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Methods for Filling (and Emptying) Vials Grinding and Processing Secondary Ingredients

Most sources of herbs will provide them in their “grimy” state, and so you must clean them before use—the main exception is if you decided to buy already-cleaned herbs from other players. Cleaning herbs is as simple as clicking on them, but there’s a bit of technique involved in doing it efficiently, which I will now show you. I’ll also discuss some alternatives for those who do not have the necessary skill level.

If you collected grimy herbs from monsters or Farming without cleaning them, got them from the Kingdom of Miscellania, or bought them in bulk, you’ll want to clean large numbers of them as fast as possible. Here’s how best to do it.

First, go to a bank that can be opened with a single click, and empty your inventory. Then withdraw 28 grimy herbs (you can select “Withdraw All”, and you’ll get 28; ignore the stupid message the game gives you.)

You now need only click the herbs, and the trick to doing this fast is to use a serpentine pattern. Start at the top left corner and go left-to-right across the top row. Next, move down one row and proceed clicking right-to-left. Move down and go left-to-right on the third row and so forth (Figure 155). This minimizes how much mouse movement is required.

You can also use an up-and-down pattern instead. Go down the first column, then up the second, down the third and up the fourth. You can also do the patterns backwards, starting in the bottom right corner, or the bottom left corner, and so forth. In fact, alternating among several variations will reduce some of the monotony of cleaning herbs.

When done, bank the clean herbs, take out more grimy herbs and repeat. It should take you 20 seconds to do a load, so you can clean about 5,000 herbs per hour.

WARNING: Cleaning herbs is a very “click-intensive” process. I recommend not doing it for long periods of time, or you could potentially start to strain your fingers, hand or wrist. For details, please refer to the discussion of repetitive stress injuries.

If you are going to be making potions from the herbs you want to clean, I recommend that you not bother cleaning and banking them as mentioned above. Instead, just follow the process for making potions from grimy herbs, which is slightly slower than making them from clean herbs, but actually more efficient.

You may have some grimy herbs that you want to clean. Why? You can’t use them, right? Well, sometimes it can be easier to sell herbs when they are clean than grimy. Also, having both clean and grimy herbs means wasted bank space, and some players like to keep their herb drops for future use. So here are a few options.

There are several items that can temporarily boost your Herblore level, which may be all you need if you are close to the level needed. The only really practical one is greenman’s ale, though, and it only gives a +1 bonus.

Since Herblore is a skill that traditionally costs money to train, most high-level players will be more than happy to let you use their services to clean herbs, via the Assist System. The best way to do this is to go to a bank where there are lots of people hanging around, such as the banks in Varrock or Falador, or the Grand Exchange. Ask if anyone is willing to provide Herblore assistance and wait for a reply. If this fails, you can always try posting on the RuneScape forums.

If you go this route, please be considerate. Remember that the assisting player can’t do anything while helping you, so do what you need to do quickly, and be sure to tell the assister when you are done. Thanking them is a nice touch as well. J

If you have any potions you need made, this is a good time to do that as well!

There is also an NPC herblorist who can clean herbs for you: Zahur, who lives in the desert town of Nardah. Go to Nardah with herbs in your inventory and he will offer to clean them—for a fee of 200 gp each. You can either use individual grimys on him (click the herb and then click him) or ask him to clean all the herbs in your inventory (Figure 156).

Why would anyone want to travel all the way to Nardah and pay 200 gp each to clean herbs anyway? Well, you probably don’t. Zahur is somewhat of a “leftover” from the old days, when grimy herbs were unidentified—players with low Herblore levels would literally not know what herbs they had, and there was no Assist System then either, so players couldn’t help out (other than using trust trades). Zahur is somewhat redundant now, but he’s still an option if you want to use him.

Getting to Nardah is a bit of a hassle. If you have access to the magic carpet network, take one from Al-Kharid to Pollnivneach, then run south to the other carpet area and take one to Nardah. A faster option is to use a pharaoh’s sceptre to teleport to the Agility Pyramid, and then run northeast.

If you can’t clean herbs but want to save what you’ve obtained for future use, you can simply sell the grimy herbs and buy an equal number of clean ones. This isn’t really cleaning your herbs, of course, but it has the same net effect. J

Depending on the current prices of clean and grimy versions of herbs, this can cost you money, be roughly neutral, or even net you a small profit. Obviously, you will have to check market prices to see if this is worthwhile; start by trying to sell one grimy herb and buy one clean herb and see what happens. If you like the result, repeat with a larger number of herbs.

Methods for Filling (and Emptying) Vials Grinding and Processing Secondary Ingredients