OSRS 1–99 Farming Guide

Farming is built around patches — fixed locations dotted across Gielinor where you plant a seed, wait, and harvest. Each patch type grows its own family of crops: allotments grow vegetables, herb patches grow herbs, and the tree, fruit tree, hardwood and special patches grow the various trees, with bushes, flowers, hops, cacti and more besides. You can only have one crop growing in a given patch at a time, which is exactly why a “run” means hopping between many patches of the same type in one trip — six magic-tree patches around the map, ten herb patches, three hardwood patches on Fossil Island, and so on. The more patches you have unlocked and can reach quickly, the more experience each loop delivers.

Crops grow on a real-time timer, advancing one growth stage every few minutes whether you are logged in or not. Herbs take about 80 minutes start to finish, regular trees a few hours, and hardwoods like mahogany over three real-life days. Most of your experience arrives in two lumps: a small amount for planting the seed, and a much larger amount for checking the health of a fully grown tree (or for harvesting the final crop on patches without a check-health option). A grown oak, for example, gives only a few experience for planting but several hundred for the health check. Because the big experience comes per crop and not per second, Farming experience is best measured per run, not per hour — the hourly figures in the table below are effective rates that assume you string runs back to back with no waiting, so treat them as a comparison tool rather than a literal sit-down session.

The one real risk is disease: a growing crop can fall ill at any growth stage and, if left untreated, die at the next stage, costing you the seed and all the experience it would have given. You avoid this two ways — pay a nearby gardener a small protection fee (usually a few crops or a handful of coins), or treat the patch with compost before planting. Fully grown plants can no longer become diseased, so the danger window is only while they are growing. Manage those two things — protection and a fast route — and Farming becomes almost entirely passive, which is its whole appeal.

Farming uses cheap, simple tools rather than a tier ladder of weapons, so there is no expensive setup to buy before you start. The essentials are a spade (to dig up dead or harvested plants), a rake (to clear weeds from a patch before you can plant), and a seed dibber (to plant most seeds). To grow your own tree saplings — far cheaper than buying ready-made ones — you also want a gardening trowel, a plant pot filled with soil, and a watering can: you put the tree seed in the pot, water the seedling, and a few minutes later it becomes a plantable sapling. Saplings even finish growing while sitting in your bank, so you can prepare a whole run's worth in advance. Almost all of these tools can be left with a Tool Leprechaun stationed at every patch and summoned on the spot, so they never clog your inventory during a run.

The one upgrade worth chasing early is the magic secateurs, a reward from the quest Fairytale I - Growing Pains. Simply held in your inventory or equipped, they give a flat +10% to herb and allotment harvest yield, which means more herbs and more profit from every single herb run for the rest of the account's life — one of the best permanent quest rewards in the game and the first thing any farmer should grab. A bottomless compost bucket is a hugely convenient item that stores hundreds of doses of compost in a single inventory slot, saving you from carrying stacks of buckets, and it can be refilled cheaply. Finally, a stamina potion keeps your run energy topped up as you sprint between distant patches — a small thing that noticeably shortens every run, since Farming is mostly time spent running, not clicking.

The farmer's outfit is Farming's experience-boosting set: wearing all four pieces gives +2.5% Farming XP (strawhat +0.4%, jacket or shirt +0.8%, boro trousers +0.6%, boots +0.2%), with each piece adding its bonus independently and the full set giving the maximum. Unlike most skilling outfits it is not available from level 1 — you need Farming level 34 to wear any piece, and the full set costs 400 points at the Tithe Farm reward shop, which works out to roughly five and a half hours of grinding that minigame. If you are buying it, get the pieces in order of best boost-per-point: strawhat or jacket first, then the trousers, and the boots last.

Whether it is actually worth the detour depends entirely on your goal, and this is where new farmers often waste time. The +2.5% only applies to active experience you earn, and tree runs — where the overwhelming majority of your experience comes from — are so fast in effective terms that the hours spent grinding Tithe Farm points frequently cost more experience than the outfit will ever save you on the way to a single level 99. In other words, for most accounts going for just one 99, skipping the outfit and doing more tree runs is the faster path. The outfit genuinely shines in two cases: if you are maxing or chasing 200 million Farming experience, where 2.5% compounds into hundreds of thousands of saved experience, or if you simply enjoy Tithe Farm and intend to grind it between tree runs anyway, in which case the points come essentially for free. You can see how every experience-boosting set across the skilling skills compares in our skilling outfits guide, which is handy if you are deciding where to spend your limited grinding time.

Compost is how you both protect patches from disease and squeeze extra crop out of them, and understanding it is the difference between a profitable farmer and a frustrated one. There are three tiers. Basic compost halves the disease chance and is barely used. Supercompost cuts disease by 80%, grants 26 Farming experience per bucket when applied, and raises the minimum herbs you harvest from a patch to five. Ultracompost — supercompost combined with three volcanic ash — is the best of the three: it slashes disease by 90%, gives 36 experience per bucket, and guarantees a minimum of six herbs per seed, lifting expected herb yield to roughly 8.6 herbs per patch at high Farming levels when paired with magic secateurs. That extra herb or two on every single patch, every single run, is enormous over a Farming career.

The golden rule is simple: always treat herb and allotment patches with ultracompost, because there the yield boost pays for itself many times over in extra herbs and the profit dwarfs the cost of the compost. For trees, fruit trees, hardwoods and bushes, however, compost does not increase yield at all — it only protects against disease — so on those patches it is usually simpler and cheaper to just pay the gardener for guaranteed protection rather than spend ultracompost. The exception is the celastrus and crystal special trees, whose harvest is boosted by compost. Making your own super or ultracompost in a compost bin from buckets of compost (using produce like pineapples or watermelons) is also a tidy, cheap way to grind the very first Farming levels, since each ultracompost bucket made gives 8.5 experience — and you will want a steady stockpile of it for your herb runs anyway, so it is never wasted effort.

The early levels are the only genuinely slow and tedious part of Farming, so the vast majority of players skip them entirely with quests. Completing the Goblin generals subquest of Recipe for Disaster, plus Fairytale I - Growing Pains, Forgettable Tale..., The Garden of Death, Garden of Tranquillity, Enlightened Journey and My Arm's Big Adventure, hands out roughly 32,500 Farming experience — enough to jump straight from level 1 to about level 38 and begin proper tree runs immediately. Doing these quests first is by far the recommended path, because it lets you skip the worst of the grind and start on the rewarding part of the skill from day one. Several of them have very low requirements, so even a young account can knock most of them out.

If you would rather train normally without the quests, the plan is to plant cheap allotment seeds — potatoes (level 1), onions (5), cabbages (7) and tomatoes (12) — in the allotment patches found around Gielinor, harvesting and replanting them on a short cycle, or to make super and ultracompost in a compost bin for steady passive experience. Both are slow but very cheap. The single aim of this whole phase is just to reach level 15, the moment everything changes: at 15 you can plant your first oak tree from an acorn, and the proper tree-run cycle — the real engine of Farming experience — finally opens up. Bagged plants planted inside a player-owned house are the fastest active route through the teens, but they are expensive, so for most accounts the quest skip plus a handful of allotment seeds is the sensible, cheap way through the early levels.

Tree runs are the heart of Farming and by far the most effective experience in the skill. From level 15 onward you visit the regular tree patches — the Gnome Stronghold, Falador, Lumbridge, Varrock, Taverley and the Farming Guild — and at each one you check the health of your fully grown tree for a big experience lump, pay the gardener to clear the stump, and replant the next sapling. The whole loop is a handful of minutes for a large chunk of experience, after which you simply log off and let the next batch grow over the coming hours. This is why a player can reach 99 Farming with only a few minutes of actual play per day: the trees do the waiting, not you.

The regular-tree ladder follows your Farming level, and you always plant the highest tier you can reach: oak (level 15) → willow (30) → maple (45) → yew (60) → magic (75). Per the table below, an oak gives about 481 experience per cycle, a willow about 1,482, and a maple about 3,448 — the per-tree numbers climb steeply as you go up, so each upgrade is a meaningful jump. The catch is cost. Magic trees are very expensive — the seeds alone run into the tens of thousands of coins each, so a 99 done purely on magics costs a fortune — and yews are semi-pricey too. Maple trees, by contrast, cost only about 1 coin per experience (roughly 13 million coins for a full 99 if done solely on maples), which makes them the clear value pick if you are not in a hurry and want a cheap, steady climb. A money-saving habit that applies to every tree tier: buy the cheap raw tree seeds off the Grand Exchange and grow them into saplings yourself with a plant pot, trowel and watering can, rather than paying the much higher price for finished saplings — over hundreds of trees that saving is substantial.

Stacked alongside your regular trees in the same run are fruit trees and hardwood trees, and together these are the real backbone of cheap, fast Farming experience — many players plant all three families on every loop. Fruit trees unlock at level 27 with the apple tree and then ladder up through banana, orange, curry, pineapple, papaya (57), palm (68) and dragonfruit (81). Nearly every fruit tree is actually profitable to grow, provided you pick and sell the fruit before clearing the tree — papaya trees in particular can net over 20 million coins on the way to 99, turning a training cost into a gain. Picking the fruit takes a little extra time at each patch, so the most efficiency-obsessed players sometimes skip the harvest to save seconds, but for the vast majority of accounts picking the fruit is well worth it. The fruit-tree patches sit at Catherby, Brimhaven, Tree Gnome Village, the Gnome Stronghold, Lletya, the Farming Guild and Varlamore.

Hardwood trees are the cheapest experience per coin in the entire skill, which is why they are a fixture of nearly every serious tree run. Teak (level 35) and mahogany (level 55) cost only a fraction of a coin per experience — a mahogany gives a huge ~15,800 experience per cycle and a teak ~7,325, both for a seed that is nearly free — so a 99 done largely on hardwoods can cost as little as ten million coins total. Their one downside is patience: teaks take roughly 75 real-life hours to grow and mahoganies around 85, so you cannot run them daily, but that is no real cost — you simply fold them into your normal trips whenever they happen to be ready and let them tick along in the background between checks. The hardwood patches sit on Fossil Island (three patches, unlocked by completing Bone Voyage), in Varlamore (added via The Ribbiting Tale of a Lily Pad Labour Dispute), and at the Anglers' Retreat for those with the Sailing level.

As you climb the levels you unlock four special tree patches, each one a single unique location that adds a big slug of experience to every run. The calquat tree (level 72), grown in its lone patch at Tai Bwo Wannai, gives around 12,000 experience per harvest from a seed that costs only a couple of hundred coins — some of the best raw value in the skill. The crystal tree (level 74) in Prifddinas is unlocked after the grandmaster quest Song of the Elves and is harvested for crystal shards, a useful by-product for elf-gear and tool charging. The celastrus tree (level 85) in the Farming Guild is nearly free to run if you harvest its celastrus bark (used to make the amulet of eternal glory and similar), giving about 14,000 experience per growth on a short 13-hour cycle — and unlike most trees, its yield is boosted by ultracompost, so always compost it. The redwood tree (level 90) is the undisputed king of high-level Farming experience: a single redwood gives a massive lump per health check, and it slots neatly into the same Farming Guild trip as your celastrus.

Because each of these is a one-of-a-kind patch with no siblings elsewhere, you do not run them in batches — you simply add each one to your daily route as you unlock it, planting a single sapling and moving on. By the time you have calquats, celastrus and redwoods all running on top of your six regular trees, your fruit trees and your hardwoods, a single five-minute loop can hand you well over 100,000 experience in one go — an effective rate comfortably past a million experience per active hour, and the reason Farming feels so rewarding once you reach the higher levels. The early levels test your patience; the special trees are the payoff.

There are two honest answers to “the fastest 99”, and they pull in opposite directions, so the right one depends on how much you value coins versus calendar time. The fastest in effective experience is to plant the most expensive trees you can on every patch — a full run of magic trees, dragonfruit fruit trees, calquat, celastrus, plus mahoganies and a redwood — with each patch protected by gardener payments or ultracompost. At high level this pushes the effective rate toward roughly 2.4–2.5 million experience per actively spent hour and reaches level 99 in around two months of consistent daily runs. The bill, however, is steep — well over 100 million coins if you buy every magic and dragonfruit seed at market price — which is why this route is mostly chosen by established accounts with deep banks.

The fastest cheaply swaps the costly trees for value picks: maples, papaya fruit trees, calquat, celastrus, then redwoods once you hit level 90. This route costs only around 5 million coins for the entire 99 — a tiny fraction of the premium route — but stretches to roughly four months and about 122 tree runs, because you do fewer, smaller runs and harvest fruit for profit along the way. For most players this is the smart default. The sweet spot many farmers settle on is to plant the expensive trees but bankroll them with herb runs (covered next), whose profit can fully cover the seed cost — effectively training the fastest tree route for free. Whichever you choose, two rules never change: always plant the highest-tier sapling each patch allows, and always protect every single patch, because a tree that dies is pure wasted weeks of growth. Model your exact route, level by level and coin by coin, in our Farming calculator before you commit, so you know what the run will cost and how long it will take.

Herb runs are the second great pillar of Farming and the reason so many players visit their patches every single day, often for years. The cycle is simple: plant a herb seed, treat the patch with ultracompost, wait 80 minutes while you do anything else, then return to harvest a whole stack of grimy herbs. The Farming experience is modest — this is not a fast levelling method — but the profit is excellent and reliable. Ranarr weed (level 32) is the classic money-maker, since ranarrs feed Prayer potions which are in constant demand; snapdragon (level 62) feeds super restores; and torstol (level 85) feeds the strongest combat and divine potions while giving the most Farming experience of the three. As the table makes clear, even torstols give only a small per-seed experience figure, so you should think of herb runs as an income engine that happens to also give a little experience, not as a road to 99 in their own right — reaching 99 on herbs alone would take thousands of runs and hundreds of hours.

That income is precisely why herb runs pair so beautifully with tree runs. A handful of herb patches done daily can generate a couple of million coins, which comfortably covers the cost of the expensive magic and dragonfruit tree seeds from the premium route — so in practice you can train Farming at full speed and have it pay for itself, or even turn a profit overall. The technique that maximises this is to always use ultracompost and the magic secateurs together: that combination guarantees a minimum of six herbs per seed and lifts the average yield higher still, meaningfully increasing both your experience and your profit on every patch. Pay the gardener is not an option here — herbs need the compost for the yield boost. Ironmen lean on herb runs harder than anyone, since they are the main self-sufficient supply of ranarr, snapdragon and torstol that the Herblore skill depends on, making the daily herb run a near-mandatory ritual for a self-made account.

If what you want is a 99 in the shortest real time rather than the shortest play time — the only method where you sit down and grind Farming for hours like a normal skill — the Tithe Farm minigame in Hosidius is the answer. It gives roughly 110,000 experience per hour with the full farmer's outfit (about 105k without it), which can carry you to 99 in around five days of solid play, compared with the month-plus that tree runs need on the calendar even though they need far less actual play time. Inside the minigame you plant special seeds (Golovanova at level 34, Bologano at 54, Logavano at 74), water each plant three times at the right moments as it grows, and then deposit the harvested fruit into sacks for experience and reward points.

Tithe Farm has several genuine advantages that have grown over the years. It is completely free — the seeds are handed to you, so unlike tree runs it costs nothing to train. Thanks to a string of updates it now runs in solo instances and the plants no longer decay, removing the old stress of racing a timer across a crowded shared farm. The points you earn are the only source of several excellent rewards: the farmer's outfit itself, the auto-watering Gricoller's can that removes the tedious watering step, and the seed box for carrying seeds compactly — rewards that make every other part of Farming smoother. The trade-off is that it is intense, continuous clicking rather than a relaxing five-minute run, so most players do not use it as their main road to 99. Instead they treat it as a focused points farm — grind it just long enough to buy the outfit and the Gricoller's can, then return to the gentle rhythm of tree and herb runs for the rest of the journey.

A handful of unlocks turn Farming from a slow chore into a smooth, fast daily loop, and getting them early pays off over the whole grind. Fairytale I - Growing Pains is the single most important — it gives the magic secateurs (+10% herb yield), a chunk of Farming experience, and access to extra patches, so it should be one of your first quests. Bone Voyage opens the three hardwood patches on Fossil Island; Song of the Elves unlocks the crystal tree patch in Prifddinas; Tai Bwo Wannai Trio opens the teleport to the calquat patch; and low-level quests like The Garden of Death both skip early levels and open additional patches. The Farming Guild in the Kebos Lowlands is the high-level hub of the skill: its regular tree patch needs level 65, its fruit-tree patch needs level 85, and it houses the celastrus patch, the redwood patch, a herb patch and a tool shop all in one spot — reach it instantly with a skills necklace, which teleports nearby.

Beyond quests, fast travel is genuinely everything in Farming, because a run is overwhelmingly time spent running between patches, not interacting with them. Stock up on teleports for each patch cluster: an Ardougne cloak for the Ardougne herb and tree patches, an Explorer's ring for the Falador patch, a house teleport set to Brimhaven or Rimmington for the hardwoods and fruit trees, plus Catherby, Camelot, fairy rings and the spirit trees unlocked by Tree Gnome Village and The Grand Tree. The faster and tighter your loop, the higher your effective experience per hour climbs, so investing in teleport tablets and jewellery is never wasted. Achievement-diary rewards help here too: completing the elite Falador Diary makes the Falador tree patch immune to disease permanently and for free, one less patch to ever protect.

A few habits make Farming dramatically smoother and cheaper. First and most important: always protect your patches — a dead tree is wasted weeks of real time — either by paying the gardener (best for trees, fruit trees and hardwoods, where compost gives no yield benefit) or by using ultracompost (best for herbs, allotments, celastrus and crystal trees). Second, plan a fixed route and keep a saved inventory preset of saplings, compost, coins, a spade and your teleports, so a run takes a tidy few minutes rather than a scavenger hunt through your bank each time. Third, grow your own saplings from cheap raw seeds instead of buying finished ones, and do it in bulk while they sit in your bank. Fourth, on the Tithe Farm never log out mid-grow, which wipes your planted crops and wastes the seeds. Ironmen have an extra tool worth using: pick up Farming contracts from Guildmaster Jane in the Farming Guild — completing them rewards seed packs (averaging up to roughly 73k in loot from hard contracts) that keep a steady supply of tree and herb seeds flowing into a self-sufficient account.

Farming's skilling pet is the Tangleroot, a small walking sapling that is one of the more iconic pets in the game. It can drop when you check the health of a grown patch, when you harvest the final crop of a patch, while you play the Tithe Farm, or when you kill the Hespori — the Farming “boss”, grown from a hespori seed in a special patch beneath the Farming Guild, which also drops valuable bottomless compost buckets, white lily seeds and tangleroot rolls. The pet chance scales with both your Farming level and the specific crop you are working, so high-value patches like redwoods, magic trees and torstols give you your best odds of rolling it — another reason high-level tree runs are the place to be. There is no quest that simply hands you a 99, so the road there is almost entirely runs and patience — but few skills in the game reward so much experience for so little time actually spent at the keyboard, which is exactly why Farming has such a devoted following.