The Garden of Kharid is a new and revolutionary piece of content that will change how you approach activities such as pickpocketing, runecrafting, and farming herbs in Runescape 3. Not only will you have new activities within the garden itself, but you will be able to unlock permanent upgrades for your account that you’ll be able to use everywhere else. The same update that brings the garden of Kharid also brings a few complementary quality-of-life improvements that will help you, especially regarding farming.
Location
As the name suggests, the Garden of Kharid is located in the Kharidian desert, near the Kharidian mine. The fastest way to get there is a teleport which you can get from the garden by pickpocketing some of the garden’s inhabitants: the sand seed. You can also get it by trading with other players from the Grand Exchange or purchasing it from the Garden’s reward shop. Other less fast methods you can use to get there are:
- Dungeoneering cape
- Wicked hood
- Ring of duelling
- Lodestone
Requirements
To get the best out of the Garden of Kharid, you need level 50 Farming to start earning favour via the farming skill and either 42 or 83 thieving if you want to pickpocket and train your Thieving skill. The higher your level, the more you will profit and the better experience you will get here.
Getting Started
Once you get to the garden, speak to Polletix, and she will tell you about the Crux Eqal favour system and the herb of the day. You need to first speak to her to be able to earn points. Planting and then harvesting this specific herb that will be different for you than for other players will grant you more favour points than planting and harvesting all of the other herbs. However, if you decide to stray away from the herb of the day, keep in mind that the higher-level Farming required for the plant, the more points you will receive for it. Also, if you want to start your herb run without physically going to the Gardens of Kharid and you’re wondering what the herb of the day is, you can contact her via the contact NPC spell from the lunar spellbook.
The only way to earn favour points is by planting herbs. You will get a base number of points that are specific to each of the plants you plant. For example, the base points for planting a toadflax seed is 25, and the base for a Torstol seed is 45. However, as you earn points and unlock more of the permanent rewards given by the Garden of Kharid, you will be able to earn more points per herb run.
This is because you will get points for each of the seeds you are planting, and among the rewards you’ll be able to unlock, there is the ability to plant more than one seed at a time. You will get points regardless of which patch you are harvesting the plant from, and you will receive the points upon harvesting, not when planting.
Rewards
- Plant Power
This reward comes in 4 tiers, unlocking the ability to plant more seeds in a single patch at a time. The first tier will allow you to plant two seeds at a time, the second tier will allow you to plant four seeds at a time, the third tier will allow you to plant seven seeds at a time, and the highest tier will give you the ability to plant ten seeds at a time. However, based on the points cost of each of the permanent unlocks, the sweet point is tier 3, which costs 7500 points, while the final tier costs 25000 but only increases the number of seeds you can plant by 3.
Therefore, the last tier is aimed towards completionists who want to unlock the Garden of Kharid achievement for unlocking everything, rather than a considerable upgrade compared to the previous tier.
- Bountiful Harvest
This unlock will modify how much yield you get from bushes, grapevines, cacti, and fruit trees. If you don’t do these farming activities, it’s better only to unlock them for completionist reasons.
- Speedy Growth
One of the rewards you’ll get is the speedy growth benefit, which also costs 25000 points, like Plant Power. It will give you a permanent decrease in the time you need to wait for a patch to be ready, as it will skip the first growth state of all herb patches permanently, resulting in more herbs overall. However, if you only tend to do one or two herb runs per day, it is better to get the tier 4 Plant power first because you will get more herbs overall. Adapt the order of the unlocks to your playstyle and frequency.