General Method Description

Banshees are a low-level Slayer creatures that are best known for their frequent herb drops, but they also have the distinction of being likely the best source of noted pure essence available through combat. High level players can expect to get upwards of 100 herbs per hour from these critters, as well as up to 800 pure essence, and a few runes and other goodies as well.

Banshees use a magic-based melee attack, and are considered undead, so you should use dragonhide armor and wear a Salve amulet or Salve amulet (e). You also must wear earmuffs (or a Slayer helmet, which contains earmuffs) to avoid having them do massive damage on you and drain your stats. While these are low-level monsters, they are not recommended for fighting by players below mid levels. Even though they have only 22 hitpoints, they regenerate very quickly and so if you cannot kill them within a few hits they can take quite a long time to finish off.

With monsters that drop a large number of herbs, there are trade-offs between keeping all the herbs or leaving the lower-valued ones so you can try to get more of the ones that cost more. There is also a trade-off between using a beast of burden to get more herbs per trip, or summoning a macaw for its herb enhancing benefit, because the macaw increases the percentage of good herbs (ranarr and above) by a hefty 40%. The key factors that determine the best approach are the number of herbs you get per hour from the monster, the distance to the bank (and thus how much time you waste per hour banking if you take more trips) and the value of non-herb drops.

Banshees drop fewer herbs per hour than monsters like chaos druids or aberrant spectres, so less banking is required. However, they also have a very valuable "alternative" drop, the pure essence, which means you are giving up on some of that income the more you bank. Using my herb dropping analysis model, I've determined that the best approach is to use a macaw, either keeping all herbs or keeping only guams and harralander and above (skipping marrentills and tarromins). The two are nearly identical, so do whichever you prefer. At extremely high levels you can get about the same profit using a pack yak and keeping all herbs, but the macaw also occasionally forages herbs, so I'd give it the nod anyway.