RuneScape:Wiki Post/Editorials/Whippin' Willows

Whippin' Willows
Written by Tienjt0.

Willows are not the fastest Woodcutting experience in the game. Instead, I recommend to you another tree that is better for both speed and profit.

Yep, you heard me: '''Willows are not the fastest Woodcutting experience in the game. Instead, I recommend to you another tree that is better for both speed and profit.'''

Some of you probably do know what offers the fastest Woodcutting experience in the game, but for those of you who don't, I tell you. As a level 99 woodcutter, I can assure you that starting at level 35, you can cut teak trees for more experience per hour then you could ever get from cutting willows. Heck, they're not just faster, but can be more profitable than willows, as you will soon see.

In order to gain the 70k xp per hour from chopping teaks (compared to the 50k per hour from willows), you must drop your logs after cutting them. With practice, you will be able to drop a full load in around 15 – 20 seconds.

You might be thinking, "But you get a profit of almost 3.5 million coins from cutting willows, and you get nothing from teaks! And they're basically the same speed!"

Pfft.

''The following section will be familiar if you read my previous editorial, but I urge you to read it. You may be surprised.''

Teaks offer around 70k xp per hour, as stated earlier. Suppose you play 2 hours a day. That's 140,000 experience a day; divide that into 13,034,000 (xp needed for 99) and you get about 93, which is the number of days it’ll take to get 99 Woodcutting by cutting teaks.

On the other hand, willows offer around 50k xp per hour. Playing the same amount of time per day, that's 100,000 experience per day, so you will get 99 Woodcutting in about 130 days chopping willows.

With the extra 37 days you gained from cutting teaks, you can just find a way of making 50k per hour and easily make the money you would've gotten from cutting willows. Heck, if you have Varrock armour 3 and are running your kingdom, you can simply purchase/sell your daily 64 battlestaves and collect your raw materials from Ghrim to make an easy 100k+ per day with only 10 minutes of effort, and in a little over a month you will make the money you would've gained from 130 days of chopping willows, glad that you already obtained your Woodcutting cape 37 days earlier.

If that's not enough, then hear me out again: there is a method of banking teaks quickly by chopping them at the Hardwood Grove in Tai Bwo Wannai and then getting Rionasta, who is just west of the Grove, to bank them for you. However, this will lower your experience rate to about the same as willows, and you need to pay 100 trading sticks to enter the Grove and 10 sticks to get Rionasta to deposit the logs. Since 153,341 teak logs are required to get 99 Woodcutting (13,034,000 / 85 (xp per log)), divide that by 27 (number of logs per trip; one space is taken by the sticks), and you get approximately 5,679, which is the number of trips you must take to Rionasta for 99 Woodcutting. Now, multiply that by 110 (number of trading sticks paid per trip), and you get 624,690, which is the total number of trading sticks you will need for 99 Woodcutting. They cost 4 coins each, so approximately 2.5 million coins are needed to purchase the trading sticks.

But hey, the profit you'll make from depositing your logs more than makes up for the cost of trading sticks. The price of teaks logs is 75 coins each (at the time of writing). 153,341 teak logs is approximately 11.5 million coins, so combined with the loss from trading sticks, you will gain a profit of about 9 million coins. That's nearly 3 times more than the measly profit from willows, slightly faster than or at the same speed as them.

Anyway, I'm not saying that willows are completely bad. They are a viable option for training Woodcutting (better than maples, at least!). My point is, why cut willows when there is a tree out there that is better in every shape and form, in terms of both profit and speed? Unless you just don't like dropping logs all the time, there's really no reason to take willows over teaks. And just to let you know, I myself cut teaks to 99.

The next time you're at Barbarian Outpost, you can snicker at the players chopping willows there. They might not even know that teak trees exist. But you do. :D