Rune essence

Rune Essence is the raw material for runecrafting, obtained by mining.

It now has two varieties, since the update of 20 April 2006.

Pure Rune Essence
Can be mined only on members worlds, by players with a mining level of 30 or higher. It can be used to make all types of runes.

Rune Essence
Mined on free-to-play worlds, or by players with lower mining level. This can only be used to craft the six lower level runes, while the situation for combination runes has not been clarified.

Why the change?
It is a measure to devalue one of the popular autoers routes to easy profit, as the essence mined without membership or adequate mining level will be unusable for high level runes.

It unfortunately also devalues a good revenue stream for for many honest players in free-to-play, players who could previously have joined members with a good supply of ess already banked.

Other effects
Price speculation on pure ess is rife, as are fears that runecrafting members will also suffer a grave reduction in supplies, resulting in a price shift on higher level runes and a considerable slowdown in levelling.

This update has been met with very mixed reactions, with some support for "sticking it to the autoers", but concern that it destroys the easy availabilty of cheap essence for runecrafting members.