TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Skill Secrets       9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore            9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Techniques for Obtaining Vials, Secondary Ingredients and Special Items                 9  Acquiring Secondary Ingredients for Potions

Fighting Monsters that Drop Multiple Secondary Ingredients How to Carry 35 Secondary Ingredients in 28 Inventory Slots - It’s Magic!

The best method for gathering Herblore seconds varies from one item to the next, but most techniques have some common needs in order to ensure efficiency. For example, nearly all methods rely on making maximum use of inventory space. Most also involve a great deal of running between bank and sometimes distant locations, which makes run energy conservation essential. And some rely on killing large numbers of monsters for drops. These commonalities mean that you can improve your efficiency in getting many items by keeping a few general tips in mind.

Be sure to also see the discussion of a neat way of getting more effective inventory space.

Secondaries like snape grass, jangerberries, wine of Zamorak and potato cactus all come from item spawns. These items just appear on the ground; you pick them up, and after a certain amount of time the next one appears. The respawn time until a new second shows up depends on the item, but also on the number of players logged into the world you are on.

The same issue applies to monsters that are killed for secondary ingredients: the respawn rate will be faster on a full world. This doesn’t matter if there are lots of those NPCs around, but does when there are only a few of them.

What this means is that you are better off collecting secondary ingredients on a full world than one that is half empty. For example, to ensure consistency, I do all of my tests on World 2, which is the most “reliably full” server in RuneScape. If you can’t get into that world, choose another that is reasonably full; it doesn’t need to have 2,000 people on it, but 1,900 is better than 1,100.

If you’re after a limited resource and when you arrive at its location someone else is there, be considerate and switch worlds. (Yes, even if this means you’ll have slower respawn times. It won’t kill you.) There’s no point fighting with someone over a small number of spawns or monsters, and hey, you’d hate if someone did that to you, right?

Always run between item locations and banks when gathering materials, and if your run energy gets used up, restore it with energy or super energy potions. Some players decide to spend much of their time walking to avoid purchasing energy pots, but this is a false economy: the time you waste is worth a lot more than the money you save.

Avoid wearing armor or carrying items when gathering seconds, unless they are absolutely necessary. Keep weight down and conserve run energy by using boots of lightness, a spotted cape or spottier cape, and Penance gloves (from Barbarian Assault).

Beasts of burden are Summoning familiars that can carry from as many as 30 items for you, with certain restrictions. Using them helps you get more items per hour, because you spend less time on travel overhead as a percentage of the total time used in collecting. The value of the familiar depends mainly on how far you have to travel to bank the seconds you collect; the longer this takes, the more time you save by being able to take extra items with you.

Higher-level beasts of burden are better than lower-level ones, because they can hold more items. Of course, they also take a higher Summoning level to use. Also bear in mind that even though a war tortoise can carry 18 items where a spirit terrorbird can only hold 12 and a bull ant 9, the ant and terrorbird each have a special move scroll that restores a nice chunk of run energy, which is exceedingly useful when gathering items involves traveling long distances. It also saves you a lot on energy and super energy potions.

You may also find certain Summoning familiars useful for situations where you are gathering secondary items as drops in combat.

Note: Be aware that some of the information in my guide to using Summoning familiars is now out of date due to Jagex’s overhaul of the skill at the end of March. This will be updated soon.

When you complete the quest As a First Resort... you get access to a set of spa pools in the ogre town of Oo’glog, which you can use to get several benefits that can come in handy when gathering items. The most important is the salt water pool, which temporarily gives you infinite run energy, the value of which is obvious—this lasts around 10 to 20 minutes before wearing off, depending on your Agility level (and luck). Other pools can boost your Prayer points and Hitpoints well above their maximums, which may also be handy in more limited situations.

It takes some time to get to Oo’glog to use the pools, but if you are doing a lot of running it may be worthwhile. That’s especially the case if you’re using the fairy rings to get where you’re going, since there’s a ring portal not far from the resort. You can also charter a boat from Catherby or several other ports to the town.

Fighting Monsters that Drop Multiple Secondary Ingredients How to Carry 35 Secondary Ingredients in 28 Inventory Slots - It’s Magic!