TruthScape.com  9  TruthScape Skill Secrets       9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore            9  TruthScape Skill Secrets - Herblore - Training Techniques and Strategies                 9  Strategies and Methods for Efficient Training with Potions

Making Unfinished Guthix Balance Potions Advanced and Alternative Methods of Earning Herblore XP

Barbarian mix potions are made by adding either roe or caviar, obtained from barbarian fishing, to any of 24 different 2-dose regular potions. These special potion versions act the same as regular potions but also heal either 3 or 6 HP per dose; perhaps even more importantly, they also give extra Herblore XP when you make them. Since they add functionality and give bonus XP, you would think that barbarian mix potions would be an excellent an option to consider in training. It turns out, though, that they are only useful in very limited circumstances.

There are two main problems with making these potions to work on the Herblore skill. First, not very many people are interested in them, which makes them hard to sell. And second, they are time-consuming to make.

The first problem is largely caused by most players disliking the two-dose restriction of these potions. Even when you point out that two 2-dose prayer mix potions provides the same potion doses and more healing than one 4-dose prayer pot and one shark, most players just aren’t interested. Some of this is ignorance, but there are also valid considerations: in many types of combat, it is preferable to have healing and potion effects separate.

This issue is exacerbated by bogus prices in the Grand Exchange, with mixes often priced way above or way below the cost of regular potions. For example, at the time I write this, a 2-dose ranging potion has an average GE price of 737 gp, while a 2-dose ranging mix potion costs 2,491 gp. Who’s going to bother buying them for that price? Conversely, a 2-dose super restore costs 4,404 gp, while a 2-dose super restore mix is 400 gp. Who’s going to bother selling them for that price?

The second problem was described in the topic where I explained in detail how to make mix potions: they’re a nuisance. There’s no “Make All” function for these, and you have to right-click every time to combine the fish eggs with the potions. This makes them a rather slow option for trying to train. And they just don’t give very much XP for the time required to make them.

Add all this up, and you have a potentially nice feature that mostly has gone to waste. There are still a couple of training options, but not nearly as much as there could be if this feature had been properly implemented.

While the market as a whole is thin and unreliable, there are times when you’ll find certain mix potions can be sold. This is most often the case when the base potion of the same type is in high demand, but can occur simply when certain individuals decide they want the potion for whatever reason.

The only way to find this out is to make one each of a variety of potions and attempt to sell them. For example, as I was writing this, I made and tried to sell a super attack mix (2), a super strength (2) and a prayer (2). The super attack and prayer mixes wouldn’t sell even at the lowest price on the GE, but the super strength sold at the maximum price. Furthermore, this price was above the value of a 2-dose potion, opening up the possibility that I could use this option for training.

On this particular day, the value of a 3-dose super strength potion was 2,440 (that’s what I could sell them for). The cost to buy caviar was 471, and the 2-dose super strength mix sold for 1,973 gp. Making the barbarian potion gives 42 Herblore XP, and it is possible to make 900 mixes per hour from 3-dose potions. These numbers yield the following skill activity ratings:

SAV = ( 1973 - (2440 * 2/3 + 471) ) / 42 = -3.0

SAS = 900 * 42 = 37,800 XP/hr

SAP = -3.0 * 37,800 / 1000 = -113 kgp/hr

These are pretty good numbers. It isn’t the fastest method in the world, of course, but it’s rather cheap by Herblore standards. Here is the TVE comparing this method to actually making super strengths:

TVE [super strength mixes compared to super strengths] = ( (140000 / 37800) * -113 - (-1412) ) / (140000/37800 - 1) = 367 kgp/hr

That number is fairly high, indicating that these are worth making unless you can earn a lot of money in other ways. But again, that’s only the case when people are buying the mixes, so you need to check.

If you do this and an opportunity presents itself, be sure to make small batches and sell them immediately. You don’t want to get stuck with a pile of mix potions if the market changes. Conversely, also check if new opportunities arise; I said above that I wasn’t able to sell prayer potion mixes, but I went back to the GE two hours later and someone was buying them at the maximum price! J

There are also sometimes situations where you find a mix potion that sells at a huge profit, albeit slowly. For example, Zamorak brew potions are dirt cheap right now because they are (falsely) believed to be useless; a 2-dose Zammy brew is only worth around 250 gp. Despite this, a 2-dose Zamorak brew mix potion sells for over 2,000 gp, and surprisingly, people buy them. Not many, mind you, but the last time I tried I sold, oh, maybe 20 of them over the span of a couple of days. Hey, why not? J And if they don’t sell, you can use them yourself: the healing from the caviar nicely offsets the damage done by the potion.

Even if you can’t find mix potions that people want to buy, you can certainly consider making them for your own use. They are handy when fighting tough monsters, and if you already have the potions it’s a way to get extra XP at very little cost. Also, if you do your own barbarian fishing, sometimes you may find that caviar is dropping in price and not sellable, so you might as well use it and get some benefit from it!

You can make 900 per hour, so super attack mixes earn you 29.7k per hour, super strength mixes 37.8k per hour (as above), and antifire mixes a nice 47.7k per hour.

The last option is to make barbarian mix potions just for the XP, not bothering to really use the resulting potion in the manner for which it was intended. This seemed to me like a good method to investigate, but it turns out that it’s not really worthwhile given current roe and caviar prices.

My first thought in this regard was to make some of the low-end potions that use roe, because it is cheaper than caviar. It’s really not that cheap, however—it is worth over 200 gp each—and the low level mixes give very small XP values. Also remember that the best of the potions that uses roe is the regular restore (2) potion, for which making unfinished Guthix balance potions is both cheaper and gives more XP.

Then I turned to items like magic potions and Zamorak brews that are extremely cheap, and figured the extra 57 or 58 Herblore XP would make these worth considering. Unfortunately, even though these 2-dose potions cost about 300 gp, with caviar hovering in the 500 gp range, you lose too much for it to be worthwhile. (And yes, you can sometimes get caviar cheaper, but that doesn’t change the fact that using it this way is a waste when it is worth so much.)

This method may be worth exploring further if roe or caviar prices go down.

Making Unfinished Guthix Balance Potions Advanced and Alternative Methods of Earning Herblore XP