Hohto's farming guide {update 16.4.2007)

16.4.2007. Adjusted the statistics a bit, should be more realistic now.

6.4.2007. Added strategies how to buy seeds and little info on making your "slave" to cut the tree for you.

edit: Thought this was bruned and gone forever, but as it isn't, I'll update it :P

At my 90 farming post I promised to write one farming guide more. Well, here it is. If you copy it to your own homepage or something, at least give me the credit for it. If you are interested in growing times, accurate xp or want to see maps to find the patches, use tip it farming guide http://www.tip.it/runescape/?page=farming_guide.htm

I didn't want to make a similar guide, so I'll talk about tactics and others. If you feel like something's missing, please reply and I'll edit this one if I feel it's necessary.

Items needed:

Ectophial, air staff, water runes, law runes, earth runes, fire runes, hatchet, super composts (or empty buckets), spade, rake, seed dipper and magic secateurs if you want to.

Herbs:

Herbs are pretty ok xp and same time rather good money if you know what to pay for the seeds. Personally I'd pay something like herb price*3 per seed, but of course less if I could and more if the amount of the seeds was big. Herbs are really profitable once you get to ranarr. When compared to the time used, farming is probably the easiest cash maker in the whole game. With a super compost+magic secateurs you get an average of 6-7 herbs per seed (sometimes 0 as they die, but you can get even up to 18 or more herbs from 1 seed), so with ranarrs that's like 30-40k cash per seed without doing basically anything.

Herb patches are located south of falador (tele to draynor if you got glory amulets, it's faster than teleport to falador), port phasmatys (tele with ectophial and run west), catherby (tele to camelot and run southeast), north of ardounge (tele to ardounge) and in Troll stronghold after you've completed "My arm's big adventure".. To plant herbs, you should carry a spade and a seeddibber. You can store your rake to the Leprechaun, just in case if the patch gets weeded. For herbs you should always use a super compost. Super compost gives you more herbs (min. 5 per seed with it when compared to min. 3 without it) and with it your herbs die less. Remember that you can't pay farmers to look after your herbs. Herbs do not need watering.

Magic secateurs are supposed to give 10% more herbs per patch. This means you might get 1-2 herbs more per seed, depending how do they round it. Personally I'd use them, 1-2 more torstols is a lot of xp and 1-2 more ranarrs is a lot of gp.

Allotment:

Might be useful at low levels when you are trying to get your farming up and the xp from low lvl herbs is too slow. Personally I wouldn't plant any other allotments than watermelons.

Watermelons are really nice xp as it gives you 54,5xp to harvest 1 watermelon and with supercomposts it isn't rare to get over 20 watermelons. Watermelons also got a real use unlike other allontments: you can use them to make supercomposts. I personally farmed watermelons just because of this reason; in 80 mins I was able to get enough melons for almost 80 super composts.

You can pay farmers to watch after your allontment. For watermelons the cost is 10 leaves of curry. Personally I didn't pay for watermelons, I rather saw few dead ones than started to stock up curry leaves. For watermelons I'd always use super compost: if you are able to waste 1 bucket of it on melons, the extra melons will pay back that 1 bucket and give also few extra ones. Allontments can he planted at the same places as herbs and watermelons take 75 mins to grow (herbs 80 mins), so they are easy to farm with herbs. Magic secateurs also work with allontment, so you'll get 1-3 watermelons more per patch with them.

A fully grown nasturtium helps your watermelons to survive. The nasturtium must be fully grown, means that you must be able to pick it up. This means you can't use that flower patch to grow anything, but flowers area really bad xp anyways :P

Fruit trees:

Low lvl fruits trees aren't that great xp, but the higher level you get, the more xp and the better fruits you'll get. It takes over 14 hours for them to grow, so I wouldn't waste my money on low lvl (apple, banana, orange or curry) trees. If I got some from nests, I'd plant them. At lvl 51 you can start growing pineapples. These aren't too great xp yet, but pineapples can be used for making super composts.

For high lvl farmers palm trees are pretty handy way to make xp. They give over 10k xp per seed, the farmer wants only 15 papayas to watch after them (worth paying every time) and you can plant 4 palm trees same time. Coconuts are also used on farming, so they can be sold 2-3k each.

Trees:

If you're rich and you want fast farming xp, go for trees. If you don't want to waste money, stay away from them. They are the fastest xp, but also the most expensive ones. If you buy your seeds, you will always end up losing money, no matter what.

Low lvl trees aren't that fast xp yet, but few acorns (oaks) won't cost a lot and they give little extra xp. Personally I grew acorns, willows and maples when I got either free or extra-cheap seeds, but didn't really look for deals.

When you're planting trees, high woodcutting level is definately worth it: I was 82 (later got 83 just by replanting magics I had grown) and it could take me even up to 5mins just to cut one magic tree. I can't imagine how long would it take to cut one with just 75 woodcutting.

To plant trees, put the seed on a plant pot (remember to use garden trowel!) and water it. Soon it becomes a tree sappling and it's ready to be planted. To plant a new tree to the patch, first cut the old one (don't forget your hatchet) and then dig up its roots with your spade. These roots can be used on few things; from yew roots you can make antipoison+ potion and from magic roots you can make a string for a nature amulet.

I personally blew over 40 million on magic trees. They were really expensive, roots are/were (still some left :P ) painful to sell and yet they were so great xp that it was almost addictive. Some people told me to cut their logs so I could get the money back that way; I'll tell you it's not worth it. As there's only 1 tree per patch, it isn't really worth it to waste your time on it. If I wanted to get magic logs, I'd went for a place with many magics at the same place.

You can pay for farmers to watch after you tree. However, it's not worth it to pay for magic trees. It costs 25 coconuts and they can be sold 2-3k each. This means it costs 50-75k to make sure 1 tree doesn't die. As like every 10th magic or so dies, it's definately not worth it. Just use a super compost and you should be fine.

Last chapter proved mathematically:

25 coconuts 2k per = 50k

2 trees = 100k

3 trees = 150k

4 = 150k

1 magic tree = 160-180k

Now look at those items. It would be worth it to pay for a magic tree if it died with the odds of 25%. Well, I tell you it doesn't. I've planted way over 100 magic trees, probably closer to 250, and I can guarantee the odds to kill a magic tree are around 8-10%.

You can pay the "farmer slave" (my own term :P ) 200gp to make him dig up the roots of the tree you've grown. This way you get rid of the tree faster than by chopping it, but you won't get the roots. It's up to you do you want to get loads of low lvl tree roots to your bank or not, I've personally taken them as I don't know if they get real use in future. At the moment they are pretty useless, however. Magic roots are the thing that you should dig up yourself if you just can cut magics.

Bushes:

Not too great xp and the cash isn't that good either. I wouldn't pay for bush seeds, but if I got some extra whiteberry or poison ivy seeds, I'd plant them for the extra 500-1k xp and few berries :P. You can pay for them, but even with a normal compost they didn't seem to die too often. They are located at bad places far away from herb&allontment patches, so basically they are just waste of time.

Specials:

A bit same words as for bushes. Not too good money and not worth paying. Cactus spines can be sold like 2k each, but every cactus gives only 3 seeds and it takes some hours for them to respawn, so you can't really talk about good money.

Calquats are only specials worth growing. They give really nice xp and the seeds are only like 40-60k each. However, it takes something like 20 hours for them to grow, you can't pay for farmers to look after them (seemed to me they died more often than magic trees) and there's only 1 patch for them. They are good extra xp, but not the main xp source.

Super Compost:

Definately worth using with on calquats, herbs, watermelons and trees (if you don't pay for the farmer). With super compost you get more water melons, more herbs and your plants die less often.

To make super compost, put 15 high lvl farming productions to the compost bin. Personally I'd use some of the following:

* watermelons

* Jangerberries (picked up from an ogre islan east of Yanille)

* Pineapples (picked up from karamja of grown alone)

* Papayas (self grown)

* Toadflax herbs

* Coconut shells (break a coconut with a hammer, use the milk with an empty vial and there you go; coconut milk filled vial and coconut shell.)

They can be bought from other people (sell for like 1k each) so if you don't feel like making your own, buy them. Only an idiot would use normal compost instead of super when he's growing herbs, trees or watermelons.

tips:

* Magic secateurs. Do fairy tale part 1 to get them. The extra herbs and watermelons are definately worth carrying these magical things.

* Don't carry any extra weight with you while farming. You have to run from spot to spot so extra energy won't hurt you.

* If you see someone selling a bulk amount of herb seeds, buy them. You most likely will meet people selling herb seeds in amounts less than 10, so it helps a lot to buy 100+ at once. I personally bought even seeds I couldn't plant and paid huge extra price for big amounts as it saved hours of my own time.

* While your productions are growing, go to do something else. I personally studied or made more money while my things were growing.

* If you got multiple (fruit) trees, first plant the low lvl ones and later the high lvl ones. This way you will end up having the high lvl trees planted. Usually their fruits are worth more in both cash and xp than the ones gotten from low lvl trees.

Farming Pie:

Cooking meet farming :P Now lvl 34+ cooks can make their own garden pies and temporary boost their (or someone else's if the pies was sold ;) ) farming by 3 levels.

To make a garden pie, get flour, jug of water, pie dish, tomato, onion and cabbage. First use the jug of water with flours and make pasty dough. Put it to the dish and add other incredients. After that just cook it and gain 128 xp from cooking it. Best places to make pies are Yanille cooking store, Lumby basement (if you have done recipe of disaster) or probably cooking guild. The pie has 2 bites, both bites giving a temporary rise of 3 farming levels.

Using garden pies is really helpful, specially with trees or fruit trees. For herbs, you can most likely farm all 4 patches with 1 pie, depending how fast you are. You need a single level just to plant them, not to pick them up. That means that a lvl 72 farmer needs a pie to plant a magic tree, but after it has grown, he doesn't need a pie to check its health.

My Arm's big adventure:

So, this weirdly named troll needs your help. The quest isn't too hard (check Tip.It quest guide if you need help) but the reward is godlike. The extra xp from reward is ok, but the big thing is a patch which is protected; no dead herbs here.

Of course it's worth it to use supercompost as it gives more herbs. I've been reported that this patch might give more herbs than normal patches, but I can't guarantee that. At the moment he highest amount I've gotten is 15.

I personally plant snapdragons here instead of the normal dwarf weeds. They give so nice extra cash and there's no chances to die for them. That's like an extra 300-500k per day.

Summary:

If you want the maximal money, grow herbs and make your own super compost. If you want maximal xp, grow herbs, watermelons, trees, fruit trees and calquats. The faster xp you want, the more it costs.

For the best money, grow ranarrs. They are rather low lvl herbs so there's a lot of them being sold, there's huge demand for ranarrs/pray pots so they are easy to sell and you don't need to work long to be able to grow them. For higher level farmers, snapdragons are also really good money. The profit is pretty much the same as from ranarrs and they give more xp, but they are also a bit harder to buy as there's less of them being dropped by monsters.

Statistics:

At the moment after hundreds of herb seeds grown and every patch counted, I've seen where the average approximately is. With super compost and magic secateurs the average amount of herbs per seed is a bit (really minimally) under 7.

Little calculations:

6 ranarrs per seed = 36-42k per seed. At 20k per seed that's pretty ok cash for few mins of working.

4 Magic trees growing while you sleep = ~55k xp at morning when you wake up. Also lost like 500-800k gp there.

6 torstols from 1 seed = 1350 xp.

Playing 24 hours nonstop and picking up&planting new ranarrs with a perfect rhytm and getting an average of 6 herbs per seed = 432 herbs per day and 1296k profit if you sold the herbs 6.5k each and paid 21k per seed. Note: this calculation has been done with 4 patches, not 5!

How to get seeds?

This quest has been asked many times. They way to get the seeds depends on your own motives: do you like training melee skills? Are you willing to spend money? Are you willing to spend more money than can be rationally imagined?

Collecting from monsters:

Many monsters do drop seeds, but some are better for collecting them than others. Here's a short list of monsters which are ok for collecting seeds. I've tested these places and they work for sure, but if you got succestions, be my quest and share your tips :P

Dagannoths = These beasties drop quite often good seeds. To kill them, you gotta start the Horror from the Deep quest. Cannoning them gives great ranged xp too and gets you even more seeds. Multicombat area with many monsters, so good def is recommended.

Ogres = King Lathas training area has the best place for these to be killed. There's many of them and they are there waiting for your arrows to come. The only bad thing is that you can't melee them in that place. However, why wouldn't you give a shot and train other combat skills too? :P

Aberrant Specters = One of the best monsters in the whole game if you want herbs or seeds. They hit pretty hard tho, even at lvl 125 I prefer using prayer against them. Don't forget your nosepeg! You need to have high slayer level to kill these babies.

Nechryaels = Lvl 80 slayer needed but pretty ok seed drops. Also drop rune boots which can be sold for 180-200k. They also got a safe spot for archers.

Trolls = Pretty lovely foes and also drop seeds. Not a bad thing idea to kill them for seeds if you have too low slayer for aberrants.

I bet some of you have realised at this point that slayer is a good skill to be trained if you want seeds. Many slayer monsters drop seeds and for example all the monsters listed above are task monsters. If you want any kind of info about slayer, read Axe Man Jack's ultimate guide:

http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=595295

Managing thy kingdom:

Before starting this, read these great guides:

http://tip.it/runescape/index.php?page= ... ingdom.htm

http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=568626

This is a good way to get cheap tree/fruit tree seeds. Minus things are that you gotta do some quests, you will also get a lot of pretty useless low level seeds and you get seeds when your slaves have them, not when you want them.

The seed ratio is same as it would be with nests gotten from cutting your own trees. This means that you gotta search tens, maybe hundreds of nests to get one precious magic seed.

Buying:

This is the fastest way to get seeds. However, there are many different ways to buy them.

Buying in game: Seers bank is one of the best spots to buy seeds in game. It can be a lot cheaper to buy them in game than from forums. The difference might be even up to 5-10k on some herb seeds. The problem is that you usually get only few seeds at once. Because of this, buying hundreds of seeds is painful. Switching servers every now and then is good as the bank is pretty full of people who don't move from it, meaning that the potential sellers gets lower after every trade you do. It's good to choce a server which isn't too packed; there's less merchanters stealing your deals.

Buying from forums: A lot faster than buying in game and you can get big or even huge amounts at once. The bad thing is that there's also other people buying them. Because of this, you might lose trades to other people and prices are higher than in game. Also true bargains are rare.

Buying at woodcutting spots: It's not a bad idea to carry some cash with you while you're cutting yews. Other cutters also get nests and some of them want to sell their seeds as fast as possible. This way you can find some true bargains.

Stealing from the master farmers:

If you want a lot of useless low lvl junk seeds, this is your way to get them. If you want some real seeds with an actual use, avoid master farmers. Horrible way to get seeds.

Nice guide, I'll probably use it when I feel like farming. BTW, it's Allotment, not allontment, although it's probably a typo :wink:

Very good guide. Get Leesters to put it in his archive.

nice guide!

Nice quide, well layed out and easy to understand. Should be archived.

You forgot about flowers and scarecrows protecting allotments.

Plant one in the centre and dont remove it (although you miss out on some xp there). I never had a diseased watermelon or sweetcorn afterwards (with super compost). And I harvested 2000+ sweetcorns and lots of watermelons.

Sweetcorns are decent cooking xp too.

You forgot about flowers and scarecrows protecting allotments.

Never used them, that's why I didn't talk about them :P If you want to write a short chapter about them, I'll edit it to the guide and give you the credit. Personally I don't like sweetcorns as they are like half less xp than watermelons :P

You can get Ranaar seeds easily at 15K each.

You can get Ranaar seeds easily at 15K each.

Depends do you buy 1-2 seeds at a time in game or 20-100 seeds at once from boards. Only random newbs sell for cheaper than 20k at boards. Anyways if you got 20+ ranarr seeds, I'll more than happily pay you 18k per as they are so easy for you to get at 15k each ;)

Scarecrows- A huge waste of time and watermelons

Limpwurt roots grow fully about twice per watermelon i grow so they are quite useful. Also limpwurt roots can be sold 1k each on forums if you sell for bulk amounts. Yet not very exp

This is not a guide or chapter just some small information :P

snapdragon seeds are cheaper to buy and sell for more than ranarr, they also give more farming and herblore exp

Nice guide. I'm not much of a farmer but this looks very well thought out. Good work! I may even try some of this when I farm. :D

If you're out of limpwurt seeds (or watermelons/strawberries, for that matter), growing sweetcorn (and planting a scarecrow) isn't a bad way to go. The cooking xp is pretty good, and they can be used for the tuna and corn baked potatoes if you feel like making them.

Strawberries are also a good alternative/backup to watermelons, as baskets of strawberries are 5 * 6 = 30 hp of food per slot, excellent for Fight Caves or long stretches of thieving/agility. Not very good for pking. :P

I don't farm for xp anymore, of course, since I reached 85. If and when Jagex adds a level 90-95 layer to Farming the same way they have for other skills, I'll change my mind, but in the meanwhile I'm content to find other efficiencies for farming.

Killing the Giant Mole for claws and skins, and exchanging for nests, is a decent way to get more higher-level allotment seeds and limpwurt seeds if you don't want to be bothered paying for them.

D

Scarecrows- A huge waste of time and watermelons

 

 

 

Limpwurt roots grow fully about twice per watermelon i grow so they are quite useful. Also limpwurt roots can be sold 1k each on forums if you sell for bulk amounts. Yet not very exp

 

 

 

 

 

This is not a guide or chapter just some small information :P

Scarecrows and flowers have to be setup once, and will have its positive effect from there on with no attention needed.

I used sweetcorn as these seeds are a lot cheaper to get than watermelon seeds. The bulk of my farming xp I got from the tons of high level seeds I got from slayer training.

Sweetcorn has 2 other advantages:

1) you can get cooking xp from cooking them

2) they are needed for tuna potato, which I`m making in large amounts now.

over a period ov 200 ranarrs, with deaths as 0, i averages 6.7 ranarrs, but i averaged over 100 snapdragons 7.8, so take that for what its worth

ill get ya my sweetcorn average when im done my 1300 seeds;P

Nice guide there.

I don't have a lot of cash to buy magic seeds, so I guess I just have to level up the slow and painful way :(

I have a question: you said Coconuts can be sold for 2-3k each. I have been trying to sell mine for a long time (at 2k each) without much success. I think I have around 2k of them. Do you know where I can sell them?

Another thing you can add to your guide: picking fruits. When a player have a number of fruit seeds, it is worth planting them from the lowest level (apple) to highest level (palm) and leave the palm tree till he/she gets more seeds.

When he is doing the farming round, he can pick the fruits and calquat as well. This is worth about 1.4k xp per round. Assuming 3-4 rounds a day, that is 5k xp.

I use the following routes, which can be implemented into your farming route:

Farm in Catherby, then pick the fruits there

Teleport to Ardougne, farm there

Take a boat to Brimhaven, pick fruits and calquats and get some pineapples as well, back to Ardougne east bank

Go south west from Ardougne east bank, pick the bushes there then to the fruits west of tree Gnome maze

Talk to the gnome at the maze entrance to get there then spirit tree teleport to Gnome Stronghold for the fruits there

It is an essential part of a poor man leveling up farming if he doesn't have millions to spend.

over a period ov 200 ranarrs, with deaths as 0, i averages 6.7 ranarrs, but i averaged over 100 snapdragons 7.8, so take that for what its worth

I managed to get like 6.5 average per kwuarm for my first 500 seeds, for the another 500 I got like 5.9 :\. For lantadymes I managed to get over 7, tho. Didn't want to put too high averages there ;)

Personally I don't like that mole. Far too many low lvl seeds from it. I rather do something to earn money than waste my time on that getting more potatos :P

How much are snapdragon seeds on the market?

How much are snapdragon herbs on the market?

I have a question: you said Coconuts can be sold for 2-3k each. I have been trying to sell mine for a long time (at 2k each) without much success. I think I have around 2k of them. Do you know where I can sell them?

Official boards. Once in awhile there's someone buying them. Of course they aren't easy to sell, but still pretty nice money once you find someone who's interested in them :P

Another thing you can add to your guide: picking fruits. When a player have a number of fruit seeds, it is worth planting them from the lowest level (apple) to highest level (palm) and leave the palm tree till he/she gets more seeds.

Thought it would be part of common sense to first plant low lvl trees, but oh well :P I'll add that part to the guide.

When he is doing the farming round, he can pick the fruits and calquat as well. This is worth about 1.4k xp per round. Assuming 3-4 rounds a day, that is 5k xp.

Picking up a calquat fruit gives you 48,5xp and from a full calquat tree, you'll get a total of 291xp. Not really worth the trip to the Brimhaven jungle IMO.

Nice guide! It's basically what I do...

One mistake, Scarecrows only protect Sweetcorn. If you want to protect Watermelons, use Nasteriums. Only a fully grown Nasterium will work so plant and grow one before planting a single watermelon seed. (make sure you don't pick it!) I get almost 100% success with them and supercompost.

To make watermelons, put 15 high lvl farming productions to the compost bin. Personally I'd use some of the following:

To make Super Compost :roll: :roll: :roll:

Good Guide, I grow ranaars and it pays off well

For max money, you can sell ranaar for 7k each, high lvl herbalores will buy them. I buy the seeds 15k each, sometimes 10+, but yeh I understand 100+ for like 20k each.

Once again, very nice guide, help clear up some questions I had, mainly about bushes and money. Though I find that the scepteurs have like a love hate relationship with me. For like 3 harvests, I'll only get 5-6 ranaar a patch, and yet then when I do another 3 harvests without them I get more 6-7 ranaars per patch. Yes, my high of like 12 ranaars has been with the scepteurs, but I don't always trust them :?

thats a pretty extensive guide there hohto, keep up the good work!

Ok, fixed few typos (There's probably still loads of them :P), changed info a bit on watermelons (a mistake there, brains weren't working) and added a part of farming (a.k.a. garden) pies.

Wow, very nice guide, I might actually consider leveling farming now :shock: