vials and people have been using the lunar spell Humidify which fills all vials in inventory with water and is very fast rather than run to a water source and fill them all.

2nd Ingredients

Now here is where a lot of my cash has gone on obtaining my levels.
I would generally buy a lot of 2nds from players on forums, I would look through the forums when I was doing a skill like woodcutting or fishing as not much attention is required and I am still gaining xp (as you can tell I’m a skiller)

Tower of life

A great place for 2nds is the tower of life; you gain access to this after the tower of life quest. The Tower basement has life altars showing the items you must use to create life. Create the monster, and then kill it to get the desired ingredient

1 :-one raw sardine and one red spiders eggs = Spidine which drop 2-10 spider eggs

Spidine from the tower of life drop red spider eggs

2: - one cow hide and one unicorn horn = Unicow which drops 1-9 unicorn horns

Unicow from the tower of life drops eye of unicorn horns

3: - one eye of newt and one feather = Newtroost which drops 1-17 eye of newts

Newtroost from the tower of life drops eye of newts

However I do collect some 2nds here and myself are the main ones I collect and where.

Red spider egg I collect these in the dungeon near edgeville there is a re-spawn of five or at the tower of life south of ardougene

Dragon Scale This one is quite quick to collect as I can use the short-cut through the taverly dungeon take an air staff some laws and some water runes and a dragon anti-fire shield and teleport back to fally to speed things up.

Potato Cactus This one is more of a pain but when I get kalphites as slayer task I normally load up with them when my task is complete.

Zammy Wine These are easy to gather but a little slow, At the Chaos Temple northwest of Goblin village. Use the Telekinetic Grab spell, otherwise every monk in the room will attack you

Eye Of Newt These are also easy, I prefer to buy from the Shop in Taverly (where you can also get vials) or even in the tower of life south of Ardy (use an eye of newt and feather on the alter)

Unicorn Horn From unicorns and also from tower of life south of Ardougne

Limpwurt These I normally buy in bulk on the forums and grow using farming, however they drop from Hill Giants, Hobgoblins and Druids. Can also be grown using farming skill.

Chocolate dust Easy to collect when you have completed recipe for disaster as the chest you gain access to in the Lumbridge basement sells chocolate the you can get chocolate from food stores (Port Sarim, Yanille, Grand Tree), Chef's guild, Lost City, or Nardah

Snape Grass I Gather these at Hobgoblins west of the Crafting Guild, They are also found on Waterbirth Island north of Rellekka you can use lunar teleports to gather them quickly here.

White Berries I collected a lot of these from the elven place in Tirannwn near Lletya, can also be gathered at Red Dragon Isle around level 40 wilderness. Also dropped by the men and women of Canifis (in both normal and wolf form). Can also be grown using farming skill

Jangleberrys On the Ogre Island just west of Yanille. You will need a rope to swing across (level 10 Agility) and can be gathered with farming from bushes

Crushed nests These are random drops when woodcutting and I gather a lot from the kingdom in miscellania

Mort Myre Fungi Must have completed the Nature Spirit quest to get this ingredient from Mort Myre Swamp. Use the Silver Sickle (b) obtained in that quest to Cast-bloom while standing near rotting logs in the swamp

Training Tips

Well there is no secret way of doing this or tricks that will make it quicker, however I can give you a basic guide of how I managed to get to 99 herblore and how combining skills helps a lot.

Firstly I have made Thousands of super weapon poison. The reason I made so many was firstly as I was training farming at the same time I collected a lot of poison ivy and also a lot of coconuts. The main problem making super weapon poisons is that the nightshades are non-tradable so you need to collect a lot of them and with only 1 farming patch for them just north of draynor that isn’t a lot of help, the other place to gather them is in the ogre village Gu’tanoth south of yanille. To gather them you need a light source (I recommend a mining helm) and the skavid map (obtained during the quest Watchtower). Now the main problem here is the re-spawn on a high populated world is about 30 seconds low populated worlds the re-spawn is slower, so no use in world hopping as it takes 30 seconds to hop worlds so you may aswell wait, Now as I always like to do you can kill 2 birds with 1 stone by alching whilst you wait and get xp in mage. Alching is not a great thing to do lots of clicking and not very exciting however if your doing it you may aswell be gathering some nightshades at the same time, I worked out through the amount of times I went there and alched that I could do 250 alchs per inventory which means I would take in inventory 250 noted alchs, 250 nats, my skavid map and wear my mining helm as that doesn’t take up an inventory space. I have also taken imp boxes with me to bank more at a time however it doesn’t take to long to bank so that is just an option.

The nightshade spawn in the ogre village Gu’tanoth

As I have mentioned before when you become serious for the herblore lvls the forums become invaluable as people sell in large bulk and this will help move along the xp. I would normally look through the forums when I was doing other skills like woodcutting or fishing, something that doesn’t really need a lot of attention. This allows you to gain xp in other skills at the same time.

Selling of the pots…. Urrrgh… my one and only hatred of herblore is the fact you have to sell the pots to other players. For some reason this is my real pet hate in the game whether it is selling pots or drops. I just find it a pain to do and really try to avoid it as and when I can, ultimately I end up with a lot of pots in my bank until I sell then I sell almost all of em. So my advice on this subject is if you have the patience to sell super sets at 10k each in a pker world then great, I don’t and normally sell on the forums at 8.5k each. So as you can see for me herblore isn’t about the cash. People will try and sell at “pker world” prices on the forums but people who use the forums regularly will know that those prices just are not bought on the forums. So if you have patience to sell in pkers worlds you will be making at least some cash from them.

People have said in game “wow 99 herblore you must be rich”
Let me show you how this is just not true.
A break down of a super set is a super defence a super attack and a super strength pot.

Vial + Kwuarm + Limpwurt = 100 + 5000 + 850 = 5950 to make a super strength

Vial + Cadantine + white berry = 100 + 2400 + 1000 = 3500 to make a Super Defence

Vial + Irit + Eye Of Newt = 100 + 1500 + 200 = 1800 to make a super attack

So if you add those up to make a super set it costs 11,250 gp if you buy all the ingredients. A super set sells for between 8k-10k each. Therefore to actually make cash from herblore you can see you need to either gather or grow your own herbs or 2nds to stand any chance of making a profit from herblore.

If you do want to try and make cash from herblore then I would suggest snapdragons and ranarrs as the way to go especially if your growing them using farming. A ranarr seed sells for around 30k at the moment and as I say you gather around 6.5 per seed, so on a normal run you would gather around 32ish herbs from all 5 herb patches (including trollheim) so the seeds would cost you 150k for 5 of them but the herbs will value about 256k as each ranarr is worth about 8 k each. Snapdragon seeds sell for about 40k each and the values of all seeds will be 200k however the herbs you will receive will total around 320k ish. As prayer pots sell for around 8-9k each and super restores sell for around 9.5-10k each. Now I realise some people will be reading this and saying that some herbs die but even if 1 or two patches die your still making a big profit from the herbs and for me its all about the xp and not the money.

1 way I gained a lot of xp was from Sara potions. Now as I use my Kingdom fully on logs I do gain a lot of nests and seeds which help as this gets your farming lvl up aswell J
Sara pots are made from the once cheap toadflax herbs (I bought lots of these at 1 k each) however the prices of toadflax has gone up as people realised that they are used in Sara brews aswell as agility potions. The xp is 180 per pot and is the highest xp from a potion using water filled vial. The Sara pot is a very undervalued potion in my view as not only does it boost your hp above maximum but also boost your defence lvl temporarily. So as long as people know how to use this potion e.g. with a restore or super restore potion to counter act the negative it gives it’s a useful potion at things like Dagganoth Kings Or even dragon Fighting Or the new gods war dungeon where you will need to use prayer because if you replace your prayer pots with super restores you will last longer as a Sara pot heals more than a shark with added bonus of taking hp and def above normal and 1 sip of a super restore will counter the negative and also obviously boost prayer.

When you have some potions with less than the four doses that a vial can hold, you can top it up from other potions. So you can take a dose from here and put it into there and so forth. This will help in emptying low dose potions to get vials back for re-use. I normally only do this on certain potions, mainly potions I use myself rather than potions I plan on selling. I personally think it’s not worth selling 4 dose potions, as the value doesn’t transfer well. However it’s a good way to create those precious water filled vials if you need some quickly.

After lots of hard work this banner is a welcome sight

A license granted to wear the herbore cape, here modeled by my good friend Ninebobnote, who kindly wrote this herblore guide to help you with your training.

I am on a roll for money making tips, at the moment all herblore related for some reason I am not even actively training it at the moment.

Snape grass is used for prayer pots, prayer pots are the most valuable pot on the market fetching anything from 6k to 10k at current prices.

Snape grass is found at Waterbirth Island and more commonly on the hobgoblin island south of the crafting guild, the way I do it is to have my house located at Rimmington use home tele and step outside run west to the Island and pick up the loan snape grass then continue to the double spawn spot and go between the two spots collecting as they spawn.

This place gets busy so if someone else is there I let them finish then I start to pick, If someone else comes along they may not wait so my tip to get it every time is not to just keep clicking but stand on the spawn spot and click as soon as it appears, people who just keep clicking will fill up the mouse buffer and be picking up nothing even after the snape has appeared.

Once you have a full inventory tele to Fally, bank and repeat, you can if you are short of runes use fally bank by heading north using the shortcut under the wall and return the same way.

The main problem is the hobgoblins they can cull low level players so make sure you are twice their combat level before collecting.

At current prices snape grass sells for up to 600gp and finding a buyer will not be a problem, I have even seen it sell for 1k each.

I have noticed that there are a lot of sites selling information on how to make money fast, there is no need to buy the information it is always available through the free channels such as fan sites and blogs such as this, I did find some blogs telling you how to scam which is a great way to make money quickly but what good is a load of cash in an account that has been banned.

When I was a low level I spoke to a chap who was lower level than me who was wearing dragon legs and had a whip, I asked him how he got it, he told me he did it by getting blue dragon scale and selling to high level players.

Having thought about it that makes a lot of sence, you can make 1 bow string that involves picking flax and spinning it then selling for 180gp, with blue scales it involves a bit of walking, if you have good agility a very little bit of walking, running around in circles picking up blue dragon scales then tele to Fally and repeat for 600gp each.

The best way is to get a full world so all the dragons are being attacked by players and the scales re-spawn quickly.

I had forgot about this as a way of making cash fast but was reminded the other day when I wanted some to make anti fire breath pots.

Many skills on Runescape compliment each other, one of the perhaps least obvious is Slayer and Farming compliment herblore.

When training slayer you often get herbs and herb seeds. you can identify the herbs that you get when killing slayer monsters, use the the herbs you can and save all your unids (unidentified herbs), you can sell the unids if you want they can fetch as much as 2k each, this is however a short term cash boost and in fact will reduce the speed you progress later on in your herblore skill.

farming is a great skill, I have often heard that this is a boring skill, I can not understand how in any way it can be boring, you plant a patch and go off and do something else then come back and harvest, you get lots of xp while you are doing something else, you just need to come back to collect your xp.

I will go into farming in greater detail in a later post, with the herb seeds you get from slayer you can plant and get anywhere from 4 to 15 herbs per seed, you will lose some plants but thats Runescape for you, save your herbs up and when all your seeds have gone get the secondaries and make your pots.

Another way of getting good herbs is to kill men and women, they are very low level npc's and often drop ranaar, the best monster by far is cave crawlers you need a slayer level of 5 to kill these but they drop all herbs and many secondaries, they also drop water filled vials so you can make pots there and then saving inventory space, they are venomous so you need anti poison but are low level so you need minimal armour or food.

Another good monster to kill is chaos druids, these are very popular as herb droppers and it gets very busy, to get the kill when it is busy it is best to range them, these are almost as good as cave crawlers they drop many level herbs and the odd water filled vial and snape grass.

It can be a pain getting water filled vials, the best way I have found is to buy the entire stock from the general store in Ardougne when I pass, I also buy an inventory full when I visit Shilo village.

Getting secondaries can be done the same way, if you pass Taverly buy a load of eyeballs, even if you don't need them immediately, you will get some guams or irit leaf eventually, the same with unicorns if you pass one kill it and get its horn, plant a whiteberry bush and pick the berries every time you pass.

I will cover secondaries in a later post.