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TruthScape.com 9 TruthScape Skill Secrets 9 TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore 9 TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - The Best Methods for Obtaining Herbs |
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Obtaining Non-Herb Primary Ingredients - Star Flowers, Cactus Spines and Cave Nightshade
The general rule with potions is that the primary ingredient is an herb. Well, they say that rules are made to be broken, and with primary ingredients there are three “rule-breakers”: star flowers, cactus spines and cave nightshade. These items play the role of herbs in their respective potions, but are gathered in ways that more closely resemble secondary ingredients than herbs. They also do not have distinct “grimy” and “clean” versions; they are ready to use as collected.
Most players don’t gather these particular ingredients nearly as much as they do standard herbs, but here’s some information for when you do.
I think these items, which are the primary ingredient in magic essence potions, are the coolest ingredients in Herblore. J They are collected from spawns, but these aren’t like the mundane spawns of ingredients like snape grass, for example. Rather, you actually watch star flowers grow up from the ground in large, pretty fields, and then must pick them before they wither away.
To gather star flowers, put on any lightweight gear, and equip a lunar staff or dramen staff. Go to a fairy ring and teleport to Zanaris, then enter code “C K P”. You will find yourself in the dreamy, beautiful alternate dimension that you visited during A Fairy Tail, Part II.
Head a bit south and wait, and you’ll see small green shoots start to appear in a grid all around you. Eventually some of these will become larger green plants, and then yellow flowers will appear, as seen in Figure 202; this does take some time to begin happening. Each time you pick a plant you’ll get a star flower in your inventory, and the plant will shrink back down, only to grow again later. You can also explore around the other areas of the plane, though sticking close to the teleport spot is most efficient.
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When your inventory is full, go back to the fairy ring where you entered and return to Zanaris. Run northwest to the banker fairies and store your star flowers; you can then go back and repeat the process.
In my tests, it took me, on average, just under 3 minutes to get a load of 28 flowers. One interesting thing I noticed was that after leaving the plane to go bank, when I returned, all of the flowers that had grown were gone and I had to wait for them to regrow each time. However, this took more time on my first trip than subsequent ones. This suggests that there may be an advantage to doing multiple trips in a row, compared to just one.
At just 3 minutes for 28 flowers, you could get over 500 an hour, which is very fast for a potion’s primary ingredient. This would suggest that magic essence potions would be a good training option. Unfortunately, the catch comes in with their secondary ingredient: ground gorak claws. Goraks are tough opponents that hit through prayer and are slow to kill, and their claws are untradeable; a high-level player would do well to get even 40 claws per hour. Obviously there’s no point in getting lots of star flowers if you can’t get the gorak claws to go with them, so not many people bother with magic essence pots—or star flowers.
Cactus spines substitute for herbs as the primary ingredient in extra strong weapon poison (item name weapon poison+). They are one of the most difficult Herblore items to acquire in quantity, because they have only one major source, and it limits you to getting only a small number of them. Ironically, the only saving grace when it comes to getting cactus spines is that you probably won’t have much need for them. There’s so little demand for weapon poison+ these days that it’s not really worth making them to sell, and for your own use you are better off with super weapon poison, which is superior and quite cheap to buy.
If you do decide you want this item, you really only have two practical choices: buy it on the Grand Exchange, or collect it slowly over time. Cactus spines are quite expensive to purchase, though, not because of demand from herblorists, but rather from farmers: 10 cactus spines are the NPC payment used to ensure the health of yew trees. You can generally expect to pay over 2k each for them when buying from others.
If you want to get them yourself, you must plant a cactus in the special cactus patch in Al-Kharid; you need level 55 Farming for this. Once the tree has grown, you can pick three cactus spines from it at a time, after which you must wait several hours before you can pick more. If you have a giant ent summoned, you can get extra spines if you’re lucky.
There’s only this one spot where the cactus can be planted, so unless you are religious about coming back to pick the spines constantly, you’ll only get a few per day. The big problem for most players is simply remembering to check the cactus regularly. You can get to the patch quickly, and one tip I can give you is to work it into your farming routine if you grow herbs. For example, I try to remember to check the patch every time I start an herb run, so at least I get three whenever I cycle my herbs.
The fastest way to get to the patch is to use a ring of duelling to teleport to the Duel Arena in Al-Kharid. When you arrive, go through the gate to the west and then run due south, and the patch is right there. The use of the duelling ring sets up one other possible way to remind yourself to pick spines: when you are planning to teleport to Castle Wars, first go to Al-Kharid to the cactus (unless your inventory is full). For example, if you’re about to go to Castle Wars to use the bank there to make potions, first rub the ring and go to Al-Kharid, pick three spines and then go to CW.
Another option to consider is to access the Vinesweeper farming game from the cactus patch. Then, if you remember to exit the game using the portal when you’re done, you’ll be in the same spot and can pick any spines that have regrown while you played.
Other than the cactus, the only alternate source of cactus spines is the minigame Impetuous Impulses: one spine is a possible reward from looting a nature impling jar. These are hard to catch in quantity, however, and this is one of over a dozen possible rewards, so this is far from a reliable source for spines.
Cave nightshade is the primary ingredient in super weapon poison (weapon poison++). It is also a quest item, and so is untradeable; the only way to get it is to get it yourself, either by growing it using the Farming skill, or gathering it from a single spawn in the Ogre city of Gu’Tanoth.
Growing nightshade requires level 63 Farming. To start, you plant a belladonna seed in a dedicated nightshade patch located on the west side of Draynor Manor. It takes at least five hours to grow, you must harvest it while wearing gloves, and for your trouble you get one—yep, one—nightshade (Figure 203). As such, this is hardly a way to get nightshade in any reasonable quantity; at best, it can be used as a supplement to get some extra Herblore XP over the long term (and Farming XP too, of course).
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The other method requires going to the cave of the “mad skavid”, a strange creature in the ogre enclave of Gu’Tanoth, whom you encounter during the Watchtower quest. In his cave is a single cave nightshade spawn (see Figure 164). Picking it up will cause another to respawn in the same spot, which takes 30 seconds on a reasonably full world. (There is also apparently another cave where this spawns but the two aren’t close enough to use simultaneously.) Obviously, this means that, at most, you can get only 120 per hour, and overhead (running from the bank and so forth) makes it less: the practical limit is about 100 weapon poisons made per hour.
It is most efficient to collect nightshade and then use it in potions while waiting for respawns, as I mention in my description of making super weapon poison. In order to access the nightshade cave, you need both a light source and a skavid map, which is a quest item you use in Watchtower. If you no longer have one, you can get another from a level 83 ogre “city guard” in Gu’Tanoth—they are the only ones who have it. You must bring with 20 gp as well, to get past an obstacle blocked by another guard who demands this payment. Talk to the level 83 guard (Figure 204), tell him you’ve lost your map and he’ll give you another.
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