TruthScape.com - Grimy Herbs and Clean Herbs

You probably wouldn’t fall over in shock at me telling you that herbs are a big part of the Herblore skill. J Below I will explain to you the difference between grimy and clean herbs, and show you all of the herbs and the Herblore levels required to clean them.

An herb is the primary ingredient of most potions; that is, it is the first material added to a vial of water or another base liquid to begin the potion-making process. Most herbs, when obtained, are grimy, whether they are dropped by monsters or picked using the Farming skill. This word just means they are dirty, and you can see this by looking at the herb in your game window; dirt will be visible on the surface of most grimy herbs.

You cannot use a grimy herb in a potion or for other purposes until it is cleaned; this requires that you have a high enough Herblore level. You also get some Herblore XP at the same time: an amount ranging from 2.5 XP at the lowest levels up to 15 XP per herb for torstol (level 75). Cleaning is sometimes done by players on-the-fly as herbs are obtained, but other players buy large amounts of grimy herbs just to change them into clean herbs for XP.

Grimy herbs have only been in RuneScape since late 2007. Before that, rather than herbs having “grimy” and “clean” versions, they were either “unidentified” or “identified”. In those days, herbs grown using Farming were identified when you picked them, but any herbs obtained as monster drops were unidentified at first.

Like grimy herbs, unidentified herbs (often abbreviated unids) could not be used in potions, and also like grimy herbs, if you had the right Herblore level you could change unidentified herbs into identified ones.. The big difference is that with unidentified herbs, you didn’t even know what the herb was. For example, right now a monster may drop a grimy cadantine, and you know of course that cleaning it will result in a clean cadantine. Before the change, that grimy cadantine would have just been an item called “Herb”; clicking to identify it would change it from “Herb” into “Cadantine”, but until you clicked, it could have been any of 11 different herbs.

Since all herbs that came from monster drops were just called “Herb” before identification, you can imagine that this led to a number of problems. The most important one is that these unids were tradeable, yet you could not easily tell them apart. So you could have one noted stack of “Herb” that was ranarrs, and another that was marrentills, and they were indistinguishable.

This situation led to the rise of several scams perpetrated by unscrupulous players, generally involving misrepresenting unidentified herbs to sell them for more than they were worth. For example, scammers would lie about what a bunch of unids were, or they’d sell you 100 ranarrs and 50 harralanders but it would really be 50 ranarrs and 100 harralanders, and so forth. Creative players came up with ways of avoiding being scammed, but many players didn’t understand how to use these methods, and they weren’t foolproof anyway.

On September 10, 2007, Jagex did away with unidentified herbs, changing them to grimy herbs with their names displayed. This eliminated unid-related scams from the game. They also fixed a similar problem with unfinished potions, which prior to this date all carried the same name—just “Unfinished potion”—making them scam bait as well.

Most players liked this change, but it was a big blow to many serious herblorists, for two main reasons. First, one of the ways smart players got herbs for training was to buy unids from players who didn’t need them, and it was possible to sometimes get better deals this way than is possible now. Second, players with low Herblore levels didn’t know what high-level unids were and would often leave them on the ground in dungeons for higher-level herblorists to get for free.

Of the 15 regular herbs in the game—the ones used for regular, mainstream potions—11 are dropped by monsters, in addition to coming from Farming and other sources. The other four can only be obtained either by Farming them or through special methods, such as minigame rewards.

The “big 11” herbs that can come from monster drops are guam, marrentill, tarromin, harralander, ranarr, irit, avantoe, kwuarm, cadantine, lantadyme and dwarf weed, listed in order of the level required to clean them. Low-level herbs are dropped more frequently than higher-level ones.

The “other 4” herbs that are not dropped are toadflax, spirit weed, snapdragon and torstol. Since they can only generally be farmed, and the seeds for them are sometimes rather rare, this means that they are generally more expensive than droppable herbs.

Table 16 shows all of the essential information for standard grimy and clean herbs, including a list of main sources for them and products in which each is used.

**Table 16: Grimy and Clean Herbs, Cleaning XP and Related Products**
Herblore Level to Clean Herb	Grimy Herb	Clean Herb	Experience Points	Primary Sources	Products Using Herb
3	Grimy guam	Clean guam	2.5	Monster drops or Farming skill	Attack potion, Guthix rest tea, super fishing explosive, guam tar Also a secondary ingredient for the macaw Summoning pouch.
5	Grimy Marrentill	Clean Marrentill	3.8	Monster drops or Farming skill	Antipoison potion, Guthix rest tea, marrentill tar
11	Grimy Tarromin	Clean Tarromin	5	Monster drops or Farming skill	Strength potion, Serum 207 potion, tarromin tar
20	Grimy Harralander	Clean Harralander	6.3	Monster drops or Farming skill	Restore potion, energy potion, combat potion, Guthix balance potion, Guthix rest tea, blamish oil, harralander tar
25	Grimy Ranarr	Clean Ranarr	7.5	Monster drops or Farming skill	Defence potion, prayer potion
30	Grimy Toadflax	Clean Toadflax	8	Farming	Agility potion, Antipoison+ potion, Saradomin brew
35	Grimy Spirit Weed	Clean Spirit Weed	7.8	Farming	Summoning potion
40	Grimy Irit	Clean Irit	8.8	Monster drops or Farming skill	Super attack potion, super antipoison potion, Antipoison++ potion
48	Grimy Avantoe	Clean Avantoe	10	Monster drops or Farming skill	Fishing potion, super energy potion, Hunter potion
54	Grimy Kwuarm	Clean Kwuarm	11.3	Monster drops or Farming skill	Super strength potion, weapon poison
59	Grimy Snapdragon	Clean Snapdragon	11.8	Farming	Super restore potion, Sanfew serum
65	Grimy Cadantine	Clean Cadantine	12.5	Monster drops or Farming skill	Super defence potion
67	Grimy Lantadyme	Clean Lantadyme	13.1	Monster drops or Farming skill	Antifire potion, magic potion
70	Grimy Dwarf Weed	Clean Dwarf Weed	13.8	Monster drops or Farming skill	Ranging potion
75	Grimy Torstol	Clean Torstol	15	Farming, Sinister chest	Zamorak brew

Vials, Water-Filled Vials and Coconut Milk

Jungle Herbs

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Last Update: May 28, 2008

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