Kama

Nice guide. I totally forgot about the bonus to the salve ammy for this. I might as well head off and complete it.

Nice guide gree. I actually agree a bit with paying for some of the low trees. There is no reason not to pay for some of the actually. Might be interesting tocombine the two guides and call it something like: "To Pay, or Not to Pay, that is the Farmer's Question!"

Interesting little guide you have here Gree. We might agree a bit on payments actually. I do use apples from the RFD chest to pay for my willow trees, but the return on time for the higher level trees is much better so I don't plant too many low level trees any more. My guide really focuses on the items that are player made commodities. Anything sold in stores is relatively reasonable to use as a payment actually. One thing that I did think needed mentioning is that most farmers should have a stock of tomatoes, oranges, and strawberries from farming them, so no real need to buy them in shops. Mind adding a link to my guide within yours? I will add yours as a way to get low tree payments. Lastly, A quick calculation would put about 1,500 bananas an hour as a more reasonable collection rate, and please for the sake of the rest of us, do not give away the secret of the banana.

Re-read the guide. It is posted correctly there. It is the difference between standing over 1 plot and watching it grow or power farming 5 plots. I have months of data that averages out to about 7 herbs per plot, so I will use that in this example. Standing over ONE plot to watch it grow will give you a 100% yield, 100% of 7=7 herbs. In my guide I wrote that by power farming you gain 93% of 35 herbs (or 93% of 5 plots as my post should say). Basically it boils down to this: You can get a higher return on your herb yield per seed by watching over herbs. The reason you shouldn't do this is because you can get more herbs (and XP) per hour by power farming. Using ranars as a classic example, it would look like this: Watching over Round 1: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Profit: 24,000 (49,000-25,000) Round 2: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Cumulative profit: 48,000 (24,000+49,000-25,000) Round 3: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Cumulative profit: 72,000 (48,000+49,000-25,000) All rounds are the same here actually By the end of round 3 you have spent 4.5 hours and have grown and sold a total of 21 herbs. The seeds cost a total of 75,000, and you sold them for 174,000, leaving a profit of 72,000 over 4.5 hours of in game time. Power Farming Round 1: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Profit: 102,850 (227,850-125,000) Round 2: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Cumulative profit: 205,700gp (102,850+227,850-125,000) Round 3: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Cumulative profit: 308,550gp (205,700+227,850-125,000) At the end of 4.5 hours you have spent 4.5 hours and have grown and sold a total of 97.65 herbs. The seeds cost a total of 375,000, and you sold them for 683,550gp, leaving a profit of 308,550. You can hit all 5 plots in 6 or 7 minutes as well, so power farming them only really takes 18 minutes of in game time for these results. Power farming lowers your ROI, but increases your profits.

ID - I think you are missing the main point of my guide here. Growing a tree is not an active event at all. Plant, go off to do something else. Unlike nat running, you don't even have to be logged in to do it. From any bank it takes all of 60 seconds to get to any of the tree plots, so no real waist of time with planting either. The real waist of time would be in trying to buy coconuts or spines. Everyone wants them, no one sells them.

Have you ever actually tried that? It is terrible xp and they drop very few vials. They do drop them, but not in any decent quantity at all. That ranting aside, they might be good if you are only a casual herbie trainer, nah. Go buy out the Ardo shop if yu dont need that many at once. It is much faster.

Thanks Cheese! And thanks again for the post on my enchanted lyre guide. I do have statistical data on all of my farming, but it is a matter of time to get it all into a guide. The few sentances on the herb patches could easily fill an entire guide as well. It is one of the places that RS can really teach people about real life actually. The vast majority sadly would take 100% of 7 herbs over 93% of 35 herbs. Having another guide I worked hard to complete locked really did dampen my guide writing spirits though. If you see my bucket guide around feel free to PM pokemama about locking it for no good reason.

Got magic trees updated just now. I will have more time to get the rest done in a bit.

Thanks for the input guys. I got the URL updated. Kin - Thanks for the help. I had explained this a ton of times as well so I finally wrote this guide. I killed many a unicorn there as well until the Tower of Life came out. That place rocks now. You can make quite a bit selling the horns, or more selling Super Antipoisons, as Irits are all over and cheap.

Used to be: The Economic Farmer Payment Guide (or, why you shouldn't pay for them) Now: DON'T Pay For your Trees, but DO Power Farm I am an avid farmer, and have picked up a few tips over the levels. By far the best tip I heard was to stop making farmer payments. When I first started, I worked hard to pay for everything. If you are reading this then I am sure you know the feeling of rushing around for that last apple, or conjuring bones to bananas for that last basket of bananas. Saving money by letting crops die might seem counter intuitive, but follow along and allow me to change your mind. TOC 1. The Basis 2. Hard Numbers 2.1 Yews 2.2 Magics 2.3 Pineapples 2.4 Apples 3. The Exceptions 3.1 - Curry 3.2 - Papaya 3.3 - Spirit Trees 4. Why you should Power Farm 5. Closing Thoughts 6. FAQ 7. Edits 1. The Basis The basis behind this way of thinking is that when you pay a farmer to watch your trees, you end up paying far more than the value of the tree seed itself, because most trees would actually live. The low rate of death negates any benefit to making that payment in the first place. You might be thinking, "wait, that yew cost me 80k, and I have these cactus spines in my bank, it's free isn't it?". That is true to an extent, but you could also sell those cactus spines for 3k each on the various forums. The cost of one payment is ten cactus spines, or about 30,000gp. True it is less than the cost of a yew seed, but what if you didn't pay the farmer and your tree lived? In game I am averaging one death every ten trees. I am saving ten payments of 100 spines worth 300,000gp by sacrificing one 80,000gp yew seed. Sure there are exceptions to this rule, but if you are working on high level farming, then they really don't come into play. This guide will primarily focus on paying for trees. I might make a guide about allotments (or add them in here), but they are more straight foreward than trees are, and much cheaper to protect. This also holds true for herbs, but in a slightly different way, in that time is money. By power-farming them, and letting a few die, you will actually make more money in the long run because of higher volume. If you stand over a plot, you are 100% assured of 7 herbs. If you power farm five plots, your yield drops to about 93% (I average one death every 15 seeds). Would you rather have 100% of 7 or 93% of 35 over the same time period? 2. Hard Numbers Even if you average more deaths than I do (you shouldn't as they are all based on the same thing), here are some graphs I made up to illustrate my point. 2.1 Yews In this first case, you can clearly see that it costs you more to pay for trees than you would save by selling the payment and just buying more seeds. The break even point here is 3.75 deaths per 10 yews. The numbers used here were 80,000gp as the cost of a yew seed and 3,000gp per spine. 2.2 Magics Magic trees might seem to big a big loss if they die, but in reality, they are the worst tree to pay for in the game. The break even point here is 4 deaths in evey 10 seeds planted! I calculated the costs based on 125k for the seed, and 2,000 per coconut. You would have to kill 5 Magics of every 10 to actually make money by paying for them. With magics the roots are also valuable and sell for 50k, and I added that into the cost of the seed. Seed cost - Root cost = Actual seed cost 175,000gp - 50,000gp = 125,000gp The cost of 25 coconuts is 50,000gp Does that paint a clearer picture? 2.3 Pineapple Trees: Here again, you can clearly make a much better profit for selling your watermelosns for 800gp each, and even more than that by making them into super compost and selling that for 1k each. With pineapples, you can kill off four in ten seeds and still come out ahead. I used 20,000gp for the cost of the pineapple seeds and 800gp each as the value of the payment, or ten watermelons. 2.4 Apple Trees: This benefit is also some times not monitary, such as in the case of apple trees. The payment there is ten raw sweet corn. By making that payment you trade off either 10,000 cooking XP or 50,000gp every ten trees. No graph for this one because it should be obvious. Raw sweet corn has much better uses than farmer payments. Tuna Corn Potatoes FTW! 3. The Exceptions: 3.1 Curry Trees: It takes almost no time to buy 20 baskets, and glory to karamja and collect enough bananas at the plantation for the payments on 4 trees. Also, if you only need a few more bananas, you can finally put the bones to bananas spell to good use. Kill a man and make his bones into bananas. Trust me here, you will feel good making use of that spell for once. 3.2 Papaya Trees: With a straight economic comparison like the ones above, you do actually lose money when paying for these trees, but pineapples are very easy to get. Both Catherby and Karamja plots have a charter ship next door so you can just buy the payments when you need them. 3.3 Spirit Trees: This one really is a no brainer. The payment is very cheap at: 5 Monkey nuts, 1 Monkey bar, and 1 Ground suqah tooth. These items do however require that you have a few quests completed. 4.0 Why you Should Power Farm When I say Power Farm, I mean hitting all patches to at least plant a herb. I also recomend Planting the allotments as well. They are easy to take care of and at the least, you can make compost every trip from the produce. Here are my calculations for farming herbs. My average is 93% survival rate, so the basic premise is that you are better off having 93% of the produce from 5 herb patches over 100% of 1 herb patch. By doing this you gain an exponential return on herb yields. All Plots can be farmed in 6-8 minutes, so even if you want to stand over one to watch it, taking a short break every 90 (some times as little as 75) minutes is well worth the effort. Here are the calculations after just 3 rounds: Watching over Round 1: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Profit: 24,000 (49,000-25,000) Round 2: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Cumulative profit: 48,000 (24,000+49,000-25,000) Round 3: Plant 1 herb 90 minutes later - 7 herbs Sell for - 49,000gp Cumulative profit: 72,000 (48,000+49,000-25,000) All rounds are the same here actually By the end of round 3 you have spent 4.5 hours and have grown and sold a total of 21 herbs. The seeds cost a total of 75,000, and you sold them for 174,000, leaving a profit of 72,000 over 4.5 hours of in game time. Power Farming Round 1: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Profit: 102,850 (227,850-125,000) Round 2: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Cumulative profit: 205,700gp (102,850+227,850-125,000) Round 3: Plant 5 herbs 90 minutes later - 32.55 herbs Sell for - 227,850gp Cumulative profit: 308,550gp (205,700+227,850-125,000) At the end of 4.5 hours you have spent 4.5 hours and have grown and sold a total of 97.65 herbs. The seeds cost a total of 375,000, and you sold them for 683,550gp, leaving a profit of 308,550. You can hit all 5 plots in 6 or 7 minutes as well, so power farming them only really takes less than 18 minutes of in game time for these results. 5.0 Closing thoughts I have left out some trees from my guide. Those should pretty much be no-brainers though. With a high farming level you should have more than enough product to pay for the other trees, so you might as well. Last I checked tomatoes were nearly worthless. I am slowly updating this guide as I get more time to add figures and back up my position on not paying farmer payments. 6.0 FAQ Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: 7.0 Edits/Credits

Crypto - Nice guide, but here is a thought about farmer payments. On my way to 77 farming, I did a bit of calculating and found that my trees die about 1 in 10 times. That holds for both yew and mage trees. A cost/benefit analysys will show you paying for your trees is a money losing option. Yew Trees: 10 tree payments is 100 spines. According to the tipit price guide they sell for 3-4k EACH! That means you can let one in ten trees die and lose out on the 55-65k value of the seed, but save 300,000 to 400,000 every ten trees. Magic Trees: Magics are even worse at 25 coconuts each. It takes 250 coconuts to pay for 10 trees. Coconuts sell for 2-5k. That is a minimum value of 500,000gp to pay for 10 magics, and at the max of 5k each you are giving away 1.25mil, enough to break even, even if 10 out of 10 trees die. Even with kingdom Manamement on Maples 100% you don't get many yews or mages, so you can use the money saved to buy more high xp yielding seeds. If you had the payment ready anyway, then sell it buy more seeds. I am not a 'tree killer' and I do feel bad for my poor trees when they die, but looking at farming economically, not paying the farmers is the logical choice.

Mind if I copy that pic to my lyre guide? (With full credit and a link given of course)

Lava - On my way to 77 farming I have farmed 13 Snapdragons twice now, and 12 ranars once. All others were less than 12 herbs per seed. I always use super compost and magic secaturs. On a usual day I can get in 2 to 3 rounds of farming just the herb plots. The 13 Snaps were from the Trollweis garden the first time, and the Ardo gardent he next. The Ranars were from the Catherby plot. I do graph all of my farming yields to track my profits per seed.

Thanks Cheese! I have never been in the Warriors Guild, so I wouldn't ahve known about it otherwise. I will get it added today.

Why thank you moon. Corrections noted, but not enough to get a mention in the credits.

Great update, and thanks for the plug. I was at the tipit event last weekend in F2P and even at lvl 72, I love pizzas. One inventory slot and 18 hp healed. Also feel free to take pot shots at my guides (I got the bucket guide up today): The Bucket Guide The Enchanted Lyre Guide Either way, let me know what you thought.

I was going to leave it alone, but there are some people who asked me about how to make lyres, so here is a bump for them.

Yep there is one. You can get the map piece back as well after completing the quest. The spawn is very slow thoguh, so bring along some alchables and high alch away until you have a full inventory of belladonna. Ouch here man. Bad suggestion. Molten sells for 1k each. That will buy you 5 vials per molten. making vials is only 35xp per molten as well, so a pretty poor use of training time.

Hey again Lave. I hit 76 herblore yesterday and have a few more tips I though would help your guide a bit. At my current level it is becoming seriously hard to get a constant stock of vials for my potions. With that in mind I have been working out various ways to get a large supply at once. Here are a few pointers on gathering vials: 1. The Fastest Method: Catherby farming shop. You mention this one, but you missed a large part. You can empty the vials on the way to the sink (between the shop and the bank) and then fill them there. This averages 27 WFV every 72 seconds. 2. Entrana herblore Shop. Take the hot air balloon to Entrana buy vials and fill them at the sink in the shop, then duel ring back to CW. This averages 27 WFV every 75 seconds. The cost is actually cheaper than using the catherby shop method because vials are less expensive then plant cure. (Entrana vials cost 810gp less per trip, more than compensating for the duel ring purchase). You can also yse a yew to get back to CW, but that will cost you 300 per trip, about the same as a duel ring (300 x 8 trips is 2,400), and the added time is not worth it. 3. Buying Attack potions. I have purchased literally 3,000 attack pots for 200gp each. This is the same price, or cheaper than WFV on the market. Just empty and fill in the Lumby basement like you mentioned. 4. Another free but slow way is to get on world 18 edge and just pick them up. The PKers drop them all over. Part 2 - Seconds: 1. Newt Eyes: You can get these from the Entrana shop using the above method as well. It is also faster than the 2 methods you mentioned. 2. Unicorn Horns. You made a mistake on your Unicow drops. They drop green sachels, not Addy ones(although they might look a bit addyish). They have not sold for over 500gp since the first week of the Tower of Life Quest, and should be dropped, as they dont stack in your bank. (you mention a poor market for tea flasks as well, but they are actually untradable) The tower of life 'beats the pants off' the wildy collection method. Bring a charged glory and tele to Edgeville, bank then use the Fairy Rings, code DJP, to get right back to the tower. You can even kill a few cows near the Zanaris ring if you are running low on hides. 3. White Berries. The wildy spawn is great. Just bring boots or lightness and a glory. You can glory tele to Edge from lvl 30, so it is actually quicker then collecting in the Elven lands. Also, make sure to use a crowded world. The spawn rate is significantly faster. These days there are also a lot more green drag killers out in lvl 40 wildy, so you are pretty much safe from pkers. They see you with nothing or a drag slayer with loot, and they go after them. Also, if you aren't skulled, you keep your glory, and can run back to pick up your white berries. PKers leave them. Hope this helped.

Nice guide. If you have any more questions about using the Enchanted Lyre, I have a guide on the topic up here: My Enchanted Lyre Guide

Zaff's staff shop is the middle in price. Lunar shop is the highest and the Mage Guild is the cheapest. All 3 shops opnly stock 5 at a time though, so you will have to hop servers. Much easier to do that now BTW. I did thousands of staffs before the easy hopping. One thing to gain faster XP and gp is to trade battle staffs + 1k for elemental staffs. It is win-win. They alch it for 9300, making 1300, and you get staffs faster, and cash for the enchanged orb.

You cant beat Flesh crawlers for lower levels. They drop am amazing number of herbs and fires.

They arent tradable.

Not much research went into this guide. You miss teaks completely. Grab a stop watch and time an inventory of teaks, they are by far the fastest WC XP per hour, and they are very easy to burn in the pen. For that matter Oaks are faster WC XP then even willows. Dont believe me? Try it for yourself. Cutting magics for 99 WS is an insane waiste of time. over 1000 inventories of magics takes well over 300 hours. Complete waist of time.

Nice suggestion. Re-read my post above. Crafting Minds is one of the **** I mean most in effecient things in the game. It is a waist of time, resources, and XP. And it is very cleat to those who spend 5 minutes confirming that fact.