Item Lending

Item Lending is a feature released on 14 July 2008 that allows all players (free and members) to lend their items to friends for up to 24 hours, or until either player logs out. Jagex first announced the development of Item Lending on the 17th of December, 2007 in its Future Changes to Recent Updates article.

On 29 July 2008, Item Lending was updated so that players needed to send a trade request to lend an item. Doing this will open the trade interface, where players can right-click on an item and choose to "Lend" it. This update was introduced by Jagex to prevent players from scams via trust trading, and also because the unbalanced trade restriction prevented players from lending some items.

Lending
 To lend an item to a player, one needs to send a trade request to the other. Once the trade interface is open, the item can be lent by right-clicking and choosing the "Lend" option. This will put the item into the "Loan" box, showing the item is kept by the player.

The default loan duration is "Until log-out", but this can be changed by clicking on the button and typing the desired duration (between 1–24 hours) for the loan. If the player wished to lend the item until either player logs off, the duration should be set to "0" (zero) or click until it says "Until Logout".

After setting the duration, both players need to accept the "trade", and the item will be transferred to the other player. Some players rent certain rare items (ex. godswords and partyhats) and may make a considerable amount of money from it, and renting may even end up paying for the item after a few hundred "rents."

The player being lent to will get a warning a minute before the item is returned, and one when the item is returned. Only one item can be lent at a time.

North of the Grand Exchange (Worlds 2 and 6) is widely regarded as the "item lending" area. For free players, the best item lending/borrowing area is the Grand Exchange entrance on World 1. There are also some clan chats for item lending purposes, and many players lend on the forums.

Borrowing
When an item is offered in the trade interface, the lent item will appear in the "Loan" box and the loan duration will be shown just below the item. The borrower may choose to lend another item in return, or offer coins for the loan of the item. However, this is not required, as the item can be borrowed for free. Once both players have accepted the trade, the item will be lent to the borrower.

When borrowing an item, to find out how long you have left before the item is returned, unequip the item and use the discard option. The result will display in a dialogue over the conversation pane.

Any item traded in return for a lend will not be refunded when the borrowed item is returned to its original owner. Borrowed items also cannot be used in the photo booth south-west of Falador.

The item being borrowed will be protected above all other items, even if the item is lower in terms of value compared to other items. If the player is unable to retain any items (i.e. skulled), then the item is returned to the lender.

Discarding
A player may discard an item (unwield, right-click and "discard") that is no longer required. A dialogue box will appear to show the remaining time and also give the option to discard the borrowed item. Should a player go ahead and discard it, he will be unable to retrieve it again for the remaining time of the loan. The lending player will be unable to retrieve the item until the full time of the loan is up (and thus will not be informed if it is discarded). After discarding a borrowed item, a player is able to borrow another item immediately, even if the discarded item was lent for a fixed amount of time by the lender.

Collecting
Chatting with the banker will enable the collection of borrowed items, similar to the collection from the Grand Exchange. The option to choose is "I'd like to see my Returned Items box." Doing this will bring up an interface that shows the borrowed item which needs to be collected.

With the Item Lending update, items may be collected from wandering bankers such as those outside activities like Fist of Guthix. Note: You can now retrieve your lent items from the Duel arena travelling banker, which in the past was not possible.

When lending items out for a specific duration of time, you will NOT get your item back under any circumstances until the specified time limit is over. If you choose the "Demand" option on the item in your Returned Items box, you will be told how much time is remaining until you can retrieve your lent item. This is also the case if the borrowing player 'Discards' the item before the time is up; you still have to wait for the full duration.

If you choose to "Demand" your item while it is lent until logout, then you can regain your item immediately.

Any Bank chests that allow you to collect items from the Grand Exchange will now let you gather lent items.

Using an item on the rightful owner also returns the item. This only works for "until log out" situations. Before 3 February 2011 this action returned the item directly to the inventory. Because the exploit of this feature lead to a new type of Lend Until Logout Scam, now the item always go back to the owner's returned item box.

Locations
Wilderness and Free For All Dangerous Clan Wars area are the only places where lent items cannot be taken into. Should your inventory be full and you leave the Chaos Temple dungeon where the armoured zombies are located to recharge your prayer, the item will be sent to your bank and stored there, even if there is no additional room (468 item maximum reached).

Some of the places items cannot be lent or borrowed in are:
 * Chamber of Koschei the Deathless underneath Rellekka
 * Fist of Guthix
 * Tears of Guthix

Item symbol
All borrowed items have a red symbol added to the item to differentiate between the borrowed item and the other regular items.

Weapons

 * Abyssal whip
 * Ancient staff
 * Composite bows - willow, yew and magic
 * Dark bow
 * Dragon hatchet, battleaxe, halberd, longsword, mace, claws, scimitar, two-handed sword, pickaxe, dagger and spear (including poisoned versions of last two).
 * Godsword (all types)
 * Granite maul
 * Godbows
 * Longbows - maple, yew and magic
 * Rune hatchet, battleaxe, longsword, pickaxe, scimitar, warhammer, and 2h sword
 * Runite crossbow
 * Saradomin sword
 * Seercull
 * Shortbows - maple, yew and magic
 * Staff of light
 * Zamorakian spear

Armour

 * Amulet of fury
 * Archer helm
 * Archers' ring
 * Armadyl armour - helmet, chestplate and plateskirt
 * Bandos armour - chestplate, boots and tasset
 * Berserker helm
 * Berserker ring
 * Dragon armour - helm, boots, chainbody, platebody, full helm, platelegs, plateskirt, square shield, and kiteshield
 * Dragonhide armour - green, blue, red and black dragonhide body, chaps or vambraces
 * Farseer helm
 * Glaiven boots
 * God armour Guthix, Saradomin, Zamorak, Bandos, Armadyl, and Ancient full helm, kiteshield, platebody, platelegs and plateskirt
 * Granite body helm, legs and shield
 * Wizard boots
 * Mystic robes - boots, gloves, hat, robe bottom, robe top (including dark and light variants)
 * Obsidian cape
 * Ranger boots
 * Ragefire boots
 * Robin hood hat
 * Rockshell armour - helm, platebody, legs, gloves and boots
 * Rune armour - full helm, kiteshield, platebody, platelegs and plateskirt,
 * Seers' ring
 * Skeletal armour - boots, bottom, gloves, helm and top
 * Spined armour - body, boots, chaps, gloves and helm
 * Splitbark armour - body, boots, gauntlets, helm and legs
 * Steadfast boots
 * Third Age helmet, kiteshield, platebody and platelegs
 * Third Age mage hat, amulet, robe top and robe bottom
 * Third Age ranger coif, top, legs and vambraces
 * Warrior helm
 * Warrior ring

Others

 * Animal masks - all types
 * Beret - all colours
 * Cavalier and mask
 * Cavalier hats
 * Flared trousers
 * Halloween mask - all colours
 * Headband - all colours
 * Highwayman mask
 * Pantaloons
 * Partyhat - all colours
 * Powdered wig
 * Santa hat
 * Sleeping cap
 * Top hat
 * Zamorak robe top

Common items that can't be lent

 * Spirit Shields (all kinds)
 * Dwarf Multicannon (set or separate)
 * Vestments
 * Gnome Scarf
 * Regen Bracelet
 * Armadyl Battlestaff
 * Lava,Steam,Smoke etc... Staffs

Items with charges
(Note: some of the staves might be considered to have infinite charges)
 * Dragonfire shield

Degradable items

 * Any kind of degradable armour.

Stackable items

 * Runes
 * Coins
 * Food

Untradeable items

 * Untradeable armour

Glitches

 * There used to be a glitch allowing item duplication where a player with a lent item can repeatedly click an emote while the lender logs out, when the lender logs back in they can pick their item up from the bank. However the person with the lent item will still have it in their inventory any action such as moving or engaging in combat will cause the item to disappear. The effects are purely cosmetic however as the lent item becomes a "Dummy" and the lender will not receive a duplicate of the item once the lender's item disappears.
 * Upon the re-release of pvp to the wilderness, if a player borrowed an item for 'until logout', the player would then lure the other player into the wilderness and having them attack him or her, once the person lending the item was almost dead, the borrowing player would use the borrowed item of the player on him/her thus putting the item in the inventory and killing them, getting the borrowed item for themself. This was corrected two days after.
 * There is a glitch that can make you borrow an item longer. if you are in the house options the item wont return, but if you are borrowing an item until log out, the owner can take his item back, and it will look like the item is duplicated because you will still be wearing it, and as long you don't move or go out of the house options you will wear the item.

Trivia

 * If a player tries to cast alchemy on a borrowed item, a message will appear saying "That's not your property."
 * Sometimes when an item is lent only the red icon appears without the item's image; re-logging resolves the problem.