Brewing : The Forgotten Skill

Raise your hand if you've ever tried brewing in Runescape. Hmm.. I don't see too many hands. Since I've gotten into Construction, I decided that I wanted a Chef's Delight barrel instead of the standard issue dragon bitter barrel. Looking through the forums, I saw that people were selling chef's delight for.. How much? 60, 70, 80, 100k+?!?! Wow, that's a lot of dough for a few beers, how hard could it be to brew some of my own? The answer is, it's not really hard, it just tales a little time and the brewery locations aren't terribly convenient. Here's what I do:

The best way that I know of to get to the Keldegrim brewery is to teleport to the Burthorpe Games Room and then take the mine cart. That said, this is what you should have in your inventory:

Burthorpe Games Necklace
Ectophial (you can hit the port p brewery next)
1000 coins (you'll need to pay for the mine cart ticket, some yeast, and you'll probably want to buy some beers for the glasses)
2 buckets of water
2 barley malts (Grow barley in a hops patch and then use it on a range)
4 chocolate powder (You can buy chocolate powder/bars in the gnome stronghold or from the Culimancer's chest if you've done enough of the Recipe for Disaster quest)

After you take the mine cart to Keldegrim, the brewery will be just north (it's in the bar, upstairs, and is marked with a barrel icon).

There's a pot sitting on a table in the brewey, grab it.
Talk to the man and buy some yeast.
Use a bucket of water on the vat.
Use a barley malt on the vat.
Use a chocolate powder on the vat.
Use your pot of yeast on the vat.

That's it, now all you have to do is wait. You can tell when your chef's delight is done by looking at the vat, it will say something like, "This vat contains chef's delight". When the delight is done, click on the "pipe" to fill the barrel.

If you try to empty the vat before the delight is ready, it will ask you if you are sure. Click "No" or your batch will be lost.

You will need 8 empty beer glasses when it is time to collect your delight, these can be purchased for 2 coins each from the bartender downstairs (buy beers and then drink them). Buy some extra glasses while you are at it if you plan on collecting delight in Port P as you cannot get glasses there.

Ecto to port P and head to the bank.

Grab your ghostspeak amulet, 5 ecto tokens, 2 buckets of water, 2 barley malts, and 4 chocolate dust. Make sure you still have the pot you grabbed in Keldegrim.

The brewery is downstairs in the bar. Once you are there, trade your 5 ecto tokens for some yeast. Use the same process that you used in Keldegrim to start the brewing process.

The shop in Port P is a good place to buy buckets, buy a bunch if you need them.

Sometimes you will end up with "mature" chef's delight. This gives a better cooking bonus but cannot be used to make a chef's delight barrel.

I easily sell chef's delight for 80k per set of 8.

Short Farming Circuit

A quick trip to all allotment patches using no runes.

Items needed: Glory amulet, ectophial, and dramen staff.

• Bank: Grab 4 allotment, 1 flower, 1 herb
• Ecto to Port P
• Run west and then tend crops
• Glory to Draynor
• Bank: Deposit harvest, grab 4 allotment, 1 flower, 1 herb
• Run nw and then tend crops
• Glory to Draynor
• Bank: Deposit harvest, grab 4 allotment, 1 flower, 1 herb
• Use wizard tower fairy ring south of Draynor, dial BLR (Legends Guild)
• Tend crops
• Use Legends Guild fairy ring.
• Bank: Grab 4 allotment, 1 flower, 1 herb
• Fairy ring to DJR (Sinclair Mansion)
• Tend crops

09/18/06 Update: Ok, ok, I can be really cheap, but I finally realized that using just one law rune saves me a whole heck of a lot of time. Since I've been making some serious cash farming ranaar, I use the following route:

Items needed: Glory amulet, ectophial, air staff, 1 law, and dramen staff.

• Bank: Grab 4 limpwurt and 4 herb seeds
  
• Ecto to Port P
• Run west and then tend crops
• Glory to Draynor
• Bank: Deposit harvest
  
• Run nw and then tend crops
• Glory to Draynor
• Bank: Deposit harvest
  
• Use wizard tower fairy ring south of Draynor, dial BLR (Legends Guild)
• Tend crops
• Teleport to Camelot
• Bank in Catherby if necessary
• Run to the Catherby plot and tend crops

This route is much quicker than my old route. Not only do I save time by using the camelot teleport, I save time by skipping the allotment patches.

Santa Tracker

Less than a week ago, Santas were selling for about 20 mil, today I see they are going for 23 mil. Wow. It will be interesting to see if they fall sometime soon, I'm betting that they will.

08/24/06 Update : When I look today, I see people trying to sell santas for 23 mil, but I don't see any takers at that price. People are claiming that prices will be falling as kids return to school, I'm interested to see if this pans out.

Moving forward, I'll be tracking santa prices in this post.

06/15/06 : 11.1 mil (prices dipped due to addition of construction skill)
08/15/06 : 20.0 mil
08/24/06 : 22.5 mil
08/28/06 : 25.6 mil (santas skyrocket on news of cursed_you ban)
08/30/06 : 26 mil (it'll be interesting to see if we see a slight dip as the cursed_you news gets old)
08/31/06 : 25 mil (suprise, suprise)
09/05/06 : 25.75 mil
09/07/06 : 25.5 mil
09/12/06 : 25.4 mil
09/15/06 : 25.4 mil
09/20/06 : 25.25 mil
09/22/06 : 25.5 mil
09/26/06 : 30 mil! (what happened?!?)
10/02/06 : 27.5 mil
10/12/06 : 25.8 mil (I'm guessing they will start going back up shortly)
10/23/06 : 26.3 mil (I guess I was wrong.. :))
11/13/06 : 22 mil (I thought rares would take a hit when the lvl 99 capes came out. It didn't happen immediately, but I'd guess this is the delayed reaction to the release)

After a long layoff, I've decided to start updating this section again. Over the past several months, I've seen santas peak at 25 mil. When the new shop update came into play, santas took a bit of a hit resulting in current prices of:

10/11/07 : 22.8 mil

For a long time, it has been said that rares are the only item certain to rise in price over time, but I'm not so sure that is true. It seems to me that Jagex is making a concerted effort to curb this by constantly introducing things into the game that drain money from players' pockets.

11/05/07 : 23.3 mil

Santas are at about 20 mil

I bought my santa on about 6/15 for around 11.1 million. Today, while browsing the RS forums, I see that santas are selling quickly for 19.8 million. 8.7 million is a 78% return on my investment over a period of only 2 months. Not bad at all.. :)

I've seen santa hats hit this level once before about a month ago and then they dipped back down for a little while so the increase in price seems to be sure but not so steady.

Maybe some day, I will sell my santa and use the funds to merchant my way to a purple party hat..

My (very long) Farming Circuit

I decided to come up with a farming route that takes me to all tree patches and all allotment patches using the fewest law runes. The route shown below requires at most one law rune.

The maps located here were very helpful when plotting my course.

Start off in Catherby. The only ways that I know of to get to Catherby is walk, tele to Camelot and then walk, or use the DJR fairy ring.

Tip: If you are approaching the maximum amount of super compost that you can store with the leprechaun, the patch in Catherby is closer to a bank than any other patch. With an empty inventory, run to the leprechaun, withdraw 28 super compost, bank, and repeat.

Wear glory amulet, dueling ring, and boots of lightness.
Withdraw a woodcutting axe.
Wield magic secateurs.
Withdraw 6 allotment seeds (strawberry, watermelon, etc), 1 flower (limp, nasturtium), and 1 herb seed.

Tip: If you will be farming strawberries or any other item that is stored in a sack or a basket, be sure to bring money for said items with you.

• Walk to the Catherby allotment, pick crops, and plant seeds.
• Bank your crops and grab a crossbow, grappling hook, 1 fruit tree, 2 trees, and noted payment for the farmers.

Tip: If your brew, grab some cash, 2 buckets of water, 2 barley, and whatever other ingredients you need. You can take the mine cart to the Keldagrim brewery when you're in Taverly.

• Walk to the Catherby fruit tree patch, check tree health, pick fruit, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Use the grappling hook to get to Taverly.
• Check tree health, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Run to Falador.
• Check tree health, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Bank (crossbow no longer needed), grab 4 allotment seeds, 1 flower, 1 herb, and then run to the allotment to the south.
• Harvest and then plant the allotment and then run or glory to Draynor.
• Bank grab 4 allotment seeds, 1 flower, 1 herb, the ectophial, a tree, and farmer's payment.
• Run to the tree patch west of Lumbridge.
• Check tree health, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Ecto to Port P.
• Deal with the allotment.

Tip: If you need buckets (you'll find that you can never have too many buckets for all of that super compost), this is a good place to buy some. While wearing a ghost speak amulet, buy a bunch from the store here.

• Duel ring to castle wars.
• Bank everything in your inventory and grab a woodcutting axe and a dramen staff.
• Run to the fairy ring sw of castle wars. There is a teak tree in this area, cut teak until your inventory is full and then use the fairy ring.
• Use the bank in "fairy land", deposit teak, keep axe and dramen staff, grab 4 hops seeds, 1 mushroom spore, and 105 coins.
• Use the CKS fairy ring.
• Pick mushrooms, plant mushrooms, pay farmer.
• Use the DKR fairy ring.
• Canoe to the Champion's guild.
• Pick hops, plant hops, pay farmer.
• Canoe to Edgeville and use the fairy ring there.
• Use the bank in "fairy land", grab 2 fruit trees, 1 tree, 1 bush seed, 1 cactus seed, and farmer's payments.
• Use the CIQ fairy ring. Run nw to the patch west of the gnome maze.
• Check tree health, pick fruit, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Run north and then east to the bush patch next to the monastary.
• Check bush health, pick bush, plant a new bush, and then pay the farmer.
• Run to the Khazzard spirit tree and then tele to Varrock.
• Check tree health, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Spirit tree to the gnome stronghold.
• Take the gnome glider to Al Kharid.
• Check cactus health, pick cactus, plant a new cactus, and then pay the farmer.
• Take the gnome glider back to the gnome stronghold. Bank if needed.
• Run to the tree patch just west of the gnome agility course.
• Check tree health, pick fruit, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Spirit tree to Khazzard, run to Ardougne, bank, grab 1 fruit tree and farmer's payment, and then take the boat to Brimhaven.
• Check tree health, pick fruit, chop tree, plant a new tree, and then pay the farmer.
• Grab some pineapples and/or bananas if needed and then boat back to Ardougne.
• Bank, grab 4 allotment seeds, 1 flower, 1 herb, and then walk to the Ardougne allotment.

My Farming Store

For the longest time I left my farming down at 1 because I thought it was a boring and pointless skill. I accumulated tons of seeds while stealing from the master farmer at Draynor and also while training range on the Moss giants. The seeds piled up in my bank and I finally decided it was time to put them to use.

I've discovered that I absolutely love farming. I grow herbs like mad, use them to train herblore, and then sell the potions for profit.

During my farming adventures, I have discovered that most Runescape players have absolutely no idea what seeds are worth. In an effort to fund my new obessession, I started up a "store".

Update : I've been buying seeds now for a while, so here is my updated (as of 8/24/06) list:

strawberry: 500ea
watermelon: 1kea

willow: 5kea
maple: 10kea
yew: 45kea
magic: 100kea

curry: 5kea
pineapple: 15kea
papaya: 25kea
palm: 35kea

limpwarts: 500ea

ranarr: 15kea
kwuarm: 4kea
snapdragon: 10kea
cantadine: 4kea
lantadyme: 5kea
dwarf weed: 5kea
torstol: 5kea

calquat: 20kea

super compost: 500ea

When I sell, these are the prices I use:

strawberry: 1kea
watermelon: 3kea

willow: 15kea
maple: 35kea
yew: up to 90kea
magic: up to 200kea

curry: 15kea
pineapple: 30kea
papaya: 45kea
palm: 75kea

limpwarts: 1kea

ranarr: 25kea
kwuarm: 9kea
snapdragon: 25kea
cantadine: 10kea
lantadyme: 10kea
dwarf weed: 10kea
torstol: 10kea

calquat: 50kea

super compost: 1kea

A lot of my selling prices are untested and may need adjusting. I tend to keep most of the seeds that I buy, only selling the lower stuff that is no longer worth my time (willows and down, curry and down, lower herbs). I never sell watermelon seeds, snapdragons, or ranaar. I make a killing by selling the "little stuff". Strawberry, toadflax, irit, limps, etc.

Wilderness Agility Arena

While the Brimhaven agility arena helped me creep into the 50's, a quick look at the tip.it agility guide shows that the Wilderness Agility Arena is where the big dogs hang. As the wilderness arena is a very dangerous place to travel to, I thought I'd post the tactics that I've refined over several trips.

The first rule of training at the wilderness agility course is : Don't take anything you mind losing. No matter what you do, if you train at this course for any length of time, you *will* be killed by a (lame) pker.

Starting in Ardougne, steal cakes from the stalls until you have a good load. If you have lots of strawberries left over from farming, these will work as well.

Next, head to the bank and grab black dhide top, bottoms, and a dds. The dds is great to take because it acts as a slight deterrant to potential pkers and is also sufficient for cutting the webs that one will encounter. The key here is take 2 pieces of lightweight armour and a bladed weapon.

Feel free to also equip your favorite lightweight, easily re-obtainable quest items such as boots of lightness, legends cape, gnome amulet, etc.

It never hurts to take an anti-poison.

Turn off auto-retaliate if it is on and be sure that your prayer is charged.

Ok, now take a deep breath and pull the Ardounge lever and you will be teleported to lvl 50something wilderness. Run north and cut the web with your dds (or whatever bladed weapon you happen to have with you). Once past the web, run west and a little south until you hit the east wall of the mage arena.

Follow the wall south and then west.

I take this particular path because in doing so, I avoid the mage bank lever. The bank lever is the Bermuda Triangle of Runescape, it is pker central and not a good place for a 3 iteming agility trainer with only cakes for food to be hanging out.

Keep heading west until you reach the agility arena.

Once inside the arena, hit points should be kept as low as possible because one takes less damage from failed obstacles.