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Obtaining Special Ingredients Roe and Caviar

Swamp tar has been around RuneScape for many years, but until the Hunter skill came out, it had little use. You could distill it to make lamp oil, but that’s something you only need to do once. And you could mix it with flour and cook it to make swamp paste, but that’s much easier to get just by buying it already made.

Hunter made swamp tar a popular item by introducing herb tars, which are used both as bait and fuel for salamanders caught by that skill. Salamanders are versatile weapons, and making herb tar gives a good amount of Herblore XP. As a result, swamp tar has become quite valuable—it’s worth over 200 gp each.

Using the right methods, it’s possible to collect over 1,000 herb tar per hour, which you can either use to make herb tars yourself, or sell to make money. The two main methods of getting it are taking it from spawns (either on the ground or in barrels) or getting it as a monster drop.

There are two areas in RuneScape that have ground spawns of swamp tar: Lumbridge Swamp and Mort Myre Swamp. You can go to either place and just run around picking up swamp tar off the ground; since it stacks, you never have to bank. Sounds good, but of course, there’s a catch: it’s slow. In both places the spawns are fairly spread out, you only get one swamp tar per spawn point, and they take at least 30 seconds to respawn. As a result, the only way to get a bunch of it is to do a lot of running around—which means you then have to deal with the expense of energy potions.

I did a brief test in Lumbridge Swamp, picking up swamp tar from spawns around the entrance to the Lumbridge Swamp Caves and the water rune altar. In about 5 minutes I was able to get 53 swamp tar, which works out to 636 per hour. This is much slower than the methods I’ll describe below.

I didn’t bother testing this extensively in Mort Myre swamp as the spawns there are even more spread out, and you also have to deal with the annoyance of ghasts there. Trust me though, it’s really not worth the bother.

When you do the quest Lunar Diplomacy, you take a ship from Rellekka to Moonclan Island. On that ship are several barrels that contain swamp tar; you can take tar from them for a while, after which they “become empty” and you must wait for them to respawn. There are several locations of these barrels on different decks, but the best spot is on the middle deck.

To get to the ship, make sure you have a seal of passage and go to Rellekka via teleport or whatever means you wish. (Ask Brundt the Chieftain for a new seal if you lose yours). Then find Lokar the Searunner on the docks (the same one Jarvald is on, the dude who takes you to Waterbirth Island) and tell him you want to go back to his ship. After you travel with him, go up the ladders and onto the ship, and you’ll see two ladders just south of you. Go down one of them.

You are now on the middle deck of the ship. Head south and you’ll find one barrel of tar in the southwest room; click it until it becomes empty; you’ll get anywhere from 1 to over 10 swamp tar, though 1 to 3 is most common. Go east into the southeast room and you’ll find two more barrels; do the same, then run back to the southwest room to wait for the tar to respawn, which takes about 15 seconds.

In my test I found that I averaged 8 swamp tar total from the three barrels; I was able to get a total of 181 in a little over 10 minutes, working out to about 1,050 per hour. Obviously this is far from an exciting activity, but that’s a decent amount of value to get for an hour’s time. You can make even better use of the waiting time between spawns by bringing with some nature runes and noted items to alch (Figure 230).

Tip: When you’re done, before leaving, go back upstairs and look for the two barrels that look like they have green stuff in them: they contain apples, a useful item for Farming.

Swamp tar is dropped by four monsters: cave slimes, warped terrorbirds, warped tortoises and mummies. The last three of these are not worth considering for this purpose, as they all have high combat levels, take a long time to kill, and don’t drop the tar very frequently. In contrast, cave slimes are level 23 with 25 HP and drop 1 to 6 swamp tar on every kill. As you can see, it’s not a tough choice, though you must have a Slayer level of 17 to fight them.

The slimes are found in two locations: the Lumbridge Swamp Caves and the Dorgesh-Kaan South Dungeon. The latter is a far better location, because it has a room with six cave slimes in it; Lumbridge has more of the monsters, but they are much more spread out.

Cave slimes don’t hit much due to their low level, but they are poisonous. Their poison does a maximum of 3 damage, and it’s a contact poison—that means you will be continuously poisoned when fighting them, whether or not they damage you.

To fight cave slimes in the Dorgesh-Kaan South Dungeon, you must have completed Death to the Dorgeshuun. Equip yourself with lightweight armor (like dragonhide) and your favorite weapon. For supplies, take out of the bank a lunar or dramen staff, one 4-dose super antipoison for every 24 minutes you want to fight the slimes, and a covered light source. You can also bring with a super attack and/or super strength potion to speed up kills if you wish.

Access the fairy rings (the one between Edgeville and the Grand Exchange is convenient) and go to code “A J Q”. This will put you right in the dungeon—though not near the slimes. To find them, run east, then north and then west, continuing all the way until the corridor ends. Bend to the south, then continue west, and you’ll find an alcove with six cave slimes. Take a super antipoison dose and start wailing away. Be sure you get the swamp tar after each kill, as it blends into the dark color of the floor here and is easy to miss.

In my tests, I am able to get approximately 1,300 swamp tar per hour killing cave slimes here. In addition to that, they drop lots of gems, decent numbers of water runes and smaller amounts of other runes, coins, and also pairs of iron boots (Figure 231). Don’t leave the boots behind: people pay 2k each for them! J

If you can’t get into the Dorgesh-Kaan South Dungeon, you’ll have to use Lumbridge. Take out the same equipment and supplies mentioned above, except for the staff. Teleport to Draynor Village, then run southeast to the entrance to the caves. Run over to the square just east of the wall beast near the entrance; then click the spot just west of the wall beast to run past it without getting grabbed. Continue west and then north into a room with three cave slimes.

Fighting in Lumbridge is a bit slower, because you spend more time waiting for respawns. You’ll probably get only around 1,150 to 1,200 swamp tar per hour here, though that is still pretty good.

Cave slimes are, generally speaking, the way to go. You get more of them per hour, you get other valuable drops—including half keys on occasion—it’s less boring, and you earn combat XP. If you don’t want to fight for your tar, the tar barrel approach has the advantage of being easy, and if you combine it with alching it can be a good overall use of time. Don’t bother with ground spawns.

Note that in my tests I found little advantage in using advanced combat methods on the slimes; I even tried Dharoks and it made virtually no difference. Stick with a whip and defender combination or a godsword.

Obtaining Special Ingredients Roe and Caviar