Sorceress's Garden



The Sorceress's Garden, often abbreviated SG, is a Thieving /Farming activity located in Al Kharid. This activity can be started by talking to Osman. This is a safe activity, as there is nothing to kill you here, unless you are already poisoned when you start playing. In the game, players attempt to sneak past elementals guarding the sorceress's gardens, in order to pick Sq'irk fruit to make sq'irk juice or to gather herbs. Sq'irk juice can be exchanged for thieving experience or used to temporarily increase thieving level and restore run Energy. Picking fruit or herbs also gives you Farming experience. Picking fruit or herbs causes you to teleport around the exit fountain, so after one pick players have to navigate through the gardens once more.

You need to have completed the Prince Ali Rescue quest in order to play this activity.

The popularity of this activity increased somewhat after the 2008 Hallowe'en event and the quest Swept away in which the Broomstick was given as a reward. This broomstick, after being enchanted by the Sorceress's Apprentice, will enable unlimited teleports to the Sorceress's Garden.

Introduction
If you talk to Osman, you will find out that he wants to get Sq'irk juice, but the Sorceress with whom he used to deal now refuses to give any to him. To this end he will enlist you to steal Sq'irk fruit from her garden. '''You must have completed Prince Ali Rescue to do this activity. '''You can access the garden from the Sorceress's house, which is just east of the path leading to Shantay Pass. Speak to the Sorceress's Apprentice on the ground floor until you convince her to teleport you to the garden. (Speaking to the Sorceress on the first floor does not get you entry to the garden. Also, you only need to go through to the apprentice's story once. In subsequent trips, you can right click the apprentice and choose the teleport option.) After completion of Swept Away, the broomstick can be enchanted to give unlimited teleports to the central garden.

Remember: Do not speak to the Sorceress's Apprentice before you speak to Osman, as you will be taken through a lengthy conversation that leads to two dead ends (and will therefore waste your time).

The garden is divided into five areas. You appear in the central garden with a fountain and Del-Monty the cat. Drinking from the fountain will teleport you back to the Sorceress's house. Del-Monty will tell you about the garden and the activity, if you speak to him while wearing a Catspeak amulet from Icthlarin's Little Helper. This is not required to play the activity.

Around the central garden are the four seasonal gardens, each of which has a Sq'irk tree:
 * The Winter garden has a tree with the most under-ripe fruits (five required for one glass of Sq'irk juice).
 * The Spring garden has a tree with the slightly under-ripe fruits (four for one glass).
 * The Autumn garden has a tree with overripe fruits (three for one glass).
 * The Summer garden has a tree with perfectly ripe fruits (two for one glass).

You can only enter a seasonal garden if your current Thieving level matches or exceeds the garden's required level. Fruits gained from a garden can be crushed into a beer glass using a Pestle and mortar to make Sq'irk juice. Making Sq'irk juice grants you 5 cooking experience. Drinking the juice raises your thieving level temporarily and recovers run energy, while giving the juice to Osman yields thieving experience.(Instead of going through the chat options with Osman it is advisable to just "use" the glass of Sq'irk juice on him) Several fruits and an empty Beer glass are required to make Sq'irk juice. Beer glasses needed for this activity can be obtained for free by searching the shelves in the Sorceress's house.

You can only pick one fruit per trip, upon which you will then be teleported back to the central garden. If you pick herbs instead, you always get two grimy herbs before you are teleported out of the garden. These two grimy herbs will vary and are completely random. From the central garden, you can enter the season gardens again to pick more fruit or herbs.

To leave the garden, simply drink from the fountain located in the central garden. Alternatively, use an Amulet of Glory to teleport to Al Kharid which gets you close to Osman to hand in the Sq'irk Juice. Getting through a maze is easier with run mode. Low weight and good agility helps significantly to extend the period of time for running. Use super energy potions and weight reducing gear if possible.

Lap times
Round trip to the centre of the summer garden is approximately 50 seconds. The round trip to the herb patch is around 40 seconds. So this would give around 70 tree trips per hour or 35 drinks per hour. Factor in the occasional misclick or lag and a realistic figure of 75K experience per hour seems achievable, Note that these figures assume constant running.


 * Picking a fruit from the central tree in the summer garden gives 60 farming experience.
 * Picking the herbs from the summer garden gives you 50 farming experience.

Method 1
It is possible to consistently one-click through the summer garden. Using the one-click method appropriately makes each lap around the garden about 35 seconds, nearly doubling the experience. Enter the summer garden and don't move. Be ready to click the mouse at the centre of maze, use minimap for clicking. Wait for the first Summer elemental to turn and the fourth to turn east, check the picture for more information.

If the second Summer elemental is at the wrong place keep doing this until you can get past it. Every time you fail at the second Elemental the location of elemental moves. Use the same method to other Summer elementals. Elementals 1 and 4 can be at the wrong places too so use same method to put them on the correct places. Getting the rhythm right can take from 5 to 10 minutes. If you fail you may need to start from the beginning. This method may mess up if you skip a round or go to bank. There are other, more efficient methods that are simply difficult to describe in words or even pictures. In addition, elementals can get stuck if a player is "caught" but the elemental cannot cast teleport before they are behind an obstacle and as long as that is anywhere in the garden, (even by the fountain), the elemental will be focused on them trying to expel them, unless another player tries to run by. This can make the next trip impossible to one-click.

Method 2
Another method of setting up the timing for one click is to get the second elemental changing direction one movement or second before the first elemental. Then stand on the flower just inside the gate to the west and click on the middle of the maze where the tree is when the 3rd elemental turns around at the south end of its path and the 1st elemental is 2 spaces south of the top of its path.

As with the previously stated method, it is best if the 4th elemental is set up to have turned east and the last 2 may be in the wrong places, but will all fall into place after several runs through while getting the initial timing of the first 3 elementals right.

Once you have achieved one-click synchronisation, it is possible to do almost continuous laps of the summer garden without stopping. Make sure while your character is running through the maze to click on the tree itself so it does take a few minutes to set up, but once set up it is an extremely fast way to train.

Rewards
You have two options for rewards in the Sorceress's Garden: herbs up to dwarf weed, if you choose to pick the herbs near the tree, or sq'irk fruit to make sqi'rk juice with. Sq'irk juice currently offers the highest non-random thieving level boost, depending on the fruit. The main uses for sq'irk juice are as follows:

1. Giving to Osman for thieving experience, a lot for the matter.

2. Drinking for the appropriate thieving boost, useful in many quests.

3. Drinking to replenish energy, as well as the thieving boost.

Tip: There is an unlimited supply of beer glasses in the shelf on the ground floor of the Sorceress's house, so don't worry about buying them all. When you give Osman the juice, he keeps the beer glass but you can simply get a new one from the house.

Most players get herbs just so they don't have to deal with all the work of finding the seed and planting.

Experience
If you fill your inventory with the fruits and bank them, these are the following experience points given: (these are out of the 28 slots you have)

Winter: 840 total farming experience and 1,750 total thieving experience per trip, 70 thieving xp per fruit (this involved getting 25 of the fruits you picked and adding them into 5 beer glasses).

Spring: 1,120 total farming experience and 9,450 total thieving experience (a big jump) per trip,337.5 thieving xp per fruit (this involved getting 28 of the fruits you picked and adding them into 7 beer glasses).

Autumn: 1,400 total farming experience and a whopping 21,150 thieving experience (an even bigger jump) per trip, 783.3 thieving xp per fruit (this involved get 27 of the fruits you picked and adding them to 9 beer glasses).

Summer: 1,680 total farming experience and an even more whopping 42,000 thieving experience (an extremely big jump) per trip, 1,500 thieving xp per fruit (this involved getting 28 of the fruits you picked and putting them into 14 beer glasses).

Tips

 * The elementals don't catch players while turning. In the spring garden all elementals can be dodged this way, and a usual laptime can be as low as 48–55 seconds when you learn exactly when to click to run through them. They can usually be passed After they have turned 1/4, while they occupy that square and the next square following, with elementals that walk back and forth. As long as you are never "in front of" an elemental turning a corner, you may occupy the same space without being noticed. This speed increase can lead to over 105k exp gain per hour. if you pass an elemental before they begin turning, you will be caught, and this leads to a few misclicks per hour.
 * Beer glasses can be made using the Crafting skill, can be obtained by searching the shelves in the house that the Apprentice and Aadeela the Sorceress are in or can be purchased in some shops and on the Grand Exchange.
 * The area is one of the most prevalent hotspots for botting. As such, if you time your movements so they are synchronized with those of the bots, you can effectively avoid being detected, as the bots are programmed to move in a way in which they won't be caught.
 * You should have your inventory either full of beer glasses, or either 2-3 super energy potions, whatever you need to make enough trips at run to fill all glasses, with space left for enough fruit to fill one glass. In this picture, the player's inventory is suited for making Autumn juices. Once three fruit fill up the empty space, they can simply use one of them on the pestle and fill a glass. They will repeat this sequence until they have all the glasses filled (in this player's case, 24 glasses).
 * Using the above method, you can also get one extra glassful. When all the glasses are full in your inventory, continue playing until you have one more set of sq'irks. Drink from the fountain to return to the Sorceress's house. Drop one glass of sq'irk juice. Search the shelves to get an empty beer glass. Squeeze the sq'irks. Now pick up the glass of sq'irk juice that you dropped!
 * It is possible to get into gardens using thieving bonuses, such as those from the juices themselves.
 * If you plan to do the activity repeatedly, consider doing the As a First Resort... quest. This gives you access to the salt water spring there, which gives you unlimited run energy for 10–20 minutes. You can go to the pool first and then teleport to Al Kharid (using, for example, a Ring of duelling, Amulet of glory) or an Enchanted Broomstick (which teleports you to the middle of the garden) to get to the gardens quickly.
 * In some gardens, the walk to the herb patch is slightly shorter than to the sq'irk tree.
 * An incredible amount of patience is required to play this activity most effectively. Always try and play it safe, as it WILL save you time in the long run.
 * The elementals can only "see" and teleport the player when there are only two squares between them and the player.
 * A Ring of kinship is useful to use as a banking method for doing multiple trips, after teleporting to daemonheim, use the broom to teleport back.
 * The Garden, or more specifically the Summer Garden, was heavily bot-infested after the return of Free trade. This may have created lag for slower computers and made it difficult for legitimate players to go through the garden. However with the bot nuking update most of the bots have gone.



Music

 * Garden of Autumn
 * Garden of Spring
 * Garden of Summer
 * Garden of Winter