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TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Steps for Making Potions and Other Products Efficiently Efficiently Cleaning Herbs

If you buy vials that already have water in them, they are ready to use, but otherwise you will have to first fill them with water. There are two basic methods for this: either filling them manually, or using the Lunar Magicks spell Humidify. In some cases, you may also begin with vials that have a potion or other fluid in them that must be emptied.

You may also be interested in my analysis of the pros and cons of filling vials as opposed to buying them already filled.

The “old-fashioned way” of filling vials is to simply use them on a sink or other water source. Simply clicking on the vial and then the water will cause all vials to be filled one after the other.

First, pick a location. You want a bank that is easy to use and very close to water, and the place best meeting these needs is the Culinaromancer’s chest in the basement of Lumbridge. It has a one-click bank (because it’s a chest) and there’s a sink in the same room. Second best is Falador west bank, but it is further from the bank, and the source there is a water pump instead of a sink, which is more difficult to click. Another option is the bank in the Chef’s Guild, which is very close to a sink, but it requires completion of the Varrock achievement diary (which I have not done), and the door in the way is likely a hassle. Stick to Lumbridge.

Before beginning, make sure you are set to run and your inventory is empty. Then follow these steps:

1. Withdraw 28 empty vials from the bank.
   
   
2. Without closing your bank screen, click on the minimap near the sink. Your bank interface will close and you’ll start running towards the sink.
   
   
3. While you are moving, click a vial to “use” it and then click the sink—this will save time compared to waiting until you get near it. All 28 vials will quickly be filled (Figure 153).
   
   
4. When the last vial has water in it, click the bank chest in your game window (not the minimap) and you will run back and open the bank interface. Store the vials of water and go back to step #1 to repeat.
   

   Figure 153: Filling Vials at a Sink

   The simplest method of filling empty vials is just to use one on a sink; the game will fairly quickly fill each one automatically.

   
   

Pretty simple. In my tests it took around 30 seconds to do a full load, so you can fill about 3,360 per hour. Doing this at Falador west bank takes about 5 seconds extra per load, which doesn’t seem like much, but adds up: you fill almost 500 fewer per hour.

An alternative to filling vials at a sink is to use the new Humidify spell, which is part of the Lunar Magicks spellbook. This turns out to be a very viable method for quickly filling vials and also getting magic XP, though it has some rather steep quest and skill level requirements.

To use this method, you will of course have to be on the Lunar Magicks spellbook. Then go to any bank that can be opened with one click. Take out the equipment and supplies you need for the spell:

• If you have a steam battlestaff, take it out and equip it, and also withdraw a stack of astral runes: one for every spell you plan to cast. You’ll be filling 27 vials at a time, so divide that into the number of vials you need to fill, or just take out a bunch and put back the leftovers when you are done.
  
  
• If you don’t have a steam battlestaff, wield a water staff and take out a stack of astral runes and fire runes, one for every 26 vials you are going to fill.

Now, all you need to do is take out as many vials as you can hold, cast Humidify, and then store the vials of water and repeat. Each time you cast the spell you’ll see a cool storm cloud and rain animation (Figure 154) but you do not have to wait for it to complete before storing the water vials and getting more empties. Practice to see how quickly you can repeat the process.

In my tests, I was able to do 10 loads in a minute and a half, which is 400 casts per hour. If using a steam battlestaff, that comes out to 10,800 vials filled per hour; with a regular water staff, about 10,400. Quite a lot! And you get 26,000 Magic XP, which isn’t too shabby.

Some players like to begin their potion making by reusing vials that already contain other potions or liquids. This can be done either by buying “junk potions”—which I do not recommend—or by recycling potions you’ve made yourself for XP but that you don’t need (such as Serum 207 or unfinished Guthix balance potions, for example).

There’s nothing complex to this: just modify one of the procedures above to take out vials of “whatever” from the bank instead of empty vials, and then dump their contents to make them into empties. Then fill them as usual.

Don’t underestimate what this costs you in time, though: I found that emptying 28 vials takes about 35 seconds, which is quite a lot given how fast vial filling is. This means that when filling manually, the number you can do per hour drops from 3,360 to about 1,550; and the productivity of the Humidify method plummets from 10,400 or 10,800 to 2,100 or 2,200!

WARNING: Emptying vials dramatically increases the amount of clicking needed to make vials of water. I recommend doing this for at most short lengths of time; see the discussion of repetitive stress injuries for more information.

TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Steps for Making Potions and Other Products Efficiently Efficiently Cleaning Herbs