Wonder

Which means all end game missions are worth it, question is, do they stack? I have a Morale captain with 3x Leader and a Combat captain with 3x Tactician. They do stack, with the multiplier applied to your ship and crew, but not to the 3% warehouse bonus.

2 sf 2 mor 1 cb No idea, but 9 > 10 takes so long, 11 could well be possible but unreached. I was under the impression that the level cap increased 1 level per region. Arc was 5, Skull was 6 and so on, so that would mean Pincers caps out at 10. Does anyone remember levelling a crew member higher than Region + 4 while still in that region?

Salve or Salve(e)? A quick (modified) calculation using the tip.it calc puts the result with Salve and not Salve(e) at 110 exactly. The way I always worked around the Dharok error on the tip.it calc was to just calculate it based on full 99 hp, then double the end result manually. In this case, the end result of 55 * 2 = 110.

I remember seeing the pic of the 110 being hit on the shades as well, but I searched and couldn't find the topic. That may have also been done before the addition of the last few bonuses (not sure if piety or the salve ammy (e) was out yet). I believe you're calculating the salve ammy bonuses correctly, but I was always unsure of how it related to the other bonuses (specifically potions and prayer). Is the 15%/20% bonus applied to the potted 118 or the base level 99? Does prayer such as piety increase the 118/99, or 118/99+20%? There are a variety of different ways that it could actually be calculated, but I think the way you're using it now is correct, because it makes more logical sense from a programming standpoint to do it that way, and because the final results seem to come out better that way. It's also important to remember how rare it is to max out, especially under optimum conditions. There is a very small window for your strength to be potted to 118, your hp to be at 1, your prayer to be full, and the undead monster you are fighting to have more than enough hp. Even then, you have to be lucky enough for dharok's special to activate, and there's no guarantee that when it does, it will be for the full bonus. I sometimes do my slayer tasks with Dharok at low hp, and I know what my max should be with the setup I use, and I rarely even come near to getting the full effect of Dharok's special when the special does activate. Unlike the way that the NPC seems to behave, it's not an all or nothing special for players; it generally falls somewhere between 100% and 200%, with the full 200% being fairly rare. A lot of things need to go right all at once to max out under those conditions you listed, so I wouldn't be completely surprised if nobody has ever hit the maximum possible in the game yet.

Not 100% on how the coding works or if I'm understanding it correctly, but it seems like that calculation increases the player's strength level, not the end result. My adjustment for dharok was to take the final result of the calculation as if there were no dharok special, then multiply it by the (x/99)+1 number. I don't know if it falls in the "$ext_multiplier" section, but I think it should. From what I can understand of what you said, it appears like it currently increases the strength level prior to the calculation of the damage.

For the specials, a lot of it was trial and error in the different parts of the formula. When I tried it as a boost to the weapon power with the dragon long special, I got what I considered to be a 'pretty number' of 30. Other tries got me decimals, and generally the simpler the better. You have to remember that it's people at Jagex putting these numbers into the game, and a person is much more likely to choose an even 30.00 over something like 30.83 or even 37.00. I tried the other weapons as a bonus to weapon power, and all of those turned out to be 'pretty numbers' as well. For the original numbers (0.00175/0.1/1.05), I never liked those in the formula. The 0.00175 wasn't an exact number, as the decimal seemed to carry on forever. The other two numbers were basically fixes to the original formula to get it to work more precisely. I never liked how it looked because they weren't 'pretty numbers', but I couldn't argue with the results. Initially I was never off by more than one damage point (even with the inaccurate potion calculation), and as the game progressed, all the new additions to the game did nothing but fit nicely within the ugly formula I had initially created. I expected as the maximum weapon power and additional features were increased, it would slowly start to diverge from my formula, but it doesn't seem like it has. I still haven't hit anything over what the formula has told me I would hit, and people do need to remember how rare it is to actually max out with the optimum conditions. In response to the 'pretty number' theory above, my guess was that they had to use ugly numbers to get the initial formula to hit exactly what they intended, so that the damage was fairly reasonable when the game was played. I still don't like it though, and I would be quite pleased if someone came out with a better formula that used nicer numbers. For the Dharok special, I seem to recall looking at that right when it came out, and the NPC Dharok's actual max seemed to be 19, with double that at 38 with the special. I don't know if that still holds true, or if those were the exact numbers, but I remember it being exactly double. NPC's work the same way that players do in terms of max hit, and for a time when the combat levels of NPCs roughly matched their strength levels I was able to predict their max hits with surprising accuracy. Dharok's hits led me to believe that it was as simple as taking the end result and doubling it (almost). I think my solution to it was to take the end result of the formula, then multiply it by [1+(hp missing/hp level)] if you were wearing the set. I always had a question as to what value to use in the hp level part, because it seems like it would be more fair to always use 99 instead of the player's level if it was under 99 (a player with 71 hp would have a greater advantage than a player with 99 hp if they were both missing 70 hp with the given formula). I was never able to test that though, as I was already 99 hp when the dharok set came out. Also with the calculation of the actual formula, I noticed a trend with the decimals on the end of the result. If the result was 30.1, I would hit 31 at a ratio of about 1:10 that I would hit a 30. If the result was 30.9, I would hit a 31 at a ratio of about 9:10 that I would hit a 30. Just something fun I noticed, and I don't really know whether it's true or not, because there's no real way to test it. A question I always had which you may be able to answer now was whether the potted levels were rounded by the system or not. The stats screen would show 118 when super potted, but does the actual result equal something like 118.7836 (arbitrary decimal for the purposes of discussion only), and which number does the formula use to calculate? This leads to the question of whether the stats drain once every set interval, or the decimals count down out of sight with the number in the stats screen changing only when it drops below 118.0000. I think it just uses the whole integer based on the way that potions will all wear off at the same time, but I was never quite sure. Additionally, are you certain the potion formula is level/100, or would level/99 make more sense? I haven't run any of the numbers, so I have no data to go on, but level/99 would seem more logical.

I can definitely give you a little help with this question, and probably a few others as well. The short answer to the question above was that I simply made the numbers up. I wrote the base formula that everyone uses, back in November of 2002. Back then, I was interested in maximizing my damage, and knew what I could hit at what parameters, and started asking others what they could hit as well. With that data, I basically figured out what numbers I would have to use to make it work. Back in classic, it was much more simple to figure out, without specials and all the other unique bonuses they added. I was able to get the base formula to within 1 damage point, and since then as they have updated stuff I have been able to figure out what they did and add it into the formula. As an example, I did a lot of work with I D R when the special attacks came out with RS2 to find out what people's maxes were with each special, and having the basic formula, was able to calculate the bonuses for each special. The max hit formula in classic is exactly the same as it is in RS2, just that RS2 has a lot more enhancements and bonuses than the original. One of my major limitations is something that you have pointed out, I never had an accurate formula for the potion boost. I used the best approximation that I could find. Elfio was working concurrently with me on his own version of a max hit formula (in 2002/2003) and he claimed he had an accurate potion formula, but he left the game before I was able to see it or ask him for it. I believe the reason we asked for the base strength and not the potted strength was because some of the calculation was done based off of your base level, and entering your potted strength would have skewed the results. I'll see if I can find my notes from back then, because I think I still have them shoved in a drawer somewhere, and see if that can refresh my memory on the subject further. I really haven't been playing much lately, and I have sort of lost touch with all the newer stuff like keris and the obsidian necklace stuff. Something a little easier to understand, for those who don't want to dig through all the code:

IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll agree that the first point probably has some flawed logic in it somewhere, but you probably have a better background in economics than I do, so youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll have to explain why. :P My logic was that since gp is a store of value, and has no inherent value of its own, the value of gp can only be equal to the value of raw materials/items. I guess this could be where the future value of money and items comes into play, because gp has a relatively lower future value while rare items have a higher future value. Would gp being worth less and rares being worth more in the future account for the difference between gp value and item value? Is there an actual economic theory that deals with the price-resource relationship, or are you just basing your comment on your own observations of the economy? On the topic of your observations, IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d also like to point out that you estimated that 1 billion gp is leaving the economy every day just as a result of construction. The 1 billion gp leaving every day really hasnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t had much of a noticeable effect on the overall economy after the first few weeks, and if losing 1 billion gp a day with little noticeable effect is happening every day, I think it may indicate a far larger amount of gp in circulation than most people would think. Back in June, you estimated the amount of gp in circulation to be approximately 1.78 trillion gp. Do you have an estimate for the price of all the items in the game, or even just an estimate on the value of all the discontinued items currently left in the game? For the second point you disagreed with, I just sort of threw some numbers out there without too much calculation. I just looked at the price of a white party hat around the time of price stabilization (200k), and compared it to the current price (about 250mil). The value of that item increased about 1250 times since then, so I figured the numbers I picked werenÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t really that bad. Regardless, the main point of it was to highlight a point, not give an accurate theoretical price analysis. :P Are you active at all on runescape anymore, on a new account? If you arenÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t, IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢d be curious to hear if you had any new ideas about the economy. I always got the feeling that your merchanting may have prevented you from saying every idea that you might have had in the previous economy discussions. In addition, do you think these shorter term semi-rares like the new treasure trails will be able to fulfill the function of the actual rares, if new semi-rare items are released on a more frequent basis?

What reason do you have for wanting the formula? The tip.it calculator seems to work well enough for most people.

How rares saved the economy, and why more discontinued items are needed in the future I understand your reasoning, but I think it is based on a few misconceptions. The current discontinued items are actually a necessity for the runescape economy, and I feel that more will be needed in the near future to keep the economy stable. The first misconception that most people have is that rares ruin the economy, or even worse, rares drive the economy. At best, rares are an indicator of the state of the economy. Instead of damaging the economy as most people think, rares actually help keep current prices stable. This is due to a couple of factors, one of which involves another common economic misconception. People believe that money and items are the same thing, which is actually untrue. Money (gp) is only a medium of exchange, and it has no value on its own. You canÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t gain xp with gp directly in runescape. Money is used to purchase raw materials for leveling, but the only value to money is that it can buy things that can be used to directly gain xp. From this, we can see one of the most important things to know about the runescape economy: the value of all the gp in runescape is equal to the value of all the raw materials in runescape. The value of the runescape economy is not gp+items, but instead, the value of the runescape economy equals all the gp in runescape, which is the same value as all the items in runescape. This is a rather confusing concept for some, especially when looking at the trillions of gp in the runescape economy. IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll give you a much simpler example to illustrate the point. LetÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s assume that in all of runescape, there is only 1 million gp available, split between all of the players. LetÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s also assume that there is only one skill (weÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll use smithing in this example), and there are 10,000 steel bars in existence. (This example requires a few other minor assumptions, but IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll skip them for the sake of simplicity) The supply of money available determines the price of the bars, so that each bar will be worth 100gp each (1,000,000gp divided by 10,000 bars). The value of the economy in this example is only 10,000 steel bars, not 1 million gp + 1,000 steel bars. The economy = items = gp. Now, to take our example one step further, letÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s begin increasing the supply of money. LetÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s now assume that the number of bars remains the same, but there is now 5 million gp available. The 5 million gp divided by the same 10,000 steel bars now means that the price of steel bars is 500gp each. The value of the entire economy stays the same though; the economy is still valued at 10,000 steel bars. The only thing that has changed is that it now takes more gp to buy a steel bar. If the supply of items remains the same, and the supply of gp increases, it costs more and more gp to purchase the same item. You may now wonder if the above situation applies to the complex runescape economy that we have today. The answer is yes. In fact, in the early days of runescape (around the introduction of the p2p version), this is exactly what happened. Around that time, more and more players were bringing in more and more gp through monster drops and alchemy spells, and as a result, prices increased dramatically. The price of nature runes, for example, was fairly steady at 100gp each since their introduction. After a while though, the new gp generated by new players quickly forced the price higher and higher, up to 600gp each at times. Around this time, something strange happened. People began to take a serious interest in the discontinued holiday items. This interest in rares is what saved runescapeÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s economy. IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll illustrate how using our previous example. LetÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s say that there is again 5 million available gp, 10,000 steel bars, and we are now adding 10 party hats. People are accustomed to paying the previous price of 100gp each for their steel bars, and they find that at that price, all the steel bars are valued at a total of 1,000,000gp each. This leaves 4 million gp unaccounted for in the economy, which needs to be allocated to the rest of the available items. This means that the 10 party hats are worth 400,000gp each. The introduction of party hats basically absorbed the effects of inflation, and kept the price of raw materials stable. This is exactly what happened in runescape, and what has been happening ever since. The supply of gp in runescape has been growing at an exponential rate, while raw material prices have remained roughly the same. To account for this additional growth in gp, discontinued items have increased in price dramatically to balance out the economy. If there were no rares in runescape, you would end up paying close to 10,000gp each for raw lobsters, and 30,000k each for natures. I doubt that anyone would enjoy runescape if they had to pay those prices. Everyone complains about the price of rares, but the only alternative would be an increase in raw material prices. So that is why rares have actually saved our economy. This next part deals with the original topic more closely, and explains why we actually need more rare items introduced in the near future. IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢m sure everyone is quite aware of the current prices of rares, with 8 different items now valued at over 100 million gp each. The problem we are soon to face is that rares prices are rapidly becoming too high to effectively serve the purpose that they have in the past. Fewer and fewer people are able to participate in the rares market, and eventually, rares will no longer be enough to counteract the continual increase in gp. This will mean that for the first time in about 4 years, we will see a massive increase in the prices of raw materials. There will be fluctuations in all prices, and the economy will be pure chaos for a while as a result. One way to prevent this from happening would be to add new discontinued items every year, to help the current rares keep up with the increasing supply of gp. The prices of these newly released rares will start small, but as time passes, demand can only increase. New discontinued items will not have an immediate effect, but in the long run, they are needed in order to ensure the stability of current prices. New rares would even help with the prices of the existing discontinued items, as the extra gp in the economy would now be split between more items. Prices for existing rares would probably stop growing at such an extreme and dangerous rate in response to new discontinued items. The point of all this is that rares are not the problem, as most people believe, but rather a solution to the actual economic problem. The real problem with the runescape economy is the excessive amount of new gp that is created every day, primarily through alchemy spells. Jagex has been taking steps in the right direction though, as we have seen in the construction skill, and more recently, the extremely rare treasure trail armor sets. There are also other ways to keep the economy under better control, and although adding new discontinued items may not be the best way to accomplish that, it wouldnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t be as bad as many people think it would be.

Boy Wonder 1 (126) I'm 126 with all of my fighting skills maxed, including magic, ranged and prayer. I don't have a fire cape, and I'm not really interested in getting one. I think it looks terrible, and I don't plan on getting one unless they update it (or I get really bored one day :P).

I got it working. It does a spin move on the new vampyres, them turns them into a 'held vampire' that floats in mid air so you can kill it. It uses 1/10th of the special bar, and you need to hit the vampyre to about 1/2-1/3 hp to get it to activate. It has a spin and bubble type thing directed at the vampyre, and then rings decend and rise around the now floating creature a few times. You can kind of make out one of the rings in this pic. All they seem to drop is vampire dust.

Special on the new staff can't be used on other players. I'm thinking it's charges to kill or weaken vampires. Edit- doesn't work on regular vampires either. Maybe the new Vampyres, trying that now.

I have another staff made, and it has a special attack bar when equipped. Probably what the (10) charges are for. Going to test it now.

First off, I should mention that I'm not an economist, and I only have a very basic background in that field. I'm only operating on ideas I can think up myself, and quite a bit of guess work. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have suggestions. That being said, I think Jagex should hire an economist. They're making enough money to afford it, and the game is desperately in need of it. I know they won't, but this whole idea is a bit of a theoretical exercise anyway, so I figured I'd throw that out there. Now as a reply to the master merchant himself, I'll offer my theories on the effects of implementing this idea on three things- the short term market, the transition period, and the long term market. These replies will all assume that Jagex has implemented this idea, and have done so in a way that players have decided this is the most advantageous way for them to spend their finished products. We can discuss the best way for Jagex to go about this in a seperate post. :P First I'll address the short term market. I think you said it best yourself on this one: When all the clever merchants such as yourself see this update, and realize what is going on, what's the smart move for them to make? Convert all (or most) of their rares to gp. Now, what happens when all the big name merchants rush to sell off their rare collection, and the bulk of the rs population sees it happening? Rare prices drop faster than you can blink. Prices may bounce around a bit, but you're going to see them dropping overall by a very significant amount. In addition to all the current players in the rare market selling off, you'll also get those investors who have been sitting on them for years jumping in and selling them off as well. I've seen your estimates on how many rares there are in the game, and I'm pretty sure you've greatly underestimated the number of players that have been holding them since the drop, just selling a few here and there to pay the bills. So that's the short term, a massive sell off of rares due to merchants foreseeing the value of gp as a better investment than the value of rares. Now on to the intermediate effects of this solution. Again, IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll refer to your assessments of the situation: As the short term scenario has shown, the relative values of rares will be dropping significantly, as gp will become the new hot commodity. Gp will take on a greater value, and will be able to purchase more rares and more experience relative to current gp values. Rares are still dropping, so people will, for the most part, steer clear of those and turn to raw materials, as they have become a much better value relative to the other values. Values will fluctuate pretty heavily in this period for all things; items not directly effected will being changing in price, as well as raw materials, rares, and the relative value of gp. As rares are limited, they should see a continual relative increase, but the addition of new rares to the active market from those holding them as a long term investment will cause a decline in relative values for this period. Most importantly in this period, the raw materials will be in greatest demand; merchants will begin to use their vast gp resources to cash in on the growth in this area and the gp currently in circulation will begin to spread to the raw material gatherers, distributing the current reserves a little more evenly. Finally, once all the values have become relatively stable and the rares stop being dumped into the economy, they will resume their steady upward climb. However this time, itÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s a much slower climb that starts from a point considerably lower than it is today. The climb will be so much slower because the amount of cash available to purchase the rares will remain virtually the same. Raw materials will become a much more important part of the economy, and this is how it should be. The only real value in gp is that it can purchase you experience. If you were unable to purchase experience with your gp, it would be worthless. If you were unable to buy rares with your gp, it would still be a fully functional currency within the game, without one select set of relatively useless items able to be purchased with it. You also suggest that higher levels will become more common due to all this. I disagree, because of the increased demand for raw materials. Initially, people will accelerate a little quicker in leveling, but once existing supplies are exhausted people will either be forced to pay gp thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s becoming shorter and shorter in (relative) supply, or gather the raw materials themselves. You have no idea how eternally slow it is to gather your own materials to 99 in any skill. :P Well, I think thatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s more than enough for one post, so IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll just add that I agree none of this will happen overnight, and IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢m not 100% positive that any of this will turn out as I predicted. If it does, or even comes close, it will solve numerous problems with very little negative effect on anyone. I think IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve addressed most of the points youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ve mentioned, and I really do appreciate intelligent replies to my ideas. Hopefully youÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll give this a read and another reply; you always bring up very valid points.

Taken from a previous post, replying to the gp cap and how players are worth more than the 2.1 billion gp cap that's currently in place. It addressed the cause of the skyrocketing rare prices, and offers a solution to bring prices back down. Most of it still applies to this topic: The problem isn't merchants, party hats, or any other rares either. The problem is inflation. Do you know what the original gp cap was when I broke it back in classic? 65k. That's right, not 65 million, billion, or trillion, the original cap was 65,536 gp. So how did we get here? Sure there are a few things that contributed, but the biggest cause, by far, is alching. The high level alchemy spell creates artificial demand, and that's what has caused this rampant inflation that's causing so many problems now. In a functioning economy, goods are only purchased until the demand is satisfied, and price either drops or the good stops selling. However, in rs, the alchemy spell keeps 'buying' your product, well after the market is saturated. As an example, I'll use myself and just two of the skills I've levelled. My fletching and smithing are both 99. To accomplish this, I've fletched over 53,000 magic long bows and smithed over 65,000 steel plates. Now, what did I do with all those items? I either alched them myself, or had someone alch for me. So for fletching, I alone brought 81.4 million gp(1536 x 53000) into the game, and for smithing, the figure is 78 million gp (1200 x 65000). That's correct, I checked my numbers. I alone brought close to 160,000,000 gp into the game from levelling only two skills to 99. I'm going to say that again at the beginning of this next paragraph just so all of you skimming through this post read that. A SINGLE PLAYER, RAISING JUST TWO SKILLS, CREATED 160 MILLION GP THAT DIDN'T BELONG IN THE ECONOMY. Now, that's just me, and that's just two skills. Now take into account all the other money I've brought into the game with other skills. I bet you have a pretty big number in your head now. Yeah, that's just me. Now multiply times the number of players who have 99 fletching, smithing, or any other productive skill. That's a big number, right? Now, keep that incredibly large number in your head, and ask me why party hats are worth hundreds of millions of gp. Merchants can ask for whatever price they want for a rare, but if the gp doesn't exist for a buyer to spend, the merchant doesn't do much merchanting, and the rare prices are much more reasonable as a result. Merchants aren't the problem, party hats and other rares aren't the problem. The economy is skewed due to artificial demand, causing rampant inflation. More and more money is essentially being 'printed' every day, and the amount generated is only increasing at an exponential rate as time progresses. So what can be done? Leave it alone, and wait for players to break the trillion gp mark? Sure, we could try that. But I'd rather try to shut down some of these money printing machines. Yes, I want to stop people from alching. Now, before you get all upset, I do have a reasonable solution. The spell wouldn't even need to be removed, and you could still alch if you wanted to. I just want to give you a better alternative. That's right, I want to help both you and the economy. Now I have your attention back, don't I? Trade in your finished goods. Not to a store, and not to an alcher. Bring your finished goods to master guildsman for your skill, and have him reward you with xp for your hard work. Now, at this point, you decide to mention to me that this feature doesn't exist in rs. And this is the part where I tell you it should. Jagex, write this down, you'll want to use this later. Allow me to take the steel plates I've just smithed to Horvik the Armorer, and trade them in for smithing xp. Allow me to trade those magic longbows in at the ranging guild for fletching xp. So, not only will the players following in my footsteps not create 160 million gp, but they'll actually have to make less items to get there. Not only is all the artificial demand gone, but a portion of the unnecessary goods are gone as well. This concept does need to be explained a bit further to iron out the smaller details, but that's the main point, that's what you and Jagex need to know. Money will stop being produced artificially, and there will be a reduction in the overall number of products produced. The overall net effect of this simple idea is staggering. The gp cap is just one of the minor things that's no longer an issue. In the bigger picture, the prices of rares will drop and people will level more efficiently, without a negative effect on the economy. Merchants will actually buy and sell useful items, such as ores or logs. As a result, the merchants will be forced to compete with one another over the raw materials. This means lower markups for the merchant, and more money in the pocket of the producer, and less out of the pocket of the end user. Everybody saves money buying raw materials, everybody makes more from selling their raw supplies, and rare items come down to a much more reasonable price. Merchants stop making literally billions of gp, inflation is suppressed, and the economy is fully functioning as it should.

I just ran the numbers on the max hits adjusted for the gloves, it seems the max hit on a player should be 95-96, and the max on an undead creature 103-104. I doubt these will ever be achieved, as it requires 99 strength, ultimate prayer, ssp, aggressive style, dharok axe, strength/salve ammy, fire cape, berserker ring, climbing boots, the new barrow-style gloves, and 99 hp. I honestly doubt we'll reach the full max possible, but I guess I'll give it a try anyway. :P Also as a side note to some users of the calc, if you choose the ssp option, the dragon battle special will have no further effect, so don't include that in the calculation if you are using the ssp option.

I initially wanted to do away with alching completely, or give it a drastic reduction in how much was returned. This is a much more simple fix, but I'd worry that all the raw material producers, like the miners and woodcutters, would take the biggest hit. It seems like raw material prices, and the incomes of those raw material producers, are tied directly to the high alch prices in most skills, most noticeably in woodcutting/fletching. Realizing that completely doing away with alching wasn't a viable option, I came up with this trade in idea as a substitute. Keeping the alchemy spell in place will hold the prices of raw materials steady, because the person creating the raw materials can make the final product themselves and get a portion of the money they deserve. I don't think the current prices of raw materials are very problematic at this stage of the inflated economy, so I'd rather not mess around with them too much. The point you brought up about recycling your fletching profits is also very important. People are allowed to buy and alch in a never-ending cycle, and it's a huge problem. The solution to this complicates things a bit further, but I believe it's still a workable solution. It would involve changing the alching spell to either mimic the general store buying patterns, or to just put a time limit on alching. If an item decreases in price as you alch more and more of them, people will be getting less and less gp per item, until they eventually reach a point that it is better to trade in for the xp reward. Raw material producers can still get their cash out if they need it, but for the most part, alching is drastically reduced, and virtually eliminated. Instead, if a time limit were introduced, that would just slow down the production of gp to a point that it would be a better use of a player's time to just sell for xp and earn more gp from a different source. Currently, I think players can alch something like 1000 items in an hour. This means that your 53k bows could be alched in 53 hours of game play. If Jagex were to only allow 100 alchs in an hour, it suddenly takes 530 hours of game play. Most players looking to get their money back using the recycling method will think twice before committing to 530 hours of alching. Again with this situation, raw producers are saved, items end up traded in to save time, and alching is cut way down. To address the issue of magic xp more specifically, I'll first point out that both of these methods would cut way down on the number of people alching for cheap/free. They would move on to other methods that are either faster or cheaper. The method would still remain an option to those that wanted it, but at a much slower pace. I've also heard good things about the new mage training mini-game, but I don't know if the people making money off of it were only doing so because of the initial demand of the new robes and wands. I haven't done too much experimenting in there, so I don't know if that's a viable break-even option for mages, but even if it's not, Jagex could make minor adjustments to that as well to provide for the mages that are taking a hit from the alch reductions. As for using hard numbers and percentages, that's not something I concentrated too much on, because it would require someone to run a whole bunch of numbers to find the optimal settings. The original numbers I was thinking might be appropriate were something like and 80/40 split, where players would get 80% of the current xp, and a bonus of 40% of the current xp when traded in. I think most people wouldn't object too much to the +/- of 20% on the current xp values, and the people that trade in their items end up getting 50% more xp (based on the adjusted xp) than they would from alching the item. I think this, coupled with one of those two alching adjustments listed above, is a solution that minimizes the damage to all parties involved, while doing the most to salvage the economy before it gets too far out of control. Like I said before, it's a complicated fix, and I certainly didn't want to throw the whole thing out there in a single post, but I think it can be done, and I think it needs to be done. Also, feel free to play around with those percentages I gave for the xp adjustments, I didn't run any numbers to check how things would turn out, so any feedback or thoughts on those would be appreciated.

I didn't want to get too complicated in the first post, it was already long enough as it was. First, yes, the alchemy spells would still be used, but very rarely. Jagex would have to make sure the xp trade in option was the right amount so that it was traded in instead of alched. This would most likely mean that xp on the initial production would have to be dropped a bit, but the compensation at the end trading in would make up for the loss, with a nice little bonus thrown in as well. It would have to be balanced properly to be effective, but I do think it would not only be effective, but a much better alternative than just leaving things alone. I do appreciate the feedback though, I wasn't sure if anyone would even bother to read all of that :P

Has anyone actually broken the cap yet and lost all their money? Back in classic I broke the original cap and it just split my pile of gp into a second stack. I don't know why they would have changed it in rs2 to just delete all your gp if the previous system already had the code to just make a new stack. I don't know much about programming, so I may be wrong on how it works, but it seems logical that it would just make a new stack like it used to in the older version of the game. That being said, the real issue isn't the gp cap. The problem isn't merchants, party hats, or any other rares either. The problem is inflation. Do you know what the original gp cap was when I broke it back in classic? 65k. That's right, not 65 million, billion, or trillion, the original cap was 65,536 gp. So how did we get here? Sure there are a few things that contributed, but the biggest cause, by far, is alching. The high level alchemy spell creates artificial demand, and that's what has caused this rampant inflation that's causing so many problems now. In a functioning economy, goods are only purchased until the demand is satisfied, and price either drops or the good stops selling. However, in rs, the alchemy spell keeps 'buying' your product, well after the market is saturated. As an example, I'll use myself and just two of the skills I've levelled. My fletching and smithing are both 99. To accomplish this, I've fletched over 53,000 magic long bows and smithed over 65,000 steel plates. Now, what did I do with all those items? I either alched them myself, or had someone alch for me. So for fletching, I alone brought 81.4 million gp(1536 x 53000) into the game, and for smithing, the figure is 78 million gp (1200 x 65000). That's correct, I checked my numbers. I alone brought close to 160,000,000 gp into the game from levelling only two skills to 99. I'm going to say that again at the beginning of this next paragraph just so all of you skimming through this post read that. A SINGLE PLAYER, RAISING JUST TWO SKILLS, CREATED 160 MILLION GP THAT DIDN'T BELONG IN THE ECONOMY. Now, that's just me, and that's just two skills. Now take into account all the other money I've brought into the game with other skills. I bet you have a pretty big number in your head now. Yeah, that's just me. Now multiply times the number of players who have 99 fletching, smithing, or any other productive skill. That's a big number, right? Now, keep that incredibly large number in your head, and ask me why party hats are worth hundreds of millions of gp. Merchants can ask for whatever price they want for a rare, but if the gp doesn't exist for a buyer to spend, the merchant doesn't do much merchanting, and the rare prices are much more reasonable as a result. Merchants aren't the problem, party hats and other rares aren't the problem. The economy is skewed due to artificial demand, causing rampant inflation. More and more money is essentially being 'printed' every day, and the amount generated is only increasing at an exponential rate as time progresses. So what can be done? Leave it alone, and wait for players to break the trillion gp mark? Sure, we could try that. But I'd rather try to shut down some of these money printing machines. Yes, I want to stop people from alching. Now, before you get all upset, I do have a reasonable solution. The spell wouldn't even need to be removed, and you could still alch if you wanted to. I just want to give you a better alternative. That's right, I want to help both you and the economy. Now I have your attention back, don't I? Trade in your finished goods. Not to a store, and not to an alcher. Bring your finished goods to master guildsman for your skill, and have him reward you with xp for your hard work. Now, at this point, you decide to mention to me that this feature doesn't exist in rs. And this is the part where I tell you it should. Jagex, write this down, you'll want to use this later. Allow me to take the steel plates I've just smithed to Horvik the Armorer, and trade them in for smithing xp. Allow me to trade those magic longbows in at the ranging guild for fletching xp. So, not only will the players following in my footsteps not create 160 million gp, but they'll actually have to make less items to get there. Not only is all the artificial demand gone, but a portion of the unnecessary goods are gone as well. This concept does need to be explained a bit further to iron out the smaller details, but that's the main point, that's what you and Jagex need to know. Money will stop being produced artificially, and there will be a reduction in the overall number of products produced. The overall net effect of this simple idea is staggering. The gp cap is just one of the minor things that's no longer an issue. In the bigger picture, the prices of rares will drop and people will level more efficiently, without a negative effect on the economy. Merchants will actually buy and sell useful items, such as ores or logs. As a result, the merchants will be forced to compete with one another over the raw materials. This means lower markups for the merchant, and more money in the pocket of the producer, and less out of the pocket of the end user. Everybody saves money buying raw materials, everybody makes more from selling their raw supplies, and rare items come down to a much more reasonable price. Merchants stop making literally billions of gp, inflation is suppressed, and the economy is fully functioning as it should. I remember a time when the gp cap was set at 1/32000th of what it is today. I really don't want to look back in a few years and remember the time when the gp cap was 1/32000th of 67,200,000,000,000 gp. I'd really hate to have to dish out a few trillion gp for a paper hat.

Never got a chance to finish it to 40 attack though :(

Jokes like that and people like you make me want to pull the lever. I hate you and the half hour of my life that you wasted.