OSRS Herblore Training Guide 1–99: Potions & Mixology

Reviewed 24 October 2026 · Onyx Services

For fast Herblore progress, combine ready-made unfinished potions with their correct secondary ingredients at a bank. For better use of a limited herb supply and access to useful equipment, consider Mastering Mixology from level 60. Herb cleaning is another option when its margin suits you, but it gives much less XP per item.

This members’ guide takes you from the initial unlock to a practical route toward 99. It explains what each production stage contributes, how potion doses change the calculation, and when equipment or an activity detour can be worthwhile. Prices are examples unless stated otherwise; no recipe is permanently the cheapest or most profitable.

Unlock the skill and choose a method

Complete Druidic Ritual before beginning ordinary Herblore training. Its 250-XP reward takes a zero-XP account to level 3. Later quests such as Jungle Potion and The Dig Site can add useful XP, but check their own requirements before treating their rewards as an uninterrupted starting route.

Choose the next useful unlock before planning all the way to 99. A player preparing super restores or Saradomin brews has a different supply target from someone buying the fastest possible final levels.

Separate cleaning, unfinished potions and finished potions

Cleaning a grimy herb gives a small amount of Herblore XP when you meet its cleaning level. Adding a clean herb to water creates an ordinary unfinished potion but normally gives no XP. Adding the correct secondary ingredient provides the main potion-making XP.

Buying unfinished potions skips the cleaning and water stage. It does not remove their value from the cost calculation. Conversely, growing or looting a herb yourself does not make it economically free: you could have used or sold it elsewhere.

Some recipes use coconut milk, blood or an already completed potion instead of a standard water-based unfinished potion. Always match the exact base item and dose count. A ranarr potion (unf), prayer potion(3) and prayer potion(4) are three different inputs or outputs.

Levels 3–38: a worked starting route

The following example starts immediately after Druidic Ritual at 250 XP. It uses ready-made unfinished potions and prepared secondaries, so no herb-cleaning or preparation XP is included.

The running totals are 1,600 XP, 8,750 XP and 30,215 XP. The final total passes the 30,208 XP required for level 38. This is a predictable example, not a claim that these recipes always have the lowest cost. Quest XP or other training changes the remaining quantities.

1. Withdraw fourteen unfinished potions and fourteen matching unstackable secondaries.

2. Use one ingredient on the other and select the batch.

3. Let the inventory finish, then bank the completed potions.

4. Withdraw the next matched pair of supplies and repeat.

5. When the target is reached, compare the next recipe before buying more.

Prepared chocolate dust is not a chocolate bar. If crushing ingredients yourself, include a pestle and mortar where required and count that preparation separately. For a straightforward first session, ready-to-use secondaries keep the process easier to measure.

Useful potion milestones through the middle levels

Compare these recipes at each unlock rather than assuming a mandatory switch. Prayer potions may fit a useful account stockpile, while a cheaper super attack batch can remain sensible beyond level 52. At later levels, brews, selected extensions or super combat potions offer further choices with different ingredients and banking patterns.

Goading potions unlock at 54 and prayer regeneration potions at 58, using aldarium with their respective harralander and huasca unfinished bases. Aldarium can make these recipes expensive despite their relatively low level requirements. Inspect their actual cost per XP before selecting them as a bulk training method.

Doses: the most important pricing check

Most ordinary herb-and-secondary recipes make a three-dose potion. Four of those outputs contain twelve doses, which can be decanted into three four-dose potions. You cannot sell each three-dose mixture for the quoted price of a separate four-dose bottle.

As an example, 2,000 ordinary prayer-potion mixtures give 175,000 Herblore XP and 6,000 doses before equipment effects. Those doses make 1,500 four-dose bottles, not 2,000. Include any remaining doses and completed selling costs when valuing a smaller batch.

Stamina potions are a useful counterexample. At 77 Herblore, a four-dose super energy potion uses four amylase crystals to produce four-dose stamina and gives 102 XP. A three-dose input uses three crystals and gives 76.5 XP. These are different per-action values, even though the XP per dose is the same.

Recipes that always produce four doses and recipes that preserve a variable dose count need their own calculations. Do not copy a generic fourteen-plus-fourteen inventory layout or three-dose sale assumption into every high-level potion.

Chemistry amulets and prescription goggles

An equipped amulet of chemistry has a 5% chance to give an extra dose on supported production. It has five charges and uses a charge when the effect triggers. The extra dose gives no extra XP. Its value depends on whether the added dose is worth more than the charge consumed.

The alchemist’s amulet from Mixology raises that chance to 15% and can be refilled using amulets of chemistry, each providing ten charges. It is a useful long-term upgrade when the supported dose savings justify the activity detour and charge cost.

Neither amulet benefits a recipe that already always outputs four doses, such as super combat potions. For dose-preserving recipes such as stamina, the extra-dose effect requires an input with fewer than four doses. Processing smaller inputs improves the bonus relative to each dose but means more actions for the same total volume.

Prescription goggles give a 10% chance to save an eligible secondary while worn. Roughly ninety secondaries can therefore support one hundred standard eligible mixtures on average, rather than requiring one hundred; an individual batch can vary. They do not save every material, including crystal dust for divine potions or ashes for serum 207.

Use the exact equipment effects supported by your recipe. An extra-dose amulet changes output volume; goggles change secondary consumption. Neither should be added as a blanket XP multiplier.

Mastering Mixology: access and materials

Mixology requires an unboosted 60 Herblore and completion of Children of the Sun. It is on Aldarin; the activity teleport is a convenient option, with the usual teleport cooldown. Higher Herblore unlocks more recipes, with all available at level 81.

Bring unnoted clean herbs or the corresponding unfinished potions to the refiner near the bank. Grimy herbs need cleaning first. Refining turns the inputs into mox, aga or lye paste. Paste is an input; the mox, aga and lye resin earned for orders is reward currency.

Compare price per unit of paste rather than price per herb. For example, tarromin gives fifteen mox paste, avantoe thirty lye and lantadyme forty aga. An apparently expensive herb can be better value per paste than another herb with a smaller yield, but valuable potion ingredients also have alternative uses.

The hopper holds the paste used by the mixing levers. Each ordinary lever input uses ten paste once the potion base is collected. Three matching inputs can therefore make a basic thirty-paste recipe. The later MixALot recipe is different, using twenty of each paste, so do not apply the basic cost to it.

Your first Mixology orders

1. Refine a small balanced supply of the three paste types and put it in the hopper.

2. Read one current order in the interface, including both its potion and processing symbol.

3. Pull the levers for the required mixture and collect its potion base.

4. Take it to the required station: retort for concentrating, agitator for homogenising, or alembic for crystallising.

5. Let the machine complete the process before taking the potion to the conveyor belt.

6. Deposit the order and read the newly refreshed set before making another.

The same base can need a different processing station on a later order. Its name does not permanently determine its machine. If several unprocessed potions are in your inventory, use the specific potion on the machine rather than relying on a click that may process the wrong one.

Once comfortable, prepare up to three current orders before depositing them together. Fulfilling two at once gives 20% more resin per potion, and all three gives 40% more. Depositing refreshes all three orders, so unfinished bottles from the previous set may no longer match afterward.

Machine speedups have different cues. Repeated retort inputs can speed concentrating; the agitator rewards reacting to its visual or sound cue; the alembic rewards a timed click as the bellows opens for the fourth time. Learn one cue at a time, because mistimed inputs can lose progress.

Digweed can occasionally be collected during active play and added to an order for doubled XP and resin. It withers when carried out of the activity area, so use it before returning to the bank side. First learn valid orders; bonus optimisation is secondary to avoiding incorrect mixtures or machines.

Is Mixology worth doing before more potions?

Mixology generally gives slower XP than efficient bank-side potion production, but can stretch herb supplies and unlock prescription goggles, the alchemist’s amulet and other utility rewards. It is an equipment and material-efficiency choice rather than an automatic fastest-XP route.

At 81 Herblore, active play with the machine speedups can reach roughly 70,000 XP/hour, while play without speedups is closer to 45,000. These are reference setups, not Onyx gameplay measurements or a level-60 guarantee. Recipe access, correct orders and time refining supplies change your overall results.

Choose one reward that fits your next production target, and keep track of all three resin balances. A large amount of only one resin does not purchase an item requiring a mixture. Do not convert every valuable herb into paste before checking your useful potion stockpile.

Cleaning herbs and other alternatives

Manual herb cleaning can suit a profitable grimy-to-clean margin, but gives little XP per item and needs substantial clicking or repeated batches. Buy and sell a small test quantity before assuming a guide-price spread is available at scale.

Degrime requires 70 Magic, A Kingdom Divided and the Arceuus spellbook. It cleans an inventory with less direct clicking and also gives Magic XP, but its Herblore XP per cleaned herb is reduced compared with manual cleaning. Include runes and the correct cleaning method in the calculation.

Tar, barbarian mixes and specialised Sailing supplies offer additional recipes. Check the exact output, required unlock and trading volume. A theoretical profit on a rarely traded potion is not a reliable training margin, and processing a potion that you intend to keep answers a different question from selling every output.

Calculate a target and protect your budget

Mixtures needed = round up (remaining XP ÷ XP per action for your exact recipe). A 100,000-XP target using super attack at 100 XP each needs 1,000 irit unfinished potions and, before savings, 1,000 eyes of newt. Output starts at 3,000 doses before amulet effects.

Net cost = base inputs + secondaries actually consumed + charge and preparation costs − net output value. Suppose each mixture costs an illustrative 2,000 GP and its three doses sell for 1,800 GP net. A thousand mixtures lose 200,000 GP for 100,000 XP: 2 GP per XP. Do not substitute a four-dose sale price into that example.

On an Ironman, count gathering time for herbs and secondaries and retain potions needed for combat or quests. Self-supplied ingredients still have a use elsewhere. A practical routine is to make useful potions, use Mixology selectively for supplies and upgrades, and reassess the next level target before consuming the whole bank.

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