sees_all1

In a nutshell, my oversimplified model does say this. In runescape, there are literally hundreds and thousands of items. I do not wish to go into discussion on how inflation would affect each and every single one of these items, doing so would be pointless. But you do have a valid point - inflation affects different items in different ways. That also goes into how you calculate inflation. There are many ways to do this, including putting together "baskets" of items that every runescaper needs, and then calculating the price change in these baskets. One thing that complicates things is uncertainty - we have absolutely no idea how many scimitars there are at any one point in time, how many nature runes, how many ... you get the picture. We also have no idea the rates these are created or destroyed, further complicating everything. But that is getting into different topics than the one I'd like to discuss at this point - pure inflation. I'll go ahead and read it... I love reading different points of views. Thanks for the heads up on the older materials.

A few years ago I took my first economics class- I have to say some of the things I learned were interesting, while much of the stuff was boring. The first thing my economics teacher told me is that to be an economist, all you need to do is say you're an economist. I don't know the accuracy of that, but he said there was no exam, no boards, no thesis required. All you need to be an economist is an interest in it. There is a lot of discussion recently over the Economy of Runescape, whether its micro, macro, in between. Believe it or not, discussion on prices of certain items, inflation, or even experience vs. cost all deal with Economics. If you've read this far, are still interested, and have no economic experience (classes, reading, whatever), I suggest you read (or skim) the wikipedia articles on economics, supply and demand, and inflation. There are many other topics in Economics, and certainly many we can apply to Runescape. Anyhow, the primary purpose of this thread is to discuss and debate different things relating to economics and runescape - I don't know how long or how far this thread will go, and if it seems to die I'll try and post a new, economics related thing that everyone can discuss. I'm also starting this thread, in part, because I had a disagreement with Ts_Stormrage and the article they posted in the October 18th Tip.it Times. I want this discussion to be both highly visible, and easy to participate in, but I also want it to eventually cover more areas than Ts originally talked about (but couldn't fit into a single article). So - the first Topic I would like to discuss is Inflation in Runescape. Please notice that in my examples I'll make gross simplifications. This is so I can deal with only one or two variables at a time, and I suggest that when discussing these things you do the same (otherwise our heads will hurt from all the things we need to keep track of.) [hide=Topic 1: Simplified view of Inflation - Not the cause of all runesape's problems?] Inflation: In economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. When the price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation is also an erosion in the purchasing power of money – a loss of real value in the internal medium of exchange and unit of account in the economy.(Wikipedia) So, in Runescape terms. Inflation means that after some period of time (days, weeks, months, years) one GP will buy less goods in Runescape than before. How does inflation occur? Suppose there are 100 active players in runescape. Each player has 25 gp. There are 100 items total in the entirety of the runescape economy. Players are only able to trade items, or kill a type of monster, which drops gp only. Say each of the 100 players kill a monster, and the total amount of gp in the economy grows from 2500 to 5000. The number of items stay constant. This economy has experienced inflation of 100% - 1 GP now buys exactly 1/2 of what 1 GP would buy before. Inflation would also occur if items were lost - Instead of 100 items total, there were 50. Then one gp would buy less, because there is less to buy. Once again, this is a gross over simplification of what goes on in the Runescape Economy. It doesn't take into consideration that new items are created, there are many different types of items, new players enter and old players leave. It doesn't take into consideration that XP is valued, that shops sell items, etc. What happens with pure inflation? Suppose a player plays for a year, has 10m in their bank, and then quits. They obtain their money only from runecrafting. A year goes by, and inflation was at 100%. The player is only able to buy 5m worth of stuff. However, because this is pure inflation, they are able to earn GP at a rate 2x as fast as they were, or at the same rate when you account for inflation. What if the player also had 10m of items in their bank? Because GP is now worth less, the items are worth the same if inflation is accounted for, meaning they would be worth 20m (10m deflated GP). In pure inflation, the only thing that is worth less is the GP. Items are still worth (relatively) the same, making profits by creating items still gives the same amount of deflated GP. There are other was to get GP - PvM. Monsters usually drop GP. If that is the primary thing the monster drops, hunting them becomes less profitable over time, with inflation. Whew, that's quite a bit. I will update this space in the future, but I'd like to see what everyone has to say on the topic. Anything major I missed on the topic of inflation? Anything you respectfully disagree with? Anything I need to clarify? What do you have to say on the topic? What I don't understand is why people dislike inflation so much. I don't think everything we're seeing now is pure inflation, and inflation is just a symptom and not the cause of the problems. It seems to me that telling Jagex to fix inflation is like demanding a new product to be created... Chipotlaway. It fixes the fact that you have to buy tons of new underwear, but it doesn't fix the fact that you're bleeding from... well you know. Let the discussion begin.[/hide] [hide=Topic 2: Supply and Demand, with some historical context.] Alright. Last night I posted my views of inflation. I've spent some time clarifying, but not much time really *debating*. I would like to propose that inflation has very little to do with runescape's current economic problems (well, until we can get into a discussion about "what is money?"). So - What is the reason for crazy high, and rapidly increasing prices? I would like to propose that is supply and demand, and the invisible hand at work. Supply and demand is a topic that is best explained graphically, and can be fairly confusing, so I'll try and get graphs up ASAP. Remember back to January 2nd, 2008. That's right, almost two years ago. Unbalanced trade was removed from the game. 1/2/08 was the death of RWT, but more importantly, gold farmers selling 1m gp for $3 each. If you've ever visited a gold farming website, you'll have noticed that not only did they sell gold, but they also sold lobsters, swordfish, sharks, yew logs, pure essence, and a variety of other materials. Gold farmers typically DID NOT play the game as intended. What I mean is that Gold farmers would only "play" to gain materials in order to sell to other players. All gold farmers did was supply raw materials to the game. With the removal of RWT (or significantly limiting it), gold farmers could no longer make an easy profit. It became impossible to RWT raw materials, but not so impossible to RWT weapons or GP. I remember that after unbalanced trade was removed, for some reason this prices of cooked lobsters plummeted. I don't have any historical records to point to, and if anyone could provide it I'd appreciate it. I remember this so well because I lost so much money on it. I purchased several k's of lobsters on the GE at minimum instantly, and the price dropped down to 150 each. (EDIT:I've been searching some forums, and from Tip.it's price check of 2006 - http://forum.tip.it/topic/61735-price-list-overview/ (lobster is 220-250) From another forum post that was last editted Mar 12 2007 - http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=6700253&f=225 Lobster is 180-210. I'm still looking, but its looking fairly consistent...) If this is what I think it means, it meant that the gold farmers were dumping all of their items. There was a massive store of items that weren't intended to be used by the owners. I think it might be plausible that over the course of a year or two, these items have been sold off. So, the facts. With the removal of RWT from the game, Jagex severely limited the supply of popular items that were gathered by gold farmers. When the total supply curve shifts left (less supply at every point on the curve), the equilibrium price goes up. The speculation - The amount of stored items have been dwindling, and is gone now. It has taken about a year to use up all of the stored items. Now that all the stored items are used, the prices are shifting to the new equilibrium values. This helps explains why pure ess is 220 each versus the 30 each two years ago, but why fire runes cost next to nothing. Pure inflation would mean everything rises in price. Supply and Demand means that only some items are affected - the ones that were gathered by gold farmers. This does not explain why some items, like some armours, have changed in price, but it does (in my opinion) a good job with raw materials. Topics I haven't covered that's related to supply and demand, which I might do later - Price floors and Ceilings Infinite Supply and money sinks What do you think? Is my explanation plausible? Unlikely? Have a better idea what went on? [/hide] [hide=Topic 3: What is GP, actually? (and wtf is with junk trading)] I touched on this with my discussion of inflation, that even though price levels rise, it doesn't affect players. How could this be, if GP - the primary medium of exchange - becomes devalued? So, I have two definitions for GP, similar to money, GP is the primary medium of exchange, and GP is a store of value. As in, GP is bankable, was never worth nothing, will probably never be worth nothing, and is near-universally exchangeable for items. And that sums it up really, all you need to know. Just kidding. You're probably wondering right now, if GP is the primary medium of exchange, how could there be junk trading? That is a good point, and it is almost exclusively a failure of the hand that drives the market - Jagex. When I say this, I mean that the system that Jagex has devised is quite ingenious, while not allowing for massive amounts of Real World Trading, it allows for limited free trade. But that's the problem - trade is limited. If trade was completely free, we had no updates, and we're at some long run point in time, there would be an equilibrium. Runescape Gold would have a monetary value, much like a euro has a value of the dollar. The prices of items would remain relatively stable, because GP would be stable. That isn't the case, and it never will be. Because Jagex cannot afford to allow RWT, they had to make the markets sticky. To better understand what one GP is, I'd like everyone to imagine a runescape without GP. How would you get items that you wanted? You would have to make them yourself, kill monsters until they dropped them, or accumulate another item which you could trade someone for to get a mutual benefit - They want what you have, and you want what they have. Merchanting in this system would be incredibly easy. All someone would need to do is accumulate an item, and be conservative in what they gave, but liberal in what they accepted. This actually happened - and still does happen to some extent. An example my economics professor gave was Nazi POW camps. Each POW would get a care kit every month. Inside would be items like cigarettes, tinned meat, toothpaste, and a candy bar. What happened? Cigarettes became the medium of exchange, and you would get people posting their prices - Will buy all toothpaste for 4 cigarettes each, will sell all toothpaste for 5 cigarettes each. In that example, there were only several items. Imagine Runescape not having a GP. If nothing became the universal medium of exchange, trade would rarely occur. You would have to pair your item, one of the many thousands, to someone else's, of many thousands. The GP makes everything more liquid, easier to buy and sell. So, back to junk trading. When multiple items are stuck, junk can be used to supplement the purchase to make it more fair. These items, whether it be junk, or under priced, have a VERY key role in the Runescape Economy - they help make trade possible in a restrictive world. When a new item is created, and demand is exceptionally high for it, Jagex will never be able to correctly guess the price. Junk allows these items to be traded outside the GE... but more importantly, they're traded. [/hide] Topic 4 - Price floors and Price ceilings: the cause of all things junk For my forth topic, I would like to discuss pricing limitations, specifically floors and ceilings. First, I want to make a distinction. There are natural and unnatural pricing limits. An unnatural pricing limit is one where the market dictates the price of an object to be higher or lower than a limit that Jagex has imposed in the game. A natural pricing limit is a price where the item can be converted directly to or from currency, via alching, shops, or into something else which is convertible via skills. Straight to the examples: Cooked Swordfish have a med and a max price of 500 each. If the market were allowed to dictate the price, you can be sure it would be much higher, probably around 750-1k each. Other items in recent memory to have an unnatural price cap include death runes, lobsters, and strength potions. An unnatural price ceiling set by Jagex does two things. The first is it keeps the item at a very specific price, which may or may not be affordable to all (which is usually the point, make the item affordable). The second is it stops the market from being fully efficient, it causes a shortage. More people would supply the item if it were a higher price. If you took an economics course, the teacher would probably show you some nice graph with an x, and a line underneath the x. Then they'd start talking about the dead-weight loss, etc. A natural price ceiling is one that occurs in the market. I've found that in runescape these seldom occur, and an example of this would be the disparity between uncooked and cooked food. Cooked food will never be worth less than uncooked, because people value experience. A better example would be death runes. When stores stocked items infinitely, the prices of those items could never get much above the price the store set. If death runes did not have a price ceiling placed by Jagex, people would sink millions of GP into stores to buy death runes to make a 1-2gp profit on each. Another example of a different kind would be the rares market. A natural barrier in place is the 2.1B GP limit. Although the most valuable items are not remotely close to that, there could conceivably come a point in time in which a Christmas Cracker is worth 2.1B GP, but cannot be worth more because it is impossible to obtain more GP than that in a single trade; it is impossible to change the price valued on the GE. An unnatural price floor is one set by Jagex that does two things. The first is it keeps the item at a very specific price, that makes it worth while to obtain this item to people that have time. The second is that it causes a surplus, there is too much of this item being created and the quantity demanded at the current price is very limited. An example in recent memory are willow logs: they had a price floor of 18gp, and after it was removed the price dropped to almost nothing. Similar to price ceilings, one could discuss and examine the dead weight loss, and the surplus. A natural price floor is one that occurs in the market. The biggest and best example of this is the high-alchemy spell. An item will never fall much more than its high alchemy price sans the price of a nature rune. People value magic experience, and high-alchemy is one of the neutral approaches to gaining experience in magic. Another natural price floor is zero - an item will never reach zero because then it would be free, demand for such an item would be virtually limitless. So, after defining natural and unnatural price ceilings and floors, this takes the discussion to junk and untradables. These are only created when the market is unable to adjust in a timely fashion to the natural equilibrium. One of the biggest fears that Jagex has is that all armour under steel will fall to the status of junk, because a nature rune costs more than high alching nets you. This arguably would ruin the experience for a lower level; there is no incentive to work hard to earn your keep. The last point I would like to make is that markets with unnatural price ceilings are negatively affected, because as the value of currency is lowered, the difference between the natural price and the ceiling becomes much greater. This is an argument I've rarely heard used against me when I say inflation doesn't hurt the players, but it is true none the less. The easiest way to fix it is to allow prices to be set by the players, and not some arbitrary limit on the GE. Alright - anything that I missed? Also, I'm welcoming discussion on any past things I've written.

Just tried that for two hours, could never get it to where it was (I've missed an attack turn about 20 times now... 1 pk total instead of the 4-5 I would normally have, and that's only because they didn't eat at 25hp, and with a B-Ax I hit 0,0,then 25. Go figure.) Anyhow, to add insult to this, I died because I didn't eat after spam clicking a swordfish - but I don't blame that on this particular update, just the game engine. On each one something needs to happen.

only for the essence.

I apologize if my post came off as attacking you - I did not mean it to. I understand that you put a lot of thought into your article, and a lot of effort. I would like you to consider that all of the effects that you have talked about are not just inflation. I don't know if there is a term that can describe everything that has happened, but its more complex than inflation. I do not believe that I am shortsighted, greedy or ignorant, and I would invite you to reread my first post after you have calmed down, and perhaps in the future debate me when I can put an appropriate amount of time in a hypothesis of what has gone on. Right now I do not have the time, nor the inclination to express all of my views right here, especially because it won't be seen after 45 minutes as the thread moves on to the next pages. You will hear my point of view in the future... And I look forward to reading what you have to say on the subject.

If the prices of everything in game rises by 30%, who does that hurt? If most of your wealth was tied up in items anyway, it doesn't hurt you. If all you had was 50m in cash, and nothing else, sure you might be out of 30% of your GP, but it doesn't seem like you use it anyway... Inflation only hurts low levels, but even they're not affected because they tend to make their own items, and if they sell those items, they'd get proportionately the same amount. All I see these days are people ranting about inflation, as if they knew what they were talking about. I think sometime in the near future I'm going to try and educate a few of you, and myself, into understanding what has gone on in a historical perspective.

The new engine screwed up all the positioning in GOP, making some spawns impossible to get orbs quickly.

Alright, a little background. I'm pure F2P, 92 strength and 80ish magic. I used to love to go on PvP worlds, and pk with magic. It was very simple, really. Pick someone in full rune, and start blasting them. Wear them down, and finally they'll realize that their full rune gives me a huge advantage, so they take it off. Lull them into a false sense of security, they'll lax on their eating (eating at, 18-20 hp rather than 24-26). Pot, prayer, and B-ax or 2h them with a high chance of success (I hit up to 30, so a 1/3 rate of pk with one shot). This worked. I could switch from staff to 2h with one click, a huge element of surprise for my opponent, they can't eat in that time frame. Now, with the new setup, I have a staff, but auto-cast is used through the magic interface. If I switch from a staff to a 2h, I get a message "Not enough runes to cast this spell" repeatedly, until finally after the 4th or 5th time it realizes I want to attack with my 2h and not magic. The only way to get around this is to turn auto-cast off, and then switch to a 2h, but even then it takes one time step to do that, and all the time they have a chance to eat up. Before I could PK with F2P magic. Now I can't, because they took away the finishing weapon option.

I like most of these, they're much different from my suggestion. I'm not sure where the Fate rune comes from, I'm assuming quest related. The special transfer is an interesting idea, but may be a tad overpowered in multi-areas (unlimited specials?) Also, attack speeds for different spells are a little weird, I thought different staffs had different speeds.

Rather than quote everything, and nitpick over parts, I'd like to make sure that I understand what you've said. You've told me that unstable prices of raw materials affect game play in a negative way. I agree with this, but I would not call that inflation. I would say that is the market adjusting, and perhaps at times over correcting because of external influences (merchanting clans, general panic amongst players), but I would certainly not call it inflation. You've also told me that increases in price levels of certain fighting materials (food, potions perhaps) is also bad for the game. I disagree with this, because I believe it allows room for new players to grow and enjoy the game ("wow, I can actually sell my lobsters now at a decent price," or "I can't wait until I can fish swordfish") But that's my opinion, don't flame me for it. Last thing was that you disagreed with my idea about deflation. I didn't put a lot of thought into this, and it was added (fairly) hastily at the end. But I would like you to consider the following scenario: Every player has 100% earned potential, grabs 76k and kills someone with 25k, then grabs 25k and dies to someone with 76k. The items that everyone loots would be worth so much more than the 25k per person lost. Some of it might be money or statues, some of it might be items, but I'd be willing to bet that most of the drops are rune items. 75% of my drops usually contain a battle axe, scimitar or 2h. If this was the case for everyone else, then these items would be worth less than they are now. However, this scenario does hold many things constant, and I understand in game its different. I'd like to say "who cares" if every item's price increased at a rate of 3% per year - its not like many people lose from that. I don't think Jagex cares either, and they wouldn't do anything to *correct* it.

I'm sorry, but none of you have convinced me yet that inflation *is* a problem. What does it matter that one gp one year is worth less than it was a year before? If you're actively playing the game or you invest in items, it shouldn't make a difference. Your *wealth* will remain the same every day. The only bad thing is if all your wealth is in cash, then it'll be worth incrementally less. Also, why do you say there is inflation? It's difficult to determine when no one has said "this is a basket of items every runescaper needs," and then tracked the value, and the number of them in game, along with the number of players. If what you're concerned about is PVP items in drop tables becoming less and less expensive, then that isn't positive inflation, its negative. Meaning one GP buys you more.

yeah, I tried to keep it pretty basic. I've also taken a couple econ classes, I'm looking to get a minor in it. Anyhow, I don't think merchanting clans will be a big problem in the future, because it seems that Jagex has / will take action against them.

Sorry I've been away for a bit - I've been busy. I've taken out a lot of the spacing the forum changeover put in, if there is something you don't particularly like please tell me, and I'll get on changing it. I'll try to keep it updated better. @mattr - thanks for the support, I'll get to adding you right now.

I disagree. During that time, I was training strength at moss giants, and returning to the GE would have taken a significant amount of time. Also, if every time that I noticed that a merchant was not going exactly as planned, and I dumped my goods, I would waste significant amounts of time on offers that never pan out. The beauty of the GE is that I can forget about my offers, so to speak.

Are you talking about the new monster? I'm considering changing the melee attack's maximum, but I don't want to give it the whole triangle. It should be difficult but not impossible. no just to weed out the mage PURES so y dont you make it innacurate so it will only hit people with low defense I think there are few mage pures in the game; most are tanks. Even if there were mage pures, they would still have a great deal of difficulty meeting the 750 non magic/hp skill total minimum, seeing as they wouldn't have atk, str, or range to take up a good portion.

Thanks for the kind feedback. Lol. That was intentional. I'm still looking for more sections to add, I think one or two more should do it. Also, I need to check out some of the new shops and see what their price is relative to the GE; there might be some ways to profit with that.

Lol, probably. I just hope that I'm not in any of the pictures, being the fruitcake you're pointing out. Keep in mind I usually play in LD on a laptop with no mouse :oops: I wish your guide was mandatory reading for new players to GOP.

This guide is intended to help the everyday 'scaper with their GE ventures. It is written from a F2P point of view, and assumes no skill levels. I can't promise that you'll make millions, its really up to you. I can promise that if you follow these guidelines, use your head, you'll be much better off in the long run. If you're diligent, you might end up richer than your wildest dreams. Please know that this is a work in progress, and I'll work on it as much as my schedule permits. Table of Contents: 1-Be wary of crazy promises - they're too good to be true 2-Economics of Merchanting clans explained 3-How to profit against Merchanting clans 4-Patience is a virtue (and keeping a level head!) 5-Putting your GPs to work 6-Disparities between Shops and Players 7-The Seasonal Madness 8-Event minded individuals foresee the future? 9-The parts or the whole are worth more? 10-Never pay for XP again 11-Hints and Tricks for PVP 12-An investment in skills is a profitable investment [hide=1 - Be wary of crazy promises - they're too good to be true]We've all seen the macroers and autotalkers screaming at the GE - Join my Merchanting Clan. You'll make millions! Or the, Do as I say, Do what I do, Make what I make! It doesn't work. If their "secret" to millions was so easy, and worked so well, why are they sharing it? Are they wearing a p-hat? Probably not. The truth of the matter is that the best way to earn gp is to find a production skill that you don't mind, and do it for a while. I repeat - there is no magic to making gp. This might seem as a shock to some of you, but I hope you read on. There are some good tips in here that will help you earn GPs in the long run.[/hide] [hide=2 - Economics of Merchanting clans explained]First off - Merchanting clans are trash. The secret to making money is not blindly following people you don't know, buying stuff you don't want in hopes it'll rise a few gp. That's right. Merchanting clans don't work. There are too many things that can go wrong. 1. Merchanting clan leaders typically stock up on the item before they announce it, and they sell it off as their clan is buying it up. 2. People in the clan that usually buy up the item first dump early, way before the set price. 3. Jagex has been known to drop the price of heavily merchanted items, i.e. limpwurt roots. If that's not enough to put you off merchanting clans, allow me to explain the ideal merchanting clan using economics. -The honorable leaders decide they are going to merchant item x. Here is the price and demand schedule for item x. Notice how supply and demand are not points, but rather curves. You will learn this in any economics course, it is an important, basic concept. -They agree to announce the item at noon. When noon comes, they announce the item, the dump price. They, and everyone else immediately put in offers for max (fair competition). The demand curve shifts to the right, because of all the new demand of the item. -The item steadily rises in price, due to demand increasing at every point on the price schedule. This is easy to see on any of the graphs in the GE. -Every day, the item rises 5%, like clockwork. When the item isn't quite the dump price, but right before, people are still supposed to buy the item, even though it isn't very profitable. -The item finally reaches the dump price. The price was updated at some unknown time, so people immediately begin the sell-off. The demand schedule goes back to its original place, but at the current price, very few people are interested in buying. Also, to make matters worse, there becomes a huge surplus in supply. -Only the lucky few are able to sell their items, and even then they won't be able to sell very many of them. Notice how at each price, there is a MASSIVE gap between the new supply line and the demand line. -The price continues to plummet as the surplus is used up, below the natural equilibrium. -Finally, after about two weeks, the item is back to normal, most people lost money, while a lucky few gained money. If you want to profit, DO NOT GET CAUGHT UP IN MERCHANTING CLANS.[/hide] [hide=3 -How to profit against Merchanting clans]Hopefully by now I've convinced you not to participate in merchanting clans. If not, good luck; don't come crying to me because all I'll have to say is I told you so. Recently, Gold bars were merchanted. Here is a picture of the graph: The clan, "be mercher" was looking to raise the price on the second hump - their goal was 480 per gold bar. Notice it never got remotely close to where they promised it would - heck it was 150 gp off. Notice the other key point of the graph. At the very end, after it crashed, it bounced! That's right, the gold bar (right now) has an equilibrium of about 240-250. Noticed that there were some individuals that were able to buy it for 210-220. Heck, I even purchased 10k for 230 each, and sold them for 241 each; a profit of 110K just for being aware of what is going on. I could have waited and sold them for 250 each for more profit, but this leads to this section: Buy items that have recently crashed because of merchanting clans. That's right - crashed items are almost guaranteed profit. The key is to figure out about how much the item is worth. If you look between the humps, you'll see that gold bars averaged around 235-240. If you can figure out what a merchanted item is worth, and buy it for lower after the crash, it is easy profit.[/hide] [hide=4 -Patience is a virtue (and keeping a level head!)]If you find yourself in a sticky situation, do not lose your head. The easiest way to lose money is to sell some item for the minimum when its crashing. A few months ago I purchased 5000 uncut sapphires for 900 gp each. The next day they started going down. I put an offer into the GE to sell them for max (912 each). I waited. And I waited. It took a few days, but finally they sold. It might have been a very slow profit, but I ended up on top. Had I sold them for 870 each, I would have lost 150K. Instead I gained 60k. If you absolutely need your GP back, and you have to dump an item, you've over extended yourself. Panicking is a sure way to lose GP. Another thing - If you notice an item starting to rise, put a low ball offer in. One time, I noticed silver bars were rising. I put in an offer for about half way to minimum. Three days later, my offer completed (after having slept for two). I then was able to wait another two days, and sell for near maximum. If your item sleeps on the GE, you will have one of the first offers in when the price gets updated; they will buy from you. When Jagex decided that there was no more protect an item, Dclaws crashed. And then they introduced +1 BH worlds. All the poor sods that sold their claws for minimum were out a couple million, while the people that picked them up gained a couple. Not panicking served people well.[/hide] [hide=5 -Putting your GPs to work]Remember what I said towards the beginning? The best way to make money is to find a production skill, and grind a way at it. Here's the thing - You don't need to be at the GE every second of every minute of every hour that you're playing runescape! No longer do you have to stand in World 1 shouting: "Selling Item X, Y gp each!". So, find something you enjoy, put an offer in the GE, and only return once its completed! Some important things to remember: You can only purchase 10k bars, ores, bones, etc. every 4 hours You can only purchase 5k gems every 4 hours You can only purchase 100 weapons every 4 hours You can only purchase 4 rares every 4 hours. You can sell as many of an item as there are buyers. If you can buy the limit on the GE at a low price, you can trade it with players at the med price! This isn't advised, but it can make for the fastest turn around time. The key to making money in the long run is finding volatile, yet stable items. What do I mean by volatile and stable? I mean items that continue to fluctuate between 2 prices. Personally, I loved uncut sapphires. They used to continually go between 850 and 950 every few days, naturally. They have never been worth nothing, and you can always wait a few days to sell for the price you want. The key is to find an item which you can purchase, that uses a significant portion of your wealth, and that is volatile enough that you can make 1-3% on it each time. If you can make 1% on your wealth every day, you will double your wealth in 71 days.[/hide] [hide=6 -Disparity between Shops and Players]This section is intended to help the less well off, less skilled individuals. Over the past few months, there have been several guides promising 300k-500k+ an hour, simply by buying raw materials. With the new shop updates, and price limits removed from the GE, this has become true again. If you only have 310 gp, you can buy a death rune from a shop, then sell it to the GE for ~400. That's an immediate return on an investment. While this may not be great for multi-millionaires, it'll certainly help out the little player. Several key things to pay attention to - -The GE Graph -The Shop Price at each point -The Shop respawn rate. This might be a way to make a quick buck, but it won't sustain you like high gathering skill levels.[/hide] [hide=7 -The Seasonal Madness]It is no secret that come October 1st, everyone wants an H'ween mask. Every third Thursday in November, everyone wants a santa hat. Every spring, people want easter eggs. Rares are seasonal! If you have enough to purchase one in the off season, do it! I bought a green h'ween mask a year ago for.... drum roll please.... 8.6 million. That's right, for 8.6 million a year ago. I sold it for 19 million two weeks before halloween. Because I had the foresight to buy a h'ween mask, I made 10.4 million. Now, I could have stayed at the GE every day, working and working to get my pile up, but this was an easy investment. I just had to let it sit, while I did other things. Short term, it is relatively easy to buy a mask or santa in world 1, then sell it for +3% on the GE. This might be one of the riskiest ventures you take, but it can be the most rewarding. At one point in time, I made about 5 million in a week through various trading of rares. I can't promise everyone's results will be the same, but it isn't impossible.[/hide] [hide=8 -Event minded individuals foresee the future?]A couple years ago, I was alching rune scimitars in the GE. They were worthless - I'd buy them for 250 less than alch price, alch them, and net zero gp, and magic experience. A guy asked me what I was alching. I told him. He said that he'd pay me 17k for every rune scimitar I had. We traded for a few days before he ran out of cash. No doubt in my mind he's got more money that 95% of all rs players. What happened, two months after that? PvP worlds were released. Rune scimitars doubled in price! This guy must have had more than 500, and his investment paid off handsomely. It wasn't exactly a secret that PvP worlds were coming out, but he had enough foresight to stock up on materials that every F2Per would want. One time I read a story about someone who purchased thousands of steel bars the day construction was introduced, and literally tripled his money in a week. Was it magic? No, he has just a little bit of foresight to see that materials used in the brand new skill would be a hot commodity. Jagex has given enough hints that you can see what will be needed in the future. Good investors take advantage of this.[/hide] [hide=9 -The parts or the whole are worth more?]Here's an interesting thought - Rune platebodies, Rune platelegs, Rune full helms, and Rune kiteshields make up the Rune Armour Set (l). Sometimes it is near impossible to buy one piece on the GE. Sometimes it is amazingly easy. It seems that there is profit to be made in either making, or breaking sets. You are only allowed to buy 100 pieces of a type of armor every 4 hours, and you can't sell immediately afterward. But there's a way around it ! If you purchase 100 of each piece, set each of them, you've created an entirely new item! Likewise, if you purchase 100 of each set, break each of them, you've created entirely new items! Sometimes it is very profitable to break, or make sets. One time I started out with a level 3 character, and after making 40k buy just picking stuff off the ground, I was able to make sets, and sell them at profit. I did this so fast and made so much that from 40k gp, I made 1 million in under 48 hours! Once again, I can't promise similar results, as the markets have changed, but imagine the possibility, the potential. If you don't have millions to invest, you can still grow your money by setting. [/hide] [hide=10 -Never pay for XP again]There are many different ways to train skills in which you either break even, or make a profit. These methods are fairly well known, and well discussed. A little bit of research can go a long way. I'm going to list a few that I've used in the past with some success towards the end of this section, but first I'd like to discuss your most valuable resources. In runescape, there are two things that people value: GP and Time. Usually for any particular training method, you can do well with one, but do crud on the other. For example, cutting diamonds will give you EXCELLENT experience and fast levels, and take very LITTLE time, but will COST A FORTUNE. Methods and skills that make GP tend to take a horrendous amount of time. This is because others are willing to pay a premium for the work they don't have to do. Notice that almost every uncooked version on the GE is worth about 20-40% more than the cooked version. This is because cooking experience is valuable, and fast experience is worth much more. The key towards faster training and less spending is finding activities that are fairly repetitive, give less than ideal yet quick training, and can be done near a bank. There are many guides with many activities like this, but to name a few, Its no secret that: Smelting bars makes a profit, while super heating usually breaks even (mithril & up). Certain items in runescape have been deemed "worthless", and can be high alched for free. Crafting certain jewelry (sapphire necklaces, anyone?) usually makes a profit. (F2P only)The Chaos Alter in lvl 15 wildy has many free bones to bury. The biggest point of this section, the one that I'd like you to take home, is a little research goes a long way. Knowing the price of a nature rune, and many different items can determine fairly quick, free mage experience. Knowing the price of coal and mithril ore can get decent smithing experience, the list goes on.[/hide] [hide=11-Hints and Tricks for PVP] One thing I notice in PVP and BH worlds is that there are many people sitting around, doing nothing to gain Earned Potential. This is THE BIGGEST WASTE OF TIME! On a PVP world, you can do everything you can on a normal world, with a little more risk. Whether its training woodcutting, mining, fishing or cooking, you can use your time to get experience. Recently, I've been wanting to PVP. I went to a bounty hunter world, and I mined adamantite in high level wilderness. Adamantite ore, if you don't know, takes an excruciatingly long time to spawn, and sells for about 1200 gp per ore. The Volcano in the wilderness is the perfect distance to the spawns, so that you never have to wait between banking. As an added bonus, there are a bunch of hobgoblins which you can kill for limpwurt roots when you get done mining. They are also aggressive, and make it very difficult for others to jump you. Monsters don't follow the same rules as players when attacking. You may not have the mining level to do this, but the advice is good for general purposes: There is so much more that you could be doing instead of waiting for earned potential. If you're good at player killing, you can make 400k an hour on top of what you get skilling, simply by killing only your bounty hunter targets. If you're sitting down, you're wasting your time. If you're going to PVP, its critical to understand some basic things. -Have more than one food in your bank. When you're not in the middle of combat you don't need to eat your best food. Trout heals half as much as a swordfish, but costs 10 times less per constitution healed. When you're in a safe zone, its OK to be frugal. -25% Earned Potential is worth less than the 500k armour that you're wearing. Bring a teleport, it may save your life. More importantly, it will save your armour. -Don't let your Earned Potential get above 75% - the next time it updates, you will have wasted your time. [/hide] [hide=12-An investment in skills is a profitable investment]I started this guide out telling you one thing: The truth of the matter is that the best way to earn gp is to find a production skill that you don't mind, and do it for a while. I hope you take this lesson to heart. The fastest money making in runescape is not by buying and selling rares on the GE, its by grinding high level production skills. These take time to level, and when I say they take time, I mean its a considerable investment. Jagex estimates that there are 15,000 hours of gameplay in F2P, and I'll guarantee you that most of those are in runecrafting and mining. But those are the best money makers in the game. Mining runite can fetch up to 500k / hour, while runecrafting (F2P) can be 200k / hour in GOP, vs 600k+ / hour in running double nats (P2P). It takes a great deal of effort to get to those levels, but the rewards are outstanding. Its no wonder why there are so many level 3 skillers that have rares. Using some of the techniques described earlier, along with skilling, will grow your cash pile much faster than the 5k every 15 minutes you can get by begging...[/hide] Whew that's a ton. Feedback, suggestions, and corrections are appreciated. If I can think of some nice pictures here and there I might add them. I don't like all the formatted junk you see on some guides, so please don't suggest that. If you end up making moderate to significant contributions, I will include you in a "special thanks to".

Are you talking about the new monster? I'm considering changing the melee attack's maximum, but I don't want to give it the whole triangle. It should be difficult but not impossible.

works for me. Make the button nice and big, and put it far away from the "x".

seriously, wtf is a qwed? ;) How people spend their time on RS is their business, not mine. If they want to waste it perfecting another account other than their main, so be it. All that happens is they get two accounts, each worse off without the extra levels.

I've taken a liking to the newer "report abuse" interface, it makes it alot easier to report these narbs. I would personally like to see some IP bans given out, not only to stop their nub characters, but to actually punish them; its bad enough to have organized price manipulation - worse to listen to them gloat about their clans.

From my own personal experiences, I would tend to disagree. But that's just because its my own experiences :P . At any rate, we should be comparing apples to apples. To steer back to the thread topic - The comperable comparision is willows to coal, in which case willows are undoubtly faster (xp). Which, by the way, I agree that mining sucks. I think it is one of the skills that are comparable whether you do it in F2P or P2P, espescially in difficulty.

Maximum hit in F2P is currently 35 - -Amulet of Strength -Rune Berserker Shield -Rune Gauntlets (FoG) -Corrupt Dragon Battleaxe -Ultimate Strength -Strength Potion I've witnessed this, but forgot to take a screenie.... anyhow using this the Tip.it calculator says its 36...

When you get 50 rc, get a couple of tablets and see how quickly you can get with each... I think the fastest method (and semi-profitable) was: -Air staff -Water Tiara -Lumbridge Explorers ring -Water Runecrafting Gloves from FoG -Water Tablets from GOP -Teleport to Falador Example: Wielding the air staff, teleport to Falador. Run to the west bank. Bank, grab 26 essense Teleport to water altar, craft runes, repeat. I think that's the method water_is_nat (one of the 5? f2p only players to max) used to get 99 rc. Like the guide, good jorb.