Skill training-The Chaos Druids

Hi all,


As the title makes evident, these creatures are the chaos druids. These NPC have gained some fame for their suprisingly vast amount of herb drops, despite being only lvl 13. Most people just come here for the great drops. Honestly, the drops are the best part, but you can't ignore the melee training.


How to get there:



Go to Taverly Dungeon, and go down the path to enter the thunder cauldron area (lvl 19 suits of armor might attack, there is a back way if you go straight). Walk until you get out of the open area with lots of giant bats (lvl 27) and into that "outer circle". Head north a short ways, and you should find a little circular room (cave...?) with loads of druids.

The Drops:

Chaos druids have a variety of good drops, the most notable of which are the herbs. They drop herbs almost half the time, and these herbs range from gwan, to snape grass, to even lantandyme (or however it's spelled). They also drop a healthy amount of water-filled vials (use on low level herbs to gain free exp), nature runes (not as common), and a suprisingly steady amount of law runes. On top of this, they also drop mithiril bolts, although the frequency of this drop isn't very high.

It's not bad money either. I made about 120k in probably 30 trips (only selling certain amounts of herbs tho). To make max money, you should probably only keep the most expensive herbs (some can be more than 5k per herb!). You'd probably hit 100k within 15-20 trips. Keep the laws. They stack, and they are dropped ALOT.

What I got in 30 or so trips:

A bunch of herbs equivelent to 120k. ( you can make alot more per trip if you don't pick up the marrentil, tarromin, harralander, and guam)

Over 100 law runes, possibly 200. Good stuff :D

Overall, great herbs, and decent (if you have tele runes, it's better, you can refill laws on druids) access to a bank.


Issues:


Because of the great drops, there is a fairly constant amount of player eager to get their hands on some herbs. Because of the proximity to Catherby (a kind of holy city for high level players) about 60% of the players in the little chaos druid alcove are very high levels. But the place does handle crowds fairly well, and the druids respawn very quickly.


I've had trouble with macroers (suprisingly enough) here, but they aren't too bad. Just report them and steal their kills out from under their noses. It's quite satisfying :P




Whats the big deal?


The reason why I say Chaos druids are good melee training is because they have a decent amount of hitpoints (20) are at a low level (13) have NO defence, AND spend most of their casting a usless spell that lowers your attack temporarily 3 levels, but does no damage. I've killed over 100 druids without getting any damage. And, of course, the drops.



The drops:



There's an excelent article on runescape wiki about the herb drops, but here is a photo of a good trip to the druids (ignore the vials, I only picked those up for reference). Heres are a few notes of what i've gotten on the trips.

Law runes: (none-16 per trip)
Nature runes: (none-6 per trip)
Guam: (2-10 per trip)
marrentil: (1-10 per trip)
Snape grass: (1-2 per trip)
Water filled vials: (15-30 per trip: don't bother with these except to make unfinished pots, and then drop)
Mithril bolts: (40 per trip, don't bother with these unless you're training like me. You can equip these, thus saving space and making a little more money)

Note: I didn't keep track of the high level herbs as much, but on one trip I did get 4 lantandyme (or however it's spelled).

So overall, I'd say that this is a great place to get lots of stuff all around. If you haven't tried this yet, you're missing out.

So pretty cool stuff eh? Try it out if you're a low lvl herb player. There are vials, marrentil, and a source of unicorn horns in catherbury and rellaka (north).