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How to Safely Do Trust Trades and Player Services Obsolete Item Scams and Scam Avoidance Techniques

Unfinished potions are vials of water that have the herb added but not the secondary ingredient. They are tradable, but rarely actually bought or sold, because usually people prefer to sell either herbs or fully finished potions. Buying unfinished pots used to be a major problem because unfinished potions of all types look pretty much alike, and they used to all be just called “Unfinished potion”. It was necessary to use a special anti-scam method to buy them, like the one that used to be used for buying unidentified herbs, which I had formerly described here.

Fortunately, on September 10, 2007, Jagex got rid of unidentified herbs, and also changed unfinished potions so they now say which herb is in the vial. For example, if you add a ranarr weed to a vial of water, instead of it saying “Unfinished potion” it now says “Ranarr potion (unf)”. This eliminates most of the problems associated with buying and selling partially completed potions. You no longer need a special method, as you can tell what you are buying even when the items are in noted form. Accordingly, I removed from this section the instructions on the anti-scam method of buying unfinished potions that once was here.

Trading unfinished potions still has one slight risk associated with it, though, which I felt I needed to mention. The issue is that the unfinished potions are identified by herb and not by potion type—this is necessary because certain herbs are used to make more than one type of potion. (For example, avantoes are used in fishing potions, super energy potions and hunting potions.)

What this means is that if you want to buy unfinished potions of a particular type, you must know what herb goes into that potion, so you can avoid being misled. For example, as mentioned above, and unfinished prayer potion will say “Ranarr potion (unf)” and not “Prayer potion (unf)”. (Ranarr is also used for defence potions, though in practice nobody makes them.) Even when an herb only makes one potion, the unfinished version will be labeled with the herb’s name, not the potion’s. For convenience, Table 8 shows what the unfinished versions of the most popular potions are called.

One final note is that with Herblore, you get all the experience for mixing in the secondary ingredient to make the final potion, and none for adding the herb to the water. This is why unfinished potions are rarely traded—the person making the unfinished potion gets no XP for it. Beware anyone who tries to get you to do work for them, claiming that you will get “half the XP” or whatever.

How to Safely Do Trust Trades and Player Services Obsolete Item Scams and Scam Avoidance Techniques