Pure essence

See also Rune essence.

Pure essence is rune essence that can be crafted into any type of rune. Only level 30 Mining members can mine it from the rune essence mines; however, this item can still be traded with free-to-play players. At its release, Jagex claimed that pure essences were needed in order to prevent autoers from being able to make money from low-level accounts mining rune essence. It is highly disputed that this goal was reached. Effects included reduced profits in Runecrafting for runecrafters, but increased profits for member essence miners, including many autoers. It also made regular rune essence much harder to sell because all the high level runecrafters who used to buy it to make huge profits now had to buy pure essence instead.

The main problem was on the F2P economy however. Many low level legitimate players just starting out saw rune essence as a golden way to make money, as it was mined fast and was in high demand by member runecrafters. However, when pure essence was introduced thousands of F2Pers were left with no way to make money.

A noticeable decrease in the street price of pure essence has been winding through the Runescape worlds. On F2P worlds, players are less likely to pay 90 to 100 coins each for the Pure Essence as they are 65 to 70 coins each. On P2P worlds, the chances of selling Pure Essence for 100 coins each have been slimming down also.