RS3 Farming Guide - Max the farming skill fast!

Do you want to get good at farming? You’ve come to the right place. There are many guides and resources online to look at, but you just arrived at the best compendium of all those guides out there. There are few things here and there to add to the incredible useful wiki article on the subject, and if you are a total beginner, you’ll find us way friendlier than all the numbers out there. Sometimes you just need instructions, the locations for allotment patches, and not the very specific equations to calculate the exp gains for everything.

If you were an OSRS farmer, you’d find that some things look quite similar to an OSRS farming guide. And while that is true, in this guide, you’ll read some key differences between farming OSRS herbs and farming them on RS3.

Now, about farming for farming XP. This member’s only gathering skill will net you some gold and herbs to increase other skills easily. Leveling up to 20 will give you access to POF (player owned farms), which basically lets you play breed different animal species. We'll talk about it a bit later. Farming in RS3 is easy to understand but hard to master, and learning every aspect of it requires a lot of your time. That’s why we are here! 

Do have an objective in mind, though! As if you are just trying to get your farming skill over level 99, some extra items might not be worth the trouble, while they might be necessary for a level 120 run. The main benefit of a higher farming level is the yield you’ll get from crops. More yield = more profit! You can really make a fortune if you know what you are doing.  Yes, that does mean that you could do your monthly subscription payments with in-game currency training the farming skill and selling produce. You don't have to be a hunter to make money.

There are a few requirements and things you should know before starting. From checking the health of a bush to learning when to log out from your account and log in into the server. Soon, you'll be running from crop to crop to water your plants. Be quick to maximize your gold and experience income.

Things to know

Before we start, here are some key things you need to know about gaining farming XP on RS3:

When you start to level up the skill, there’ll be 4 places to farm in RS3, all players farm exactly in the same places but can only see an interact with their farms. You can find these allotments north-east of Canifis, north of Catherby, north-east of Ardougne, and south of Falador. Do wear a Falador shield two or above to gain an extra 10% farming experience while farming on there. You’ll unlock more places for specific species as you gain levels. 

Every single plant and tree grows on a real-time timer. Each one of them has its unique growth cycles, and you need to be careful not to log-in and log out in the same cycle you planted your crops since that resets the timer. Check the link on the wiki to learn the specific times on each plant.

It may sound obvious, but you'll need seeds to farm. You can get the seed by buying them at the players' market or killing some monsters. Turoths are a great source of seeds, for example.

The Rapid Growth spell takes the plant to its next growth stage. Using it also reduces the chances of them dying or getting diseases, but it can only be cast once per day per patch, and it resets at 0:00 UTC. There is a way to cast it twice per day with the Master farmer outfit, which also gives an experience bonus. You'll need the appropriate runes, so have them ready.

Plants and trees have a small chance of getting a disease. Meaning that in the next growth cycles, there is a 50% chance for it to die. Plants cannot advance to the next growth cycles until cured, and getting a diseased farm will effectively delay the growth cycle to the next one. Herbs, plants, flowers, vines, bushes, cactuses, and bushes, belladonnas, hops, and allotments can be easily cured with the Plant cure potion. For trees and bushes, you’ll need to prune them with secateurs. The Lunar spell Cure plant will also do the job.

Some NPCs prevent your plants from dying from diseases, but these are not worth it. Use compost to reduce the chances of your tree patches getting diseases significantly. Which on the topic, compost also increases the yield of the crops. Use Supercompost, instead of Ultracompost, the benefits of the latter are not worth the price tag. You can make your own compost on a compost bin, but you’ll be better off buying it.

The livid farm is a great way to start to level up your farming skill, but it won’t pay up in the long run. Better to go for your flower patch, planting seeds, or run a player owned farm. You’ll eventually find a tree seed and unlock the fruit tree patches. But let’s take it one step at a time.

If you have a certain familiar, it will increase the yield from certain crops. Either the giant ent or the Wolpertinger are not really worth the trouble. They help a bit for the later stages, but not for a flower patch or herbs.

RuneScape 3 Farming tools

You’ll need the right tools for the job. Not all of them can be stored on your tool belt, though! You are going to have to be mindful of your inventory space. We recommend you go through the “A fairy tale part 1” and “Fairytale III - Battle at Orks Rift” to get the Magic Secateurs and Magic Watering Can, respectively. The secateurs will give you a chance to recover tree seeds while the watering can gives you unlimited uses. The Tool Leprechauns will help you store items for free and even will automatically create compost for you for the right price.

Don’t forget to bring farming urns to your farming leveling up session, and do set them up to teleport instantly. Urns will increase your exp by 20% or 25% if you put on an urn enhancer, use them as much as you can afford to. You’ll need a high crafting level to get urns, but that shouldn’t be that hard.

A Juju potion offers some nice special bonuses for your trouble. They are not useful for gaining experience points, but its worth to mention them.  Level 77 is required to make the perfect juju farming potion. If used it'll give you a 25% chance of double harmony moss from a harmony pillar and a 5% chance of receiving harmony moss when harvesting another patch.

Lastly, let’s talk about items and gear. You’ll want the Farmer outfit, at least, if you are trying to get to level 99, and for sure, you’ll need the Master farmer outfit for levels 100-120. Overall, they both bring an extra 6% exp to the table, with the Master’s version bringing a slight edge with some added benefits. The Scroll of Life is also a must, as it gives you a 10% chance to get your seed back.

That was the basics. Now, to actually farm your farming skill, we are going to get-go trough out some tiers of play here. Be mindful that there are many ways to efficiently increase your farming levels, so we are going through many of them. Use the one that suits your playstyle best. By that, we mean, some methods require actually farming, while others are more combat-oriented. You’ll see what we are talking about.

Overall, getting to 120 level should take you around 2 to 3 months if you play daily, and around 5 months if you are more casual about it. Once you get the hang of it, the set up doesn’t take that long, around 10 to 20 minutes if done correctly.

Farming - The Early Stages (1 to 15)

This is the easiest part, and the chances are that you aren’t level 1 farming by this point. You’ll have some levels just from playing the game. From now on, your objective will be maximizing your time, and the exp gain, we’ll list the best ways to do it and the best crops to get value from your time.

Quests, quests, and quests! Sometimes the best way to farm it out is by not doing it straightforward. Many quests will give you exp, but here are the best ones to easily get through the first stages, some even give you nice little bonuses.

Fairy Tale 1 - Growing Pains

Forgettable tale of Drunken a Dwarf

Follow the links for the walkthroughs. They aren’t really tough. These two quests will put you on the right track and net you some solid exp to get you started. You will gain magical secateurs for your service. If you rather AFK for a while, you could also shovel the manure mound. Do that for a while, and soon you’ll hit level 17. 

Now, to actually begin gaining some farming experience points, go to a herb patch or farming patch, rake it to remove weeds. This allows you to use compost, and plant the seed. Remember that you can pay up a farmer to prevent them from getting the disease status. 

Start by farming potatoes from 1 to 5, onions from 5 to 7, cabbages from 7 to 12, and tomatoes from 12 to 15. If this kind of looks like its self explanatory… it’s because it is! Rake the allotment patch, use Sumpercompost, plant seeds and wait up! It should take around 40 minutes until they are fully grown. Do try to go for the magic secateurs for extra yield and experience points. Running from patch to patch will become something natural to you in no time.

The advantages of farming vs. shoveling and questing come down to personal preferences. At this point, you’ll unlock the ability to farm trees. You'll see a tree patch on every allotment patch you have visited.

Great! You’ve got over the easy part! This is the start of the real battle for some farming experience!

Farming - The Mid Stages (15 to 72)

It is what you’ll be doing most of your time unless you want to try other methods. Many other forms of farming are unlocked during this tier, and you’ll soon realize it ultimately comes down to personal preference. You can even attempt many at the same time, but that might be a bit too much trouble, just knowing there are tons of things to keep track of. It’s not about only flowers and vegetables anymore. There’ll be some fighting included.

Remember that farming vegetables, herb seeds, and fruits will net you some GP. Now, you’ll start by farming the Oak Trees, the same as before: rake up, Supercompost the patch, and plant your trees.

We do recommend you to keep doing this until level 27, that’s when you will unlock the fruit trees. If you are planning to go for the tree route, the fruit trees will be more than enough for a while. Hitting level 50 is crucial, as you’ll get most of the tree seeds drops so you can start testing other farming methods. Meanwhile, keep up with fruit; apples at 27, bananas at 33, oranges at 39, curry tree at 42, pineapple at 51, papaya at 57, and palm trees at 58.

To farm a fruit tree, you'll need to go to their specific allotment patches. There are 7 fruit tree allotments. You'll find them on the Gnome Stronghold, west of tree Gnome Village, north of Brimhaven, east of Catherby, on the Meilyr Clan, Herblore Habitat, and Lleyta. Again, all of them have their exclusive gardeners, it is not necessary to pay them to protect a fruit tree, but if you'll hate to see a dead tree on your daily run to get that farming exp. 

You could keep it up with the palm trees by this point, but if you are getting a bit bored, you could try the Seedicide. This item will destroy every seed an enemy drops, but it will give you double the exp you would have gotten from planting it. The best monsters to the farm are the Turoths, which can net you around 110,000 exp per hour of fighting. But be reminded that this will consume most of the drops they give. Turoths are weak enough that you might even fight them with Farmers outfit to get the extra exp. You can get the Seedicide by buying it from your POF (Player owned farms) or winning it on Cabbage Facepunch Bonanza.

Farming - Player Owned Farms

Alternatively, you could try to level trough POF. While effective and profitable, it does come with the slight disadvantage that not all XP modifiers work here. It can be a very profitable way to get to level up, but with the added disadvantage that it may require more investment to take care of the animals properly, they eat one piece of food per hour, so you kind of can see where this is going. If they are not properly fed, they will not be happy and will give you just a small portion of the exp net. You’ll just need to finish the tutorial. You’ll also need level 20 Construction, but that shouldn’t be an issue.  

If you are doing POF, you can get to level 120 with the right set up. The general idea is that you buy animals, grow them from baby to elder stage, sell them, and repurchase them with beans you earned. You can start your venture in POF at level 17, you’ll farm rabbits until level 28. Your babies will grow in just one hour, so be sure to check them constantly and have enough food for them.

At level 28, you’ll unlock the chickens. These bad boys take longer to go from baby to elder, 4 hours and 10 minutes, but like rabbits, you’ll keep them happy with some cheap seeds, so the transition is quite easy. When you hit level 35, you’ll need to add sheep into the medium fence. They’ll take less time to grow than chickens, so be sure to manage your schedule. Give them flowers to keep them happy.

The first animal you’ll get for the large pen is cows, unlocking it at level 49. Taking 6 hours to grow from baby to Elder, you’ll feed them the good old flowers to keep them happy. You finally have a full set up of animals to farm all the pens available. 

At level 54, you’ll start to unlock the magical creatures. These will give you a huge boost of exp, and while there are many, we’ll tell you in a bit the best ones to farm. Replace your chickens for Chinchompas at 54, sheep for spiders at 64, and keep the cows on the large pen. That’ll be your set up for a while. On the topic, spiders net your good XP, and you can keep them there until the late game, you’ll unlock a better option soon, but it can get quite expensive due to the feeding costs. 

Farming - The late late game (72 to 120+)

This is when things start to get a bit tricky. Gaining exp starts to feel like a real uphill battle, but at this rate, you’ll really start to see the money coming in. Luckily, by this time, you also have unlocked rarer species of trees and more allotments for those species, which means a total extra XP per travel. Yeah, there are many more travels and teleportations to do, but if you mix it with a bit of battling with the Seedicide here and there, your farming days should be closer than you think. 

These additional locations won’t net you more significant experience that you would already be gaining by harvesting fruit trees at the Gnome Stronghold or the Gnome Village in general, but they’ll undoubtedly give you more than the extra bit that you were looking for. However, it will take more time to set everything up. It’s ok if you drop other options, as overall, you’ll see more farming XP gains when sticking to these methods.  

At level 72, you’ll unlock the Calquat tree. You’ll be able to farm it north of Tai Bwo Wannai. And at level 83, you’ll get the ability to grow Spirit Trees. While they bring a good XP boost, you’ll be able to farm up to 4 of them at a time, but you’ll need to complete the “Plague’s End” and “Prisoner of Glouphrie” quests. To use the patch to plant the fourth Spirit Tree, you’ll need to have at least an Apprentice Farmer raking at Farming Guild.

Now you’ll do this until level 90, that’s when you unlock the ability to plant Elder Trees. It will net you cash and XP, additionally, if the voice of Seren is active on the Crwys, you’ll gain an extra 20% exp, and there’s a chance that the tree will skip a growth cycle. 

Once you hit level 109, you’ll unlock the ability to plant Tombshrooms. They have a really fast growth rate, and they will give you tons of tons of XP and cash, making these last levels, not an actual pain as one might have thought. Don’t forget to use compost! At this rate, you could afford Ultracompost with little to no drawback.

There's also the Crystal tree starting at level 91. The tree patch it's located at the Tower of Voices in Prifdinas. This marvelous farming patch will reward you with 50,000 XP instantly. You can check it daily to gain an additional 15,000 XP per day.

For those on the POF track 

Last time you were farming Chinchompas, spiders, and cows. At level 81, you will be able to replace the spider with Zygomites. However, they do require a hefty investment, since you’ll need arc mushrooms to feed them. There’s a 2000 XP difference gain between spiders and Zygomites; however, the latter cost around 80k to feed per day, while spiders only cost 500 GP to feed. It’s up to you.

It won’t be until level 71, that you’ll be able to replace your cows for yaks. And they eat flowers! That’s pretty cheap. Starting al level 92 and till you reach level 120, you’ll replace yaks with dragons. These guys do take a long time to be fully grown, meaning more free time to do more stuff. Obviously, they’ll eat meat.

Farming the farming skill

So is that all? Are all these all the methods to reliable gain farming XP? 

There are more ways, but the ones listed on this RS3 Farming guide present a better use of your time. No need to run from allotment patch to allotment patch if that's going to cost you even more resources and stress with the tree timers. To save time, skip these methods, using them is not efficient.  We'll list a few more just in case you get bored of the same daily run or just want to use an alternative method.

There are the supplies runs that occur at noon and midnight. Take ten goebies, and run to deliver them as safe as possible. The game will flag you for safe PvP so that you might end up in combat more often than not. There's also the Giant Oyster, a monthly Distraction and Diversion. If you have completed the "Beneath Cursed Tides" quest, just harvest from the tasty looking seaweed to find delicious seaweed. You gain experience based on your level, and at level 99 farming, you'll find yourself gaining 69,660 XP in this 1-2 minute run.

There are a couple more out there; we do recommend checking the many links on the guide to find infographics, video references, and other helpful information. Please, share any additional info you have found any news on farming. Join our community to read new guides on RS3. We'll keep you posted.

So that's basically it! Now, it's time to level to 99 farming and beyond. Find a comfy chair and start the grind!

FAQ

How do you train for farming?

There are many ways to do it. Farming a herb patch, a spirit tree, and growing animals on POF. You could even get through the first levels by going AFK farming on the manure mount. If you are more into combat, you could also go for the Seedicide killing Turoths for 110,000 XP an hour. Or you could use that rare Crystal acorn to grow a Crystal tree and run daily to it gain more XP. Run to the middle section of this article to learn more about it.

How long will it take me to max the farming skill?

It depends on how much time you invest into the game. If you do a daily run with no days off, around 2 to 3 months, depending on your method. Probably five months if you play more casually. Once you get to level 99 farming, it shouldn’t feel that hard.

How long do fruit trees take to grow?

Every fruit tree takes a different amount of time to grow. Check the link to the wiki for more information. Do remember they all are on a global timer, and you’ll have to wait for the growth cycles to find your plants fully grown on the farming patch. A level 27 farming is required to start farming fruit trees.

How do I start rs3 on POF?

Report to Granny Potterington at the farm on Ardougne. It’s the one north. You’ll need to get your farming level to 17 and construction to level 20 to join the POF venture. There'll be a simple quest to teach you the basics. You’ll only see your livestock there, if you don't buy livestock, it'll be empty for you.

How long do Dragons take to grow RS3?

Dragons take some time to be fully grown. Specifically, they take a week to grow from baby to elder, but the XP profits they give are huge. They are certainly worth the wait. Within that time frame, you could also try a number of different farming methods.

How do I start dungeoneering RS3?

This skill is available to free to play players and members. You’ll need it for some quests relating to farming. Just go to Daemonheim.

Where can I find a farming guide OSRS?

There are many guides out there for OSRS. And things haven't changed much on how to level the skill. Just find a farming patch to start your run from level 1 to 120.