General store

The General store is a type of shop found in many locations in RuneScape. Unlike a specialty shop, a general store will accept all tradeable items with the exception of coins. The general store is identified on the map by a pot icon. The General Store also plays a key role in the prices of items being purchased and sold in the Grand Exchange. However, some tradeable items cannot be sold to the general store because of real world trading.

Staples
Each general store carries a few commonly used, inexpensive items. The following is a list of the most conventional inventory for a general store with their Grand Exchange prices: Most general stores available in the free-to-play map area also carry the following: Other items commonly sold at general stores include:

Sellable items
In addition to regular stock, players may sell any tradeable item to a shop. The sale price isn't linked to the Grand Exchange price for the item. If the store has no stock for a given item, the player will receive two-thirds of the speciality shop price for it. The sale price decreases as the shop's inventory increases, until the price hits a lower limit.

Locations
There are many general stores located across Gielinor, some are not marked on the world map, and many offer variations of items for sale. The list below denotes members' stores with an "(m)".

Buying
The base price for any item currently stocked in a General Store is roughly 2.5x more the Low Alchemy value, or 1.66x more than the High Alchemy value of that item. The cost of items that are normally stocked increase linearly in price to 1.3x the base price at 0 stock, while items that aren't normally stock do not fluctuate in price.

Selling
The General Store's base offering price starts as high as the low alchemy value for that item, and decrements linearly to 0.5x that value (rounded down) of the store's base stock. For example, if Varrock's General Store had 3 out of 10 cake tins (which have a low alchemy value of 4) in stock, and you sold 7, they would each be worth 4 each. Then if you sold 11 more, you would receive 2 gp for the 11th one.

Unnoting items
General stores can also be used to unnote items, which particularly comes in handy to players far from a bank. To do this, sell as many of the items as you want unnoted to the shop and then buy them back. You will lose a variable amount of coins depending on the item. This does not work for all items - only ones that the shop can buy.

Owners
In most general stores there are both Shop keepers and Shop assistants. You can access their inventory via dialogue (talking to them), or by right-clicking on them and selecting the trade option.

History


The old map icon for the general store, as of 8 May 2007, was. This was changed due to fact, that the general store didn't even sell pot of flour.

In RuneScape Classic, because the Grand Exchange did not exist, general stores (particularly those in Varrock and Falador) were popular locations for trade, especially in crowded worlds such as World 1. Many players would gather at general stores in order to offload items they did not need, or in hopes of obtaining a bargain by finding an item in the store with a higher street price than the price set by the general store. Because the stores could "fill up" on items sold by players, competition for empty slots in such worlds was intense at times.

The Shop Improvement update was introduced on 2 October 2007. Shop stock was split up in two parts, the main stock which contained infinite amounts of basic items, and the player stock which contained items sold by players.

Before this update, real world traders used to find an item with a high grand exchange value and low store value and sell it to the store. The other player would then buy it, and sell it to the grand exchange for a higher price.

The update of 2 September 2009 removed the infinite stock and replaced it with the current system, whereby the amount of items each store possesses is different for each player. Many complaints are posted on the forums regarding this every day. This also led to the increase in Street Prices of items such as Cheese and Jugs of Water, that were once easy to obtain in bulk. The addition of Cheese wheels and Milk sellers has since made cheese easier to acquire in bulk again.

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