Ring of wealth

A Ring of wealth is a piece of enchanted jewellery that can be made by casting the spell Enchant Level 5 Jewellery, which requires level 68 Magic to cast, on a Dragonstone ring. The ring of wealth increases the chance of its wearer getting a drop from the rare drop table.

Monster drops are determined at random from a table. On many monsters, one of the slots on the drop table is the rare drop, which is not a single item. Instead, when this drop is randomly selected, the rare drop table drops another item at random from a separate list containing items like Gems and Half of a key. However, this second table normally contains many "empty" slots that, if landed on, cause the monster to drop nothing except for its 100% drops. The Ring of Wealth reduces the number of empty slots on the rare drop table, increasing the odds of receiving items such as Half of a key.

In issue 24 of the God letters Guthix had this to say about how a Ring of Wealth works:

"If thou consider the possessions of an enemy to be like a roulette wheel, then the 'rare' items so coveted by players are located on a second roulette wheel, that will only be spun shouldst thou roll a specific number on the first wheel. The ring of wealth affects not the number which thou may achieve upon the first wheel, but should thou gain the precise number to allow thee access to the second, the ring will make thy chances of gaining an object on that second roulette wheel all the greater. My analogy is flawed, for death is not like roulette, but I hope that thou see the truth within this."

This also sheds some light on how exactly the Rare drop table is accessed.

Graphical Explanation of the Ring of Wealth
The following table is an example of a fictional loot list for killing 1000 Greater Demons.

As can be seen, the player was given access to the Rare Drop Table a total of 231 times.

The following is an example of what the player might receive if they had NOT been wearing a Ring of Wealth.

The following is an example of what the player might have received if they HAD been wearing a Ring of Wealth.

Note that the times that 'Nothing' dropped drastically decreased as a result of wearing the Ring of Wealth, consequently causing the rest of the items on the Rare Drop Table to be dropped an increased number of times (and hence have had their 'drop rate') increased. It can also be seen that the first table remains exactly the same for both scenarios (with and without the Ring of Wealth).

Items such as the Abyssal Whip, Godsword hilts and the Staff of Light will only ever be found on the FIRST table, and as such are completely unaffected by the Ring of Wealth. Only items found on the second and third tables (ie. Rare Drop Table items) will ever be affected.

Trivia

 * The Ring of wealth does not affect Treasure Trail and Barrows rewards. It also does not affect clue scrolls, PvP drops and Champions' Challenge.
 * The Ring of Wealth does NOT affect the drop rate of the Draconic visage, Godsword hilt, Dragon chainbody, Dragon full helm, Spirit sigils, King Black Dragon Heads, or other unique drops. It only affects the items on the rare drop table.
 * The Ring of Wealth does not affect drops while LootShare is enabled.