r2-pleasent

Thanks for all the great feedback guys - appreciate it.

i dont buy that one bit. I do. Fanatics like him who spend hours on the forum making fake offers and new threads exclaiming how they got inside information that whips are now rarer are grounds for at least forum bans. Like Ares said, it's not hard to do that for a few hours, but why waste your time? Back on topic: R2, do you plan to come back to merchant, or just play the game/chat with friends? To be honest I'm not exactly sure what I intend to do. Lately I've been chatting mostly with friends in Fally Park, sure feels weird not having a few Phats to sell :P, but it's cool to talk to people that I spent so much time with in the past. I've always had a passion for high-level merchanting, but the pure grunt-work of getting back into that class is quite taxing. I'll see what the future brings.

I would say Jagex should implement a few updates into F2P, but not for the usual reasons. I believe f2p is quite outdated, and its main purpose is to attract players towards the game, and have them become members. There needs to be several updates to f2p. Perhaps update the very first quests, such as Rune Mysteries, which are there to demonstrate to players what a quest is like in Runescape. The better these initial quests are, the more players will be drawn in by their trial version, which results in more members. A simple update like this would take less time than a Members one, and would likely generate much more business for the company.

I disagree with that. Ordinarily there's a penalty for bluffing, but in rs you can easily bluff without penalty; that's the problem. On the official forums people make all kinds of fake offers and trades without consequence. That was core to the whole manipulation wave (yes, I still call it that) that really ended my days of being involved with the market. You can say it only was different - not unethical. I just always saw it as being very deceptive. (That's just my opinion and I know you've changed a lot since those days, and I don't think negatively of you anymore, so don't take it as an insult or anything) First of all, I never would make fake posts. Fake posts are dishonest, but they're also quite ineffective. The reason I say that there were penalties for me being caught bluffing are this: If I don't buy the item, my credibility dies, and that item will also get sold publicly. This means that any price I posted, I was willing to actually pay. That's why the prices went so high, and that's also why I don't consider what I did to be manipulation. To put that in the same category as a kid who says "Buying all Santas 40M each" on the forums is quite foolish.

I don't recall anyone asking you to post your opinion, either. It's a public forum, and this is a relevant post. I won't say that my methods are traditional merchanting methods, but to say they are unethical just shows you are quite uninformed about the Rares market. There's nothing wrong with bluffing, because if you get called, you're gonna lose your chips.

Here's the most recent bank pic I can find Jessy:

I understand some people are going to disagree with my money-making methods, but to say I am simply posting to boost my ego is a personal attack that I think is uncalled for. I am posting this because I think many people will find it interesting, as I have never really explained what happened with the Half Wine rise. The rest of your post is basically a flame and I won't get involved with it.

Alright, I'll edit that part down to a little piece.

Well, many people might have noticed I was banned awhile ago from Runescape. At the time I was quite apathetic towards the decision, as I rarely played Runescape anymore. Recently, however, I've started up again, and I decided I might as well tell my story of Runescape. Some of you may not remember me, but I was one of the bigger Party Hat merchants in Runescape 2. I began playing in July 2004, and within about 2 weeks I realized how I could make money by buying and selling coal at Falador East bank. It was much easier to world swap back then without the timer, so it was quite profitable. I very quickly made enough money to buy the new Treasure Trail items (such as Cavaliers and Pirate Hats), as well as lower level Rares, like Santa Hats and Masks. I merchanted these items until I had 3.5 Mil, and then purchased a Purple Party Hat. I fell in love with Party Hat merchanting, and could not seem to get myself off Runescape. I would scan the forums all day long, refreshing them virtually every 5 seconds, to make sure I'd be the first to get any good deals available. It did not take me long to work my way up, and before long I had a set. Around this time, many things were happening in Fally. Firstly, Party Hat sellers moved into the Park, which at the time only consisted of Party Hat merchants. Fally Park was by far my favourite place to merchant of all time, before it became overrun by the lower merchants. It allowed for a real community amongst Phat Merchants, one which will likely never be replicated. I made some of my greatest friends on Runescape around this time, notably Shadoken, Stevenxu, Duke (despite our differences), Papz2004, Apoc24, and many others. After a small break in December 2004 to around February 2005, I came back disappointed to see that Falador Park had become the trading grounds for nearly every item in the game. Phat merchants were pushed to the top, and the community atmosphere had dwindled down. This was also the first time that I had really become the top dog, as Duke had semi-retired, Ego Scorpion was long gone, and Unleash1 lost his money staking. I began taking advantage of my richness by forcing Rares prices in certain directions. Many players labelled this "manipulation", or deception, but it was executed perfectly legitimately. I began by buying up a large amount of a particular colour Party Hat. Let's take for example, Whites, which I purchased at around 16M apiece. I would buy about 5 Whites for good prices, somewhat privately, then I would begin paying more publicly. Of course, the merchants with Whites had already sold me theirs that day, so there wasn't much action on my posts. I would also use different language if I didn't actually want people to sell me the Hats. A post that I didn't want any sellers I would act desperate, for example: "Buying White Party Hat - Title Paying 16.8M! Someone PLEASE, contact me in game, I really need a few more Whites" My desperation, combined with my reputation as a very profittable merchant made it quite easy to post threads without actually getting any offers. If the odd person would post, saying he'd sell for my price, I'd make sure to do the trade, but to also do the trade in front of all the merchants in Fally, to show that I was for real. I would continue to pay more for another day or so, pushing them slowly up to around 18M. At this point, I would have around 11 White Party Hats, purchased at an average of maybe 16.4M. I would then search privately for a player that was buying 2-3 hats at once, and sell him the Whites at a 200K or so discount apiece. After this, I would sell as many as I could at the top price. Then, the prices would begin to fall, as more and more re-entered the market. I would then have around 5-6 Whites remaining, and would use them to push the prices extremely low, by using the reverse techniques (acting desperate to sell, etc.) This could all be done in about 3 days, and would not only increase my total worth, but also my buying power, because Party Hats would not be permanently going up in value. However, I took this tactic to another level in June 2005, when I orchestrated one of the most outrageous price rise in history: Half Wines. The Half Wine price boost was by far the largest impact I have ever made on Runescape. In mid-May of 2005, I realized that Half Wines had become very hard to find on the market, and that there were virtually no sellers of these items. They were also priced extremely low at the time, costing around 9 Mil apiece -- while Purples costed approximately 10M apiece. I realized this was a prime oppurtunity to execute some serious price hikes, as there would be no competition on the Wines market. I had also realized in the past that players are easily swayed by price rises, and it was very easy to create bubbles in Runescape. I began buying Wines up at around 9M apiece, but they very quickly rose up to around 30M, which was actually a natural rise at the time. The supply was very low at the time, due to several inactive players holding large amounts of them. I not only purchased every single Wine I could possibly buy at the time, but also gathered the Half Wine sellers who refused to sell to me. All of them knew who I was, and when I had them promise not to sell, or even advertise their Wines on the market, they all agreed. We called it the Half-Wine Owners' Club, or HWOC, and I swore to them I would have the prices up within a week. Well, it turned out that Wines were the perfect item to push up in price. This was all done during a massive rise in Phat prices, and players had tons of money to spend on the next big thing. Prices shot up on Half Wines, going from 30M to 50M within the first few days. And as the prices rose, so did the demand, as players all wanted a piece of the increase. It was somewhat fortunate that at the time there were virtually no sellers. I had purchased 12 Wines at an average price of 30 Mil apiece, and the profits at the time were insane. But, instead of selling at 50 Mil, which would have allowed me to make a huge amount of profit, I got greedy. I kept pushing them up, and up. Half Wines, for the first time in Runescape history, had become the most expensive items in the game! They had hit 75M apiece, when Blues weren't even 60M. It seemed like they would go on forever. However, there was another bubble forming at the time of the Half Wine rise. Party Hats had hit ridiculously high values, and suddenly, on June 15 of 2006, the prices went up another 25% in one day. This is when the bubble burst, and suddenly all Rares prices began to plummet. I had managed to sell 3 of my Wines for an average of 70M apiece, but I was still holding 9 of them through the crash. Prices of Half Wines went down 30M (rougly 40%), in a matter of ONE day. I ended up selling the rest of the Wines off for around 35-40M over the next little while, but I realized it wasn't really about the profit. It was about being able to do something that hadn't be done before. At least I used that justification in my head to offset the pain ;) - A chart by Duke Freedom demonstrating Half Wine prices After this, I continued to merchant in Fally. Duke Freedom ended up returning in the fall of 2005, and I began to talk to him on much more friendly terms. I was, as many of you know, banned in June of 2006 for Real-World Trading. This post is not intended to discuss my banning, however, and I'd like to keep it at that. Anyways, today I am playing p2p on my pure now and then, chatting with old friends. I've found the old passion I have for this game, which has inspired me to share my experiences with you guys. Thanks for hearing me out, I always enjoyed Tip.it's community.

I think it's wrong to judge the demand on these through forum browsing. The Treasure Trail forums are much different than the Discontinued ones, and threads hit the second page within about 2 minutes.

The problem with your theory is that clues are not cost-effective, even with Third Age items at 150M apiece. I mean, do the math on it, if the odds of finding a 3rd Age item is 1 in 12,000, and a Clue takes on average 45 Minutes to complete (which is extremely fast, but we'll assume you're a very good Treasure finder), and there's approximately 10 Third Age Items, so you find one piece every 1,200 clues, then at 150M per piece, this works out to 150M every 900 Hours, or 166K per hour. You can make double that running Nature Runes.

Well, I'll throw some of my thoughts in here. I think, first of all, that we cannot simply assume Rares will continue to rise just because they have in the past. Jagex changes this game every week, and it is impossible to judge exactly what effect an update is going to have on the market. One of the most important additions to the game in respect to Rare prices this year was actually Skill Capes, which no one originally pegged as a risk to Discontinued prices. However, with this update, it became obvious right away that people wanted these capes, and were now much more interested in spending their money to get the required levels. In my opinion, the problem with Rares wasn't inflation itself, but the fact that there was a huge amount of money in the game, and nothing to really spend it on. Other than Discontinued items, the next most expensive item up until very recently was a Dragon Chain, which was hovering around the price of 30M for awhile. The next most expensive items? Barrows items. This meant that a player could buy just about anything with 50M, without even having to sell his other items. So what happens to players with over 50M? They need to spend this money on something, and at the time, the only worthwhile items to invest in were Rares. However, this has recently changed. Nowadays, there are many alternatives for players with a large bank account. First of all, it has now become much more appealing to have 99 skills, for the same reason it is appealing to have Rares in many senses. Previously, there was really no way at all to show a player you had 99 Woodcutting, Herblore, Agility, you name it. The only skill that was displayable to other players was your Combat, which is a mix of several other skills. With Skill Capes, players can now actually show off their accomplishments, and to many people, this is MUCH more appealing than just showing off how wealthy you are. So, not only are these players spending their money on items like Logs, Ores, Fish, and other raw supplies, they are also contributing to many money sinks in the game. Money-sinks aren't necessarily GP-destroying, but also the consumption of usable items. By burning a log through firemaking, you are in effect transfering money into skill points. This is a non-reversible action, and therefore you are removing wealth from the game permanently. Now, this may seem to be quite a minor action, and the increase in players burning logs trying to raise their Firemaking would likely go un-noticed if it were the only skill affected by this change. However, other skills, like Construction, one which already is a massive money-sink, suddenly becomes even more attractive with the Skill Cape in mind. You see, many players will level a skill until they hit a certain achievement, usually around level 85-90, which corresponds to the highest level activity you can unlock by leveling this skill, which means they stop at around 5 Million Experience. But now, this same player that would have stopped at 5 Mil Exp in Construction, is now going for 99, which is more than double his original amount. Think about how many more supplies that will burn, and how much extra gold they will need to spend leveling up this skill, which would have otherwise gone towards items like Rares. And finally, as this post describes, there are new Ultra-Rare items in the game. For now they only include Third Age items, which can cost over 200M per piece, but it is very likely that Jagex will continue to introduce more Ultra-Rares, which have such a ridiculously low drop rate, that their supply is kept very low. These items are the first since early Dragon Chains, which offer a player not only a good investment, but an item they can actually use to benefit their characters in the game. The effects are already being witnessed, as Rares are no longer the only option for a player with 100M+ to spend. Ultimately, it is nearly impossible to predict the future for Rares, as Jagex is continuously putting out new updates. However, it is my belief that with current market conditions, Discontinued Items will continue to fall in price. It must be noted that most people who buy Rares only purchase them because they are expecting a return on their investment. With current conditions, players are actually losing money by holding these Rares, and the slow decrease in value of Discontinued Items has spread itself out over several months now. As Flame said, once players begin to see this as a trend, the value of Rares could decrease greatly overnight.

Excuse me, but can you take a second and review what you're saying? That's like me rolling a dice 300 times, getting 100 3's, and then using this data to conclude the dice is rigged towards getting a 3. A simple few friends who claim to have gotten good drops on the first day is not conclusive evidence by any means, so stop being so foolish. I'm not sure, but that might be statistically significant r2. I'm just saying that ~300 trials is not going to show conclusive evidence for drop rates as a whole.

Excuse me, but can you take a second and review what you're saying? That's like me rolling a dice 300 times, getting 100 3's, and then using this data to conclude the dice is rigged towards getting a 3. A simple few friends who claim to have gotten good drops on the first day is not conclusive evidence by any means, so stop being so foolish.

A simple mini-quest is not going to stop Autoing. It just means the player on the auto'er has to spend 30 mins finishing a quest at the beginning, but eventually the odds are that there will be autoing programs able to do the mini-quests as well. You also are forcing players to level certain skills in order to use other skills, which is a restricting factor that many players hate. There should be no requirements in other skills to raise such a basic one like Woodcutting.

Jagex does not alter drop rates "on the first day" for any new items in the game. This is a completely made up statement, and Jagex has never even hinted that this is the case. Players often do not understand that just because they have very good luck does not mean Jagex has completely changed the game. It's all probability; your 16,000th kill is not going to drop a Dragon Left Half.

This was the update I'm talking about, took awhile for me to find it. Although it doesn't seem like a big change, Jagex introduced new challenges that required Quests to be completed, and certain stat requirements to complete as well, not to mention clues were made much longer.

well yeah of course, but can you explain the price patterns of why robin hood hats and ranger boots have sky rocketed in the last year? Jessy, you're forgetting the update where Clues were made to be MUCH more difficult. When RHH's were 1.8Mil, Level 3 Clues could be completed in well under half an hour. Jagex then added much more difficulty to them.

Once again, you people are comparing Third Age drop rates to items you find from monsters. Items that are dropped exclusively by clues are not going to follow the same price patterns because of the length of time it takes to complete a level 3 Clue. First of all, Clues are impossible to complete with a macroer, while monsters are surely not. Secondly, the average player takes well over 2 hours to complete just one level 3 Clue. If we are saying the drop rate on these items is 0.01% (which was quoted from a Jagex Mod), then it doesn't take a genius to realize how these items are by far the hardest to come by in the game. To say Whips are rare because you need 85 Slayer is somewhat foolish as well. Certainly, it takes a good deal of time for a player to get 85 Slayer, but once the level is achieved, it once again just becomes a player killing a monster for the item. And even if the drop rate on a Whip is the same as a Third Age item (Which it is NOT, it is much higher), you can estimate a player would easily be killing at least one Demon every 4 minutes, which means by the time Player x is done one clue, he could have killed 30+ Abyssal Demons (can anyone pass me their average Abyssal kills / hour). This explains why the price on Whips began at such a high value (around 50M), as there were only 2 people with 85 Slayer for awhile, which only allowed for a couple of whips to be found in the first day. I remember buying the second Whip 0ddball found for around 53M, and selling it at the Duel Arena for 75M. So, the basic deal is, Clue Items do not even come close to following the same pattern as items dropped from monsters. This is why I believe Third Age Items should not be judged using patterns from items which are obtainable through monster drops, due to extreme differences in supply charts. The only real comparable items for Third Age Armor are Ranger Boots and RHH's, which follow a very distinct price pattern.

Duke, those calculations you present are valid for any "pseudo-rare" that enters the game; the coefficient on x would obviously be higher if the items were dropped by monsters. However, I'd like to refer back to Dragon Chains in this situation, when the Kalphite Queen was buffed, and became much more difficult to kill. Suddenly, the prices of Dragon Chains just continuously raised, at one point passing Blue Party Hats. And what caused them to finally begin dropping? It wasn't gradual increase of supply; Chains had been rising for over a year, and had a much higher drop rate than any Third Age gear. No, the reason Dragon Chains finally dropped was because Jagex introduced Barrows Armor, an item with better statistics, which was much easier to obtain. Third Age items started at high prices because of their rarity, but they will remain high because of their statistics. As I've stated before, this gear is only slightly worse than Barrows equipment, and has no repair costs. The Kiteshield is the best statistical shield in the game. When you combine such a miniscule drop rate, and items at the top of their class statistically, then a 25% increase of supply this month on an item that could have drop rates as low as 1-2 Sets per day (or even less), is not going to affect the price. It is important to remember, also, that this monthly rate is not constant, it compares the current total amount of Third Age Armor to the new sets being found everyday. Therefore, by your logic, since the drop rate is highest right now, you'd expect to see the prices falling. But, that's obviously not the case, and this increase in supply will be down to under 5% in less than a year.

First and foremost, your title is trying to compare Third Age items, which have increasing supply, to Discontinued Items, which have decreasing supply. An item which can still be obtained is never going to follow the same price patterns as an item which can no longer be found in the game. However, to say this new Third Age armor is going to follow the typical pattern for newly introduced items is foolish. Not only is the rate for these items showing up in a clue quoted as being 1/10,000, or 0.01%, but to complete a level 3 clue requires a player to also find the Clue, and complete the tasks required, which is what makes these items different from Dragon Chains, or Barrows. One item that I find to be quite comparable is a Robin Hood Hat. RHH's are very similar to 3rd age armor, because they are Rare level 3 clue drops, and because they have game utility (very good stats). The utility creates demand from nearly all of Runescape; anybody who trains Combat is a potential buyer. Since there is such a minimal amount of new Third Age equipment being introduced into the game, and the demand for such items is so high, it is quite unlikely that there will be any price drop in the near-future. I would estimate the prices on these items will remain quite constant, perhaps even slowly increasing, until some alternative equipment is implemented into the game. But for now, the extreme rarity of these items, and the fact that they are the best indestructible items in the game will keep their equilibrium price very high.

I'd say a Pirate Hook is the hardest item to obtain in the game right now, considering it costs 800 Agility tickets. Since 1000 Tickets = 240K exp, that makes the 800 worth 192K exp in a very tough skill.

Hey 0mega, haven't talked to you in awhile. Sad to hear you ended up losing so much of your fortune, the reason i've always steered clear of staking is that when it involves huge amounts of money, there is often some x factor at work. It is very plausible that there is an abusable staking glitch, especially with these new updates, but sometimes you just don't hit, for whatever reason. Technically, getting the first hit is the only realistic advantage you can get while Dueling, so there is no logical explanation as to why you'd be losing, other than just some nasty luck or an outside effect.

You're completely missing the point of my post. The cap has nothing to do with what a player "needs". Just because there are better investments than pure GP does not justify the extreme flaws in the system. When I created this thread just over 4 months ago, the highest priced item in Runescape was roughly 200 Mil. Today, Crackers are selling for around 800 Mil. So, what happens in another 4 months? The problem is only worsening, and Jagex needs to correct it fast. Many players are not educated on this GP cap, and they will lose the fortunes they've spent countless hours accumulating. To say that a rich player is wasting his time, and should instead be skilling, is completely ridiculous. This is a game, and so long as you are abiding by the rules, you are free to do whatever you please. Try not to let your jealousy run wild, and think before you post. I didn't create this post to brag about my accumulations; 2100M really isn't that big a deal anymore.

Right now, if you go over the GP cap, your money goes negative, and therefore basically just disappears. That's the real problem in this whole thing, is that a player loses his entire GP stack if he/she goes over the cap. As far as collecting 2.1 Billion of anything goes, I don't think there's anything easier than GP.