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Potato Cactus Snape Grass

Like limpwurt roots, red spiders’ eggs are one of the most common and widely-used Herblore seconds in the game: they’re a component in restore, super restore and extra strength weapon poison potions. Also like limpwurt roots, they are non-member items, and another ingredient of the only non-member potion, which gives them an interesting market dynamic compared to other secondary ingredients. There are no fewer than four ways that you can get red spiders’ eggs, though as we’ll see, some of the options are a lot more attractive than others.

The original way of getting these eggs has always been to pick them up from where they spawn in any of several deadly red spider lairs. These can be found in the following places:

• Edgeville Dungeon, in the northern Wilderness section
  
  
• Under the volcano in Karamja, near the entrance to Tzhaar City
  
  
• At the end of the Varrock Sewers, near the pipe shortcut to the Edgeville Dungeon
  
  
• In a room in the extreme northern part of the Chaos Tunnels
  
  
• In the far northern part of Tirannwn (the Elven lands)
  
  
• Level 48 Wilderness, north of the Lava Maze
  
  
• Level 28 Wilderness, in the ruins between Bounty Hunter and Clan Wars

Which to choose? Ideally, we want a location reasonably close to a bank, so we can get to the lair quickly, and one with many eggs, so we don’t have to wait for too many respawns. Avoiding the Wilderness is also a worthwhile goal, for obvious reasons—revenants.

In my assessment, the Edgeville Dungeon best meets the requirements. It has 6 egg spawns near each other, and takes less than a minute to get to from Edgeville bank, a spot that’s also easy to teleport to with an amulet of glory. Now, it is in the Wilderness, and you’ll get attacked by the spiders, but it’s only level 4 and not too tough to deal with. All the other locations are either too far from a bank, have too few spawns, or both.

To use this spawn, first equip yourself with weight-reducing equipment; you do not need armor unless you are rather low level, in which case it is recommended. Make sure you are wearing an amulet of glory with at least one charge, then follow these steps:

1. Run south from the bank and go through the trap door to enter Edgeville Dungeon.
   
   
2. Go north, then turn east, go through the gate, continue east, then go through the gate to the north that separates the Wilderness area from the rest of the dungeon.
   
   
3. Run past the thugs, going due north, until you find the deadly red spiders. There are three red spiders’ eggs in the northeast corner of the room, and three in the southwest. Pick them all up, fend off any spiders that attack, and wait for respawns.
   
   
4. Continue grabbing eggs until you have 28. Then use your amulet of glory to teleport to Edgeville.
   
   
5. Go to the bank and store the eggs. Then take out one or two energy potions as needed to restore your run energy close to maximum, and any cheap food needed to heal yourself back up. You’re now ready for your next run.

Each run takes me 3:40, which works out to 450 red spiders’ eggs per hour. You can get more with a beast of burden or by using the “make potions in the dungeon” trick.

Note that since this is the Wilderness, you may get attacked by a revenant. If so, you should simply run south and in a few seconds you’ll get back to the gate. If you get poisoned, immediately teleport out, of course. Those who are especially concerned about revenants could take with a one-click teleport, like a tablet, though this means you get one less egg per trip.

There are three monsters that sometimes drop red spiders’ eggs: cave bugs (level 6), cockroach drones (level 8) and cave crawlers (level 23). None, however, drop them frequently; they max out at around 10 per hour. These critters also all drop herbs and other seconds, so they may be worth fighting for the net value of their drops, but they aren’t a viable option if red spiders’ eggs are specifically what you are after.

Red spiders’ eggs are one of three Herblore seconds you can get from the Creature Creation feature unlocked as part of the Tower of Life quest. By using one red spiders’ egg and one raw sardine on the appropriate altar, you generate a level 42 monster called a spidine, which, when killed drops 3 to 6 red spiders’ eggs. You then use one of these eggs and another sardine to generate a second spidine, and so forth.

While a nifty method in theory, unfortunately it turns out not to be worth bothering with: it takes 4.5 to 5 minutes to get a full load of eggs, there are costs in materials, and it’s also rather tedious. If you’re interested, though, I have a full discussion of using the Creature Creation feature.

The spirit spider Summoning familiar has a special move called Egg Spawn, which it does exactly what it suggests: generates red spiders’ eggs and drops them on the ground around you. You can cast multiple scrolls one after the other while standing outside a bank (Figure 225), then collect up all the eggs and store them, making this easily the most convenient method of getting lots of this item (other than buying them on the GE, of course!)

Each Egg Spawn scroll takes 6 special move points, so you can do 10 with a full bar. This takes around 1 minute and yields, on average, 15 to 20 red spiders’ eggs. You then you must wait 2 minutes for the bar to recharge. The total time of 3 minutes means you can repeat this cycle 20 times per hour, with an approximate yield in that time of 350 red spiders’ eggs. You also get about 40 Summoning XP per hour, which isn’t much, but hey, it’s more XP than you get running back and forth between a spawn spot and a bank!

The spirit spider is a very accessible familiar: it’s only level 10, so anyone can get it. The pouches and scrolls are also very cheap, making this a viable option for many players.

For detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to efficiently generate red spiders’ eggs with this familiar, please see the full description of the spirit spider.

There was a time when red spiders’ eggs were worth 800 to 1,000 each, but that was before the big crash in Herblore item values: now they are worth only about 300 a piece. The price of this item is now kept low not only as a result of overall lower costs, but by the ease with which the GE allows non-members to introduce them to the game.

As you can see, the fastest method for obtaining them yields 450 per hour, which works out to about 135k per hour. At that rate, they are not worth gathering for resale, so you should only bother if you value self-sufficiency, and want to get them for your own use. And in that case, the only options worth considering are spawn-running in Edgeville and using the spirit spider.

In terms of straight numbers, the dungeon will let you get more eggs per hour: about 450 instead of around 350. But it’s boring as hell, and you always run the risk of a revenant attack. Also remember that with the spirit spider, you spend only 25 minutes or so of each hour “working”, and the other 35 can be spent chatting, multitasking, or working “bank-tethered” skills like Fletching or Herblore. I think this makes it the better option.

Potato Cactus Snape Grass