Methods of Herb Gathering

[TheAncient]

Preface to mods: This post is a bit guide-y, so if you feel it necessary to move to AoW then be my guest. But I think this topic would gain much more if there's open discussion on it.

 

Hey, haven't been on these forums in a while. Been busy with "real life" :P

 

The most recent herblore update is a game-changer for high levels. It's changed herblore from a trivial skill to a must-have. However, herbs are extremely hard to obtain, and that's why herblore remains one of the most expensive skills to train. Because so many people need herbs now, herbs have become even more rare and expensive.

 

If you need your own personal stock of herbs, or if you want to sell herbs for a profit, here are some tips for gathering herbs that I think the general RS community should be more aware of.

 

Note that I haven't tested many of these methods; Ive simply researched them.

 

1) Manage thy Kingdom.

Herbs are now the best option in MtK. I've run herbs for the past few days and I've gotten 250K on average, with 10 workers on herbs. This is a five-fold return (invest 50k, get 250k). Compare this to coal or flax or fishing, which is at best a three-fold return.

 

You get somewhere around 60 herbs or so daily. There are no guams and I believe no marrs; the only low-leveled herbs are harralanders and tarromins.

 

2) Sorceress' Garden

http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Sorceress's_Garden

According to the RS wiki, this minigame can yield 2 herbs a minute. If you assume herbs are an average of 4K each, then you earn 8K a minute, or almost 500K an hour. This is on top of 75K thieving xp per hour as well.

Plus getting there is very convenient, as long as you have the 2008 holiday event broomstick to teleport there.

 

3) Macaw

The macaw is a low leveled herb-gathering familiar. Its scroll has the ability to generate random herbs. Also, it improves the chance of good herb drops. While killing herb droppers (such as aberrant spectres or chaos druids), this may be a good familiar to bring.

The herbcall scroll has some time limitations and is best used while doing something else such as fishing or woodcutting.

 

I have read that killing aberrant spectres for herbs yields nearly 700K per hour, in addition to some trivial combat xp and possibly slayer xp.

 

4) Farming

Farming is even more profitable than before. I also find it one of the most enjoyable skills to train, albeit it's very slow.

 

5) Fist of Guthix gloves

One of the most worthwhile FoG rewards are the herb gloves. These gloves change your herb drops to 50% of a certain herb! There are four herbs gloves to choose from - irit, avantoe, kwuarm, and cadantine. The gloves have different costs (75, 100, 200, and 200 tokens respectively), and have somewhat high herblore requirements to wield. They all degrade after 100 drops of the relevant herb (so 200 herb drops in total)

 

The best gloves are the avantoe gloves. They cost 100 FoG tokens which is relatively reasonable to obtain, if you enjoy FoG. Avantoes are 5K+ each right now.

 

It's best to use these with a frequent herb dropper like chaos druids.

 

Other Herblore Tips:

If you want to be able to make extremes, but are short on cash, don't forget that herblore is a boostable skill!

 

Greenman's ale is a relatively easily obtained beer that boost your herblore by +1. May not sound like much, but at high levels 1 level can cost roughly 20M to train!

 

Brown spicy stews can boost herblore by up to +6. Although, the boost from these items is random, and the +6 boost is rare. Furthemore, spicy stews are very annoying to make, so you want to make as few as possible. Therefore, if you want to use spicy stews train 4 or 5 levels below your target, and rely on only the +4 or +5 boost which is much more common. Also note that spicy stews can temporarily lower your stats as well, so it's advisable to have some method to restore stats. The best option is a leech familiar (~50 summoning required), whose scroll restores damaged stats.

Let me remind you that at level 85+, 4 levels of herblore can cost you 80M or more. So while spicy stews are very annoying to make and use, they can save you lots of money.

 

For more tips on using the spicy stew, refer to tip it's guide or http://runescape.wikia.com/wiki/Spicy_stew.

[Sk8erfreak]

This is a good compilation of useful information. I already do farming + Mtk, but I have never even tried the Sorceress' Garden or the Macaw. The gloves are out for me though since I don't like killing monsters for herbs.

 

This definitely belongs in the guides section of the forum though..

[jettrider]

Manage Thy Kingdom and farming/skilling with a macaw are, in my opinion, the best methods involved in do-it-yourself herblore.

[qeltar]

Good old chaos druids are better than all of the above, except for passive methods like Farming and MTK that can be done in parallel.

 

And if you have the $ to spend, cannoning spectres is best of all.

[TheAncient]

Good old chaos druids are better than all of the above, except for passive methods like Farming and MTK that can be done in parallel.

 

And if you have the $ to spend, cannoning spectres is best of all.

 

FoG gloves and Macaw can be used with chaos druids. Macaw can be switched out to a BoB after you fill your invent.

[Misterknowitall]

Good old chaos druids are better than all of the above, except for passive methods like Farming and MTK that can be done in parallel.

 

And if you have the $ to spend, cannoning spectres is best of all.

I'd rather fight Abberant Spectres though. Chaos Druids tend to get crowded most of the times. Prayer-flashing ftw!

[cowmaster187]

if i remember correctly you dont actually get xp from theiving the herbs in SG. i havent done it in a while and my memory is abit foggy but i am fiarly certain all you get is farming xp

 

other wise i would be there right now. also if you really work at it you can get 4 herbs a min

 

~~~legoman187~~~

[Wachtwoord]

Good old chaos druids are better than all of the above, except for passive methods like Farming and MTK that can be done in parallel.

 

And if you have the $ to spend, cannoning spectres is best of all.

If you have money to spend, you're better off just buying the herbs.

[Misterknowitall]

if i remember correctly you dont actually get xp from theiving the herbs in SG. i havent done it in a while and my memory is abit foggy but i am fiarly certain all you get is farming xp

You are correct.

[qeltar]

Good old chaos druids are better than all of the above, except for passive methods like Farming and MTK that can be done in parallel.

 

And if you have the $ to spend, cannoning spectres is best of all.

If you have money to spend, you're better off just buying the herbs.

Maybe, maybe not. You also get a lot of other drops, and a ton of Ranging XP.

[lagatag]

You dont get thieving xp when you take the herbs from Sorceress Garden

[Squisher_33]

u said garden was 500k/h and 75k thieve xp? you get thieve xp for taking the herbs?

[Cantristenon]

I tried Garden for not too long ago. Getting herbs didn't give thieving xp and herbs I got were mostly low level ones. Maybe I was just unlucky with them but you really shouldn't bother with Garden.

 

 

You forgot some other methods too, for example running sinister keys, doing pest control or Brimhaven agility arena and also the one with Trolls. Not to say that they all would be worthwhile :)

[lordkafei]

You can get them from Brimhaven Agility Dungeon.

 

Assume you can get 60 tickets an hour. That translates to:

 

6 snapdragons or

12 wergali or

20 toadflax

[SanNo1]

I found killing spectres with a macaw great money and training as well. I got about 700k an hour plus a nice amount of strength exp. Banking has become really fast with the slayer rings. Another benefit they potentially have is cannoning wuth profit. It might not be very practical because you have to bank every full load of herbs, but i guess you can leave your cannon as you bank.

 

I got a question regarding the herb gloves since i've never used them: Do they all have the same amount of charges? because avantoe gloves cost half the amount of charges of kwuarm gloves, and avantoe's are only a few gp's cheaper then kwuarms, so those gloves seem to be best for use if the amount of charges is equal?

[warren211]

Don't forget Salarin the Twisted, or whatever his name was.

[miracleman58]

This is from the 11/11/2009 at MTK using 10 on herbs and the rest on fish.

 

Herbs are in lvl order.

 

Bare in mind farmed 800 of the Lants.

 

That was 26m worth of stuff there.

 

:thumbsup:

[qeltar]

Don't forget Salarin the Twisted, or whatever his name was.

Uh, yeah, forget him.. not really worth it, IMO. You're better off buying keys and running them.

 

As for Sorceress's Gardnen.. if there's a more annoying and less productive way of getting herbs in this game, I don't want to know what it is. :)

[Misterknowitall]

You can also walk in circles untill you get a random event.

[TheAncient]

Don't forget Salarin the Twisted, or whatever his name was.

 

Salarin is efficient mainly if you buy the keys yourself, which is pretty difficult. It works in theory but not necessarily in practice. Killing him will probably prove to be too slow.

[siim]

If you got the money, just buy the levels. Overloads will make you the cash back pretty fast at Arma GW if your other stats are decent too.

[fishy227]

I tried Garden for not too long ago. Getting herbs didn't give thieving xp and herbs I got were mostly low level ones. Maybe I was just unlucky with them but you really shouldn't bother with Garden.

 

 

You forgot some other methods too, for example running sinister keys, doing pest control or Brimhaven agility arena and also the one with Trolls. Not to say that they all would be worthwhile :)

 

 

I wanted to point out your suggestion of the "Troll Stronghold" , you can get about 1-3 minute if you are really good, but you take a lot of damage going for a full load. The herbs are not the best a bunch of low levels, including that new Wergali herb, ( from it i have like 12 in my bank) . But, i have had some good runs with multiple Ranarrs and higher.

[meili]

If you are killing chaos druids, pro tip for lower leveled herblaw players who need exp:

 

instead of dropping the guams bring a few water filled vials and eye of newts for the guam drops, it ain't that hard and its free exp, drop the finished pot afterwards

[Wachtwoord]

I found killing spectres with a macaw great money and training as well. I got about 700k an hour plus a nice amount of strength exp. Banking has become really fast with the slayer rings. Another benefit they potentially have is cannoning wuth profit. It might not be very practical because you have to bank every full load of herbs, but i guess you can leave your cannon as you bank.

 

I got a question regarding the herb gloves since i've never used them: Do they all have the same amount of charges? because avantoe gloves cost half the amount of charges of kwuarm gloves, and avantoe's are only a few gp's cheaper then kwuarms, so those gloves seem to be best for use if the amount of charges is equal?

They all have the same amount of charges.

[TheAncient]

If you are killing chaos druids, pro tip for lower leveled herblaw players who need exp:

 

instead of dropping the guams bring a few water filled vials and eye of newts for the guam drops, it ain't that hard and its free exp, drop the finished pot afterwards

 

"herblaw" <-- RS1 reference is even more pro :)