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Incidental Herb Droppers Inventory Management Issues During Herb Gathering Trips

The new Summoning skill largely revolves around players preparing pouches and then using them to summon familiars, creatures that follow you and can help make your gameplay more pleasant, profitable and fun. With 71 different familiars in the game now, there is really something for everyone in the Summoning skill, and that most definitely includes herblorists. As I’ll show you now, there is one familiar specifically dedicated to the Herblore skill, and others that can be of great indirect help as well.

Note: In the discussion that follows, I assume basic familiarity with the Summoning skill, and in particular, using familiars. You can find a decent explanation of how familiars work in my own guide to that subject (though some of it is a bit out of date at the moment, since the skill was recently overhauled.)

The macaw is a pretty blue bird that’s usually considered the best familiar for herblorists, especially those who gather their own herbs. It has multiple abilities that will allow you to train the skill faster and save you a lot of money.

First, here is the key information for the familiar and its pouches and scrolls:

• Summoning Level: 41
  
  
• Pouch Materials: Empty pouch, green charm, clean guam, 78 spirit shards
  
  
• Summoning XP for Making Pouch: 72.4
  
  
• Summoning XP for Using Pouch: 0.8
  
  
• Familiar Duration: 31 minutes
  
  
• Scroll: Herbcall
  
  
• Summoning XP for Making Scrolls: 0.8 per 10
  
  
• Summoning XP for Using Scrolls: 0.8

The macaw has four special abilities, three of which are directly Herblore related. First, it will occasionally forage grimy herbs when you have it out; you won’t get many from this, but an occasional free herb never hurts, right? Second, its Herbcall scroll allows you to generate additional grimy herbs once per minute. Third, the macaw provides improved herb drops from fighting monsters. And the last ability is Remote View, which is the one that has nothing to do with Herblore.

The third item I mentioned is the most curious macaw ability, and the one that makes the familiar specifically suited to combat herb gathering. Of course, when Summoning came out, everyone wanted to know: what exactly does “improved herb drops” mean? After much experimentation, I’ve determined that the impact of the macaw is not to provide additional herbs, as you might imagine, but rather higher quality herbs (Figure 174). Using one dramatically shifts the normal distribution of herbs so that you get a higher percentage of the better herbs and fewer of the ones you don’t want. How great is that?

In Table 35 I have provided the results of a comparison I did, where I fought aberrant spectres for two hours without a macaw (which I averaged) and one hour with a macaw. I counted up all of the herbs obtained and also kept track of how many times I got doubles and triples, and of those, how many of each double and triple were high and low herbs. (I define a “high-level herb” as ranarr and above.)

Pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? Using a macaw is highly recommended for those who want to get the most value out of their time spent hunting for herbs.

If there’s a bad part about fighting monsters that drop tons of herbs, it’s trying to find a place to hold them all. You only have 28 inventory slots, and running back and forth to the bank is a waste of time. Enter beasts of burden, familiars that effectively expand your inventory capacity by carrying items for you. There are limits on what they can carry, but none apply to herbs, so they are an excellent way of allowing you to carry many extra herbs on each gathering trip.

I am a big fan of beasts of burden, and have a full topic describing them in my guide to using Summoning familiars. Some of the information is now out of date, but that’s because Jagex recently overhauled beasts of burden to make them even better. For starters, the company tripled the number of inventory slots each has, so now you get up to 30 slots! Interfaces have also been vastly improved, even allowing you to empty a beast of burden’s inventory straight into your bank.

Note that beasts of burden are also good options for gathering secondary ingredients.

Should you use a beast of burden instead of a macaw? It’s a bit of a tough call. If you are trying to get high-level herbs the macaw is probably the best choice, though you’ll end up leaving more lower-level herbs behind. If you want to save most of your herbs, including lower-level ones, a beast of burden may be a better option.

Beyond the macaw and beasts of burden, there aren’t too many familiars that are particularly well-suited to helping with herb gathering. In particular, while many Summoning creatures can help in combat, you don’t generally need help for most good herb droppers, and the majority are in single combat areas anyway (where familiars cannot fight.) That said, there are a couple of indirect ways that certain other familiars could be of use to you while fighting.

Healers can be useful when fighting tougher herb droppers, especially aberrant spectres. The void spinner (level 34) heals you 1 point every 15 seconds automatically, while the bunyip does 2 points every 15 seconds; both can be extremely helpful. The elemental titans (level 79) have a scroll move that gives an 8 HP boost as well as an increase in Defence. Finally, the level 88 unicorn stallion has a scroll that lets you heal yourself significantly, though that may be more than you need.

Other familiars don’t heal directly but make it easier for you to do so. For example, the albino rat can generate cheese in its inventory that you can eat; the evil turnip forages evil turnip slices; the ibis causes fish to rain down; and the fruit bat gathers and forages fruit.

There are also several familiars that have scrolls that boost your combat stats, including the granite crab (+4 Defence), war tortoise (+8 Defence), obsidian golem (+9 Strength) and wolpertinger (+7 Magic).

Incidental Herb Droppers Inventory Management Issues During Herb Gathering Trips