RuneScape economy

RuneScape has a fairly complex economy for a browser-based game. As the game is generally focused around combat and quests, these two things tend to drive the economy. Often, however, this is in a very indirect manner. An example of this "ripple effect" is fishing. Fish are useful because they provide healing for combatants. High-level fish provide the best healing. High-level free fish can generally only be caught by fly fishing or harpooning. Fly fishing requires feathers. Despite their commonality (all chickens drop them) feathers are often a waste of time to gather, especially for players of very great power. Feathers, therefore, are unusually easy to sell for a reasonable price. Another example is Nature runes. Many powerful smiths will train their magic ability so as to be able to use the "High Level Alchemy" spell, allowing them to exchange their items for the top store price without hassle. This requires the often hard-to-find Nature runes. Consequently, Nature runes sell for up to 400 gold coins apiece. The even rarer Law Runes, used for teleportation, can sell for up to 500 gold.

The RuneScape economy is very dynamic. There is a steady increase in the price of some items, while other items are getting cheaper. Game updates can also cause a sudden increase or reduction in demand for items. It takes a lot of effort to continually track and predict the level of demand on certain items. Some players have become very good at monitoring the economy and consequently have become very rich by clever trading.

Many of the continual price changes are brought about by the constant influx of new players, and the constant growth in skill levels of older players. For example: only a level 99 smith can make the extremely valuable rune plate body armor. A year after launch, there were few of these smiths, but now, there are many more, over double the first number. If all of these accounts are still playing and still making rune plate body armor, the number of people with it goes up, unused supply goes up, demand goes down, and prices follow. However, two things tend to keep this deflation in relative check. First of all, there is a constant influx of new players who want this armor, keeping demand up and supply down, or at least even. Also, many high-level players are only out for the coin when making such rare items. They rarely want to bother with spending the extra time to find a buyer (and often, the extra profit isn't enough to waste the time on), and will often use the "High Level Alchemy" spell to "sell" the item for the store price. This saves them the hassle and gives them the coin they need. Supply goes down, demand stays level, and again the price remains relatively stable.

However, the price of some items do soar steadily over time. On certain holidays, such as Christmas and Halloween, Jagex will arrange a "holiday drop" in which rare items are placed in the game for one day and one day only. (Two exceptions were the Christmas 2004 drop and the Easter 2005 drop which lasted 2 weeks and gave out untradeable toys with no practical use.) For example, the now-legendary party hats ("P-Hats" or "phats") were only dropped on one day and can be sold for millions. Prices can drop or spike sharply depending on the actions of the few unpredictable party hat owners.

(Note: Holiday items are now no longer "dropped" so they would appear in random locations on the ground. Currently, holiday items are now only available though special that are present for a short period of time.)

Other tradeable holiday drop items include Halloween 2001's pumpkins, Christmas 2001's Christmas crackers (which contained party hats), Easter 2002's Easter eggs, Halloween 2002's masks, and Christmas 2002's Santa hats. In 2003, drops became untradeable, with Easter's bunny ears and Halloween's scythes. Christmas 2004's yo-yos and Easter 2005's rubber chickens (obtained from an Easter Bunny) were untradeable as well. The older items, especially the edible ones (pumpkins and Easter eggs) are excessively rare and can be sold for millions as well. Unfortunately, they would eventually disappear because they are only good for eating, and many owners accidentally eat their eggs and pumpkins. It's actually a pretty funny thing to watch, when it doesn't happen to you.

Some of the rarer items that are still available are Treasure Trail Items, which can only be obtained by members at the end of a scavenger hunt. The starting clue for the hunt is a rare monster drop. Generally, the tougher the clue monster, the better the reward at the end of the hunt. Mainly the reward is armor (black, adamant, and rune), and occasionally it comes trimmed or gilded. Trimmed armor, especially gold-trimmed (gilded), is extremely rare and prices are always at a premium. Some players claim to be able to trim armor (saying that it is a member's only skill) but this is only a scam. Black armor cannot be made by either members or non-members!

Sometimes runite plate armor with colored trimming and enchanted by the gods Saradomin, Zamorak or Guthix is given for the hardest clues. The trim is white for Saradomin, red for Zamorak, and green for Guthix.

With the recent addition of the Slayer skill, players can fight unique monsters which drop incredibly powerful weapons. The Granite Maul and Abyssal Whip, respectively, were worth around 1.5 and 25 million gold when they were first discovered, but their prices are severly dropping and one can buy the Maul for around 600k, and the Whip for around 9.5 million gold. The Dragon Chainmail, which is an incredibly rare drop, is valued at around 30 million gold. By comparison, the rarest party hat (blue) pulls in around 30 million gold. The cheapest hat (purple) is around 13 million gold at the moment.

In addition, the Runescape economy is constantly changing. During the Christmas season, Santa Hats are at their peak price , some selling for over one million gold each. However, right after Christmas, when the demand goes down, "Santas" are at their lowest price, and continue to remain low for the rest of the year, having at one point reached about 300,000 gold pieces. Also, yew logs, which are extremly useful to fletching used to cost 300 gp each. However, just recently their price went down to 200–250 each. Its these price changes that keep players on their feet. Since it is usually more profitable to sell to a player than to a store, and usually cheaper to buy from a player than from the store (because stores buy items for half the price they sell it for), prices are constantly changing.

Illegal Trading

Jagex has explicitly banned two types of trading: selling and buying RuneScape accounts, and trading RuneScape items and services for things outside of RuneScape, such as real world money or benefits in other online games. Despite the fact that Jagex will instantly ban anyone violating these rules, there is an active market for these illegal trades.