Herb runs: money-making guide
Herb runs fit around the rest of your account. Plant a route you can reach quickly, return when it has grown and sell the harvest. Compare profit per run: an eight-minute trip still needs a growing interval before you can repeat it.
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Start with the patches you can reach
You do not need every patch unlocked. The patches south of Falador, north of Ardougne, north of Catherby and west of the Ectofuntus make a useful early route. Add Hosidius when you can reach it conveniently. More patches help only if you are willing to make the trip.
An explorer’s ring takes you near the Falador patch and an Ardougne cloak near the Ardougne patch. Lower diary rewards have limited teleports: check your remaining uses when planning several runs. Camelot is a simple way to reach Catherby; an ectophial puts you near the Morytania patch after Ghosts Ahoy. For Hosidius, use the nearby Xeric’s talisman teleport or travel from the city.
The Troll Stronghold patch needs My Arm’s Big Adventure. Weiss needs Making Friends with My Arm and its fire of nourishment. Both protect herbs from disease. Hosidius gains protection with the easy Kourend & Kebos Diary. These are useful homes for expensive seeds. The Farming Guild herb patch needs 65 Farming, Harmony Island needs Morytania Elite, and the Civitas illa Fortis patch is reached after Children of the Sun. Champion rank at the Fortis Colosseum makes the Fortis patch disease-free.
Pack once for the whole run
Take one herb seed per patch, ultracompost or a charged bottomless compost bucket, a spade, a seed dibber and your teleports. Complete Otto’s Barbarian Farming lesson to plant seeds without a dibber. Wear magic secateurs after Fairytale I for their herb-yield benefit, and bring Graceful where it fits around your teleport equipment.
Ultracompost increases the minimum harvest and makes disease less likely; an ordinary patch can still die. A nearby farmer will not look after your herbs for payment. Keep tools with the tool leprechaun so forgetting a spade does not force a bank trip.
Clicks and client settings
Track the run and shorten the travel menus
These RuneLite plugins are included with the client. Find them in the plugin configuration sidebar, turn them on and open their settings.
Time Tracking: know when to return
Enable Time Tracking and open its Farming tab after visiting your patches. It records the crops and compost that RuneLite has seen. Turn on Show Relative Time for a countdown to the next harvest, then fit your next run around another activity. Check ordinary patches for disease when you return.
Menu Entry Swapper: put your teleport first
Enable Menu Entry Swapper and Customizable left-click under Item Swaps. Shift-right-click your teleport item and choose the destination or teleport action you use for this run. Choose the destination closest to your next patch. On mobile, use the item’s long-press menu editor and move the same action to the top.
Harvest, note and replant
Most herbs take roughly 80 minutes to grow through four growth cycles. Disease and the timing of the Farming cycle can delay your harvest. Use the wait for quests, training or another activity rather than standing beside the patch.
- At the first patch, harvest the mature herbs. A short burst of repeated harvest clicks starts the faster picking rhythm; then let the character finish.
- Use a harvested herb on the tool leprechaun to note that herb type and free inventory space. You can carry the rest of the run without banking each patch.
- Clear a dead crop if necessary, plant the next seed and apply ultracompost. Check both planting and composting have finished before teleporting away.
- Repeat at each patch. Keep a record of seeds planted and total herbs banked over several runs, including dead patches, to get a useful average yield.
Choose the crop from its margin
Ranarrs unlock at 32, toadflax at 38 and snapdragons at 62. All three are worth comparing with the other available crops. An expensive herb can have an even more expensive seed, so sale price alone tells you very little.
Higher Farming, magic secateurs, ultracompost and patch diary bonuses improve your harvest. Start with eight herbs per planted seed below, then adjust it using a few complete runs: total herbs banked divided by seeds planted. Include seeds lost to dead patches in that average.
The profit shown is for selling grimy herbs. Check clean-herb and unfinished-potion prices too if you are willing to process the harvest. For a daily total, enter the number of runs you normally fit around your other activities.
Compare other herbs at current prices
Each crop uses the same patch count and average yield. Only crops at or below your entered level are shown. Edited item prices are included.
Uses average instant-buy prices for supplies and instant-sell prices for loot, after GE tax. Edit a price to use your own offer.
Build a route you will keep doing
Begin with four or five convenient patches. Add Troll Stronghold and Weiss when unlocked, then improve your teleports before forcing every distant patch into every run. Disease-free patches are particularly helpful when seed prices are high.
On an Iron, choose the potion you need. Ranarrs supply prayer potions; snapdragons supply super restores. Irit, kwuarm and cadantine feed super attack, strength and defence potions. Toadflax becomes Saradomin brews later. GE profit is useful for a main deciding what to plant, but does not replace that supply plan.