RuneScape economy
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RuneScape has a fairly complex economy for a browser-based game. As the game is generally focused around combat and quests, these two things tend to drive the economy. Often, however, this is in a very indirect manner. An example of this "ripple effect" is fishing. Fish are useful because they provide healing for combatants. High-level fish provide the best healing. High-level free fish can generally only be caught by caging them with a lobster pot or harpooning. Fly fishing requires feathers. Despite their commonality (all chickens drop them) feathers are often a waste of time to gather, especially for players of very great power. Feathers, therefore, are unusually easy to sell for a reasonable price. Another example is Nature runes. Many powerful smiths and fletchers will train their magic ability so as to be able to use the "High Level Alchemy" spell, allowing them to exchange their items for the top store price without hassle. This requires the often hard-to-find Nature runes, which, although they can be made with the runecrafting skill, are extraordinarily difficult to obtain in large quantities. Law Runes, used for teleportation, are also valuable. Coal ore is another popular commodity since it takes a number of coal and only a single ore of either iron, mithril, adamant or runite to make the various bars, making coal ore a necessity for higher-level smiths. In every mine with coal, one can always find at least one miner who only mines coal and only for the money.
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Tracking
The RuneScape economy is very dynamic. There is a steady increase in the price of some items, while other items steadily get cheaper. Game updates can also cause a sudden increase or reduction in demand for items. It takes a lot of effort to continually track and predict the level of demand on certain items. Some players have become very good at monitoring the economy and consequently have become very rich by clever trading. The primary form of RuneScape currency is simply "coins", but is more commonly (and somewhat erroneously) refered to as "gp" (an abbreviation of gold pieces).
New items when released often tend to have very unstable prices according to rarity, but generally after a price is established, it drops steadily for quite some time except in the case of holiday items. Although holiday items were released as free items on the ground during various holiday seasons, ever since they ceased to appear, their prices have been having an upward trend (meaning that it changes slightly from time to time, but in the long run, always a good investment). An example of this happened after the introduction of the new runite pickaxes in RuneScape classic. There was only one NPC that sold the item and it regenerated very slowly. Quick players took advantage of this by constantly buying the pickaxes for relatively low prices (in effect, creating a monopoly) and selling them for hyper-inflated prices to other players who did not want to wait. Jagex corrected the problem a day later, but not before making many trackers rich. Another interesting example is when "the lost tribe" quest was released along with the new bone weapons. These weapons were dropped by the goblin guards in the caves and had very similar status to the 2nd weakest weapons in the game: iron. But since they were so "cool" the mines for the first few days were literally packed with people and only the high level players were able to get these weapons and they were sold up to prices of 50,000 gold. The current price is 1000 or less. In general, whenever there is a new update, items related to that update become breifly expensive, becuase there haven't been many made and everyone wants one. The next day, there are tons of the item and everyone has moved on to the next update and the items are nearly worthless.
Many of the continual price changes are brought about by the constant influx of new players, and the constant growth in skill levels of older players. For example: only someone with level 99 smithing can make the extremely valuable rune plate body armor. A year after launch, there were few of these smiths, but now, there are many more, over double the first number. If all of these accounts are still playing and still making rune plate body armor, the number of people with it goes up, unused supply goes up, demand goes down, and prices follow. However, two things tend to keep this deflation in relative check. First of all, there is a constant influx of new players who want this armor, keeping demand up and supply down, or at least even. Also, many high-level players are only out for money when making such rare items. They rarely want to bother with spending the extra time to find a buyer (and often, the extra profit isn't enough to waste the time on), and will often use the "High Level Alchemy" spell to "sell" the item for 1.5 times the normal store price. This saves them the hassle and gives them the money they need. Supply goes down, demand stays level, and again the price remains relatively stable. The high alchemy spell increases the amount of money in the game. The mechanisms that take money out of circulation are consumption (food, runes, arrows), are much smaller than the increase caused by high alchemy. This is in part due to the runecrafting, fishing, and cooking skills. A skilled player will quite often produce runes and food (with no monetary loss) for their own consumption without buying or selling these items to other players. The result is inflation, causing the price of some items to soar steadily over time.
On August 4, 2005, Jagex updated the RuneScape forums, the main marketplace for RuneScape items, to now allow players to search for a certain item. Previously, the high-flow in certain forums made it extremely hard for someone to find certain items being sold or bought. If a player COULD find someone selling what he/she needed, the price would be hard to compare to, leading to some items having heavily fluctuating prices. However, with the new search function, a player can track the sales of the same item in the last 24 hours, charging or paying the appropriate price. Prices of every item in RuneScape may be stabilizing, however a price range will always exist due to urgency, amount, and the like.
"Merchants", those who buy low and sell high, are often frowned upon. However, this criticism is largely unfounded, as merchants keep prices down (by convincing many that the sell price is lower in order to buy for it) and allow raw materials to be bought in bulk, by buying up smaller amounts at lower prices and then selling at a higher price in bulk. But still, they are all seen as lame "noobs" who take advantage of the system and whose actual skills (the things that some consider to matter) are low. Everyone hates merchanters, albeit unfairly. Often merchants have very good skills, because they can focus on leveling them by, say, dropping the raw materials as they don't need the money. Many skills are also higher on merchants because they can pay for raw materials. Also, although merchants may take advantage of the system, it is to the benefit of the system. This writer would also like to point out that skills are not the most important thing in runescape, as the most important thing in any game is to have a good time without hurting anyone else. Final meaning: merchanters harm RuneScape in little ways.
Alternate Currencies
Trading Sticks
With the addition of the Tai Bwo Wannai Cleanup mini-game, Jagex introduced an alternate form of currency called "Trading Sticks". The player earns these sticks by performing 'favours' for the locals of the village; e.g. repairing the continually degrading fence, defeating threats to the village (such as snakes and mosquitoes and the occasional Broodoo Victim) and other such tasks. As the player does this, he/she earns "favour", indicated at the top-right corner of the screen as a percentage. Once this reaches 100% (or sooner, if he/she so chooses), they can go around to the various NPCs to trade in their favour for Trading Sticks. Trading sticks are only really used to buy items (such as improved machetes) from the single store/NPC in the village and to gain access to the Teak and Mahogany woodcutting area.
A faster way to get Trading Sticks (although defeating the purpose of the minigame) in a hurry is to bring cut Opals, Jades, or Red Topazes to Gabooty and trade them to him. You can also do this with various gnome drinks from the Gnome Stronghold.
This currency was breifly valuable after the update came out and like all useless items that come with an update, soon became worthless.
Tokkul
Tokkul are awarded to players who take part in the TzHaar Fight Pit and Fight Cave mini-games. These are used to purchase items such as weaponry/armor unique to the TzHaar area, as well as runes and ores/bars. This is the only way in the game to get Onyx. Tokkul also drop from the various monsters that roam the area when defeated in combat.
It is also possible to take ores, uncut gems, runes and the obsidian items,to trade for tokkul in the respective shops of the TzHaar.
Holiday Items
On certain holidays, such as Christmas and Halloween, Jagex will arrange a "holiday drop" in which rare items are placed in the game for one day and one day only. (Because people were stockpiling these items hoping to make huge profits which wasn't in the spirit of the holiday, Jagex has decided to make all new holiday items untradable)For example, the now-legendary christmas crackers that created party hats ("P-Hats" or "phats") were only dropped on one day and can now be sold for millions. Prices can drop or spike sharply depending on the actions of the few unpredictable party hat owners.
(Note: Since then, holiday items are now no longer "dropped" in that they would appear in random locations on the ground. Currently, holiday items are now only available though special means that are present for a short period of time.)
Other tradable holiday drop items include Halloween 2001's pumpkins, Christmas 2001's Christmas crackers (which contained party hats), Easter 2002's Easter eggs, Halloween 2002's masks, and Christmas 2002's Santa hats. In 2003, drops became non-tradable, with Easter's bunny ears and Halloween's scythes. Christmas 2004's yo-yos. Easter 2005's rubber chickens (obtained from an Easter Bunny) and Haloween 2005's Zombie heads were non-tradable as well. The older items, especially the edible ones (pumpkins and Easter eggs) are excessively rare and can be sold for millions as well. Unfortunately, they would eventually disappear because they are only good for eating, and many owners accidentally eat their eggs and pumpkins. There were halloween candies you could get them by scare some kids in lumbridge with the zombie head.
During the Christmas season, Santa Hats are in high demand and at their peak price. The upcoming holiday season could see this particular item selling for 3 times the normal price in the summer. Halloween Masks also go through a price hike preceding Halloween.
Now-a-days many Holiday items are close to reaching their maximum possible price (a point where users will not pay much more for an item). It is wiser to invest in smaller Holiday Items ,such as, Santa Hats and Halloween Masks, rather than Party Hats, which are stable and rarely rise.
Items such as Santa Hats and Masks are prone to massive peaks and falls, sometimes rising greatly in price (sometimes nearly doubling) in a matter of days, sometimes due to rumours (regardless of whether they are true or false) or the particular season, as mentioned above. These items tend to drop sharply very soon after the rise, and then steadily fall again for an undefined amount of time before spiking again. Party Hats, however, have the potential to spike much more frequently (sometimes in the matter of just a fortnight), yet their patterns are much more unpredictable, and their massive prices make them bad items to invest in if one wants to achieve maximum returns.
Other holiday items, such as Christmas Crackers, Pumpkins and Easter Eggs are used less for investments, and rather as collector items, due to the fact that they can not be worn in any way, and there is a risk of one accidentally eating/using one of the items, destroying the item, or greatly decreasing it's value.
Other Items
Treasure Trails
Some of the rarer items that are still available are Treasure Trail items, which can only be obtained by members at the end of a scavenger hunt. The starting clue for the hunt is a rare monster drop. Generally, the tougher the monster, the better the reward at the end of the hunt. Mainly the reward is armor (black, adamant, and rune), and occasionally it comes trimmed in lighter color of the armor or gold. Trimmed armor, especially gold-trimmed, is extremely rare and prices are always at a premium. Gilded armor, which is solid gold armour with similar stats to Runite armour, is the rarest and most expensive treasure trail armor set. Another type of Treasure Trail armor is what is known as God Armor. God Armor is trimmed, but the trim comes in three different colors and designs consecrated to one of the main Runescape gods: Green with the symbol of Guthix, White with the symbol of Saradomin, and Red with the symbol of Zamorak. Other items obtained from Treasure Trails include Headbands, Berets and Cavaliers (no stat-boosting qualities) or Wizard Boots, Ranger Boots and Robin Hood Hats (Magic or Ranged bonus). None of these, with the exception of trimmed armor and god armor, are available to free version.
Slayer Items
With the Slayer skill, players can also fight unique monsters which drop powerful weapons. The number of players that can fight these monsters increases over time and as a result the price of these items is decreasing.
Conclusion
The RuneScape economy is constantly changing. It is these price changes that keep players on their feet. Since it is usually more profitable to sell to a player than to a store and is usually cheaper to buy from a player than from the store, prices are frequently going up and down and are seldom stable over any given length of time.
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