TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Skill Secrets       9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore            9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Training Techniques and Strategies                 9  Advanced and Alternative Methods of Earning Herblore XP

Getting Herblore XP from Quests Using Unfinished Potions to Powerlevel, Make Money, or Train Economically

RuneScape’s Assist System is a nice feature that effectively allows players with high levels in skills to make products for lower-level players, without any raw materials or finished items having to change hands. In effect, the high-level player, whom I’ll call the assister, temporarily loans his or her skill levels to the lower-level player, the assistee. During the time that the system is in use, the assistee can take advantage of the assister’s skill totals, making items as if he/she possessed those levels. The benefit for the assister is getting the XP for all the items made.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

The Assist System is a perfect match for the Herblore skill, and the reason has to do with the cost of training. If it were possible to make money easily with Herblore, then I could see herblorists balking at the idea of “giving away” their high-level expertise. But when you have a skill where training most often means losing money, an option that lets you get XP while remaining neutral with respect to expense is highly attractive.

Of course, let’s also not forget the intangible aspect of assistance: you’re helping another player. Especially with direct player trade so much on the wane these days, some low-level players appreciate being able to use the Assist System to make a quick potion or clean a few herbs. Remember that even though they could theoretically buy the potions they need—and many do—sometimes the Grand Exchange gets locked up, making this not really an option. And of course, the Grand Exchange is only in one location.

Somewhat ironically, perhaps the most difficult part of assisting with Herblore is finding people to assist! This, I fear, is a direct consequence of what I said above: you and I know that using the system gives free XP, but so do many other herblorists. And low-level players are often able to figure out for themselves that if they have the ingredients for a potion, they can make money by selling those raw materials and just buying what they want—assuming they plan ahead.

So, you cannot just assume that you’ll be able to find lots of people looking for Herblore help. On the other hand, you can only get 30k XP per day anyway, which doesn’t take long, so even helping one person can get you to your limit. Here are a few suggestions of ways to find people to assist:

• Go to a place where lots of players hang out and offer your assistance; this generally means banks in popular places, especially near the Grand Exchange. Periodically call out an offer like “Free level 82 herblore assistance” (without spamming) and see if anyone is interested.
  
  
• When doing things in busy places like banks or the GE, also look around to see if anyone is looking for assistance.
  
  
• Check on the RuneScape forums for players seeking assistance—use the search feature and type in “assist” or “assistance”.
  
  
• Post on the forums to offer assistance; this is best done in the Skills forum (not Herblore, which is a marketplace only). Be sure to specify what your level is.

Perhaps better than all of these options to find strangers, though, is to cultivate relationships with people you already know: friends, clan mates, and people you know from third party forums and groups. Let them know that you’re trying to train Herblore and available to help; you may be able to set up an arrangement where you help on a daily basis. Another option is to do a mutual exchange, if the other player has a higher skill than yours in a different area that you need help with.

First of all, to accept help requests from others, you must set the “Assist” button to either “On” (for anyone to be able to request assistance) or “Friends” (for just those on your friends list). You must also ensure that the Herblore skill is enabled within the Assist System; hover your mouse over its rectangle, and if it’s not already on, click to enable it.

When you receive an assistance request, it will show up in a purple font in your chat box. Click the request to begin the assistance session. While you are assisting, you can watch the screen to see the XP you are gaining from assisting someone, but you really can’t do anything else, other than chatting with others. This is also a good activity to engage in when you are not paying a lot of attention to the game (say, reading the RuneScape forums.)

One annoyance with the system is that there is no easy way to tell when the assistee is done, unless that player is considerate enough to tell you (as I was happy enough to have happen to me in Figure 169). There’s nothing wrong with reminding the person you’re helping that you’d like it if they told you when they were done. Otherwise, if you don’t see any XP showing up under Herblore after a minute or so, close the window to end the session. This will also prevent you from being taken advantage of. (I once had some guy ask for my assistance, and when I agreed he started making tons of unfinished potions to sell for a profit, while I, of course got no XP, isn’t that nice? J)

The Assist System is limited to a cap of 30,000 XP per 24-hour period. That’s across all skills, so if you already have helped someone and received 14,000 Smithing XP, you can then only get 16,000 XP in Herblore. Note that the cap timer is 24 hours from the first time you get any XP in offering assistance, regardless of when in that time frame you receive it. For example, suppose you haven’t given assistance in a while, and at 2:00 am on a Wednesday you get 500 XP via the Assist System; you can now get up to 29,500 XP until 2:00 am on Thursday. Even if you get all 29,500 XP at 1:30 am on Thursday, at 2:00 am you get a fresh 30,000 XP to play with.

The Assist System can be used to clean grimy herbs and to make most potions, but you cannot use it to make ones that are quest-related: blamish oil, magic essence potions, Guthix balance potions, Relicym’s balm and Sanfew serum. In effect, if it uses an untradeable ingredient or is related to a quest, then you can’t make it with this system.

Getting Herblore XP from Quests Using Unfinished Potions to Powerlevel, Make Money, or Train Economically