Herblore Training Guide for RS3: 1 to 120, Potions and Boosts

Herblore is the members-only skill for making your own potions, from prayer potions and Saradomin brews up to overloads and powerbursts. The Wiki notes it can be trained relatively quickly but is one of the most expensive skills in the game if you buy your ingredients; gathering them yourself is much cheaper but slow. Level 99 takes 13,034,431 XP and 120 takes 104,273,167.

How to start

• Members only, no quest needed. Druidic Ritual used to be required to start, but the Wiki says it hasn't been since 31 January 2012.
• Two steps per potion. Clean a grimy herb by clicking it (a little XP; only clean herbs go into potions), then add it to a vial of water for an unfinished potion (1 XP). Adding the secondary finishes it, and that's the main source of XP. The Wiki's fastest methods use unfinished potions.
• Grimy or clean. Grimy herbs usually cost less than clean ones, since, as the Wiki puts it, players training Herblore usually don't want to spend time cleaning them.

Training by level

The Wiki's advice for every band: brew at a portable well on World 84 at Fort Forinthry, Lumbridge bank or the Grand Exchange, for extra potions and about 20% more XP (10% from the well, 10% from other players' pulse cores). A well within 4 tiles of a bank works without clicking it. Use a bank preset of 14 unfinished potions and 14 secondaries.

From 1 to 19, the Wiki recommends quests: Druidic Ritual, Jungle Potion, Recruitment Drive and The Dig Site (see the quest guide). If you can't do The Dig Site yet, make attack potions from 9 to 12.

88 to 99: extreme potions. Make the highest one you can. Each adds an ingredient to a 3-dose super potion:

96 to 99: overloads. An overload takes all six 3-dose extremes plus a clean torstol. They're untradeable, so PvMers have to make their own. The Wiki's plan is 3,000 overloads at 1,000 XP each (1,100 at a portable well): 96 to 99 needs 3.3 million XP, and with 20% from portables and pulse cores the 3,000 give 3.6 million. The Wiki calls this method expensive.

99 to 120: bombs and powerbursts. All of these use a bomb or powerburst vial plus a primal extract:

Faster, cheaper and AFK options

• Tar is the fastest XP at any level, per the Wiki, from 19 after Lunar Diplomacy, but you need a lot of swamp tar (the Grand Exchange limit is 20,000 per 4 hours). At 44, one clean harralander and 15 swamp tar make 15 harralander tar, which is often profitable. Making 27 per inventory, the Wiki puts it at roughly 140,000 XP an hour with some AFK time. Casting Telekinetic Grind (85 Magic) on a full inventory gives roughly 3.9 million XP an hour, depending on banking speed.
• Primal extract (90): primal fruit pulp into empty vials. The Wiki's table puts it at between about 261,000 and 355,000 XP an hour, depending on level.
• Combination potions (after Plague's End): a crystal flask plus two or more 4-dose potions. Grand ranging, magic, strength and defence potions and super prayer renewals can give over 350,000 XP an hour with constant focus; super melee potions over 450,000 and super warmaster's over 720,000, but their recipes come from unreadable pages in Daemonheim. Often free or slightly profitable, but prices are very unstable. The scroll of cleansing treats every potion in them as a secondary, which the Wiki calls almost a requirement for this method.
• Dream of Iaia (after Extinction): the apothecary station needs 75 Herblore and 50,000 of each Anachronia base camp resource, and pays out stored XP at 350,000 an hour while being very AFK.

Weekly and daily extras: Herby Werby on Anachronia (100 points a week; 29,640 XP at 99, with more at 105 and 115), and supply runs on Mazcab, where 10 goebie supplies give 48,515 XP at 99. Supply runs flag you for safe PvP. The dailies guide has more like these.

Boosts and tools worth getting

• Portable well: 10% more XP, a 5% chance of an extra potion (unfinished potions too) and free vials of water. Combination potions get the XP but not the extra potion. A Brooch of the Gods raises the extra-potion chance to 10%.
• Scroll of cleansing (20,000 Dungeoneering tokens, 49 Herblore and 49 Dungeoneering): permanently, a 1 in 10 chance to save an ingredient and a 1 in 8 chance to make a potion twice as fast. Tars don't benefit.
• Botanist's outfit: 1% XP per piece, 6% for the full set. The modified botanist's mask adds a 5% chance to duplicate the potion, on top of the well's.
• Factory outfit (Flash Powder Factory): three pieces give a 10% chance of a 4-dose potion. The Wiki recommends three factory pieces with the botanist's outfit.
• Botanist's amulet: a 5% chance of a 4-dose potion, for 5 charges.
• For combination potions: +20% XP for those made in Prifddinas's Meilyr district while the Voice of Seren is there (Prifddinas needs Plague's End), and perfect juju herblore or perfect plus potions (+5% on 6-dose ones).

With the full cost-cutting set (well, brooch, modified mask, factory pieces, amulet and scroll), the Wiki says you get 19.5% more potions and use 10% fewer secondaries.

What you unlock

• 38: prayer potions. 40: summoning potions.
• 63: super restores. 69: antifire. 75: required to start Plague's End.
• 81: Saradomin brews. 85: super antifire.
• 88 to 93: the extreme potions. 90: primal extract.
• 94: super prayer potions and prayer renewals.
• 96: overloads. 98: supreme overloads.
• 99: the Herblore cape from Kaqemeex in Taverley (its perk cleans every grimy herb in your inventory, for no XP) and poison bombs.
• 106: elder overloads. 114: powerburst of feats. 117: extreme prayer potions.
• 120: the Herblore master cape (120,000 coins), which makes overloads and elder overloads 5 at a time from 4 sets of ingredients, and supreme overloads 4 from 3.

Track your Herblore on The Codex

• The Herblore page has the XP table and who gained most this week.
• The XP calculator shows the XP between any two levels, and the goal planner turns a target into a plan.
• Look yourself up: your profile shows your daily and weekly gains, and the box at the top of this guide shows your Herblore level once you have.

Sources

• RuneScape Wiki, Herblore training: the potion per band, potions needed, XP each, portable well tips, overloads, bombs, tar, primal extract, combination potions and the recurring methods.
• RuneScape Wiki, Herblore: members-only, cost, cleaning and unfinished potions, Druidic Ritual no longer required, the scroll of cleansing, useful items and the capes.
• RuneScape Wiki, Herblore/Level up table: the unlocks by level.

References courtesy of the RuneScape Wiki.