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.

Now I have started my brand new level 3 skiller as it is the only point of view from RS that I haven’t excelled in.

Runescape Updates:
“In this week’s update, we’ve implemented an extremely frequently-requested improvement to route-finding. This should particularly improve the playability of the game in laggy situations.

For a long time (well, forever really) it has been the case that when you click to move somewhere, your character would occasionally run in the wrong direction for a few steps before turning around and going to the point you actually selected. Fixing this has been a popular request for a long time. It might sound like a simple task, but in fact it was very difficult, which is why we hadn’t managed it until now.” Is what Jagex said about their new updates concerning the new route-finding processor. Makes RS a lot smoother no doubt, but at some point I think RS can be too perfect.

Also Jagex announced their 150th quest as “The Chosen Commander”. If you hurry you can run over to the Jagex store and buy the limited time zip up hoodie special for this quest. From Mod John A: “The Chosen Commander is the conclusion of a quest series that began with The Lost Tribe. I’ve had enormous fun working on this storyline over the last few years, and I’ve tried to give what I think are the best elements of the previous quests a final outing here. I hope you enjoy it.”

Hope you enjoyed my first article. Feel free to give me feedback at diehard_hogfan@yahoo.com! Razorback is out.

Don’t worry, its crossed all our minds at one point or another. So do hacks and dupes really exist? I know from personal knowledge that less than a year ago, botting was a very prevalent.  Players began looking for RuneScape cheats or RuneScape hacks. Some did have luck cheating in games such as RuneScape, which lead to even bigger ambitions, you can read about an example in our other article about the dark side of runescape cheating. Let me say that bots did in fact exist at one point, but now selling gold in RuneScape is nearly impossible. All the major runescape gold sellers have now shut down, but this cost jagex many many players.

There are however legitimitate ways to leveling up and obtaining items, many players began to look for RuneScape tips, RuneScape money guides, RuneScape quest guides. Many of these players prevailed and these are the types of players that didn’t get banned. So to sum up this article, bots and dupes DID exist at one point.

I saw a sadly misinformed conversation today in my clan chat today. The subject was whether farming was a slow skill or not. Clearly only one person knew what they were talking about, and the others spouted off unfounded jibberish about racing to 99 fletching and betting on who would finish first.

Farming is very similar to merchanting on the Grand Exchange in that it is a passive skill. It is possible to stand at the GE and yell at the NPCs there to trade your items faster. Does anyone do it? I would hope not. You go in, make your buys, collect, and check prices. Basically your actions only take a short period of time (unless you spend all day analyzing, which you shouldn’t). Then you can log, wait, skill, take your dog for a walk, or do anything while the trades go through. You make money passively here.

Farming is the only skill that you can really effectively train passively. Just because you can’t actively train it to the tune of 800k xp in a day (like fletching) does not make it a slow skill. That is comparing apples and oranges. Farming is the only skill you can train that grants you 14k xp in 2 minutes. (Check health of mage tree, pay farmer to dig up, supercompost, plant another magic tree for example).

A 10 minute farming run planting watermelon, torstol, and a belladonna nets me, on average, just over 20,500xp. Selling super compost and the pots I produce pays for the farming run, plant the occasional snapdragon and you are making money. Fletching/cooking can approach that kind of xp return, but at dire costs. Aside from that, it also makes no sense talking about speed when you ignore the opportunity cost associated with the action, ie the time it takes to make the money/collect supplies you burn while achieving that xp/hour.

Finally, to get xp from fletching or cooking, you need to be actively there training the skill. You can’t leave 500 yew longs and bow strings with a fletcher and come back in 90 minutes to have them done and get your xp.

In Conclusion, minute for minute, farming is by far the fastest skill in the game and the only real passive skilling you can do. Comparing it to active skilling is like comparing income from interest on a Certificate of deposit, (buy, wait, sell) to working for $6 an hour at MacDonald’s. You have to be there actively working for an hour to make that $6, you also stop earning when you go home.