Rune essence

Rune essence, often called Rune ess, is a raw material that can be crafted only into Air, Mind, Water, Earth, Fire, and Body runes through the Runecrafting skill.

Obtaining Rune essence
Here are a few ways of obtaining Rune essence, other than by trading with other players.

Free players may mine Rune essence in the Rune essence mine, unlocked after the Rune Mysteries quest. To reach these mines, players need to get teleported by one of a few NPCs. Members will also mine Rune essence here until they reach level 30 Mining when they will automatically mine Pure essence on member worlds. Mining from one of the rocks that have an unlimited supply of essence gives 5 Mining experience per essence.

Additionally, members that have completed Lunar Diplomacy can access a mine in the north part of Lunar Isle that contains a Rune essence rock. Since this site is far from a bank, it is recommended that they cast Moonclan Teleport from their Lunar Spellbook to get right near the bank on Lunar Isle.

On free-to-play worlds, a number of Rune essence is given to each player throughout The Great Orb Project minigame depending on each round's scores. Free players may also buy Rune essence as a reward from the minigame at a cost of 1 Runecrafting Guild Token per Rune essence.

Rune essence may also be obtained as a monster drop. Notably, Minotaurs, Catablepons, and Ankous drop Rune essence on non-member worlds. They can all be found in the Stronghold of Security. Members may get Rune essence from drops of Rock Lobsters and Zamorak crafters.

The rune essence change
To discourage Real world traders and macroers, Jagex introduced a Rune Essence adjustment update on the 20th of April, 2006. As of then, rune essence was split separately into two different items: Rune essence and pure essence (with an automatic conversion from rune to pure essence for members). Previously, rune essence could be used to craft all runes. However, since the update, the runes only craftable by members required Pure essence, which could only be mined on member worlds. Rune essence could still be used to craft the first six basic runes, however.

This measure was to try to stop macroers from making a huge profit by simply macroing Rune essence, which was in high demand, especially by free players. However, due to this update, many Rune essence macroers essentially became useless due to a large majority of them being F2P only. After the update, the Rune essence mined without membership would be worthless, since the majority of the buyers would need Pure essence instead to runecraft high-level runes. This caused the demand and price of Rune essence to drop significantly.

It is highly disputed whether this goal was achieved, especially since most of the macros just switched to mining pure essence instead (possibly using stolen credit cards to obtain membership), despite the required subscription fee and level 30 Mining.

It also devalued a good revenue stream for many non-member players, players who could previously have become members with a good supply of usable Rune essence already banked. Since the unbalanced trade update was released, many players suggested merging back both essence types, as there were no more bots to mine Rune essence.

Trivia

 * The Stone of Jas, mentioned in many texts and dialogues in the game, is what gave the rune essence its power.
 * In August 2008, the price of Rune essence jumped from around 40 coins to 65 coins due to the release of the Runecrafting Guild and The Great Orb Project, which required 50 Runecrafting to enter.