Economy guide

The RuneScape economy bears many similarities to economies in the real world. While general and speciality shop prices depend largely on the number of items in stock, player prices are influenced by many factors other than supply and demand. Real world economies behave differently from RuneScape&#39;s in some respects, however, particularly because of the limited time many have to play the game.

There are several currencies in RuneScape; most currencies, however, are used in trading between non-player characters and players in certain areas. Therefore, coins will be treated as the exclusive currency for player-to-player trading in this guide.

In general, there are several categories of items that players may obtain. Quest items and other untradable items are not covered here, as they have little to no impact on the player economy. Four main item categories, commodities, consumables, finished items, and discontinued items, will be discussed in detail in this guide.

This guide is for informational purposes only, and may not reflect recent changes in the economy.

Inflation/Deflation, Stability
In general, the RuneScape economy suffers from some inflation, due to the ever-increasing number of coins in the game due to High Alchemy and other smaller factors. Gold sinks, or features that drain wealth in coins or items out of the game, include losses on banned accounts, items lost where they will not be picked up, and the cost of repairs to Barrows armour and recharging of Crystal bows. Consumables such as food, potions, arrows and runes also drain money from the game keeping a balance in the RuneScape economy.

The Construction and Summoning skills are the largest gold sinks, as they require players to spend a hefty amount of coins to achieve even moderately high levels.

The economy is split-level, with the price shifts of high level items having little effect on the baseline items.

Hard prices
Where you would expect to buy and sell a certain item to a store, the store price serves as a stabilising factor, since buyers are hoping to get an item cheaper than the store would sell for and sellers are looking for a better price than the store would buy for.

Store prices shift by a certain amount depending on stock levels, and where large amounts of player-made items are sold (dumped) on a store, the prices can be seriously depressed, though this can be a good opportunity for arbitrage if players do not believe the situation will be maintained.

The only case of "hard price" inflation in RuneScape, was when Jagex raised the store price of Chaos and Death runes to be close to the typical player trading price, as the low prices only aided autobuying bots who camped on the stores and bought all the stock as it respawned.

Soft prices
Where the item cannot routinely be obtained from a store, then the trade situation is more complex, as you have to rely on finding a player trading the item you want at a price you are prepared to pay. As the number of richer players grows, this tends to increase the prices, as high level skill trainers will often be prepared to pay top prices to get large supplies quickly.

Merchants
There are two types of merchants; merchants that buy items for low prices from players and sell them to other players for profit, and merchants that buy items from stores at stock prices and sell them at market prices to players. The player merchants are usually not liked, and are blamed for inflation and deflation, particularly with price changes surrounding discontinued items such as Santa and Party hats. Player to Player merchanting has largely been eliminated with the Unbalanced Trade Removal. The 5k to 60k price range from a set price prevents major profits from merchanting. It is still possible with the introduction of the Grand Exchange. This strategy however requires hours of research, trial and error, and still need many hours after for profits to accumulate.

Arbitrage
Players who buy items from stores at stock prices, and sell high, often deliberately creating a shortage of slow restocking items.

Buying up overstocked, price-depressed items cheaply, and then selling them at another store, world or later when prices have returned to normal. The level of overstocking needs to be quite severe, to ensure that the selling price bottoms-out at a level below the normal buying price of the store.

You can also modify some items, such as stringing amulets, so that they are a different item, and immediately sell a few back to the same store.

Types of item
It is reasonable to divide items into a few distinct classes.

Commodities
Commodities, also referred to as raw materials, have uses in processing/manufacturing skills such as Cooking and Fletching. They cannot be used or consumed in any way. Most of the time, commodities are used to produce consumables, finished products, or other commodities. In bulk, commodities are often quite easy to sell, as they are demanded by players looking to gain levels in processing skills. This is not the case for items that are not considered fast experience, however. Higher prices are offered for larger quantities in general, and store prices have little effect on player valuation. Other factors, such as bannings of macros, tend to play a larger role.

With the release of Capes of Achievement, demand has increased for commodities, especially commodities used in Cooking and Fletching, as they are regarded by many players as the easiest skills to train.

Examples
 * Raw fish
 * Rune and pure essence
 * With the release of pure essence, normal essence is less useful to members (who made up the bulk of the demand) and has dropped in price sharply. Pure essence can be obtained if you are a member and have at least level 30 mining.
 * Commonly traded at the Varrock east bank.
 * The best example of supply and demand,with the advent of pure essence, normal essence prices dropped to about 10-20 coins for a while but then increased to 20-35 coins each, and pure essence prices became 80-120 coins each, all these prices can vary depending on the amount that is being bought/sold and whoever is buying/selling. After the introduction of the Grand Exchange prices have soared to around 40 coins for rune essence and 170 for pure essence. This is mainly because players are getting wealthier and that bulk trade is a lot easier. However, since almost all suppliers of Essence were/are non-members, there was little supply of Pure Essence. The Grand Exchange realises this and so puts up the price of Pure Essence causing it to be extortionately high for Runecrafters trying to buy it to process into high level runes.
 * Coal
 * A less stable market than rune essence, with best market location being the Falador east bank, due to the proximity of the Mining Guild.
 * Another common location is mining at Barbarian Village and selling to Grand Exchange.
 * Pressure of supply and demand is critical, and the coal market is one that has tightened significantly since the mass banning of autoers.
 * Other ores
 * Bars
 * The market price for steel bars makes it impossible for buyers to profit unless smithing cannonballs, but the price of most bars is held up by the fact that they provide concentrated Smithing experience.
 * Logs (other than normal logs), usually used for Fletching, Firemaking, or Construction
 * Willow Log prices have declined in Rimmington due to at least a dozen Willow trees being just metres south. Willow logs at the local general store, sell for a minimum of 12gp and a maximum of 25gp.
 * Feathers

Consumables
The difference between consumables and commodities, is that they are used up without necessarily creating any result. The trade in consumables is usually a lot slower than in commodities, since you usually only collect enough for a couple of trips.

Examples
 * Food (e.g., cooked fish)
 * Runes
 * Runes that are the most useful, such as Water runes and Death runes for Ancient Magicks and Nature runes for High Level Alchemy, are highest in demand.
 * Law runes when bought singularly demand prices of over 1000 coins, due to the inconvenience of selling only one causes the seller. However, when bought in bulk they are closer to 350 coins due to their use in training magic. Also, now that law Talismans are now tradable, the prices are going down, making Law runes cost a similar amount to Nature runes.
 * Since the "Legacy of Seergaze" quest was released, along with the ability to craft Blood runes, the price of Blood runes has dropped rapidly. They used to cost 500-600 coins each, and now have gone down to 260-300 coins each. The price is only just starting to rise again.
 * Arrows
 * Potions

Finished Items
Since there is no requirement for other finished items in bulk quantities, these are normally traded to the stores, or "alched" if the price is worth it. A problem for higher level smiths is that although there may be players who would pay more for Mithril items or above, meeting them takes a long time. Trade in finished items is very slow. Smithing "on-demand" is one way to beat low store prices, without carrying a bank-busting stock of assorted items. In a departure from real-world economies, finished goods usually fetch lower prices in the Grand Exchange than the components used to make them. This is because there is greater demand for the incomplete article for the experience point value than there is for the finished piece.


 * Clay items
 * These are often found as "waste" around the Pottery oven in the Barbarian Village, with a trail of bowls leading from the pottery back to the mine
 * Leather items
 * In the past, excess leather items (mainly hardleather bodies) are often sold to Al Kharid shop for 50 gp each, since the Lumbridge and Draynor Diary was released, players tend to low alching the leather items as the value is actually higher than selling to shops, and Magic experience is given. Nevertheless, the market of leather items is still over-saturated and they are suffering permanent drop in Grand Exchange price, down to the low alch price.
 * Armour & Weapons
 * Iron and steel armour and weapons are common among products of smithing trainings. They are sold to armour, weapon and general stores in large amount every day. It is assumed few would alch them as it is undesirable to do so, unless the player is far from the Grand Exchange they might use low alchemy function from Explorer's Ring.
 * Jewellery
 * Jewellery are often sold to the Jewellery stores, due to the high value it gives. Players would sell large number of amulets, necklaces at the same time, but some players are smart to sell them slowly, which contributes a little to the inflation of items.

Discontinued and rare items
The discontinued items represent an item class of their own. The discontinued items are mostly items which were given in holiday drops years ago, and the decreasing supply coupled with increasing demand continually drives prices up. The drops were given from varying monsters across the game, and were originally intended to show how long one had played. However, Jagex found that these items were being hoarded and sold later for much higher prices, due to there not being new items created ever again. In response, Jagex has created a new series of untradable holiday items, the oldest of which was released about two years ago.

Prices of discontinued items are quite volatile and sometimes the market overreacts to certain news. They are considered a relatively safe long-term investment for those who can afford, because of the constantly shrinking supply and growing demand. However, as of the time of writing (July 2007), discontinued item prices have been relatively stable for several months. This could be easily disrupted by a major event, however, such as the announcement of a skill (Hunter caused a temporary dip in prices between the time it was announced and released).

Another update by Jagex, was the Duel Arena Update for staking. As soon as the update was released prices were hit hard. Santa hat dropped by at least 5,000,000 coins, and Party hats were estimated to have dropped in price by as much as 30%.


 * Party hats (all colours)
 * Christmas cracker
 * Halloween mask
 * Santa hat
 * Pumpkin
 * Easter egg
 * Disk of returning (not a holiday drop)
 * There once was a "black hole" that banned players were sent to. Other players could go into this hole also, and they could leave by using this. The "hole" no longer exists.
 * Half Wine (not holiday drop)
 * These were created when Jagex changed wine jugs so they were consumed in one click, not two. The people with half wines already in their banks kept them.

Availability
The level of availability of an item also has an effect on the price, or specifically, the price another player will offer.

The release of the Grand Exchange caused a lot more availability to players. If you wanted to buy enormous quantities of coal, you used to have to login to a busy world and constantly offer to buy coal with no guarantee of finding players wishing to sell it at that time/location. With the Grand Exchange it's possible to buy large quantities of coal within seconds.

Common
Some items are quite commonly available, but not necessarily at the location they are wanted.

Only in Al-Kharid, is the craft shop where you would buy moulds close to the furnace where you would use them.

No store (free world)
Shields above Mithril square, Rune two-handed swords and a few other desirable items in the free-to-play world have no regular store, so are unavailable except by player trading or reaching the level required to make them.

Rare and semi-rare
The genuinely rare items are from the early days of RuneScape, and may be found among the Rares and Holiday Drops. It is worth repeating that trimmed or God armour is only obtainable from members treasure trails, and no player can trim existing armour. Also, please note that claiming an item to be rare when it is not listed in the officially recognised list provided by Jagex is against the rules. Rare here is only used to mean uncommon but is considered to be an item type (rares) in RuneScape.

There are some pseudo-rare items in free-to-play, that are actually available to members and may be traded and used by free players. Some useful items in this category are certain items in Black, that are unavailable by any means in free-to-play:


 * Black hatchet
 * Black scimitar
 * Black warhammer
 * Black two-handed sword

All other black items can be bought from stores, or can be obtained from a monster drop in free-to-play. Since black items cannot be player-made, it is not possible to smith them. Unless you insist on wielding one of these weapons instead of a black longsword, then there is no need to be held to ransom for a particular item.


 * Black full helmet: only available in the Champions guild
 * Black scimitar: respawns on the 2nd floor of Ardougne castle.

The remaining Black armour and swords are sold in the usual stores.

There are also coloured gloves, that are cheap for members and can be traded to and worn by free players - they do not offer any advantage over plain leather.

Controversy
After the addition of the Grand Exchange, the RuneScape economy has been drastically affected. Jagex has the ability to manually set price limits on items, like stabilising the price of an Abyssal whip. Because of this, many item prices are deflating, while a few others are steadily rising. Some players find this deflation beneficial; others, however, believe deflation is hurting the economy. Overall, there is a large debate over whether Jagex controls the economy, or if supply/demand and what players sell items for affects the price of the item the most.

It is interesting that while many items are deflating in price, the overall economy is doing better according to the GEMW.

Now that Jagex have introduced a feature enabling players to view the price trend for any item, the economy is in some ways similar to a stock market. If an item is going up in value quickly then players will eventually sell the items, before the prices go down. When this happens the items will go down; and vice-versa.