RuneScape Economy

The economy today in RuneScape is really unstable, with supplies low, high amount of money flow both in and out and high demand together have developed an incredibly fluctuating and unstable economy that will collapse any time or just keep on fluctuating. You can find a number of elements involved. Recent changes within the game systems have made the costs to fluctuate more and far more, affecting the economy badly. The following are the principal elements that shifted the events:

1. Removal of Boss Drops from PvP worlds

A few months ago, Jagex removed all Boss monster drops from PvP random drop tables. This caused a heavy dent to the supplies of popular PvP items most notably the abyssal whip and barrows armour. Two main factors affected it: a) Supply was reduced because of zero chance of drops of barrow items and other special items from PvP b) Loss of Special items like barrows armour when one died in PvP, resulting in the deletion of that armour stock in game.

This has resulted in the surge in prices of all Boss Only drops such as Barrow items, Godswords, Even Dragon Claws, abyssal whips, saradomin swords, etc...

2. Pvp new Drop systems

To compensate for the removal of PvP boss drops, Jagex introduced god statuettes, icons etc but they were a few items that were not affected by the demand or supply at all, partially because the items were trade only and partially because they were available as drops. But the new drop system was disproportionate and "the trick" caused a Huge rise in the wealth of the people. Since the item wasn't governed by supply - demand law, the price of the item wasn't reduced by the fact that thousands of players had obtained them and sold them, making a constant profit every sale, and increasing their money without affecting the price of the item whatsoever.

3. Rise in merchant Clans

Even when they are often labeled as scams or Get rich quick schemes, these merchanting clans have introduced a lot of extra wealth in the game. By forming cartel groups, people generally profited a lot from these attempts and the in game wealth went up soaring.

This rise in cash combined with increase in demand and reduction in supply has sustained the increase in price of the boss monster items. If this increase in demand would have gone without this increase in wealth, the items wouldn't have risen so sharply.

4. Removal of infinite Stock

The initial addition of infinite or unlimited stock in shops led to the fall of many common but cheap items in RuneScape, most notably feathers and some runes. However, the reverse effect is happening because of the sudden and abrupt removal of infinite stocks in RuneScape, causing these feathers to rise 14-15% a day! This caused a lot of instability, because lots of Skillers wanted those feathers to power train their fishing but due to shop stock limitations, the price of the feather has gone up!

5. New Dragon item

This new Dragon item, Dragon Pick axe has sparked off an intense demand because it is only the second skill related dragon item (after Dragon axe) and half of them are interested in just the item itself whereas the other chunk look at it as the second Dragon claws, and have invested their money in it for a quick profit.