So you see me talking about my 500K profit farm run every morning. You think to yourself, “What the s***, Farmer Colpo, how is that possible?”. Farmer Colpo responds, “Guildmaster Jane bruh, she got the good s***.”
Farmer Colpo’s Guide to Farm Contracts and Taking Guildmaster Jane ‘round the Block
This is my tongue-in-cheek guide for setting up the Farm Guild farm patches to best take advantage of Guildmaster Jane’s contract spread. With this set-up you will be able to complete 1-6 contracts EVERY HERB RUN. While RNG dependent (Maple Tree Contracts, the bane of Farmer Colpo’s existence), this is an easy five-minute finisher for every farm run that easily pads your herb profits.
That’s an extra 100-500K profit every 90 mins, or as often as you’re doing your herb runs.
What Skills & Pre-Requisites do I Need?
- 65 Farming - This is the minimum, as you’ll need the herb and tree patch in the farm guild to take proper advantage of Contracts. 85 Farming is best to give you access to every patch in the Guild and to be able to access all three tiers of contracts.
- A Seed Stash - Have you been taking advantage of the Seed Vault in the Farming Guild? Yes? Great job, Farmer Colpo is proud of you, you little hoarder, you. No? Go chill at Draynor for an hour and loot some seeds from the mean, mean thieves there as they pickpocket our agriculturally-oriented friends.
You’ll need a nice stash of mid-tier seeds to cycle through contracts in order to get one you either I) have completed already, or II) is a quick-grow (90 minutes or less).
You’ll want to start keeping all of your seeds, you’ll never know when you cycle through contracts and Jane loads you with a guam, strawberry, or banana tree contract.
Don’t worry, a week of contract farming and you’ll be set for life on seeds.
A hoarder’s dream.
Do I Need Any Quests?
Nope!
What Items do I Need?
- Farming Tools - Seed Dibber, Spade, Rake (If you’re like me and refuse to do Tithe Farm on basic principle), Bottomless Bucket.
Note: Seriously, Bottomless Bucket. Get on that bad boy, load it up with 2K ultracompost, forget about refilling it for six months
This is my starting inventory. I’ll withdraw pregrown saplings or other seeds from the vault as needed. - Skills Necklace - To get to the farm guild. You can also use a Farm Cape or your Spirit Tree if you’ve grown one in the guild.
The Strategy
The basic idea of this strategy is to pre-grow the most likely contracts. This lets you harvest, replant, and complete multiple contracts per farm run, maximizing your return and profit every herb run.
Jane offers contracts in three tiers: Easy (45 Farming), Medium (65 Farming), and Hard (85 Farming) while allowing you to cancel a harder contract for an easier one.
- Eg. If you don’t like your Hard Contract, you can exchange it for a Medium Contract (Assigned a Dragonfruit Tree but you’ve pregrown a Palm). Just the same, you can exchange your Medium Contract [HOW IS A MAGIC TREE A MEDIUM CONTRACT?] for an Easy Contract.
Because you can cycle to easier contracts, you always take the highest level contract you can for your first contract. If you’ve got 85 Farming, always start with a Hard contract (and if you’ve got 65-84 Farming, start with a Medium contract).
Just like Slayer, Jane’s Contract List is tiered, with higher tiered contracts more likely to be assigned. Some of these contracts appear in multiple tier lists, which means they will be assigned, as an example, from both a Hard Contract and a Medium Contract. You cannot be assigned a duplicate contract (eg. If you cancel a Hard Contract - Yew Tree, you will never be assigned a Medium Contract - Yew Tree when exchanging for an easier contract.
As you can see, there’s some serious overlap between the tiers. Maple and Yew Trees both show up high on the weights, as do Watermelons, Palm Trees, and White Berries. These are important to consider when determining what to pre-plant.
With all of that said, the following picture shows the best type of seed to plant in each Guild patch in order to maximize the number of contracts that can be finished consecutively each farm run. Note: This is what I’ve seen is best over the eight months between the release of the Farm Guild in January 2019 and the date of posting this guide. I'VE SWITCHED TO MAPLE TREES IN THE TREE PATCH; THEY APPEAR TO BE MORE COMMON FOR ME, AND I'D RATHER HAVE TO CLEAR A MAPLE THAN A YEW.
Use Kronos to grow your trees quicker, increasing the rate you can cycle through grow and complete stages on those longer growth times.
Protect your trees! Yews, Palms, Celastrus, and Redwoods are all too valuable to risk to disease.
Unless you’re bankstanding at Farm Guild AFKing Fletching and Crafting for months, but who does that?
The herb patch is flexible. I grow Lantadyme because I farm them (alongside Potato Cacti) for Herblore levels, as well as their common appearance on the Hard Contract list. Because you’re doing these contracts as part of your Herb Runs, you’ll often find yourself assigned a herb other than the one you’ve pre-grown. KEEP THESE CONTRACTS AND GROW THE HERB (Remember our =<90 minute grow-time for cancelling contracts? These are where that baseline comes from). After all, this is to complement herb run profit, not outright replace it.
- Note: I don’t recommend pregrowing Ranarr. It’s not super common as a contract, and you’ll find yourself having to grow other herbs a lot more often, reducing the number of multi-contract runs you’ll find yourself completing. Snapdragon is a better option, but refer to the hard contract list and choose a common herb from there that suits you best.
JANE DOES NOT ASSIGN SPIRIT TREES. I used the Spirit Tree patch for Groot, do as you will.
It is also a good idea to pre-grow your saplings and set up your Seed Vault Favourites so that everything you may need is immediately at had for re-planting. I like to keep 2-5 of each sapling I use for pre-growns, replacing them whenever I drop to a single sapling left.
My Favourites for easy-access; I keep my herbs and potato cacti in my bank for herb runs.
The Process, or Okay, I’ve got Dirt Under my Fingernails from Planting all this Crap, Now What?
So you’re on the last step of your herb run. You’ve teleported to the Farm Guild and you’re about to harvest your last herb patch. But wait! Check your Contract before Harvesting! It’s a good thing you just asked Jane what your contract is, because it was Whiteberries!
- Speak to Jane to check your contract - It’s always smart to double check, we don’t want to harvest something only to have it pop up when we ask for a new contract and not be able to complete it immediately.
- Harvest your contract patch - Check-Health is enough to trigger the contract; don’t bother replanting just yet, in case you get a quick-grow contract that differs from your pre-grows.
- Receive your reward from Jane, get a new contract - Receive your Seed Pack, ask for the hardest contract you can.
- Harvest your new contract patch - Repeat step two.
- Continue until you’ve done all patches or you receive a quick contract (=<90 minutes grow-time)
- Replant all of your pregrows - Replant at the end, not as you go! If you get a strawberry contract but have already planted your pregrow watermelon and snape grass, now you have to wait an additional growth cycle for your next contract. Somewhere Doug Ford is screaming about inefficiencies.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE:
Look at me, planting a thing.Always pick the hardest contract. As we’ve noted above, you want to check your hardest contract. Hopefully you’ll get a completed contract (eg. Poison Ivy, Potato Cacti, Snape Grass, or another patch you’ve pre-grown), but if not you can just exchange for a Medium contract and hope for a better roll.
To maximize your return per run, you need to be willing to a) cycle through contracts, and b) stick with a quick-grow, you don’t want to cancel an Avantoe Medium Contract only to get stuck with a Banana Tree Easy Contract. Sticking with a 90-minute Medium herb patch is always a safer bet than risking a 16-hour Easy fruit tree patch.
- Once you’ve completed all of the contracts you can that run, open those seed packs and enjoy.
Five Contracts Turns Into…
This is just the loot from those five contracts, the noted herb run loot isn’t included.
And that’s how Farmer Colpo gets those PHat farm run loots.
