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A Brief Guide to Farming Herbs Deciding What to Grow - A Matter of Playing Style

Stick herb seed in ground. Wait. Pick herbs. Simple, isn’t it? J Well, there’s a bit more to growing herbs than that, but it really is a straightforward process. By learning how to farm your own herbs, you’ll be developing a very low-cost, efficient source of herbs for making potions, while simultaneously crosstraining another skill that’s extremely useful in its own right.

Let’s start out with a high-level look at herb farming, what is involved with it, its pros and cons, and what you need or should have to do it well. Those who already grow herbs will find that they already know much of what’s in this topic, but if you aren’t already a farmer, I suggest you read it carefully.

Farming begins with a plot of ground called a patch; there are many different types of patches in the game, but naturally we’re interested in herb patches. There are four regular herb patches in the game, which are part of the four major farming centers near Catherby, Ardougne, Port Phasmatys and Draynor Village. A fifth, special herb patch can be unlocked by completing a quest. Each patch begins overgrown with weeds; you clear these with a rake, then fertilize the ground with compost or supercompost, and plant a seed in it. You obtain herb seeds from combat, thieving master farmers, or buying them from other players.

Herb seeds take 75 minutes, nominally, to grow from seed to harvestable herbs, though this sometimes actually takes longer. There’s also the possibility of the herbs becoming diseased, in which case you must use a plant cure on the patch within about 20 minutes, or the herbs will die. If they successfully grow to fruition, you can harvest anywhere from 3 to as many as 15 herbs from a patch (and sometimes even more!), though 5 to 9 is most common. You then replant to continue the cycle.

The power of Farming is that crops grow unattended; the time required to grow them is real time, not game time, so they grow while you do something else in-game, or even if you log out. It is not necessary to stand around at the patches waiting for crops to grow; instead, good farmers do what is called a farming run every couple of hours. They take out their farming equipment and seeds, then teleport and run to each of their patches in succession, harvesting completed herbs and planting new seeds. When done, they can then return to other activities.

The fact that Farming is a passive skill means you can combine growing herbs with fighting for them. After completing an herb run, go spend a little over an hour fighting a primary herb dropper, then return to rotate your crops again. In this way, you really get “the best of both worlds”.

The obvious main advantage of herb farming is that you get herbs from it. J This of course is just one of several ways of getting herbs, but farming them has some significant advantages over methods such as combat:

• Making Money: Herb farming is actually one of the rare transformation skills that is a consistent money-maker: the value of the herbs you grow is nearly always higher than the cost of the seeds, and sometimes much higher. As an example, harralander herbs currently sell for around 900 gp each, but harralander seeds cost just 35 gp! So even if you don’t want to use all the herbs you grow, you can easily sell them for a profit.
  
  
• Efficiency: It takes 75 to 90 minutes to turn a seed into herbs, but during most of that time you can do something else. You only need a couple of minutes per patch to harvest your herbs and then plant another seed.
  
  
• Quality Over Quantity: You can’t get the sheer number of herbs per hour with farming that you can with combat, but you get the herbs you want: if you plant a ranarr seed, you’re going to get only ranarrs. This make farming ideal for self-sufficient herblorists who want to make specific potions.
  
  
• Farming-Only Herbs: Toadflax, spirit weed, snapdragon and torstol are not normally dropped by monsters. While some of these can be obtained in small amounts via esoteric methods, the only way to get them in any reasonable quantity is to grow them.

Aside from the herbs themselves, the other primary advantage of growing herbs is that you are training the Farming skill. This certainly isn’t the fastest way to get Farming XP, but it’s a steady method (Figure 183), and one that doesn’t cost nearly as much as faster methods like powerleveling with trees. Getting your Farming skill higher has a host of benefits, including the ability to grow higher-level herbs and other crops, including some that are useful for Herblore as well: coconuts, cactus spines, white berries, poison ivy berries and so forth.

There really aren’t any drawbacks to growing herbs. The only thing it will cost you is some time to run to the patches and some money or time to either buy or obtain seeds. But again, you’re going to profit from this and get XP as well.

You must have a Farming level of at least 9 to grow guam leaf, the lowest-level herb. If your level is below 9, you’ll need to raise it; here are a few suggestions:

• Make supercompost from items such as pineapples or watermelons; you get 127.5 XP per bin.
  
  
• Grow allotment crops: potatoes at level 1, onions at level 5 and cabbages at level 7.
  
  
• Grow marigold flowers at level 2.
  
  
• Grow barley (level 3), hammerstone hops (level 4) or Asgarnian hops (level 8) in a hops patch.
  
  
• Use alternative experience bonus methods such as Tears of Guthix or rewards from the Varrock museum.

There are no requirements to grow herbs other than that low farming level, but there are many other skill levels and accomplishments that I recommend to make doing your farming runs easier.

Let’s start with recommendations in other skills:

• Agility: The higher the better, to conserve run energy.
  
  
• Hunter: Level 40 to wear a spotted cape, which reduces weight to conserve run energy; the spottier cape, at level 66 is even better.
  
  
• Magic: Level 45 is strongly recommended, to allow you to teleport to Camelot, which is near Catherby, one of the major farming locations. Level 51 and completion of the Plague City quest also allows you to teleport to Ardougne, which is very useful.
  
  
• Summoning: Higher levels enable you to use various familiars that can be useful in herb farming.
  
  
• Thieving: Level 38 to allow you to thieve herb seeds from master farmers. This is not essential but if you want to expand your crosstraining to include another skill, it’s a good option.

Next, some quest recommendations:

• A Fairy Tale, Part I: During the quest you get a set of enchanted secateurs; wield them while harvesting herbs for a 10% crop bonus.
  
  
• Garden of Tranquility: You get a compost potion and earn the right to get more from the Vinesweeper minigame.
  
  
• Ghosts Ahoy: Gives you the ectophial, which is the only convenient way of getting to the herb patch near Port Phasmatys.
  
  
• Heroes’ Quest: To be able to recharge amulets of glory.
  
  
• My Arm’s Big Adventure and Eadger’s Ruse: The first quest allows you to access and use a fifth herb patch, which never gets diseased. The second gives you the Trollheim Teleport spell, which is a practical necessity for getting to that patch.
  
  
• Plague City: Required to be able to teleport to Ardougne.

Finally, a few miscellaneous recommendations. You should have some gold to buy the tools, supplies and seeds you need to get started; around 10k should suffice. Some charged amulets of glory are a good idea, for teleporting to the herb patch near Draynor (the more you have, the less often you have to recharge). And last but not least, rings of duelling allow quick bank access if needed.

A Brief Guide to Farming Herbs Deciding What to Grow - A Matter of Playing Style