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Recommended Herb Farming Run Method Alternative Methods for Obtaining Herbs

You should now have a good idea of the basics of herb farming, including where to get materials and seeds, what to grow, and how to efficiently perform Farming runs. There’s so much more that I could say about the Farming skill, though… and even though I know this is an Herblore guide, not a Farming guide, it’s hard to resist throwing in a few extra pieces of useful knowledge. J So, here is some more info to help you in your Herblore-related Farming endeavors.

Your herbs and other plants will occasionally become diseased. When this happens, they turn a sickly color and stop growing; you must tend to them rather quickly or they will die. To cure a diseased plant, all you need to do is buy a plant cure vial from a Farming store and use it on the patch. The game will tell you that the disease is cured, and the plant will then resume growing.

Some of the patches have NPC farmers nearby, whom you can pay with various produce items (baskets of fruit and so forth) so the plants in them never get diseased. Unfortunately, this does not apply to regular herb patches. The special herb patch in the Troll Stronghold never gets diseased because My Arm watches it for you, though.

Since you can’t pay an NPC to watch your herbs, and some herb seeds are expensive, this leads many players to get stressed out about their herbs getting sick and dying. If you are concerned about this, then for starters, remember to always use supercompost. Then, to keep track of your patches’ health, you can get an amulet of nature or amulets of farming.

The amulet of nature is an item you make by stringing an emerald amulet with spun magic tree roots and then enchanting. You bind it to one patch, and when you wear it, the amulet will alert you when your patch becomes diseased or when it finishes growing—if it becomes diseased the amulet will even teleport you right to the patch! You can only own one amulet of nature at a time, though. It is untradeable after it is enchanted, but you can buy it unenchanted from other players and enchant it yourself (level 27 Magic required.)

The amulet of farming is a cheaper version of the amulet of nature that you buy from farming stores. Each has 8 charges, and you use up one charge when you check the status of a patch. Unlike the amulet of nature, this amulet does not have the teleport capability, but you can have one for multiple patches.

There’s nothing wrong with using these, and I have an amulet of nature myself, but the truth is that I rarely use it any more. I have developed more of a “c’est la vie” attitude when it comes to disease: I just accept that a certain percentage of my crops will fail, and I don’t worry about it (Figure 189). I’d rather find more productive uses for my time and accept a few lost crops than spend a lot of time fooling around with amulets or running around to check patches.

Obviously, you’ll have to decide on your own comfort level in this regard. One compromise approach that some players take is to plant expensive seeds only at the Troll Stronghold or a patch with an amulet of nature bound to it, and cheaper seeds elsewhere. Again, I don’t do this because in my experience I have found that I make more overall by planting the more valuable herbs everywhere, even if I lose a few, but it’s a strategy that some prefer.

The Lunar Magicks spellbook is filled mainly with support and utility spells, including a few that are of particular use to farmers. Gaining access to this spellbook requires completion of the rather difficult Lunar Diplomacy spell, and in some cases its sequel Dream Mentor as well. The spells are also rather high level: they begin at level 65.

The two main Farming-specific spells are Fertile Soil (level 83) and Cure Plant (level 66). The first of these will instantly fertilize any farming patch with the equivalent of supercompost; it costs 3 astral runes, 2 nature runes and 15 earth runes. The second will, as you’d expect, cure a diseased patch. It costs 1 astral rune and 8 earth runes.

Lunar Magicks also has two superior teleports for doing farming runs. The Fishing Guild Teleport spell puts you closer to the Ardougne patch than the Ardougne Teleport, and Catherby Teleport is obviously better for getting to Catherby than running over from Camelot. These are both expensive spells, though: each costs 3 law runes, 3 astrals and 10 waters to cast!

Because of the large number of earth and water runes needed, players who farm on Lunars will usually wield a mud staff. Even so, it’s a costly spellbook, though you do get nice amounts of XP for the spells. And of course, it has other applications for herblorists, such as Humidify and Superglass Make.

Another drawback of being on Lunar Magicks is loss of conventional spells such as enchantments and regular teleports. This can be mitigated to a certain extent by using spell tablets. Also, if you have done Dream Mentor you can cast Spellbook Swap to allow you to temporarily cast a spell from another spellbook; this is a level 96 spell though, so you need at least level 92 with a magic potion to cast it.

If you want to go beyond herbs and limpwurt roots, there are several other essential Herblore-related ingredients and items that you can grow with the Farming skill. I’ve summarized them in Table 38.

The new Summoning skill includes 71 familiars that help with nearly every aspect of gameplay. This includes several that have abilities specific to Farming, and others that are more generic yet of great use to herb farmers.

Here are all of the familiars that are directly or indirectly related to Farming, listed by Summoning level required:

• Dreadfowl (Level 4): This familiar can grant a temporary +1 Farming boost.
  
  
• Spirit Kalphite (Level 25): Acts as a 6-slot beast of burden so you can carry more harvested herbs before having to bank.
  
  
• Compost Mound (Level 28): In addition to its compost-generating abilities, you can ask it to give you a temporary Farming boost of 1 + 2% of your Farming level, rounded down.
  
  
• Bull Ant (Level 40): Has a 9-slot beast of burden capacity, and its Unburden scroll restores run energy by an amount equal to half your Agility level, making it very useful for Farming runs.
  
  
• Spirit Terrorbird (Level 52): Virtually identical to the bull ant except it has a capacity of 12 inventory slots.
  
  
• Stranger Plant (Level 64): Can give a temporary Farming boost of 1 + 4% of your Farming level, rounded down.
  
  
• War Tortoise (Level 67): Beast of burden with 18 slot capacity; does not have the energy-restoring features of the bull ant or spirit terrorbird, however.
  
  
• Giant Ent (Level 78): When active, increases the yield you get from fruit trees, belladonna and cactus patches (see Figure 190). The latter two are of particular interest to herblorists!
  
  
• Wolpertinger (Level 92): Doubles experience and yield when harvesting berries, including white berries and poison ivy berries.
  
  
• Pack Yak (Level 96): Massive 30-slot beast of burden capacity plus the ability to bank items from its inventory!
  

  Figure 190: Extra Produce from the Giant Ent

  Just having a giant ent in tow when you harvest fruit from trees, nightshade or cactus spines gives you a chance of “discovering” extras.

  
  

Of course, the beasts of burden can also be useful for gathering herbs from combat and getting secondary ingredients.

Note that if you use a level boost to plant a crop, you should also use it before harvesting. If you do not have a level equal to the level needed for the crop, the game will let you harvest it, but you won’t get any XP for it!

Finally, a few miscellaneous but handy tips to keep in mind:

• Even though you shouldn’t use regular compost, store a few buckets of it in your tool leprechaun. If you get to a patch and find it diseased and have no gold on you, withdraw four regular compost and sell them to the nearby Farming store; this will give you enough cash to buy a plant cure.
  
  
• On the way from Camelot to Catherby bank you’ll go past a field with two unicorns in it—a perfect place to practice opportunistic resource gathering. J
  
  
• If you think of it, pick produce from your tree in Catherby when you go there to harvest and replant.
  
  
• If you don’t want to use a Farming-specific familiar or beast of burden, you can bring a macaw with you and use Herbcall scrolls to get extra herbs.
  
  
• Always wear a ring of duelling on Farming runs for quick bank access if you get a bumper crop and run out of inventory space.

Recommended Herb Farming Run Method Alternative Methods for Obtaining Herbs