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Ultimate Guide to Profiting from Herblore
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[INDENT]
TABLE OF CONTENTS[/INDENT]
- General Description
- Understanding Margins
- Understanding Profit
- Market Speculation
- Data
- Industrializing
- Methodology
- Herb Cleaning w/RiD
- Unfinished Potions w/RiD
- Processing w/Simba
- Rules of Thumb
- End
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[INDENT]
GENERAL DESCRIPTION[/INDENT]
This guide will detail the process through which people go about cleaning herbs and making unfinished potions for a profit. Though this is a simple concept for most, even to the point where armies of bots are accomplishing the tasks needed to run a large scale herblore organization like an industry, some are unaware of the profits able to be made or simply don't know how to go about doing it. This guide's mission is to teach and properly inform novices how to get started, intermediate players to expand on their profit, and for experts to share. Large portions of the guide have to deal with understanding your terms and the market you're operating in, so if you feel the need to get into the nitty gritty technical set-up, that's your choice. Remember, membership is one of the defining requirements for this process, the rest are varying and can be obtained somewhat easily in my opinion. Enjoy.
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[INDENT]
UNDERSTANDING MARGINS[/INDENT]
There are many different meanings of margins in modern English. The key here is to understand that we're talking in a broad financial trading sense. In simple terms, it's the borders or constraints of something. When referred to in terms of trading/profiteering, the margin is the difference between the upper constraint and the lower constraint, or the high and low prices. The margin is that exact value with a unit attached to it (gold pieces/gp). Margins are values very important to making unfinished potions and cleaning herbs because you are differentiating between raw materials and processed goods. If the margin is negative, you're losing money on production, and if the margin is positive, you're making some sort of profit. The idea here is to find the best margin you can and make the most profit, but there are other factors to take into account.
The margin on an item is typically calculated for you as a representation of the general profit an item might make. You can either rely on a spreadsheet that pulls data straight from the grand exchange page or personally record the values yourself by price checking your items. There are ups and downs to both, whereas pulling data from the grand exchange site is less reliable and
only reflects market values from the last update (or last closing of the market, which never closes), recording all the data yourself can get tedious and cost you your most valuable resource: time. It is up to you how to go about doing this.
If you're using an automatically updated grand exchange spreadsheet, it is a good idea to price check any item you are thinking of using for this process. If you're cleaning herbs, check both the grimy and clean herb prices manually, and for unfinished potions, check the clean herb and the unfinished potion. It's a simple process where you buy the item once for an extremely high price (anywhere from 10%-15% above market value) and then sell that some item extremely low (anywhere 10%-15% under market value). These prices are extremely important to determining the actual margins for your items, as opposed to blindly relying on theoretical margins.
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[INDENT]
UNDERSTANDING PROFIT[/INDENT]
I know, so simple. But there's really more to it than just being the difference between revenue (what your product sells for) and cost (what you spend to make that product). If you get to comfortable with your profit in today's RuneScape economy, you might be blindsided by market changes. You have to pay attention to the fact that your
profit is not constant, it won't always going to be your margin. Frankly, the market is a shifty prick and highly unstable, and the herb and herb related market has been affected by the mass introduction of bots and double exp weekend tremendously, and is somewhat in the hamper. This does not mean that you can't make money off it, for the margins are somewhat similar, but the demand has plummeted. More on this later, though.
The point I'm making is that prices change, therefore new margins are created, and your profit will change. If you work on a "paycheck-to-paycheck" basis, where you're doing a load of 10,000 herbs/unfs every hour, you can't expect that the upper bound price you calculated to sell at will be the same. You need to, once again, check prices. If you work on a much larger basis where you buy products overnight and process them yourself or with multiple accounts (which takes time, and means you're no longer working on a four hour basis), you'll have to constantly price check every 4-6 hours to see if you are in a position to make a desirable profit. It's somewhat of a gamble, but more often than not a profitable one if you're not sitting on product for too long. This is more dangerous if you work with higher cost herbs, though.
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[INDENT]
MARKET SPECULATION[/INDENT]
An important aspect to your operation or even your business is to understand the market you're working in. If you don't, you're going to get rolled over with a stock of unfinished potions that are declining faster than your mother's panties when I hit her house. Pay attention to market trends, look at some graphs, and for the love of all that is holy try to understand what impacts the RuneScape economy. You might be thinking why knowing how to speculate prices of pixels and comprehending the idea of a fictional economy is relevant, and to that I say obviously you're not interested in rolling in money. Which is fine, just close this window because you're probably going nowhere in life financially, just move to Canada and start a fire cape business (in all seriousness, that man knows more about this than I do).
In today's day in age, the market is highly influenced by bot activity. Prices have dropped because of the disgustingly large process of product dumping onto the market by raw material farmers, which in turn causes demand for finished products to go down, where bots/people who process raw materials have to undercut themselves to find a new equilibrium price. This is the simple concept of supply and demand, an economic relationship between the amount of goods produced and price, and the resulting relationship is two curved lines on a graph, a descending, curved line signifying demand, and an ascending curved line signifying supply. Teaching you how supply and demand works is beyond the scope of this guide, but just be aware that more supply = less demand and less supply = more demand.
In reference to the market for herb related goods, things were looking pretty good up until bonus exp weekend. Speculation on goods made for high margins on prices initially, making for an increase in prices up until bonus exp weekend actually started. From then on, prices somewhat fluctuated but stayed around the same general price. Near the closing of the weekend, prices started dropping due to the high influx of clean herbs on the market, and unfinished potions followed. From then on we see a major downward trend of all herb related products, and prices have drastically altered.
This has scared some people away from making unfinished potions, but with the right knowledge of prices, which means being accurately informed, you can profit from this bubble crash. And if prices start to trend up again, which in time they will (time is undetermined, prices are barely stabilizing since the crash), you are poised to make even more profit due to margin increases or if you're already stocked up on unfinished potions/clean/grimy herbs.
The key to being aware of prices involves two important pieces of information: real market prices (which come from price checking, mentioned earlier) and average market prices (inaccurate averages of the grand exchange reported by FaGex). You can check prices at any time, but where do you get the idea to check those prices? The answer is from average market prices. First, you look at the margin of difference between the raw material and the finished product, and make sure it's positive so you're in the clear for a price check. If you feel like the price of that unfinished potion might go up or is going up, you have more incentive to make that product. The idea is to maximize profit but also to be sure you have a stable profit, which is mostly more important.
I'll show you a few examples so you can get an idea for what I mean when I say analysis, and I will be bones bare here.
[INDENT]
ANALYSIS: Both products appear to be stabilizing. General trend for both products is downward but curving; apparent by 180-day change positiveness. Predicting increase in price, then a small drop after a few days if product doesn't stabilize fully or sustain growth. Good for short-term potion making.[/INDENT]
[INDENT]
ANALYSIS: Products may stabilize in a few days according to other trends. Currently products trending downward with no reliable sense of positive direction approaching. Predicting decrease in price, with the possibility of a future stabilization. Proceed with caution.[/INDENT]
When I look at those graphs, that's what my brain tells me through a process known as critical thinking. I know, it's tough to critically think, and you'd think American school systems would do a better job at teaching you that. Good fight High School. Kidding aside, analyzing graphs doesn't take some know-how about how relationships work. The problem with
just analyzing graphs is that you don't have an actual sense of what the prices are, just how they are trending. But trends and patterns are still really important. If I was advising somebody financially, I'd tell 'em forget ranarrs, but that doesn't mean you should be jumping head first into irits. The goal here is to be
well informed.
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[INDENT]
DATA[/INDENT]
Unfortunately, my spreadsheets cannot be imbedded into bbcode because I don't have the ability to put the option of bbcode into RiD forums because of my lack of modship, but we can all protest to have RiD go into the bbcode and add exceptions/protocols into it so we can embed stuff from google docs. That's unlikely to happen. Here are my personal links to my spreadsheets for herblore related products.
[INDENT]
Herb Cleaning: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgvNhD5TqcuedEQ4U0txa3lQN3pGa1VvNm94aUFnQlE#gid=0[/INDENT]
[INDENT]
Unfinished Potions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgvNhD5TqcuedHlKZGRuV0phcjR1bnVxTzBLU3pXQ1E#gid=0[/INDENT]
Reference these spreadsheets for an updated price on herb related goods from the g.e., and how much profit can be theoretically made if those values were the actual market prices. These will provide theoretical margins for you, which you can base what items to price check on.
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[INDENT]
INDUSTRIALIZING[/INDENT]
The idea of using one character to profit off of herblore poses a promising profit, that ranges anywhere from 300K an hour to 800K if the conditions are right (general area of profit margins, don't quote this). But this operation can be expanded for major profits.
The general idea here is to bot on additional accounts (which would require the use of a program other than RiD) so that you can process more goods simultaneously, amounting to a bigger profit. This, however, requires the time to make multiple accounts, the money to make them all members, and the gold to finance them (and of course, the Scrolls of Cleansing if you're doing higher end herbs, which is the time taken to get 57 Dungeoneering). That, or even more money to put a middle man in to do some of this work for you.
The startup cost is rather large, but the payoffs can be large if managed correctly. Simply put, in a perfect world, you need four unfinished potion processors per herb cleaner (if you're using herb cleaners, which is recommended when grimy herbs produce a good amount of extra profit or make an unfinished potion profitable for you).
I won't detail it all out here, because that's more of how to run a business or a line of production than how to profit from herblore in general. The idea is to be on a four hour deadline, be checking your bots, have enough resources to run those bots, and always be running them successfully. Remember, many requirements, huge payoffs.
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[INDENT]
METHODOLOGY[/INDENT]
Now here comes the fun part where we actually set up our bot(s) and get cracking. Pay attention to settings of each bot, it is highly important to your bots productiveness, and making sure the bot works properly. This information is elsewhere in our forum and so on, but for ease of access, I will put everything you need to know here in a streamlined version. It's important to remember that RiD is more geared towards botting on mains than gold farming, so if you clean herbs/make unfinished potions on your main, RiD is moreso recommended. For throwaway accounts, I recommend Simba
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[INDENT]
PROCESSING W/RID[/INDENT]
Step 1: Download the latest version of RiD, or update your current RiD program by logging into the program twice. Need to minimize your bot? Click
here.
Step 2: Open RuneScape either with the RuneScape Client (installed, no refresh) or Google Chrome (webpage, refresh).
Step 3: Set up your graphics settings to properly work with RiD. This is only required for the initial set-up of RiD or any time you change your graphics to something else.
Display Mode: Software
Brightness: Max
Remove roofs: Always
Idle animations: Few
Character shadows: Off
Lighting detail: Low
Anti-aliasing: N/A
Particles: Low
Ground blending: Off
Max screen size: 800x600
Mouseover text: Off
Bloom: N/A
CPU usage: Normal/Maximum
Ground decoration: Off
Flickering effects: Off
Scenery shadows: None
Water detail: Low
Fog: Off
Customer cursors: On
Textures: Off
Skyboxes: N/A
Click through chatbox: Off
Step 4: Open RiD > log in > open RiDiverse > adjust settings properly.
Mouse Type: Gaming Mouse
Speed: Maximum
User Interaction: None/Light
Lamp Skill: None/Your Choice
Email Alerts: None
Use Bank Pin: *insert if you have a bank pin*
Use Auto-Login: *recommended*
Shutdown PC when session is complete: *not recommended*
Training Method: New
[INDENT]HERB CLEANING[/INDENT]
Set Actions:
--> Withdraw Item: Object 1 Quantity: All
--> Mousekey Inv Left Click All Object 1
--> Deposit Item: ALL Quantity: All
--> Confirm
Set Objects:
--> Withdraw Grimy *insert herb here* x1 > take snapshot > click Grimy *insert herb here* > Confirm
Save:
-->Name: Grimy_*insert herb here*_Cleaner
-->Description: Cleans grimy *insert herb here*s.
[INDENT]
UNFINISHED POTIONS[/INDENT]
Set Actions:--> MouseKey Bank Withdraw Object 1 & Object 2
--> Use Object 1 On: Object 2
--> Make-X Option (from L->R): 1st
--> Wait Until no more Object 1 remains in inventory
--> Wait Until no more Object 2 remains in inventory
--> Deposit Item: ALL Quantity: All
--> Confirm
Set Objects:--> Withdraw Clean *insert herb here* x1 & Vial of Water x1 > take snapshot > click Clean *insert herb here* & Vial of Water > Confirm
Save:-->Name: Unfinished_Potion_*insert herb here*_Maker
-->Description: Makes unfinished *insert herb here* potions.
Bank Gridsquare: North
Session Length (approx, hrs): 8 or greater
Step 5: Move your character to Soul Wars on a world with low ping, facing the bank chest.
Step 6: Set up a bank tab so that you have your clean herbs/grimy herbs/vials/vials of water/other potions all in one tab, then move clean herbs to the closest bank position nearest the "x" button, or the close bank button and move your vials of water to the bank position under your clean herbs. If you're just doing grimy herbs, move them to the closest bank position to the "x" button. Proceed to exit out of your bank.
Step 7: Hit the start button and check on your bot periodically. Restart if any issues arise.
Step 8: Profit. Check market prices and sell your unfinished potions.
[INDENT]
NOTE: A saved instance of a script will only work for that item. Bot may not function perfectly for four hours at a time. It is recommended to periodically check your bot. Do not have to change graphics again unless you change them manually for normal play. Will not have to change the set up of your specific bank tab again.[/INDENT]
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[INDENT]
PROCESSING W/SIMBA[/INDENT]
Step 1: Download and install Simba.
Step 2: Follow
these steps to set up Simba for use:
- Open Simba; go to View > Extensions.
- Enable extensions.sex.
- Click View > Extensions Menu.
- Click Extensions > Check for Updates. Let it update.
- Restart Simba.
- Go to View > Extensions.
- Enable srl.sex, and associate.sex.
- Click SRL > Check for Updates. Let the files download.
- Click MSI > Check for Updates. Let the files download.
- Click SPS > Check for Updates. Let the files download; may take a few seconds.
- Restart Simba
Step 3: Input the following script into the textbox section of Simba by method of copy-pasting:
[INDENT]
Script: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgvNhD5TqcuedEQ4U0txa3lQN3pGa1VvNm94aUFnQlE#gid=0[/INDENT]
Step 4: Input all necessary data to log in and use your bank, including username, password, and pin. Be sure to insert this data within the half quotation marks.
Step 5: List whether or not you're cleaning herbs ('clean') or making unfinished potions ('unf') within the half quotation marks.
Step 6: Open RuneScape either with the RuneScape Client (installed) or Google Chrome (webpage).
Step 7: Set up a bank tab so that you have your clean herbs/grimy herbs/vials/vials of water/other potions all in one tab, then move clean herbs to the closest bank position nearest the "x" button, or the close bank button and move your vials of water to the bank position to the left of your clean herbs. If you're just doing grimy herbs, move them to the closest bank position to the "x" button. Proceed to exit out of your bank and promptly log off and close your client.
Step 8: Head back to your Simba client and hit F9 or click the "play" button on the top bar, which will startup a windowed RuneScape client that you will not be able to click.
Step 9: Wait for RuneScape to load and log into your account, then hit Disable SMART, and be prepared to change your graphics settings to the following. Remember, so long as you haven't changed your settings, you will not have to do this again.
Display Mode: Safe Mode
Brightness: Max
Remove roofs: Always
Idle animations: Few
Character shadows: Off
Lighting detail: Low
Anti-aliasing: N/A
Particles: Low
Ground blending: Off
Max screen size: 800x600
Mouseover text: Off
Bloom: N/A
CPU usage: Normal/Maximum
Ground decoration: Off
Flickering effects: Off
Scenery shadows: None
Water detail: Low
Fog: Off
Customer cursors: Off
Textures: Off
Skyboxes: N/A
Click through chatbox: Off
Step 10: Hit Enable SMART and allow the script to run. If it's not running, go back to your Simba client with the script visible and hit F9 or press the play button again. If you wish to cut down on resources used, disable graphics. You can always enable them again to check on your bot.
Step 11: Profit. Check market prices and sell your unfinished potions.
[INDENT]
NOTE: A saved instance of this script will work for whatever item(s) are properly placed in their respective bank positions. Bot may not function perfectly for four hours at a time, but is more likely to than RiD from past experience. It is recommended to periodically check your bot. Do not have to change graphics again unless you change them manually for normal play. Will not have to change the set-up of your specific bank tab again.[/INDENT]
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[INDENT]
RULES OF THUMB[/INDENT]
There are a few general rules you should stick by to keep on top of your game. If you choose not to follow them, that's your beef, be happy with what you get out of that, but if you've gotten this far down the line, you may as well stick with the protips and become a real economic shark.
[INDENT]
1. Don't ever dump your product for a loss unless you need the money.[/INDENT]
Sometimes people need to liquidate their inventory because they're on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis. If for any reason your product has been held on for too long or is plummetting, never just sell it unless you're in dire need of gold, which should never be the case. Typically if you're stuck with inventory, it's because you can afford to be. But if you're only doing 10,000 unfinished potions at a time, or cleaning herbs, and that's all you can afford to do, and you're at somewhat of a loss, then that is the
only acceptable time to dump your goods.
[INDENT]
2. Have some patience while selling your products.[/INDENT]
If you want to sell your unfinished potions immediately, then you're still likely poised to get a profit (this may be a questionable statement in the current RuneScape economy if you'd actually price check some things from time to time). However, if you stick to around the upper bound price your check for, it can still sell just fine, it just might take a little bit more time. Think of it as flipping without having bought the unfinished potions, and made them instead. Remember, patience is absolute key to maximize profit in this manner.
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3. Know what a Scroll of Cleansing is and how to get one.[/INDENT]
Whether or not you are going to be doing high ticket herbs or not with questionable normal margins, you should still be aware of your options. A Scroll of Cleansing is a 20,000 token (20K) Dungeoneering reward. Upon estimation of what's required to get one, you need to get to around 57 Dungeoneering. The requirement for purchasing one is 50, but you are highly unlikely to have the resources needed to purchase one at that level. What the scroll of cleansing does is it's a one-time use item that permanently allows your character to save 10% of the herbs used in unfinished potion production. That means more money in your pocket. Other effects include saving secondary items when adding them to unfinished potions, which you shouldn't be doing, and the ability to make potions twice as fast 12.5% of the time, which is a nice little bonus, but in my opinion rather negligible.
[INDENT]
4. Want to step up to the big boy herbs? Proceed with caution. Scroll of Cleansing is a must.[/INDENT]
Anything past ranarr, you're looking into expensive startup costs. This stuff isn't hard to handle, nothing special about it, except under normal circumstances, the margins can be questionable, and after price checking some if not most of this higher retail herbs, you're likely looking at a predicted profit loss.
However, under the assumption that you have a Scroll of Cleansing, you're looking to make a nice hefty profit because you're saving 10% of the herbs that would normally be used in production. This means it only takes an estimated 9,000 herbs to make 10,000 unfinished potions. The profit steps up to bat because you've saved those extra herbs, which can be then made into unfinished potions themselves if you have the resources to.
[INDENT]
5. Low budget? Have no fear. There are workarounds for a small startup cost.[/INDENT]
If you don't have much money to get started with any sort of operation, don't fret. You don't have to do necessarily 10,000 potions at a time, you can start off smaller and do 2,500 an hour and have the same time upkeep as someone who's using up their buy limit on getting materials. Secondly, the lower priced herbs will only cost you, in production costs, an estimated 1300K-1500K, which is not a big sum of money. It's easily farmable on a level 80 combat account with dragons or even
[INDENT]
6. Members a problem after a month of operation? Buy it with RSGP you dumby.[/INDENT]
That's right, after the initial cost of membership, you can pay off others for RuneScape pins that will grant you membership on your account. This is a suitable and probably even better alternative to actually purchasing membership with cash given that you can make the usual cost of 12M-15M rather easily, and most definitely within the time span of a month.
[INDENT]
7. If you have the resources to expand, do it.[/INDENT]
You got bills in your pocket? Got an even better PC to boot or a server to run your bots on? Consider running multiple bots. Even on a standard PC you should be running two to four to maximize profit. However, with more resources comes more ability to produce. As you expand, you'll increase the flow of gold into your coffers.
[INDENT]
8. Finally, record your data.[/INDENT]
If you're going to be a real businessman or a profiteer, you're going to need a real spreadsheet to hold certain values. Anything and everything from price checks, costs of expenditure, and sales, you should have it all down to the tee, and the data/time of transactions as well. Is it entirely necessary to profit? Not at all, but if you don't know where your money is going, nobody else is going to tell you, and bad accounting is going to have you wind up in the red. Too much jargin? Without this, you're likely to make a few bad trades and lose money, which is counterproductive. That's a big nono, and if you're going to use these methods and be counterproductive to yourself, may want to delete System32 from your PC. Run mac? Shut up already.
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[INDENT]
END[/INDENT]
That concludes my very long and in depth guide to profiteering in the herblore economy. I encourage anyone who has read this guide to comment on it and anyone who has a correction or something to contribute, please do. I'm available for PM for any other questions available. I do apologize for the length that had to be extended over a multitude of posts, but I wanted to ensure some fluidity and format. Thanks everyone. And remember kids; keep your meat ice cold.
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