Today we have introduced the long-awaited and much-discussed new skill for members - the Farming skill!

The Farming skill allows you to grow a wide range of resources from seed to harvest, for use in the Cooking, Herblore and Crafting skills, as well as simply growing your own food. The skill centres around a new addition to the world of RuneScape - the Farming patch. There are a number of different types of patch - vegetable, tree and herb patches being some of these - and are located right across the world map, indicated by a new spade icon. You may find that the patches are rather overgrown with weeds to start with, so keep your rake handy.

You will only see the crops you have grown yourself in the farming patches. You won't see other peoples. Otherwise the farming patches would always be full of other people's crops and you wouldn't be able to grow anything.

There are four main areas where you can get started: near Falador, Catherby, Ardougne and Port Phasmatys. There are Farming shops close by each of these areas, which stock all the tools that you will need to start cultivating your crops. If the shops run out of stock there are gardeners near these patches that you can buy some of the tools from. The gardeners are also more than pleased to give out Farming advice, being experts in their field.

We have filled the Farming skill up with many types of crop for you to grow, and details of these and their skill-level requirements can be found by clicking on the in-game skill guide, and also on the manual page.

Along with the Farming skill we have updated a number of existing skills, key among these being the new 'Brewing' section of the Cooking skill. You will find breweries in Keldagrim and Port Phasmatys where you can start fermenting your own ales. We have added a number of new types of ale that can't be bought from RuneScape's inns, all of which have their own unique side-effects.

High-level herblorists will now be able to mix extra-strong and super-strong antidotes and weapon poisons, which contain some of the more toxic plants that can be grown using the Farming skill.

You can now craft fruit baskets and vegetable sacks to carry lots of certain sorts of fruit and vegetables at once (for details see Crafting).

Using the Magic skill you can now make and enchant a new amulet of nature to help you keep track of one of your farming patches. You can only have one amulet of nature at a time.

The introduction of Farming to the civilised world has also attracted a couple of other Master Farmers, both of whom have deep pockets full of seeds and a casual disregard for strangers. The last thing we heard is that they were hanging around near Varrock and Ardougne, and being Master Farmers they're probably not too far afield from a field.

Good luck, tend to your patches, and don't get your fingers shut in the compost bin!

Other Changes

The Salute emote has been changed in response to feedback from players.

We've also made a change to the way you get milk in RuneScape. New "Dairy Cows" have been added to the various fields where there are cows. These have a left-click "Milk Dairy Cow" option, although you can use buckets on them as before.