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Obsolete Item Scams and Scam Avoidance Techniques The Anti-Scam Trading Method for Unidentified Herbs (OBSOLETE)

NOTE: This page contains information about scams that are now obsolete. It is retained on the site for historical information purposes.

Before the update to eliminate unidentified herbs, there were two related scams involving the Herblore skill that herblorists had to watch out for.

The first exploited the fact that all unidentified herbs (unids) looked alike, but some were much more valuable than others. This made unids an easy choice for all sorts of scams, such as the following:

• Trying to sell a stack of low-value unids, claiming they were more valuable herbs.
  
  
• Sellers who offered “unids over ranarr” (high-level herbs) but snuck in a stack of guams or other low-level herbs.
  
  
• Scammers who sold “unids over ranarr” but “skimmed out” the more valuable herbs, especially the kwuarms.

Some of these scammers could be very sneaky. For example, one common trick was to show a stack of 100 unids, claiming they were ranarrs, and then sell you one so you could identify it. They might even give you one for free. You’d identify it, see that it's a ranarr, and trade the seller again. Then they’d trade you 99 more unids, which you’d assume are the rest of the ranarrs—and then find he'd swapped them for unid guams.

The second scam involved unfinished potions: vials that have the herb added but not the secondary ingredient. Now, all unfinished potions used to just be called “Unfinished potion”—to find out what type of unfinished potion it was, you had to use the “Examine” option on the potion. It would then say something like “I need another ingredient to finish this Ranarr potion”.

The problem is that when an item is noted, it loses its “Examine” description; all noted items just say “Swap this note at any bank for the equivalent item”. Due to this, and the fact that unfinished potions all pretty much look alike, they were easy to use in scams. (Figure 105 shows just how confusing they used to be.)

Now, there were many people who honestly traded unidentified herbs; unfinished potions are traded more rarely, but still can be legitimate. Fortunately, Jagex fixed these Herblore problems to eliminate these scams, making it much more safe to trade for herbs and unfinished potions.

NOTE: This page contains information about scams that are now obsolete. It is retained on the site for historical information purposes.

Obsolete Item Scams and Scam Avoidance Techniques The Anti-Scam Trading Method for Unidentified Herbs (OBSOLETE)