The costs of farming are highly variable; it is unlikely that you will ever receive the exact same answer from any master farmer.
I wrote an article about farming last year that you might be interested in reading. It outlines costs involved in farming willow trees and pineapple plants, and recovering costs by farming herbs.
Since writing the article I still stand firmly by farming kwuarms for herbs. I'm not sure how the price compares to how it used to but they're fantastic herbs to farm; the main advantage over ranarrs and snapdragons is that if they die, you don't lose a heck of a lot of money on the cost of the seeds.
Pineapples still appear to be the most cost-efficient fruit trees to farm besides curry trees which are slow experience. Perhaps papayas if you have the money to spend, or if you're going to make the jump from pineapples you just about mightaswell do palms.
Willows are economically advantageous but slow experience and I would highly recommend doing maples instead, if you can afford them. Yews are not worth doing primarily due to their high cost farmer payments.
However...
To make all of your money back from farming herbs, I believe you would need to farm willows and pineapples. It is also important to note here that you are only able to fit one fruit tree run (of any kind of fruit tree) into a day. Trees are different to fruit trees in that each type of tree has a different growth time while fruit trees are all the same. You can manage three willow or maple runs per day, but usually only two yew or magic runs per day.
Quote:
Originally I aimed for 50k xp a day. 50k is pretty hard to get without growing calquats (I was just under 72 farming at the time, I think) and not losing money, but it’s possible.
What I grew (all prices based on current GE market price):
Expenses: 92,480gp
Gross Profit: 327,915gp
Total Profit: 160,300gp
Total XP Gain: 53,534.5 XP
Profiting at 160k while gaining 50k farming xp a day is not bad at all - in fact, by the end of a month, you would have accumulated, based on my averages, 4,809,000 GP in solid profit. Cut out the real XP-hauling trees and you’d be making at least 7.5m per month just off herbs. You can make anywhere between 5 and 8 herb runs in a school-less day (don’t limit yourself to 3!!) but I’ve found that 3 is very easy to manage as it also ties in with my trees. Of course, don’t do herbs alone; be a man and throw in those trees too.
What I grew (all prices based on current GE market price):
- Willow trees x 5 seeds x 3 runs = 42,555gp, 21,844.5 XP
- Pineapple trees x 5 seeds x 1 run = 49,925gp, about 23,500 XP
- Kwuarms x 5 seeds x 3 runs, averaging 7 herbs per patch = 75,135gp, 8190 XP
- Nett Return on kwuarms = 252,780gp
Expenses: 92,480gp
Gross Profit: 327,915gp
Total Profit: 160,300gp
Total XP Gain: 53,534.5 XP
Profiting at 160k while gaining 50k farming xp a day is not bad at all - in fact, by the end of a month, you would have accumulated, based on my averages, 4,809,000 GP in solid profit. Cut out the real XP-hauling trees and you’d be making at least 7.5m per month just off herbs. You can make anywhere between 5 and 8 herb runs in a school-less day (don’t limit yourself to 3!!) but I’ve found that 3 is very easy to manage as it also ties in with my trees. Of course, don’t do herbs alone; be a man and throw in those trees too.
Therefore assuming that you do make all of your money back from herbs (and then some), you would gain roughly 65k XP per day if you followed this routine strictly every day, and included calquats (after level 72). To account for days when you can't be bothered, and when your calquats haven't finished growing, let's average that out to 50k XP per day: you'll be 99 farming in roughly 9 months (260 days).
Just remember that schedules that you have to follow every day for 9 months can be extremely difficult to keep up with. 99 Farming took me 8 months (I think) and that's even when I pulled out the maples from level 92-99. No matter how much you love the skill, it can always become a little monotonous after a while.
