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Integrating Vinesweeper Into Other Farming Activities TruthScape Monster Secrets

When you finish playing Vinesweeper, the fun’s not over. There’s still the final part of the minigame, and the one you’ll probably enjoy the most: cashing in your points to get rewards! You have two essential decisions to make here. First, do you want to trade your points for Farming XP or items? And second, if you want to get items, which ones provide the best value based on their point costs? Let’s take a look and find out what the options are at Mrs. Winkin’s World of Seeds.

Oh, before going any further, I should point out that even though this is technically the last part of the minigame, you can choose to trade in your points at any time.

For most players, deciding whether to use their points on XP or items really isn’t a tough choice: they go for the XP. The reason is simple: nearly all of the items in Mrs. Winkin’s seed store can be bought from other players, but Farming XP cannot. Many players specifically do Vinesweeper because they dislike conventional Farming methods, and so for them, getting XP is the entire point.

To trade in your points for Farming XP, just trade Mrs. Winkin and click the “Trade for XP” button. After confirming, your points will be swapped for XP on a 1-to-1 basis, if you are level 40 or higher; below that, the XP reward is reduced, sometimes significantly. Remember that this is the only way to get Farming XP from Vinesweeper, because you don’t get any when playing.

You probably noticed that there is only one button to cash in points for XP: it’s an “all or nothing” affair that trades all of your points for XP in one go (Figure 330). If you want to split your points between seeds and XP, be sure you buy the seeds first.

The alternative to using your Vinesweeper points for Farming XP is to spend them on items, by trading them to Mrs. Winkin. There are 27 different varieties of seeds here; some are rather useless, while others might come in very handy indeed. Table 64 contains a complete list of all of the possible Vinesweeper seed rewards and the point cost of each, along with some extra data we will use shortly.

I have to be honest in saying that I find many of Jagex’s choices here puzzling, if not outright daffy. Only about half of the seeds offered are ones that would interest most farmers—Jagex should know by now that bush seeds, hops seeds, flower seeds and low-level herb seeds are not in demand by players, and haven’t been for ages. Could the developers not have checked the Grand Exchange and seen for themselves that nearly 50% of the seeds they chose to include here sell in abundance for under 100 gp? Did they not realize that you can bucketloads of low-end seeds by pickpocketing master farmers?

In contrast, there are some seeds that really should have been here—because they really are hard to get in other ways—but are not. In particular, I’d have liked to see high-level herb seeds (lantadyme, dwarf weed and torstol), as well as the new spirit weed seeds and evil turnip seeds (which are ridiculously rare for a level 42 item.)

The final column of Table 64 is a ratio of the gold piece value of each seed to the number of points it costs; this gives an approximate indication of where you get the most “bang for your buck”. The “winner” here is asgarnian seeds, but really, who cares about those? J Ranarr seeds and watermelons are close to a tie for second, and obviously more useful.

Even with ranarrs and watermelons, though, it is hard to justify spending Vinesweeper points. The better seeds are still usually not hard to buy, and you will get more by trading the points for XP directly than by trading them for seeds that you later plant. Given this, the spirit tree seed is actually the most useful of the seed rewards, because it is the only one that is both rare and untradeable. Vinesweeper is the only way to get a spirit tree seed in a predictable manner (as opposed to it being a matter of luck when cutting wood or using the Kingdom of Miscellania.) Again, you will want to choose it if you actually want the tree for transportation purposes, since you are giving up 55k Farming XP for that seed.

The remainder of the seeds are only worth considering you want to grow them for the sake of the harvest. For example, you might want to plant a yew tree to chop it, or a palm tree to pick coconuts, or watermelons for the fruit to make summer pies. Again, if it’s XP you are after, you’re better off trading for it directly and just buying the seeds. (When comparing points to XP potential, remember that you need three seeds to plant an allotment patch...)

There are three other situations in which exchanging points for seeds can make sense. First, sometimes it is impossible to buy seeds of a particular type, if there is a surge of demand for them and you can’t get an order filled on the Grand Exchange. Second, lower-level players who get less than one XP per point may find seeds are a much better deal. And finally, I have to give a nod here to those self-sufficient players who like to do things themselves and don’t want to buy their seeds; this new minigame finally gives these folks a way to get seeds like watermelon and ranarr without the randomness inherent in both monster drops and seed thieving.

There are two other special item rewards options available from Mrs. Winkin. The first is the compost potion; it has four doses, each of which can be used on a bin of regular compost to turn it into supercompost. (Note that while Mrs. Winkin’s item list labels this “super compost potion”, the item is actually called a “compost potion”—at any rate, it’s the same thing.) Each compost potion costs 5,000 points, and can only be purchased if you’ve completed the Garden of Tranquility quest, which is where the item is first introduced.

Now, on the Grand Exchange, these are listed as being only worth 120 gp, but their value is actually far higher. Each one lets you change 60 regular compost into supercompost; the difference in value between the two is around 450 per bucket, or 27k gold total. This probably still isn’t worth losing 5,000 Farming XP, but it’s at least a reasonable trade.

One excellent way to use compost potions is in conjunction with the compost mound Summoning familiar. Use its special on a bin; if it makes supercompost, withdraw it directly; if not, apply a potion dose to the bin to turn it into supercompost (Figure 331).

Finally, you can also buy Vinesweeper flags to replace any you might have lost while digging in the farm, at a cost of 50 points each. Note that you cannot use this to try to get around the minigame’s limit of a maximum of 10 flags owned at a time (yes, I tried!) Also, if you’ve played before, be sure not to use this to buy flags before first checking with either Mrs. Winkin or Farmer Blinkin to see if they have any flags left from your last visit; if you buy 10 flags before checking with them, they’ll refuse to give you more, and you’ll lose them.

Ironically enough, buying flags using your points provides a better financial return than buying any of the seeds. The flags cost 500 gp to replace, so the GP value per point here is 10—more than double any of the useful seeds you can buy. Again, though, do you want to waste 500 Farming XP to save 500 gp? Probably not. And running back to Mrs. Winkin every time you lose a flag is also a waste of time.

Whatever you choose, I hope you have fun playing and enjoying your rewards! J

Integrating Vinesweeper Into Other Farming Activities TruthScape Monster Secrets