TruthScape.com - Overview of Methods for Obtaining Secondary Ingredients

Let’s start with an overview of all of the secondary ingredients used in Herblore and the sources from which they can be obtained. I will show you both recommended and alternative methods of getting these items, and also indicate the conditions under which I recommend either gathering them yourself or purchasing them from other players on the Grand Exchange.

The ingredients are listed in alphabetical order, just as they are in the quick reference to secondary ingredients and the potions that use them, shown in Table 19. All secondary items are tradeable except where noted. I have provided links, where appropriate, to topics that provide more details on methods for efficiently getting the most popular and important secondary ingredients.

Note that in many cases it is possible to get ingredients more quickly by using a beast of burden Summoning familiar to effectively expand your inventory capacity.

There are two sources for ashes: the residue of burning fires, and drops from monsters such as imps, demons, killerwatts and so forth. Of course, most players fighting monsters want to pick up proper drops, not ashes, so that’s not too practical. It’s more convenient to pick up the ashes when training Firemaking, though that can slow you down as well.

Of course, ashes cost under 10 gp each and are easy to buy in quantity on the Grand Exchange, so that’s what I recommend for those who need more than a few of them. At that price, it’s not worth wasting your time getting them yourself.

This is usually only needed in small quantities to make blamish oil for oily fishing rods. To get it, use a dead snail (raw) on a pestle and mortar with a sample bottle in your inventory. The easiest way is to just buy a sample bottle and one “thin snail” on the GE; otherwise, go to Canifis, buy a sample bottle in the general store there, and kill a snail in the Mort Myre Swamp nearby.

Made by grinding chocolate bars with a pestle and mortar. The bars themselves can be obtained either by buying them from food stores or picking them up from spawns. This is a popular item and not quite as simple to get in large amounts as some might imagine. Of course, it is a cheap item and so often best to just buy in quantity from the GE.

This secondary ingredient for Summoning potions can be obtained in three different ways. First, they are an occasional drop from cockatrices in the Fremennik Slayer Dungeon; you need Slayer level 25 and a mirror shield to fight them. Second, you can use the spirit cobra familiar’s special move Ophidian Incubation to turn a regular chicken egg into a cockatrice egg; this requires level 63 Summoning. Finally, you can sometimes get them from spirit cockatrices, which require level 43 Summoning (and a lot of patience!)

Cockatrice eggs are tradeable, and usually available on the GE. They are also a secondary ingredient for Summoning, which keeps their price high (close to 1k each).

Crushed nests are obtained by grinding bird’s nests with a pestle and mortar. The nests themselves come from a variety of sources, including the Woodcutting skill (randomly dropped from trees), and the Kingdom of Miscellania minigame (as bonus items when you put your workers on maples or rare wood). You can also get them by fighting the giant mole; trade in the mole claws and skins it drops to Wyson for nests. Molanisks also sometimes drop mole claws.

This material can only be obtained by picking up blue dragon scales from the blue dragon lair in Taverley Dungeon and grinding them with a pestle and mortar. I have a full description of how to do this efficiently in the section on special methods.

With a cost of under 100 gp each, it is most cost effective to buy this in bulk from other players. If you want to get it yourself, you’ll probably just buy it from the magic store in Port Sarim (though this is very slow if you need a lot). It can also be obtained in several other ways: purchased from Herblore shops, obtained as a monster drop (in small quantities) or obtained via the Creature Creation minigame.

If you are making Guthix balance potions to use for the Temple Trekking / Burgh de Rott Ramble minigames, you need small amounts of garlic, which you can easily buy from the spice seller in the marketplace of East Ardougne. There are also (slow) spawns of garlic in Ardougne, Draynor Village and Seers’ Village.

To get the larger quantities needed to make unfinished Guthix balance potions for training, buying garlic on the GE is the only practical method. It is cheap to get there, but you can only buy 100 at a time.

To get this item, kill desert goats and grind their horns; the goats can be found in various locations in the desert south of Al-Kharid. The fastest way to kill them is to fight the herd of four goats that “lives” just west of the bank in Nardah. Though that town isn’t convenient to access—using a Pharaoh’s sceptre to teleport to the Agility Pyramid is the best way—it’s worth making the trip if you plan to get a lot of horns. In my tests I am able to get 28 horns there in about 6 minutes, so about 280 per hour (not including grinding time.)

An alternative spot is near the town of Sophanem. If you’ve completed Contact! you can quickly go between the town and where the goats are by using the “hole” in the wall of the town near the bank, and the “secret passage” near the tent north of town, which takes you back inside. The goats are right near the tent.

Goat horns are also dropped three at a time (unnoted) by scabarites, in the areas unlocked during the quest Dealing with Scabaras. These are tough opponents, though, and the drops are infrequent.

Goat horn dust is also a secondary ingredient for Summoning and so is often in high demand.

Grind gorak claws, which are sometimes dropped by level 145 goraks; their lair can be accessed at code “D I R” in the Fairy Ring network. There are also level 149 goraks in the God Wars Dungeon. Both are potent foes that can hit through prayer, so don’t underestimate them.

Unfortunately, the drop rate on the claws is quite low, and combined with the high number of HP the goraks have, it takes a long time to get them in any quantity. I would estimate that even 40 per hour would be a good result. Goraks drop big bones 100% of the time and are one of the best uncut gem droppers in the game (Figure 209).

**Figure 209: Gorak Claws and Gems**
Goraks are pretty nasty critters to kill, and they drop their claws only occasionally, but they drop gems like they’re going out of style.

There are four jangerberry spawns on the “ogre island” between Yanille and Castle Wars. The fastest way to get these is to put on weight-reducing gear and a duelling ring, teleport to CW, withdraw a rope and head over to the island. Use the rope on the tree just west of the island to swing over to it (Figure 210). Fill your inventory with berries and then use the ring to bank at CW and repeat. I can get a load of 28 in 2 minutes 50 seconds, which works out to about 600 per hour.

**Figure 210: Trapeze Artist**
Well, not quite. J To collect jangerberries, you must attach a rope to the long branch of this tree just east of Castle Wars, then swing over to the ogre island. You can see a jangerberry spawn in the top right corner of the game window.

To conserve run energy, I recommend only using the three spawn on the south and eastern part of the island; on a fast world they respawn fast enough that you don’t need the fourth. Be sure you don’t accidentally click the ogres! As long as you leave them alone, they will not attack you.

Alternately, these can be picked four at a time from jangerberry bushes grown using the Farming skill; this obviously is much slower, so this can only supplement the primary source if you need them in quantity.

Grind kebbit teeth using a pestle and mortar; these are drops from sabre-toothed kebbits, which must be deadfall trapped using the Hunter skill (level 51 required). This is a slow process, and certainly not one of the fastest way of getting Hunter XP, though it’s fairly easy.

If you have level 71 Summoning, the arctic bear familiar is a fantastic help in gathering these. It can teleport you directly to the hunting grounds where they are trapped, and in addition, it gives you an invisible +7 Hunter bonus as well as acting as the equivalent of two pieces of polar camo gear.

One of the most “famous” Herblore seconds, these roots come mainly from monster drops and Farming. There are several good monsters to kill for these roots; for more, please see my analysis and comparison.

These can only be obtained by cutting down and then digging up a farmed magic tree. Unless you are powerleveling the Farming skill you won’t do this very often, given that magic seeds cost about 200k a piece. Other powerlevelers dump unneeded roots on the Grand Exchange so you can get them for far less than this price, though they are still too pricey to be worth using in potions more than once in a while.

This item is primarily obtained only by using a special technique. This involves using the “Cast bloom” function of a blessed silver sickle while standing near rotting logs in Mort Myre Swamp.

Note that these fungi are also dropped by zygomites—annoying Slayer monsters—but not in significant quantities.

These can only be obtained as drops from nail beasts, which in turn are only encountered randomly on the Temple Trekking minigame.

These berries can only be picked from player-grown poison ivy bushes (level 70 Farming required) or purchased from other players.

Picked up from spawns in the kalphite lair, the entrance to which is in the northwestern corner of the Kharidian desert. I have a guide that tells you the best method of efficiently getting them.

This is one of the most widely used secondary ingredients, and also the one that has the greatest number of sources. You can get them as follows:

This is mined from the tunnels below Witchaven after finishing the quest Kennith’s Concerns. For details on how best to get and use rubium, see the explanation of making super fishing explosive.

You get this by using a silver bar on the bone grinder upstairs from the Ectofuntus. The bars are obtained using standard methods: smelting silver ore, as monster drops, or from other sources.

This item is mainly obtained from ground spawns on a peninsula west of the Crafting Guild, and on Waterbirth Island. It is dropped by some monsters as well, though usually in quantities too small to be reliable; the best of these are level 32 tribesmen.

These are obtained by pulling the legs off swamp toads (ouch). The toads come from spawns located around the horseshoe-shaped lake between Falador and Taverley, and the swamp northwest of the Grand Tree. The second spot has more spawns and is closer to a bank, so is the better choice; it takes about three minutes to get a load of these, so that’s around 560 per hour (more if you use a beast of burden).

Swamp toads are a Summoning secondary ingredient, which is why the “unpulled” version of toad’s legs is actually worth more.

This material comes mainly from grinding unicorn horns, which are obtained as drops from unicorns (both regular and black, but only the adult ones). You can also get them from Creature Creation.

There are a couple of monsters that actually drop “already ground” unicorn horn dust, but only in small quantities.

White berries are primarily obtained by picking them from player-grown whiteberry bushes (level 59 Farming required.) Since you only get four and then must wait for them to grow back, it’s a slow item to obtain. The only reliable alternate source for them (other than buying from other players) is by taking them from spawns in two inconvenient spots: deep in the Wilderness and in the middle of the Elven lands.

You can also get these by killing cave crawlers, which drop them in surprisingly large numbers.

This wine comes from a single spawns on a table in the chaos temple between Goblin Village and Burthorpe. It must be taken using a special method involving the Telekinetic Grab spell.

Like magic roots, these only come from digging up a chopped-down player-farmed tree; in this case a yew tree of course. Due to the high cost of yew seeds, you’ll only get these yourself if you were planning to grow yews to powerlevel Farming anyway. They can also be purchased, but are generally too expensive to be practical.