Hello! I’m making this post for those who have not done herblore before the updates in 2007. In 2004 they classified these as unidentified herbs. Jagex eventually made a change to call the herb variants grimy, but unidentified herbs in 2004 would not say what kind.
I’m going to share information from osrs wiki so things are clear as they can be.
"Unidentified herbs were often called “unids” by players wanting to sell them, where they would identify a set of herbs to find out which herbs were which in their bank, and proceed to sell batches of them to other players by directly trading in person. However, as they all share the same name and appearance, this made players buying them susceptible to scams, and the Grand Exchange did not yet exist.
To prevent themselves from being scammed, players who sought a specific unidentified herb in bulk would often carry one noted unidentified herb of the desired type (ex. an unidentified snapdragon) and fill the rest of their inventory. This would make it so a seller attempting to scam a buyer by placing a different unidentified herb than the one they stated they were selling during a trade would result in the trade failing, as the buyer’s inventory is already full, alerting the buyer that a scam was attempted."
P.S - I just want everyone to know what they are buying/selling.
Nothing wrong with buying unids, but some will try to be clever for those Kwuarms/Ranarrs etc.
Well I shouldn’t say Know what they are selling
to double down on this, just don’t let people trade you over and over to isolate the herbs that match what’s in their inventory.
Thank you for warning us. I didn’t play as a member back then, so I didn’t know this was a thing. Thankfully, I have already lost hope and trust in others (at least in RuneScape), so I rarely trade or talk to others because I don’t want to get scammed or lured.
I know what you mean when on this game ahah, it takes caution till we get used to the process. Some people like selling and buying unids, but if you are independent like an ironman it can’t hurt you.
That’s not really a remedy if you’re buying from someone else. Oftentimes people selling herbs don’t have the level to identify them, so they must be sold unidentified. You would have to complete the trade before you got the chance to confirm it’s what you really wanted.
They can ask a higher level player to identify one of each herb and keep track of which is which from that point on. Although it’s probably best to have it double checked, just in case someone is trying to trick you into selling a stack of ranarrs at harralander price, or something.
I don’t understand your reasoning here. All unidentified herbs look identical in this version of the game. I don’t remember if their colors change after identifying in 2004, but the unidentified ones are indistinguishable. Having one of each identified herb is not going to help you avoid getting scammed when buying unids. The trick with the full inventory is the only method I’ve seen in this thread that would actually work.
edit: I understand what you were saying now. You were considering it from the perspective of the seller getting scammed, where I’m thinking of the buyer. The issue with unidentifieds looking the same before being identified still applies, though.
I think it would be best to treat Herblore as an iron man skill. Keep leveling it up and you’ll be able to ID more of them.
Only sell the herbs you are able to ID and only buy the herbs that are already ID’d. Also, don’t forget we have the wiki to show which monsters drop which tier of herbs. It’s the only way to be safe otherwise trade at your own risk.
I think (perhaps very controversially) that this is a place where it could be worth deviating from perfect preservation (or at least allowing it as an option). RuneScape Classic no longer has this problem because of the RSC+ client which changes the display names of unidentified herbs so that you know what they are in advance. You can argue it’s cheating, and perhaps so, but I would argue that the downside of having an “identify” mechanic that is meaningless is outweighed by the more pressing issue of scamming, and Jagex agreed, which is why they changed from unidentified herbs to grimy ones.
That said, I don’t think it is a game-ruining problem so long as there exist PSAs like this thread to warn people about potential scams. At the end of the day, you are responsible for making sure you are getting what you paid for. It’s just a shame that the game gets in the way of the players in this particular scenario and requires either taking a risk or abstaining from trade.
