TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Skill Secrets       9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore            9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Herbs, Secondary Ingredients and Special Materials

Special Herblore Ingredients and Items TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Potions and Other Skill Products

Have you ever noticed that some skills have many ways of raising them, but others do not? Well, Herblore falls squarely into the second category. J There is in fact only one reliable way of raising the skill, and it only gives a +1 temporary bonus.

Herblore is not a skill where your chance of success in making products depends on your level, so the only reason to boost your level is to allow you to make things you otherwise could not. For example, if your Herblore level is 37 and you boost it to 38, you can make ranarr potions. Note that you must have the required levels for all stages of making a potion, so you’d need that 38 both to put the ranarr in the water and put the snape grass in the unfinished ranarr potion.

In the case where one herb makes more than one potion, you need the level of the lowest of these potions to make the unfinished potion. For example, avantoe is used in Fishing potions (level 50), super energy potions (level 52) and Hunter potions (level 53), so you can make an unfinished avantoe potion at level 50.

This special brew will boost your Herblore level temporarily by one point. It wears off after at most a minute, just as most enhanced skills go down by one point every minute. To get the most benefit from the ale, get another skill either above or below its maximum and watch to see when the next game “tick” occurs and the skill returns one point closer to normal. Drink the ale then, and you’ll have close to 60 seconds to use it.

There are several sources for greenman’s ale:

• Buy it from the bartender at the Dragon Inn, the pub in south Yanille just west of the Hunter shop; he’ll charge you 10 gp. You must speak to him to buy it (there is no “Trade” option.)
  
  
• Brew it using the Cooking skill (level 29 required). It uses four harralander as its special ingredient.
  
  
• Install a greenman’s ale barrel in the kitchen of your house. You can either build it yourself at level 26, or purchase a flatpacked barrel from another player.
  
  
• Buy it from other players.

The mature version of greenman’s ale gives a +2 Herblore bonus instead of the normal +1 of regular greenman’s ale. Sounds good, but the problem is getting it. You cannot specifically brew mature ales; they just sometimes show up in the brewing vat when you brew ale. This is random, and they are rather rare; only a small percentage of batches of greenman’s ale will be mature. (Adding “The Stuff”, a reward from the Trouble Brewing minigame, is supposed to increase the chance of getting a mature ale.)

The alternative is to buy them from other players. Of course, they only get it rarely and randomly as well, and brewing is not very popular to begin with, so the market on these is very sparse.

As a result of its rarity, mature greenman’s ale is only a reasonable option when you need a +2 Herblore boost for occasional use; it’s not viable for continuous training.

This strange food item is a key part of the “Evil Dave” subquest of Jagex’s magnum opus quest, Recipe for Disaster. After you’ve freed Evil Dave, you can go back to his pad with your cat and continue to get spice canisters: your goal here is the brown spice. Adding one dose to a stew will result in a spicy stew that can raise or lower your Herblore level by as much as two levels (-2 to +2). Using two doses means your Herblore can become anywhere from -4 to +4, and with three doses (the maximum), you get a boost from -6 to +6.

The benefit you receive is random, and getting the spices is time-consuming, so this is also not something you will want to do often—it can take many tries to get a big bonus. If you need to make an item that is much higher than your Herblore level, you are likely better off finding a high-level herblorist and asking if you can request assistance.

If you get to level 99 and buy an Herblore skillcape, you can “Operate” it to get a temporary boost to level 100. This serves no purpose whatsoever, unfortunately.

Special Herblore Ingredients and Items TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Potions and Other Skill Products