TruthScape.com - Leveling and Gaining Free XP with Serum 207

Serum 207 is a specialty, quest-related potion that you learn how to make in the quest Shades of Mort’ton. Its only use is to give to villagers of that town to cure them temporarily from their affliction, so the potion has little intrinsic game value. It’s of great interest to us, however, because it has the potential to be a very handy way of supplemental Herblore training.

Serum 207 is very similar in many respects to a regular strength potion. Both use a water vial as a base and tarromin as a primary ingredient, and both give 50 XP. Where they differ is that strength potions use rather expensive limpwurt roots (which cost 521 gp as I write this), whereas Serum 207 uses ashes as its secondary ingredient. Yes, the stuff that’s left on the ground when a fire goes out. And that’s what the appeal is of this potion for training: you can literally get ashes for free by picking them up off the ground when training Firemaking, or buy them for a song in the Grand Exchange (7 gp at the moment).

Of course we have to consider the value of the output as well: strength potions cost more to make, but they can be sold, whereas Serum 207 is untradeable. What this basically means is that the value of Serum 207 as a training option, compared to strength potions, depends on the relative cost of limpwurt roots and finished strength potions. Another factor is whether players are actually buying strength potions, since they have a rather high floor price of 540 gp on the Grand Exchange.

Another complicating factor is getting rid of the Serum 207 after you make it! Seems odd that this would be a problem, but it is untradeable, which means it cannot be sold, nor can it be noted to drop it easily. If you pile up a bunch of the stuff in your bank account, you’re stuck with it forever. J In practical terms, this means that you really need to empty the potions after making them; this lets you reuse the vials, but as we’ve already shown, that isn’t an effective use of time, so this sets up a trade-off situation.

Serum 207 gives the same XP as strength potions, but the need to empty out vials after making it slows down its XP rate. Instead of the usual 45 seconds to make 14 potions (700 XP), it takes a full minute to make them and empty them. This means the speed of Serum 207 is 25% slower than strength potions.

Here are the skill activity ratings for Serum 207, based on a cost of 340 gp for tarromin, 7 gp for ashes, 95 for water-filled vials and 76 gp for empty vials:

As you can see, Serum 207 costs less and is also slower than making strength potions, so we have a simple trade-off to consider. Here is the time value equivalent (TVE) in comparing these two:

Since 168k per hour is pretty close to what most players can make in other ways, this means the two methods are reasonably equivalent. Those who can make more money than this are better off with strength potions due to their faster speed.

Naturally, this entire analysis changes dramatically with variations in the prices of components. Table 30 shows a few examples of what happens when prices and values change in this comparison.

**Table 30: Multiple-Scenario Training Analysis for Strength Potions and Serum 207**
Scenario	Limpwurt Root Cost (gp)	Ashes Cost (gp)	Strength Potion Sale Price (gp)	Empty Vial value (gp)	TVE of Strength Potions Compared to Serum 207 (k/hr)	Analysis
Default	521	7	540	76	168	It is worth making strength potions for most players, since earning 168k per hour is not difficult.
Cheap Limpwurt Roots	471	7	540	76	0	The TVE being 0 means you need to earn nothing in the time you save by making strength potions, so it is obviously worth doing. Lower root prices will drive TVE negative, meaning it makes even more sense to make strength pots.
Expensive Limpwurt Roots	620	7	540	76	500	Here, making strength potions is costing you 500k per hour. Not worth it for most players. Higher root prices raise TVE further.
Drop in Value of Empty Vials	521	7	540	56	101	Just changing the value of empty vials by 20 gp drops TVE by 67, making strength potions more appealing.
Increase in Price of Ashes	521	27	520	76	101	Increasing the price of ashes by 20 gp has the same effect as lowering the value of glass vials by that amount.
Drop in Floor Price of Strength Potions	521	7	390	76	672	The price of strength potions is propped up by a floor price in the GE. Dropping that price by 150 gp, for example, would make strength potions only worth doing if you value your time at 672 k/hr or more.

The limpwurt root price is what will change most often, and you’ll need to check it and decide for yourself if strength potions are cheap enough to be worthwhile. You also have to check if players are buying strength potions at the current price. I see the last scenario in Table 30 being the greatest threat to the viability of strength potions being economical, since the current 540 price is entirely based on an artificial restriction imposed by Jagex.

There are also some non-financial factors to consider. If you are the sort who values self-sufficiency, Serum 207 is a better use of your resources than strength potions, because it uses a waste item as a second, and lets you save limpwurt roots to make super strength potions. You also don’t need to worry about having to sell the final product, and you get vials you can reuse. On the other hand, if you don’t care about all that and hate having to empty the vials, Serum 207 is not the potion for you.

When you fight monsters to get herbs, you probably leave the tarromins behind, since they are cheap and plentiful, and you don’t want to spend too much time banking. Serum 207 lets you turn these into free Herblore XP: just bring with vials of water and ashes, and you can turn waste tarromins into 50 XP. Then just drop the serums on the ground to make room for herbs.

What makes Serum 207 particularly well-suited to this is that it is the only potion that can be made in reverse order. Add ashes to a vial of water and you get an “ash potion (unf)”, to which you can later add tarromin. So you can make a few of these ash potions to save space and bring them with you to fight aberrant spectres, for example. Of course, some NPCs drop vials of water or ashes themselves, which makes this even easier.

I mentioned earlier that the only use of Serum 207 is to treat locals of the town of Mort’ton. When you use a vial of the serum on an “Afflicted” NPC, it will turn into a normal villager temporarily. He or she will thank you and then reward you for using the serum.

The rewards are nothing exciting, being mainly low-value ingredients used in the Shades of Mort’ton minigame: olive oil, limestone bricks, swamp paste and small numbers of coins. But you also often get some of the same ingredients used to make Serum 207 in the first place: vials, grimy tarromin herbs, and logs (to burn for ashes). This means that, depending on what you get, you can sometimes get “free” Herblore XP by starting with Serum 207 and making use of the rewards you get. Of course, it’s not really free, because this process is very slow compared to other methods of training, and there’s no guarantee that you will get all of the items you need. So this is something I recommend you only do for fun if you feel like trying it out.

If you use Serum 207 on the sanctified flame of the temple in Mort’ton, after you have at least 20% sanctity, it transforms into Serum 208, the “permanent” version of the serum. Using this on “Afflicted” villagers will give you better rewards: generally, just greater quantities of the same items like olive oil, logs, tarromin and so forth. This takes even more time so it probably isn’t worth doing, but if you want to try it, go to World 77, which is the theme world for the Shades of Mort’ton minigame.

Note that despite this serum supposedly being “permanent”, villagers will turn back into “Afflicteds” after about 30 seconds. J