Is it possible that the prices of these items are dependent upon the intervention of long time merchants like myself? or is it a natural supply and demand issue?

In the first of four posts on making GP with the GE, I will outline some effective trading strategies (Fundamental, technical and speculative), and in the last I will debunk some of the poor strategies (like buy outs for example). If, after you are done reading fee free to post any questions you may have. There is also a forum over at The Grand Exchange (Thegrandexchange.com) where you can register and ask specific questions about trading and the various methods I will outline here.

Part I – Fundamental Trading

First off, I will start by saying that fundy trading is the easiest and fastest way to make money off the GE. It is fairly straightforward, and is based on real stock trading methods. The kind of trade you do also determines which items you will trade.

There are three prerequisites for items to determine if they are a good thing to buy as a fundy trade. They are:

1. The item must be traded in high volume (Anything in the top 100 most traded items list is good)

2. The item needs to be used up in the process of skilling (People use them up in large quantities)

3. The price graph must be relatively straight (little volatility)

The goal with a fundamental trade is a 5% profit. In general, buying at 2.5% below med and selling at 2.5% above will accomplish that. Done on a consistent basis, you will see your money double every 14 trades. (See the rule of 72 for further study of the reasons for that).

Why high volume? You need lots of buyers and sellers. Items like gold leaf, for example, are used in the ‘value chain’ of making gilded items in construction, but there are so few traded on the GE that it is nearly impossible to make money off them. Teak planks on the other hand are traded in huge volumes, as well as being used far more frequently in skilling.

Finally, why a straight line? You don’t want to choose an item that might jump down after you purchase it. Coal is another example. It is used up in large quantities, and is the 19th most traded item, with 97 million chunks of coal trading hands yesterday. With a 4 hour limit of 10k coal, it is impossible to manipulate, as it is not a matter of purchasing power or GP at that point. You would need a clan 20,000 members strong buying and selling 10k coal each to even make a dent in the price, and no one has anywhere near those numbers, not to mention all of the coal miners would keep pumping cheap coal into the GE to offset any attempted price increase.

An example of value chain for Rune Essence: Rune ess is mined, air runes are crafted, water blast is used to kill an NPC. The final product is a drop that you can either bank or sell (or leave on the ground). Either way the ess is converted and finally used up in the process. Why does it remain flat? As rune crafters skill, they buy rune ess when it is cheap and mine it when it is expensive, keeping the price relatively stable.

As a beginner, once you go through the initial work of finding some items, you can continue to trade them without constant checking of the prices in the GE, making fundy trading ideal for those who either don’t have the time or the inclination to check the market regularly. 90% Of my trades are fundy trades, as I can pull a 5% profit in 5-6 hours. That beats the pants off the return you would get with a buyout clan that only makes 5% every time the GE updates (26-30 hours).

I want to tell you otherwise.

I have played RuneScape for roughly 4 years. It will be 5 this June, not counting the breaks I have taken. For most of those 4 years, I was the model player. I reported players when I thought it was neccessary, I didn’t break rules (except swearing, but hey, that’s been lifted a bit) and most of all, I didn’t bot. RuneScape was never really boring. I was a member for most of the time, and so I had plenty to do. RuneScape was good.

Shortly before 2008 breathed its last breath, I re-kindled a friendship with an old mate. He introduced me to sites such as Sythe and Fagex, and taught me the art of scamming. Together we scammed two accounts, and several membership PINs. Sythe and Fagex also have a RSBot section, and I looked through it and eventually downloaded RSBot.

I wish I had done it sooner. RSBot is easily the best thing I have done in my RuneScape career. I am botting right now! Jagex claims they will find you, and yet in 3+ months of near constant botting, I have not been warned nor banned.

As the title proclaims, robots don’t get Carpal Tunnel. If RuneScape is getting boring, you can do what I always did, and take a break. Alternatively, you can take the step and get RSBot. You will never be the same.

What the scenario mentioned above is called is a Merchanting Clan, or a group of investors who invest in the same thing. Many merchanting clans have millions in the market (a few clans are expected to have close to a billion) meaning that they can either crash the price of an item, or catapult it. With the exception of price-locked items due to Jagex updates, this usually works. Most merchanting clans make the Clan Name the item to buy, and say when to sell it. The only downside is that when the item is sold, the market is often flooded with so many orders that many investors cannot sell it, or lose lots of money. 

With a merchanting clan, your  prospects for making money are greatly increased. Usually, the price will increase. However, make sure you sell before the “Dump ” order comes in, or you’ll be caught in a stampede of selling. If you are interested in a clan, try “efd923″. The item to buy is posted in the Clan Name, and the clan is reasonably large. Try looking around for other clans too, and diversify your investments. But be warned: Merchant clans are NOT for the long-term; on the contrary, they usually employ a buy-one-day, sell-three-days-later technique. Forget to sell your items, and you’ll probably be left with huge profit loss when everybody in the clan does.

As Real World Economy retreats, so does Membership and P2P items

GRAND EXCHANGE, VARROCK, WORLD 2- It was just 1 year ago that the life of a P2P player seemed perfect. Cash was flowing freely, and member items were stable. And with the creation of the Grand Exchange,  the wealth of investors soared tremendously. Now, both Members and Free Players are bracing for a serious shock to hit the Exchange market. Most are expecting many member objects to crash, and many F2P objects to rise. Why? It’s simple: Less members are subscribed currently, meaning less members are buying. Some players have even cut their Internet subscription. This creates less demand, and a possible massive shock to the RuneScape Economy.

         There have always been more Free-to-Play players than members, meaning that some items are more valuable if they are Free-to-Play. For example, players will pay almost 10 times the amount of a Dragon weapon for a Corrupt Dragon weapon that degrades. Why? Because Corrupt Dragon is Free-to-Play, but plain Dragon isn’t. However, with even less members placing orders in the Grand Exchange, we might well see prices sink incredibly for member objects. But with Non-member objects, investors are holding their breath, hoping for an increase in valuable Free-to-Play items like swordfish, lobster, etc. These will become the Manta Ray and Shark of RuneScape, as members switch to Free-to-Play worlds. Other items that require to be made or aquired in Member worlds may also rise, such as Green Dragonhide.

         Wealth has also been decreasing for members, as they either cannot make money on Members’ servers or cannot sell their items for higher prices. One former member, Hulpul, commented on the matter. “My membership expired about a week and a half ago,” says Mr. Hulpul. “I just didn’t want to renew it. When I was a member, though, I made my 1 million gold in about 3 days off of slaying dragons. Now, I pretty much can’t do anything as profitable.” What this RuneScape millionaire  says is true. Very few things in Free-to-Play worlds are as profitable as things in member worlds. A drop in total wealth is expected greatly.

         However, many players doubt that membership decreases will harm the RuneScape economy. One player, Blaze1982, claims that General

Stores and monster drops will keep the Economy afloat. For instance, Rune Platebodies and Green Dragonhide Armour may be obtained from Oziarch, who has an unlimited supply. The same goes with arrows, which can be bought from a range store. But whether or not these unlimited general stores are a lifeline to the RuneScape economy entirely depends upon whether or not players buy or sell on the Grand Exchange. Most players do all their shopping at the Grand Exchange, and few are loyal to the specialty shops located around RuneScape. An entire merchanting clan, efd923, has been investing in Member objects despite the current situation.

         However, one thing is for certain: during these tough times, RuneScape WILL change, and there WILL be a drop in membership subscriptions. And member items probably WILL NOT rise; most have been dropping already. Most Grand Exchange analysts are advising players not keep their investments in member objects, and are suggesting to buy stock in top-of-the-line non-member objects like Rune armour, Food, Corrupt Dragon, etc. A word to the wise: If you’re an investor, watch out for the possibility of a crash in the market

Magic Potions – Drink Me!

Should you use these while training mage? Absolutely (well, unless you are casting high alch over and over again…). At today’s cost of 235gp a sip, these are a bargain as well. They increase your mage by +4, significantly increasing not only the chances that you will hit more often, but also that you will do more damage.

I know that some readers are thinking, hmmm, “My inventory slots are more important than having a potion.” I agree to an extent, but you have to be aware that a potion’s effects don’t wear off instantly. I wouldn’t carry one along to a blue dragon task, but I would sure have a sip every time I banked hides and bones. The stat bonus carries me through the entire time.

Can’t make magic potions? I don’t know any high level herblorist who would turn down free herblore XP. I certainly wouldn’t. Today Lants are 1,163 and potato cactus is 965. That is 2128 per potion or 709gp per dose. Is it worth it for a +4 mage bonus? I think so.

The non-combat uses are also worth mentioning here. At level 70, I trained using teleother to Lumbridge with magic potions. On a crowded server, people beg to be teleported, and it is some of the fastest magic XP in the game. (at 71, you should switch from magic pots to Wizard Mind Bombs though).

Ranging Potions – Shoot this!

With Pking gone, these have lost the majority of their value, but are still very worthwhile potions. Today they are 431 a dose. Range potions give a 4-13 (10%+3) level boost. At 60 range that will boost you up to nearly 70. Starting with 70 range will get you up to 80. This is a pretty hefty increase, and will significantly decrease your kill times, saving you arrows (darts, knives, cballs, charges), time, and increasing the rate at which you level up.

In conclusion…

It really is worth it to use what ever stat increasing items and tools you can while training. With the potion market being what it is, they are well worth the investment. With both range and magic potions, it is more expensive to buy the ingredients and get assisted, but still not unreasonable, especially if you happen to have a few lants and dwarf weeds sitting in the bank. The seconds for both are about 1k each, and many people will assist you. Just call it out in the GE, and you should get offers.

Stay tuned until next week when I will outline some of the highest potions in the game and some uses for them that you probably haven’t even though about.

Part 1: The basics of using potions to speed up leveling and XP per hour

Super Attack Potions – What they do and why you should use them.

These increase your attack by 20% for a 5-19 level increase. For example if you has an attack level of 80, one sip from a Super Attack would boost your attack level to 96. Not bad for 80 gold pieces, especially when you compare it to a slayer mask that only gives a 15% increase but costs nearly a mil. You could buy 12,300 Super Attack doses for the cost of that one mask, but since the bonuses stack, you really should use both while training slayer for a whopping 35% increase in attack.

Strength Potions – Drink this for Strength

Strength potions, or str pots, increase your strength by 12.5% for a 3-12 level increase. A sip of this boosts a strength of 80 to 90. This is especially useful in F2P, where str increases are few and far between. Increased str makes you to hit for higher damage, causing: faster kills, more XP per hour, and increased drop rate per hour (the more you kill the more drops you get).

Barbarian Mixes – Eat your pots

These are one of the greatest underutilized parts of the game. Cost wise they are pretty bad to make from scratch, but they are great to make if you already have the potions, especially if you are fighting monsters that occasionally hit you and do damage. To make a mix, you need a 2 dose potion and roe. You can decant 2-2dose potions using a 4 dose potion on an empty vial. adding the roe to either an attack or strength potion gives you attack mix(2) or strength mix(2) respectively, and turns the potion into food that heals 6 hp (3hp per dose). Roe is easy enoug to fish near the barbarian outpost, they even have a drop box 1 click away at the Barbarian Assault mini game, it is also very cheap, at only 35gp on the GE, so it is well worth buying, unless you want some fishing XP.

In Conclusion…

Even if you are only killing a monster that just drops bones, it is worth it to use potions. Bones sell for 90gp. Super Attack and Str mixes sell for 80gp and 100 per dose, and easily last more than 2 kills. I am not recommending you stop training to bank normal bones by any means, but I wanted to illustrate how cheap it is to use potions for training. Some more examples are:

- 1 dose of each gives higher bonuses than an Amulet of Fury. Cost:3.2mil vs 180gp
- At lvl 99 str the bonus is 300% better than bandos chest str bonus costing about 15.1mil less
- At str level of 32 the bonus from a str pot is eqivalent to the bonus from a berserker ring for 1/36000 the price.

Happy Potting!

Note from the editor: We suggest you check out Turbo’s blog for some more interesting reading: RS Investor

My friends and me were once talking about earning GP, when I started wondering if it was possible for the value of the Gold Coin to decrease like the American Dollar. The more money in the sytem, the less that currency is worth, right? After a few minutes of pondering, I realized that this was not possible because the big “J” has implemented a few factors into the game that do not allow this to be possible.

The first one is probably obvious. The players with lots of gold quit and when they do, the money pretty much leaves the system because the coins will never go to another player who might be able to use it Of course, they may give it out in the Falador Party Room, but lower-leveled players leave the game even more often than the more higher ones. The second one is the one most players might not suspect…Summoning. “What do you mean?” you might ask. Where do the Spirit Shards and Pouches come from? Players can’t make them, and the only way you can actually acquire them is to buy from NPCs. Well where do the Coins go when you buy the shards and pouches? They get destroyed. And the amount of Shards and Pouches needed to get to 99 Summoning is 120 Million gp! The amount is never achieved by most players.

That’s all I could think of for now, and hopefully I have answered some of your guy’s questions out there :).

Hello everyone, I’m ThirdEyeOpen (Most know me by other names but I am choosing to remain anonymous while posting on this blog). Here is an article I have written to share with you all regarding Runescape’s cheating scene. I’m currently retired from Runescape however I spent a total of 5 years playing the game on and off, mostly focusing on the darker side of the game which is cheating. This article details all the intricacies of Runescape and cheating and what really goes on behind the scenes, I assure you that it will surprise you.

Imagine this – Thousands of dollars are instantly wired to your bank account through some complicated anonymous online payment system you have worked out with your main buyer, it would have been a lot more but most of your product was confiscated earlier in the night. Your security wasn’t tight enough, they busted some of your guys… but only because the bastards have been spying on you.

You probably think I’m talking about some sort of organized crime ring, and in a sense your right. Calling it crime might be a little bit of a stretch, but we were definitely organized, and we were definitely pissing a large gaming corporation named Jagex Ltd. off. Welcome to the Runescape cheating scene – the real one. Think that’s a little bit too dramatic? Keep reading.

Ask your average 12-year-old flax-picking dragon-slaying Runescape adventurer about their conception of in game cheating, and you’ll most likely receive some sort of vague response regarding people who use auto-bots to get ahead. For the greater majority of what we call the “cheating community”, that is true. At face value, everything seems reasonably innocent; most of the kids just use simple autoing programs or pathetic scam techniques in some lame attempt to accelerate their progress within the game, and in the end it’s just a game… so they get banned from the game, or they get away with it, and that’s that. Right? It’s just a game….

The thing you’ve got to realize about video games is the more advanced they become the more closely they begin to emulate reality, I mean that is the point after all… trying to emulate reality as closely as our technology allows in some sort of fun and entertaining way. The introduction of Massively Multi-player Online Games (MMORPG) was an incredibly innovative leap in video game technology, it uses our advances in communication technology to effectively emulate a reasonably functional social atmosphere while still managing to keep the players entertained and focused. This is an amazing thing; you can now create and maintain social relationships that are almost as good as the ones in real life while sitting in front of your computer playing a game. The other thing that has come with the introduction of MMORPGs is the ability to consistently add new content to the game, essentially making it so the game never ends, providing the gamer with a space that he may participate in for incredibly long periods of time. So I mean when your in this space for extended periods of time, and there’s this intricate social atmosphere, and it’s entertaining and all that jazz, and as familiarity grows it starts to become more and more like real life, becoming a second life in some sense. In moderation, this is ok, however some people reach the point where they actually prefer the virtual reality to their day-to-day life, and it becomes an escape of sorts, which, as far as I’m concerned, is comparable to the same mentality our society uses against drug addicts.

This is no longer a game. To some people, this is an acceptable reality. As such the imaginary things in this game start to attain a real life value – the more games emulate reality the more influence they have in our actual reality. So now we’ve got this problem where people are assigning real life monetary value to these entirely intangible game objects such as high level characters and the virtual money within the game, and this is where our problem begins.

Some kid discovers that some other kid who enjoys the game a whole lot more than him will pay him $20 in real life for some of his virtual currency inside the game world, which he has attained by simply playing the game. Everything is still marginally innocent at this point, generally it would be impossible for any player to make a decent wage attaining and selling virtual currency assuming they are playing the game as it is intended to be played. This is where the cheating community comes in. Kids see this real life value vested within the game so they create and use programs which are designed to play the game for them with the intent of obtaining mass amounts of virtual currency which they can sell for real money at a minimal expense of their time since these programs are doing all the work. Naturally the gaming company frowns upon this and makes it against the rules to exchange the virtual goods for real life objects and justify it using some rather vague intellectual property laws, which state that since they created the game all of the data within the game belongs to them and is not to be exchanged for profit among players. Consequently, because there is still a relatively large amount of profit invested in this the cheating communities are forced “underground” and a black market manifests for the exchange of gold.

A Black market. Seriously. The thing to remember is that for the most part, we’re dealing with kids here… The average age of a Runescape player is probably about 10-13 with a few 14-18 year olds and a handful of adults as well. So these kids on these black market sites are facilitating these shady exchanges over virtual currency, and in the same way that the video game emulates reality, these off site black markets begin to emulate reality. It turns into a primitive version of any real black market, such as things for drugs and child pornography, except it’s inhabited mostly with teenagers with the slightly older ones running the show instead of adults. Organized Crime Pre-School.

So that’s where I come in, I was one of those older teenagers who was sort of running part of the show. Most people tended to stick to the traditional auto-bot method of obtaining mass amounts of virtual currency. Some hardcore hacking also occurred but it was very rare and mostly obsolete by the time I entered the scene. I was able to create a new form of cheating which involved the discovery and exploitation of natural flaws within the Runescape game engine, this ability came from my extensive understanding of the game engine as I played the game rather excessively from the age 11-15 until I made the transition from a regular player to a cheater. At first, I simply used my skills to advance my character within the game, however when my main character was banned I got a little more devious in my intent and began finding exploits with real life profit in mind. At the time I was 15 and experiencing some serious problems in my personal life, and as a result I had to ride my bike 5 miles to the public library every day to search for exploits on Runescape. I recruited some old friends of mine to help me, many of which proved to be invaluable accomplices throughout the rest of my Runescape cheating career. Our first major breakthrough occurred when we found an exploit that allowed us to do many amazing things, the most important of which involving the ability to rapidly duplicate an item (glory amulet) that could be sold for a relatively large amount of virtual currency. Needless to say we got a little overexcited, and a group of about six of us began a round the clock operation to obtain as much money as possible. This ended up being a very stupid idea, as the game maintains an economy and market that function much like the market in the real world…. we ended up flooding the market with an excessive amount of this item, resulting in it’s value being reduced by about 50%, which as far as I know has not fully recovered to this day, two years later. Within two days Jagex had become aware of the problem and we all woke up one morning to find our accounts disabled. Fortunately, we still had some bartering room, as Jagex had no clue how the exploit was preformed and needed information. What ensued was an online interrogation of sorts that resulted in one of my friends accounts being spared in trade for the exploit while the other five accounts remained banned (the reasoning behind this was very personal and complicated, but it was my own choice). Having been arrested and interrogated before in real life, I can say that it was very similar in some ways, which makes this whole thing rather amusing. I felt pretty bad about getting all of my friends accounts banned, so in an effort to make things up with them, I decided we should form an organized group so we could really get back at Jagex. A website was created where we would share information about our projects with the general public and encouraged other Runescape players to find their own exploits using information we provided. Within a week we had 200 members. A sort of hierarchy began to form, I was at the top along with the founding members right under me… we had certain people assigned to certain things, one friend of mine was assigned to maintaining the bulk of the website, another assigned to assisting me in the main exploitation discovery, etc. We found several more extreme exploits within the course of a year, and we got more and more careful and organized about it as we went.

I turned out to be quite the business man; I began selling the gold we made on the largest Runescape black market site and ended up becoming the number one gold seller for a period of time. The whole thing was kind of pathetic. At first I would sell small quantities to individual buyers, and I’ve got to tell you it was like dealing with 12 year old heroin junkies. About 75% of the people who contacted me were simply trying to rip me off using obvious scam techniques while hiding behind the internet’s wall of anonymity, and most of the legitimate buyers were simply pathetic. I had some customers who would spend $500 on virtual currency simply for personal use, it was ridiculous and perhaps the most disgusting waste of money I have ever seen, I felt like I was dealing with junkies… I even had to talk to a few parents who were buying this stuff for their kids, which was absurd. Eventually as it became increasingly difficult for me to hold onto virtual currency for long periods of time without getting banned I had to sell the gold cheaply in bulk to resellers, who simply made their money by buying the currency and reselling it to individuals for more. This sort of hierarchy is ridiculously similar to the way drug dealing works. Eventually I became a moderator on the black market site which allowed me to maintain connections with several other powerful figures within the cheating scene. I would maintain a list of who owed me favors and this sort of thing and it came to the point where I was practically like a kiddie mob boss, without the violence of course.

Our setup lasted for a good while; it turned into a game of playing hide-and-seek with Jagex. They would always be attempting to ban our accounts and find our exploits to fix them and we would always be taking new security precautions and all these sorts of things, finding quick ways to sell mass amounts of gold and the like…. There would be some nights where I would make $1,000 in a matter of hours, and I mean going through the whole process of attaining the gold, finding a buyer for all of it, and selling it and getting it into my bank account, and that’s only counting the gold that made it through. It was not uncommon for us to have accounts containing 500M-1.5Billion banned before we could sell the gold. It got to the point where we actually caught multiple Jagex employees spying on us inside the game. The bigger we got the more the drama escalated, and it was like being part of some epic mafia movie or something… it was all very entertaining for us, and I know Jagex had a few laughs over it as well despite all the trouble we caused them. Eventually Jagex said enough was enough and after ignoring multiple lawsuit threats from them and subverting multiple attempts to have our website shutdown, I finally had a legal invoice Fedexed to my front door telling me I had to shut down my site or they would sue me, with which I decided to comply. In the end, we had 3,000 members on our site, well over 100 Runescape accounts banned (at least 50 over level 110) for exploitation and gold trafficking, and had managed to accumulate a total of perhaps $50,000 between our senior members, about $10,000 of which I took home personally.

In retrospect, the sociological ramifications of all this are what interest me the most. I still can’t get over the type of realistic environments that were being created and participated in by all these kids, and how similar everything was to the real world. It was like someone had taken the world and scaled it down into a virtual playground for kids, with the good, and the bad all perfectly intact, and Jagex as the ultimate authority equivalent to government. I’ve kept up with many of my old connections from the cheating scene and it’s interesting to see the direction that many of them have gone in (including myself!). Some got involved with credit card and PayPal fraud and money laundering, some got involved with online black market drug trade, and at least one probably got involved with homosexual porn sites, haha. Granted plenty of them also went in successful directions as well, such as attending prominent universities and running legitimate websites and such. Just keep in mind we’re still talking about people who are mostly under 20; I’m only 17 at the time of writing this. It’s really easy to see how the Runescape cheating scene could lead to more serious things, I have it on very good authority that the same types of anonymous online payment methods we used for Runescape gold transactions are the same ones used by real life criminals for money laundering, stolen PayPal accounts, drug exchange,and the like…. and apparently the communities in those circles are very similar in nature as well. Another thing worth mentioning is that the Runescape cheating community is essentially run by a very small group of people (most of which were extremely intelligent and often very mature for their age), the rest of it seems to be composed of wanna-be Runescape thugs that don’t really do anything significant other than participate in the gold exchange and auto-bot programs.

As of now, I do not regret anything… it was perhaps some of the most fun I could ever imagine having online; I learned so many valuable life skills in the process, and met so many people who will probably still be friends for years to come. I feel that my actions were no more immoral than the actions of Jagex which have caused so many kids to become hopelessly addicted to their game, much like many others MMORPGs (World of Warcraft, anyone?)… I have personally seen people’s lives significantly hindered by these types of games, and between the ages of 11 and 14 for me, mine was one of them. I encourage everyone who reads this article to evaluate the deep concepts that these sorts of games hold and how it applies to you, as a player. There is nothing wrong with playing games and there is nothing wrong with cheating in games, it is human nature to strive to be the best, and cheating is just one of the many ways that aspect manifests itself. It’s really easy for everyone to paint a black and white picture of good vs. evil in these scenarios, and I’m supposed to end this paper with some spiel going into how you shouldn’t really cheat in Runescape, but the fact of the matter is, people who cheat will cheat, and they’ll find any way they can to do it. So just take the information in this article for what it is and think about how it pertains to you, because, fun and games aside, all of this stuff is much more serious than it seems….

RuneScape Accounts can be purchased here

Some images from my career (Click to see full size):