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Snape Grass Wine of Zamorak

In folklore and mythology, the horn of a unicorn has the power to neutralize poison; and so, in RuneScape, ground unicorn horn is the secondary ingredient of both antipoison and super antipoison potions. It is also one of the items that transforms a super restore potion into a Sanfew serum, which heals poison as well. The primary source of unicorn horns is… wait for it… unicorns. J There are both white and black unicorns, and while they are not difficult to kill, getting many unicorn horns quickly can be rather challenging, due to the small numbers of unicorns in any given place.

As we’ll see, there are also other monsters that drop unicorn horn dust, already ground, and this is also the only item for which the Creature Creation feature is well suited.

There are two varieties of unicorns. Regular unicorns are white in color, combat level 15, have 19 HP and are found in the following places:

• Between Edgeville and Barbarian Village
  
  
• Near the mine southeast of Varrock
  
  
• Between Camelot and Catherby
  
  
• In the forest near Lumbridge
  
  
• On Entrana, in and around the ruins that take you to the law altar
  
  
• Near Rellekka
  
  
• A cage in the Ardougne zoo

Black unicorns are level 27, have 29 HP, and are found in just two spots:

• In the forest of Fremennik province, east of Rellekka
  
  
• In the Wilderness, among the dead trees just southeast of the Bandit Camp

Both types of unicorns are sometimes found with foals, which are lower in level but do not drop unicorn horns—only the adults do. Note that unicorns will flee if near death, so you have to kill them quickly.

White unicorns have fewer hitpoints and are in more convenient locations, so you’d think they are the way to go, but they aren’t. The problem is that the spots near banks have only two unicorns, and the respawn speed is not fast, so it takes a long time to get a load of horns. There are four regular unicorns on Entrana, but that’s not near a bank, and of course you can’t take weapons onto Entrana which makes killing them slow.

Much as I dislike the Wilderness, it turns out that the black unicorns there are the best way to get horns quickly. There are five adult unicorns that hang out in the forest of dead trees southeast of the Bandit Camp and southwest of Bounty Hunter (Figure 227). This area is due north of Edgeville, and not far from its bank; the only problem is having to watch out for revenants.

Here’s my recommended method. First, grab your favorite weapon and then put on a (charged) amulet of glory, spotted or spottier cape, and basic mage protection armor like black dragonhide. I also recommend wearing the new forinthry bracelet, which can prevent revenants from teleblocking you. Withdraw a Teleport to House tablet, then teleport to Edgeville and follow these steps:

1. Withdraw, say, 5 pieces of cheap food from the bank, and an energy potion if you are low on run energy.
   
   
2. Leave the bank and run due north. Hop over the Wilderness ditch and continue going north, staying west of the air obelisk. At around level 12 or so you should see the black unicorns.
   
   
3. Since it is the Wilderness, they will attack you. Fight them, wait for respawns and keep going until you have a full inventory of unicorn horns. Eat food as necessary to heal, or to free up space when you run out of room. These unicorns may also drop Summoning charms you can pick up.
   
   
4. When your inventory is full, teleport to Edgeville, bank and repeat.

Simple stuff—as long as you don’t get attacked by a revenant. If you do, try to teleport, and if that doesn’t work try to run south to escape. If worse comes to worst and you do die, you aren’t going to lose much anyway. Just don’t take any unnecessary valuable items with you.

The advantage of this method is that there are five unicorns, they are aggressive (which means less time wasted chasing them down) and it’s not far from a bank. In my test, I got 25 horns, 1 gold charm and 2 green charms in 7 minutes 30 seconds, which comes to about 200 horns per hour.

To try this method, start by wearing weight-reducing gear, a ring of duelling, and a law tiara. Teleport to Castle Wars and withdraw your Runecrafting pouches, then follow these steps:It’s not really worth going to Entrana just to fight unicorns, but what if you were already there anyway? And what’s the big draw to Entrana? Right: the law altar. And when you craft runes you start with a full inventory of essence, but the runes stack, leaving lots of empty space. Sounds like a good opportunity for multitasking to me! J

1. Withdraw one set of regular logs from the bank and a full inventory of pure essence. Close the bank and fill your pouches. Open the bank again and take out more essence.
   
   
2. Run east and then north to Assistant Morrow, right-click him to “Fly” and choose Entrana. He searches you and then off you go.
   
   
3. Once you arrive, run east, then north to get to the law altar ruins as usual. Enter and craft your essence, empty your pouch and repeat.
   
   
4. Now, run back south and exit the altar. You will find four unicorns in the area milling about. Chase them down and kill them for their horns. This is a bit slow since you will be unarmed, but with only 19 HP it won’t take most players very long to kill them (kicking seems to be faster than punching).
   
   
5. Teleport back to Castle Wars, bank the runes and horns and then repeat.

My timed tests show that it takes me 2:50 to do one trip of this type, which works out to 85 horns per hour, along with 21 loads of essence crafted. So that’s a pretty nice compromise. It takes 1:20 to craft a load of essence without getting the horns, so in considering just the time to get them, it takes 90 seconds to get four—this works out to the equivalent of 160 horns per hour. Again, this is slower than the black unicorns, but it’s a less tedious way of both getting horns and Runecrafting, and you have no worries about revenants.

Unicorn horns are another of the three Herblore secondary items you can get from the Creature Creation feature you access during the Tower of Life quest. To do this you make a unicow from a unicorn horn and a piece of cowhide (Figure 213); kill the critter and it will drop 2 to 4 unicorn horns. You then use one of these horns with another hide to make another unicow, kill that one and so forth.

As with the other monsters associated with this feature, killing unicows is not a speedy process by any means. And even though it sounds like they drop a lot of horns, when you consider that making each unicow consumes one horn, you really net 1 to 3 horns per kill, not 2 to 4. That said, since all of the other methods of getting horns are also slow, it turns out that this one wins the speed battle by default, yielding around 240 horns per hour.

Of course, that doesn’t come without its own costs. You need to do a lot of teleporting, and getting those 240 horns will cost you, on average, about 120 cowhides, which cost around 100 each. That’s a lot less than the horns are worth, but even so, it reduces the method’s net effectiveness.

Three of the monsters that drop multiple Herblore seconds include unicorn horn dust on their “short lists”: cave bugs (level 6), cave crawlers (level 23) and chaos druid warriors (level 37). All of them drop only small quantities, though, so fighting them specifically to get unicorn horn dust is not worthwhile.

In the God Wars Dungeon, the sergeants Bree, Growler and Starlight in the Saradomin boss room of the God Wars Dungeon also drop 6 noted unicorn horns at a time, on occasion. Starlight, in fact, looks like a unicorn! So you could go fight them for horns if you want… though I wouldn’t suggest it! J

Unicorn horns aren’t items used in speed-leveling, and are really something that it is far better to collect slowly over time. Use the method I describe for getting horns while Runecrafting, for example, and save up unicorn horn dust drops from monsters like cave crawlers. Also find your own creative methods: for example, if you work the Farming skill to grow herbs, you will often teleport to Camelot and run over to the patch in Catherby. In doing so, you’ll pass two unicorns—kill them and take their horns. Do the same when you are near Barbarian Village, or passing through the area near Rellekka. It may not seem like much, but over time, it adds up to hundreds of horns.

If you really are in a hurry to get unicorn horns quickly, the Creature Creation room is your best choice, as long as you buy the cowhides you’ll need. If you’re going to also start hunting cows yourself, you are better off just fighting black unicorns in the Wilderness.

Snape Grass Wine of Zamorak