qeltar

Cleaning herbs is very hit or miss. You need to be at the GE and actively checking current prices (by buying and selling herbs) to see if you can make a profit at any given time. Do small batches, especially at the start.

And obviously if there was a "Chaos Druid Plunder" game, we wouldn't be having this discussion right now. :) But this is part of why Pyramid Plunder is widely viewed as having cheapened Thieving -- it gives too much XP too easily with little or no cost (other than lost profit from other Thieving activities.) But there is no such option for Herblore, so we do have to make choices. Apologies, that was a bad example to use. I forgot that Zammy mixes are one of the potions where I don't use the GE price. Runewiki always uses GE prices (which I don't agree with, because the GE prices are nonsense for many potions). So we get different values. Still, there are other examples. Anyway, my point is not that slower and cheaper options are better, just that they do exist, and they make sense for those who view Herblore as an overwhelming hugely expensive skill.

Again, players do have a choice about whether to do faster or slower methods. And faster methods usually lose more money, specifically *because* they are faster methods. But the point is that this is, in fact, a choice. Would I recommend anyone make barbarian potions or clean herbs for hours on end? Of course not -- in fact, I recommend against it. But there's nothing wrong with doing it for a half hour or an hour a day, and in a few weeks you can get levels and lose nearly nothing in the process. Part of the problem with Herblore is that the mere possibility of buying levels makes everyone think that doing anything *but* buying the levels is "too slow". As just one example... making Zamorak brew mixes is a consistent 60k+ per hour at usually minimal loss or even a profit. Would anyone complain about 60k per hour in most other skills? Of course not. But in Herblore it's considered "too slow".

I'm not trying to plug my site here -- I answer dozens of questions here every week without any reference to it. But yeah, it takes a lot of time to research this stuff.

You don't need to clean herbs. Knock yourself out. I already know what is possible, because I spent over 100 hours researching, testing and documenting dozens of methods in December. And it *is* possible to get decent (>50k/hr) XP in Herblore without spending millions per hour. You just have to use your brains.

I've mentioned them in many other threads. But there's no magic secret here -- you have to pay attention to the market as it changes and look for products that can be made economically. (Or use a guide like the one available to members on my site.) There are plenty of ways to raise Herblore that are not "slow" compared to other skills -- only "slow" compared to buying the Herblore skill. Even the "slow" methods in Herblore are faster than the fastest methods in some other skills. The problem is that everyone follows the lead of those who are in a big hurry, and then says "Herblore costs zillions of geepees" when it only does so because they are in a hurry. A smart and determined player can probably get from 1 to 99 Herblore in under 150 hours without losing more than a few million or so. But most players aren't...

The constant claims about Herblore costing tens of millions to train to X level is a myth. It can cost a huge fortune to train, or a small fortune, or nearly nothing, or turn a profit -- it all depends on how smart you are, and how much of a hurry you are in. Overloads are IMO overrated. The only place where they are really of any value is against boss monsters, and only because they let you use Sara brews for healing without it hurting your stats (at least, for more than a few seconds).

Actually, it isn't. In fact, it's very disappointing. It may be better for DKing, but for regular dagannoths it provides very little in the way of tangible advantages.

Except of course that you should always use a beast of burden for this, so you'll actually need more.

Exactly. It's a mania, just like ones that have occured in the real world throughout history. (Look up the tulip bulb bubble in Holland in the 17th century, for example.) They are used to circumvent trade restrictions on the GE, but the fact is that at any time Jagex could make them untradeable (like lots of minigame rewards) or make them easier to get. Also, the supply of them is increasing as more players start to do the minigame.

Considering it isn't even better than a whip+defender on regular dagannoths, I doubt it's of any value at waterfiends.

At those levels, if it's money you are after, you're better off doing gathering or service activities that aren't based on skills or combat, but tedious stuff others will pay money to avoid having to do. I just updated my moneymaking guide last night. At your levels I'd start with this low-level method index and see if anything interests you. Good luck!

I guess I still hold out hope that Jagex will one day realize how much of a mess the economy is right now -- and that the current mint cake situation is indicative of that mess -- and deal with it properly. I'd prefer a more holistic redesign of how the GE works, but I can see them taking specific stop-gap measures against merchants and manipulation clans, and deflating the value of mint cakes is a pretty easy way to do it.

Yeah, and so was this one. I guess you're the one who wants to make this thread about me. I don't appreciate the personal attacks, especially when I work very hard to avoid making any myself. The topic here is not me. It is the simple fact that this is no more of an accomplishment than being a couch potato. If it really were some great achievement, you could explain what that is, instead of attacking me.

carl0dublin, if you don't want to make the thread about me, you might want to review your last post, which was entirely about me. ;) I am happy to admit when I am wrong about something. But I have to be *convinced* that I am wrong. Dogpiling and browbeating won't do the trick. Sorry. If you want to persuade me that I'm wrong, it's really simple to do. Explain to me what this person has actually accomplished. Tell us how that the mere act of spending 16,000 hours on an online game is any more of an accomplishment than spending 16,000 hours watching TV. Nobody can seem to do that, and the reason is pretty obvious.

Mint cakes have become a de facto black market currency because of the trade restrictions in the game. (Trade restrictions *always* create black markets. No exceptions.) The problem here is that this is a bad black market item because it has no inherent value. Worse, it is an item whose supply can be changed on a whim by the central government (Jagex). The only reason mint cakes are rare is because of how Gnome Delivery works. Any morning we could wake up and find that mint cakes are now given as rewards 10x as frequently. And in fact, I expect Jagex will do exactly that at some point, or make them available in some other way -- perhaps a way to make them via the Cooking skill. Or, they could just make them untradeable. Why not? Lots of special, low-frequency rewards from minigames are untradeable. And then lots of people will whine and moan, when they have only themselves to blame for this entire fool's venture.

I think you meant days. It's actually about 16,000 hours over five years. So tell me: is 16,000 hours of watching TV over five years also an "achievement"? How about 16,000 hours of smoking weed and lying around in a daze over five years? Is that an "achievement"? I feel pretty confident that if she had refused to give her name to Guinness, it would never have been published.

What exactly is the achievement? Explain it to me. What did she achieve?

Hypocrite? Hardly. I'm not an RS addict who wants to be a celebrity while simultaneously saying others shouldn't. Clearly you have no idea of what is involved in making something like my Moneymaking guide. Yes, it requires a lot of RS play time, but on the order of a few hundred hours over a long period of time. But that's not time spent goofing around -- it is time spent doing rigorous playtesting, which believe me, takes effort. On top of that you can add a few hundred hours of design work, writing, data structure analysis and construction, site query setup, programming, explanation and more. The result is something tangible and useful that can save players collectively tens of thousands of hours of pointless grinding. I do consider that an achievement. Yet still, I don't expect to be considered a hero for it. So where is *this* person's achievement? What did she achieve? Nobody can explain this -- because there's nothing there. She didn't achieve anything, she just racked up a lot of time online. Sorry if people can't deal with the truth, but this record could have been set by a chimp with a macro program. Everyone has the right to think that, and to say it. And you can be sure that for every person who says it here, 100 more are thinking it and don't want to be childishly flamed by people who can't be bothered to look at the issue critically. And if you are talking about ordinary people in the real world, make it 1000 to 1 (or more). Getting in a record book is not always something to be proud of. Ask Manuel Uribe.

Look at the facts - you've played runescape at least once, you're posting on a forum about runescape, and yet you're still telling us how this person has less of a life than you? That makes about as much sense as saying the guy who has two beers while watching NFL every Sunday is the same as the wino sleeping on the sidewalk. How can you possibly treat what people enjoy? Have you ever talked to an addict, be it drugs, smoking, alcohol, gambling or whatever? They ALL say they "enjoy it" and it's not a problem and whatever. Maybe they enjoy being addicted. But they are still addicts. It's not harming you, or anyone else in the whole world, at all! I personally don't care if this person wants to waste 9 hours of Runescape a day forever. Her choice (as long as it isn't affecting others directly). I just don't think she should be rewarded for an "achievement" that is no more of an accomplishment than spending 5 straight years high on a couch all day, or winning the award for eating the most Cheetos while watching TV. There shouldn't be a record for this any more than there should be a record for, as someone else put it, most heroin shots.

You really need to be careful with cleaning herbs. The prices of grimy and clean herbs go up and down constantly, and you can either make money or lose money depending on how patient you are and how well you research the market.

Jard Y Dooku's monster examine guide (somewhere on the forums) will have that information.

If you are taking a long-term view towards Summoning, you should not use ANY blue charms until you are very high level. They are slow to accumulate and you should save them so you get the most XP for each one that you can.

Gathering herbs from MTK makes sense regardless of what other actions you take. You can either use them or sell them, and at the current time, you're going to get over double the money you invest there. The idea that you need tens of millions of gp to train Herblore is a myth. You need that money only to train it *fast*. If you train it at a moderate pace, it is only mildly expensive -- and may even turn you a profit.

Posting things you don't like is not "trolling". My responses are not flaming (unlike yours), and are entirely on topic. If you can't handle reading things you disagree with, put me on ignore.