Passive Training
Hey all Turbo the RS Economist here. I made a post to a forum a bit back and it garnered little interest there, but the idea was too good to let go. Here it is again updated and revised just for you:
I saw a sadly misinformed conversation today in my clan chat today. The subject was whether farming was a slow skill or not. Clearly only one person knew what they were talking about, and the others spouted off unfounded jibberish about racing to 99 fletching and betting on who would finish first.
Farming is very similar to merchanting on the Grand Exchange in that it is a passive skill. It is possible to stand at the GE and yell at the NPCs there to trade your items faster. Does anyone do it? I would hope not. You go in, make your buys, collect, and check prices. Basically your actions only take a short period of time (unless you spend all day analyzing, which you shouldn’t). Then you can log, wait, skill, take your dog for a walk, or do anything while the trades go through. You make money passively here.
Farming is the only skill that you can really effectively train passively. Just because you can’t actively train it to the tune of 800k xp in a day (like fletching) does not make it a slow skill. That is comparing apples and oranges. Farming is the only skill you can train that grants you 14k xp in 2 minutes. (Check health of mage tree, pay farmer to dig up, supercompost, plant another magic tree for example).
A 10 minute farming run planting watermelon, torstol, and a belladonna nets me, on average, just over 20,500xp. Selling super compost and the pots I produce pays for the farming run, plant the occasional snapdragon and you are making money. Fletching/cooking can approach that kind of xp return, but at dire costs. Aside from that, it also makes no sense talking about speed when you ignore the opportunity cost associated with the action, ie the time it takes to make the money/collect supplies you burn while achieving that xp/hour.
Finally, to get xp from fletching or cooking, you need to be actively there training the skill. You can’t leave 500 yew longs and bow strings with a fletcher and come back in 90 minutes to have them done and get your xp.
In Conclusion, minute for minute, farming is by far the fastest skill in the game and the only real passive skilling you can do. Comparing it to active skilling is like comparing income from interest on a Certificate of deposit, (buy, wait, sell) to working for $6 an hour at MacDonald’s. You have to be there actively working for an hour to make that $6, you also stop earning when you go home.
Great post, I always thought farming was unfairly looked down upon
Yes. It is almost sad that so many people have the misguided idea that it is somehow boring or slow, and don’t take advantage of some seriously fast xp (not to mention huge profits from herbs) that farming offers.