Unidentified herb

Unidentified herb was removed after an update.

As the contents of this page no longer exist in Old School RuneScape, this article is preserved for historical purposes.

Unidentified herbs were the predecessor of grimy herbs that players received from drops or Farming. When received as a drop, players would not know the specific type of herb they received, as all grimy herbs were simply named "Herb" and shared the same appearance. Players would have to identify it before being able to use it (as clean herbs are today), and required a specific Herblore level depending on the herb. It was also possible to narrow down the type of herb if a player did not have the required level to identify it.

RuneScape 2

Unidentified herbs were often called "unids" by players wanting to sell them, where they would identify a set of herbs to find out which herbs were which in their bank, and proceed to sell batches of them to other players by directly trading in person. However, as they all share the same name and appearance, this made players buying them susceptible to scams, and the Grand Exchange did not yet exist.

To prevent themselves from being scammed, players who sought a specific unidentified herb in bulk would often carry one noted unidentified herb of the desired type (ex. an unidentified snapdragon) and fill the rest of their inventory. This would make it so a seller attempting to scam a buyer by placing a different unidentified herb than the one they stated they were selling during a trade would result in the trade failing, as the buyer's inventory is already full, alerting the buyer that a scam was attempted.

In RuneScape 2, unidentified herbs were removed on 10 September 2007, shortly after the August 2007 Archive of RuneScape that Old School RuneScape was built off of.

Old School RuneScape

Due to the prevalence of scams involving them back then, Jagex made a conscious decision to rename all unidentified herbs to their proper grimy variants when Old School RuneScape launched.

However, the playerbase of the time strongly desired a faithful preservation of the game as it was during the 2007 era, resulting in the Old School Team undoing the initial change, and all grimy herbs were renamed back to "Herb" in an update three days after launch.

In time, the susceptibility of being scammed slowly became apparent among the playerbase, resulting in the Old School Team polling the reversion of that change in the first content poll about a month post-launch, though it only received 52.2% support out of the 75% required.

Though unidentified herbs remained as they were, a content poll was released over a year later, asking players whether unfinished potions should have their name changed; at the time, all of them were simply named "Unfinished potion", but had their original appearance as they do today, which still made it susceptible to being scammed if players were unaware of which unfinished potion they wanted looked like. This passed with 94% support.

When the trading post - a predecessor to the Grand Exchange - was polled, it did not include a question on whether the herbs should be renamed as grimy herbs. This made unidentified herbs unlisted due to the identical appearance and name making it redundant. Due to the negative feedback regarding the trading post and a desire for a better, proper system (i.e. the Grand Exchange), the Old School Team once again released a content poll in 2015 which included a question on whether they should rename unidentified herbs to grimy herbs, passing with 85% support.

Unidentified herbs would finally be renamed to grimy herbs, as they were on the game's launch, on 26 February 2015, alongside the release of the Grand Exchange.