Locked VH Player Owned Farm - (Quickstart / Ironman Friendly)

Leedly · May 4, 2023

Table of Contents
Note: this guide is summarized and includes VH server specifics. The wiki is more in-depth and also recommended.

Introduction to PoF & benefits
Kickstarting your farm
Best Foods to use
Automation
Choosing your goals
Traits & Breeding

Introduction to PoF & benefits
Welcome! Player owned Farms are a recent addition to RS3, and as such many players like myself had no experience with it prior to the server, and it seems overwhelming. For ironmen, PoF is necessary for endgame PvM and I recommend reading the wiki, or at very least this guide. I am still learning intricacies myself, so this guide will be updated with new info! The following are the main benefits of PoF:

Massive farming experience over time for a small initial time investment
Allows full automation of entire farm, providing passive xp & resources
Endgame (120 herb) potion ingredients for personal use or sale. Powerbursts, combination potions, extreme prayers / super brews, it all comes only from PoF
Completionist Cape requirement (I'll list fastest bean methods for pof non-enjoyers)
PoF and breeding is honestly loads of fun, I cbf'ed hard at first but now I am more excited to check on my farms than oyster every day!

Kickstarting your farm
And so, our guide begins! You might be wondering why this is before the section about personal goals, that's because kickstarting your farm is best regardless of your goals! Having a high farming level allows for a better jump, but even classics at the 20 farming minimum will benefit from starting early.
Note: m/f breeding pairs are ideal but NOT required to start!! m/m and f/f couples will adopt at an extremely higher rate than rs3

For whales: Buy adolescent dinos from other players and sell for beans directly, allowing you to mega quickstart farm. You should then ideally also purchase breeding pairs.

Important: Bean prices for sale are WORST at egg/fresh stage. BEST at adolscence & then declines into adult and further for elder. Note that elder selling prices are still good, just not as good. See goals section for more.

Bis farmable locations:
Regular farm is dragons, farmable at tav dungeon, qbd, or kbd. If farming level is low, yaks ideally aggro potted.
For dinosaurs, barehanding black warlocks WNW of the Anachronia lode will give random unchecked.

The rabbits from the tutorial provide a small start, but their numerical values are all very low and they should be tossed/banked for later. Spending the other 300 beans on 3 salamanders for Dino farm is a great way to get passive income flowing! Can sell & repeat.

Your first goal is getting 2-4 of the highest farming level animal you can, and then 2000 beans for the collector (bottom of store)
This allows you to use the breeding pen at 3x normal max efficiency, as you can have 2 breeding pairs whose eggs are stored instead of one pair and room for their young. This will also be the first automation step!

Best Foods to Use

Flowers - Woad Leaves from Wyson @ Giant Mole teleport
Mushroom - Mort Myre fungus is infinite in GE. For ironmen, Morcella or Bittercap shrooms self grown. With mory legs you'll get massive morcella amounts while going for zygos.
Seeds - only use seeds for chicken. any trash/unused farming seed.
Meat - Raw Beast Meat on GE infinite. For ironmen, ooglog meat boxes DAILY!! Stock up. Dinos eat a lot.
Insects - Flies from pet shop @ Taverly East teleport 10k stack

Automation
Breeding pen automation covered in kickstart.
Each pen size (s/m/l) requires a separate upgrade to breed outside of the breeding pen, these are how you expand automation further.
Keep a high quality m/f breeding couple in each pen, removing their young after harvest for selling to pof vendors, trade to other players, or banking. Replace when a born m/f is superior to the current breeding one.
Reroll perks for these pairs when possible, but only on 2-3 slotted animals.

Daily minimum run includes:
- Harvest all 100/100 animals for xp/resources
- Ensure food in every pen to last until next run
- Create room in s/m/l pens for new breeding by ridding all non-breedpair elders.

Choosing your Goals
Sections: 120 Farm/PvM , Profit , Completionist Req, Farming Log

120 Farm/PvM
These goals are combined as both are the same methodology! For farming xp and harvest, you'll be wanting to breed specific animals. Farming experience seekers, this is simply the highest level requirement animal in each category (Small,Med,Large) of animal! For PvM'ers you'll want:

Small - 2x chin pens, pick the type you want chins of. Red/crystal best. GET RID OF GOLD CHINS!
Medium - 1x Spider pen , 1x Zygomite pen
Large - None (Dragons are fun & good xp though)

Small Dino - Frogs, leave a breeding couple and they'll fill daily
Med Dino - None (Venemous for fun/xp)
Large - 1x pen Rex family , 1x pen Tops family (BiS Pavo Rex & Malletops)

Your breeding pen should contain whatever you'd like the most of, generally Large as they breed much, much slower in their pens even with all upgrades. Remember, fill with elders and they'll breed to the collector.
NORMAL PoF ONLY! Dinosaurs don't have a collector, so only ONE breeding pair will fit alongside the third open slot for their young.
If you do not care about xp at all, animals %'s on harvest don't matter (but keep them fed for growth) and they can/should be harvested and sold as soon as they elder, regardless if they are 100/100 yet.

Note: Each section Small/Medium/Large is automated by their respective store upgrades, and until you have them ONLY animals in the breeding pen will breed. It's still good to know what to farm for, and even start growing them before the unlocks.

Profit
You will be looking to farm:
Unchecked eggs - via the PoF collector for GE sales
Breeding pairs - m/f couples with 2-3 perk slots ideally natural or rolled into breeding with no negatives. bis breeding pair value can exceed 200m
Adolescent Larges - Force paused adolescent large animals (store in bank/storm barn) that sell for extremely high beans, used by rich players to kickstart PoF/completionist req. Dragons > Yaks (2k>750) for normal farm. Dinos don't have a collector but manually paused adolescents are very valuable.
Rare Breeds - Breeding for sale rare animals for collections, Rare only produce, breeding, shinys, etc!
Private Deals - Any/all of the above plus more, PoF gurus can be hired out for any specific task/comp req supplying etc.

I will not be going into detail of this section, as the wiki explains it well. If you're looking to profit, you'll need to dive deeper into PoF than the average player (obviously.)

Completionist Requirement
"Purchase all upgrades from the famers market" is required for REGULAR comp cape. Many assume it's for trim and don't plan ahead properly.

Note - this is 100% buyable, just not in one day. You may only sell a capped amount of each animal daily, which are all tradeable. Note, only unchecked are GE'able which are 0% grown.
Selling cap of adolescent dragons and med/large dinosaurs daily you'd be done in 2-3 days.

Your goal is maximum bean income. Unlike other players, you should assign helpers to each medium and large pen in normal PoF to keep animals adolescent.
Check the farm often, selling off adolescents. Replace them with eggs from your collector and repeat!

As you progress your farm and unlock better perk combinations, breeding will be quicker & you will not have room for lesser breeding pairs in non-breeding pens. This is ideal.

Farming Log
You want to complete one or more sections of the farming collection log! That's awesome, and a lot of fun.
Your advice is pretty open, as it really depends if you'd like any XP/produce alongside log hunting. Breeding and Gene traits are very important!!

I will note, Adam the trapper is on a 6 hour cooldown or so, and will be invaluable in this goal! He is cheap and runs for almost nothing, so if you do this at least daily it'll really add up!
Note that unchecked animals stack in the bank!

Traits & Breeding
Breeding can happen when any 2 animals are fed, in a pen together, above 0% happiness meter, and of the adult or elder age.
VH's checks work differently than rs, but not in a way that seems to be identifiable or important
If animals can be penned together, they can breed. All yaks all chins e.g. can breed in their families freely.

M/m and f/f pairs will breed (adopt) slower than m/f pairs.
Sand has substantially increased the adoption rate from RS, so while you don't have to start with a m/f pair it is absolutely still the ideal.

Note: Velheim does not have disease, these perks are all useless.
BAD perks are even worse than useless! Sullen being the worst perk, as 0% happiness means worst harvest and will never breed. Reroll or trash immediately!

Trait Re-rollers are the bread & butter of selective breeding. This is why slots are the only thing that truly matter, as you can keep rolling until god perks.

The above image from the wiki covers all vital traits, though I'll say happiness only generally matters during growth and should be replaced.
Shiny traits increase shiny chances a LOT, and shinies are generally the best version of their family. The goal is to obtain shinies of 3 good breeding traits. Some, like chinchompa, are bad for some goals.

Genetic instability is the best perk in the game!! NEVER roll off of it, and go for it on all breeders. Mutation is good but lesser.
Breeding traits are incredible and important, go for them after trait bonuses.

Gene Traits (yes "Good Breeding" is a gene and not breeding trait. Ask Jagex >_>) give more or less chance for your animal to be a different breed within the same species. This completely depends on your goals which you may want or not want.

Additional trait/breeding science exists, but I'm not yet informed of it. Will update this section!

That's it! Best of luck with your farms, and hopefully this helps to get a PoF community started with an active animal trade!
I'm really not super happy with this guide right now, so I'll likely be touching it up in the near future.