Shop Update

The updates this week caused a bit of a whirlwind among players. (To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen an update that hasn't set off a mass panic). This one was a little different. I'm not going to touch on the graphics or the auto-cast of spells. I want to focus a little bit on the limited stock update for stores.

I actually really like this update. Hear me out. When I started Runescape, there was limited stock at stores. This was offset by the fact that the trade limit had yet to be imposed on the players. The prices of many items were much higher than they are in the game today.

There were rewards in skilling. Rune Platebodies need 99 Smithing in order to obtain them. This is a little ridiculous, being that there have been so many other, better, platebodies introduced since, but at the time, getting the best armor meant needing to have the best skills.

Needing runes meant you worked on Runecrafting, etc. I see this as a push to everyone who has gotten so used to buying everything they need, to train skills that they might never have. I put it on the level of the Achievement Diary. I hated getting my Farming and Smithing up at the moment, however, down the line I'm glad that I have those levels and that I worked on these skills.

Am I saying that every player should make everything for themselves? No, that's not what I'm getting at. I'm just stating that there needs to be a more drive for player-made items opposed to unlimited stock store items. Say you want a Rune Platebody, but are only 65 Smithing. Yes, its impossible to ask you to train to 99 to get what you want, but the point is, there are players out there who have trained to 99 Smithing. They are able to make one for you. Sure, it might be sold out of the GE, but there's entire forum threads dedicated to these things, as well as Worlds. If you need 1k vials and don't want to make them, that's fine as well. Someone out there is willing to do it and sell them to you. We had Runescape "jobs" for a while. I'd get the cowhides, the xp from attacking them and sell them to one high level everytime I got 1k. Same goes with coal. It gave the game a more personal feel to it as well as gave one more way to get to know your fellow players. It was walking into the mom & pop shop every weekend, saying hello, having a conversation, exchanging business, everyone wins. It feels to me that Runescape has taken on a very Wal-Mart feel lately.

This might drive the prices up on countless items, but I really feel as if skills have been hit hard over the years. Take Death Runes for example. You train your Runecrafting to 65, complete one of the more difficult quests in Mourning's End Part 2, all for what? You can create Death Runes now, but its more profitable to create Law Runes or even double Cosmics. That's really not much of a reward for those feats. Blood Runes have an insanely high level requirement considering the skill is so slow at giving xp, and the price really needs to reflect the work put into it.

Smithing as well. What started out as one of the most profitable skills on Runescape has really become a money sink over the years. Its to the point where rune armor and weapons are usually just alched when you get them as a drop. The value is negligible between selling it and its alch value, which really is kind of sad if you think about it.

I really hope this update sticks. A little legwork and "getting to know your local seller" as well as some price increases, I feel are a good thing. If I seem a little combatitive in this post its because its something I really feel pretty strong about. Merch clans, 75k, 26k schemes, etc, generating gigantic amounts of cash I feel has almost made players soft in a way. No need to train Herblore, just buy pots. No need to train Runecrafting, just buy runes, etc... Maybe it'll make someone second guess why they're spending all that cash on an item, which is now no longer selling and if it ever does it'd be for quadruple the price, say "why don't I just make that on my own?" Who knows, maybe they'll actually like it.

There was a time before the GE, before unlimited stocks where we all survived. I love the convenience of the GE, don't get me wrong. However, there was a time where that Rune Platebody we all take for granted now wasn't available in stores. To get it, you needed to know someone with 99 Smithing, if you weren't yourself. That really meant something.

As with everything, there are always exceptions. The main one for this is Shards. The limit on that is ridiculous and should be removed. Any items that are not able to be made by a player, shouldn't have a limit. As for the ones that are player made, the low limit makes me excited to use certain skills which have fallen by the weyside, again. I think its a good re-vamp by Jagex to brush the dust off of things like making vials, crafting in general, even RC. I'm excited that it looks like it will be profitable to be a skiller again.

In the year 2000...

Well, I got my 2000 levels late last week. The frantic push for levels gave me a little bit of time for me to distress after the big fireworks went off. It gave me some time to get around to some things I wanted to do.



Forever my house has been bothering. It was an incredibly poor layout which made the rooms I’d like to access quickly far away from the portal. It was disjointed and didn’t really make a lot of sense. About a month or so ago I used a few Stealing Creation hammers to pound out a few levels (bad pun, I know), however I still had a lot of lower level furniture I hadn’t upgraded. To get the levels it was build, destroy, rebuild of oak tables.

I really think Construction had been poorly designed in the beginning. You start with the lower level rooms and don’t really have options but to make a few of them. Thus, expanding your higher level rooms further out. When you’re a lower level, the price you paid for those rooms adds up. Its tough to have to tear them down. Also, I wish there were a way to remove a piece of furniture you had acquired in the past. I had a lot of gilded things thanks to treasure trails. It got to a point where buying gold leaves really put some damage in my funds.

It took me about a week to pull it together. I’d say about 5 days of playing with designs until I got something I liked, and was personalized a bit, and about 2 days of execution of actually building it. I wanted the altar, lecterns (one of each for tabs), portals, costume room, quest hall (glory tele) and workshop as close as possible. Expanding outward to the rooms I don’t use as often, the kitchen, dining room, skill hall. Finally in the outer regions the parlor (gotta keep books somewhere), throne room, with the games room and two combat rooms (combat ring and ranging pedestals) near each other for fun at gatherings. Also there’s a dungeon, hall, treasure room for good fun as well. The two bedrooms are on the second floor, with mine being slightly nicer than the butler’s. He’s got to get a good night’s rest as well, but should still know that I’m paying him.

I have some things in there lower level than I could, but for personal preference. I like the tentacle pool better than the flames. I’d rather have a poster of Morytania than Isifidar. I need to get some CWars armor and the head of something to complete it. I still have a lot to upgrade to, I am only 78 Con.

Moving the costume room was a killer, it took some seriously bankspace juggle to clear that place out. However with that back up and upgraded, the menagerie holding on to my raven, hellcat and broav, I’m actually down to 450 occupied bankspaces. I don’t think I’ve been south of 460 since they increased the size a couple years ago.

Its weird, I actually feel prouder of the house more than a lot of skills I have some higher levels in. I think its because its customized to what *you* like. It took a lot of money, it put me nearly out of range of even making a battlestave run for the day, but it was worth it and I made a lot of it back since.

Here’s the layout code for Runehq if anyone wants to see it: RIKRMLRQLRUORYNRfQSISSMRSQJSUMSYDSfNTIETOGTSFTUHTaPTdQ

Just replace “Formal Garden” with Menagerie, because that isn’t an option as of yet.

Why we do what we do

One of the Runescape sites I check out daily is Runescape Reader's Digest. It's updated on a pretty much daily basis and just points you in the right direction if you're looking for interesting articles pertaining to the game.

Today, Vaskor pointed to this article asking Runescape bloggers some questions regarding why we write what we write. I think its a really interesting idea, so I decided to follow suit. Also I'm borrowing his format because I think its quick and to the point. Hope you don't mind! ;)

Why did I start blogging?

I was looking up random Runescape information one day when I came across this blog. I had never seen a runescape blog before that didn't pertain to guides, tips or the dreaded gold farmers. It was personal. They had the same sort of playing style that I did, albeit they're a F2P mod and I'm a P2P layman. I loved reading about the interpersonal dynamics of playing a MMORPG (Runescape is the only MMORPG I've ever played). I fell in love with the fact that behind the stats, skills, quests etc, there are actual people with different political views, religions, cultures, everything, taking part in something. It was all new for me. From there I discovered more and more similar sites, mostly touching on gameplay, but each with a personal feel on it. I guess I just wanted a part of that.

What do I get out of it?

I've met a lot of interesting, amazing people that I might not have. It's nice just to have a record of things I've done, noticed, figured out or even just how I felt about certain things. It's something to look back on. Its interesting how we can change as people and players over time and sometimes we don't even notice it until we look at something we did, say, a year or so ago.

Tips to players who also wish to blog for runescape?

Write about anything you feel like writing about. What may seem just as an outlet to you, might be insipring or helpful to someone else, regardless of how trivial you think it may be. Much like the game, have fun with it. Don't make it 'work.'

Back to work...

Back home after a week vacation at the beach. I did sneak in a little RS here and there (mainly stave runs), but for the most part it was good times, good meals, drinks and friends. Its good to take a little break every now and then.

It’s interesting just how profitable GWD can be if you go with a stable set of friends. Zammy boss seems to be the easiest. We’ve been taking many trips with 6-7 people and can usually stay an hour or two before people have to go or run out of supplies. Trips usually get a split of a Zamorak Spear or a hilt. The last trip I took came in at over 5.8M gross due to getting one of each as well as various other drops. It’s still amusing to see a Dragon Dagger split though. Kril drops 19k gp a lot to a person, but splits a 30k drop between 6 people?

It’s weird to say, but I had reached a point where I had more money than I ever had in the game. I had kept it stashed away for a bit, but that’s doing me no good. I decided to take some out and get a few levels. I looked on forums for an open guilded altar and over a few days got 74-77 Prayer. Antifire potions seem to be the cheapest/best xp to make at my level so I went 72-74 Herblore. I’m only about 50k from 75. For some reason Prayer Potions are up over 15k each now. I made a few of those and they easily sold at max price in GE. Which is ridiculous because Sara Brews require a much higher level, more difficult to obtain second and are about a third of the price.

Also got 80 Slayer, 86 Crafting, 89 Strength (actually leveled this on Kril) and 121cb since my last update. They were all things I was pretty close to and just happened to level around the same time. I’m up to 1997 total levels. The year I graduated high school. Closing in on that 2k mark. If not tonight, I hope to get it tomorrow.

Part Deux

I logged in to one of the merch chats today to see if anything was new. The clan chat name was instructing to sell. I happened to have one of the items so I thought I’d try it out. Put it on GE at minimum – no offers. Just a few hours before everyone had max bids in, the leaders telling everyone to hold onto the item until it got to be a certain amount. It didn’t even reach half that amount before they dumped the product.

This brought about a pretty huge reaction. People were now stuck with tons of these items that are now plummeting in value and wondering who to blame. You could tell people were lashing out in PM to the ranks. The ‘leader’ of the clan came on, said he was tricked by a third party who dumped and caused tank of the product. Also, the person who duped him spammed the chat advertising a different clan.

Even ranked players complained about how much money they lost, which got me thinking, aren’t they in on it? I started to realize it might be a little more complicated than I originally thought. That’s when the one who is blamed to have caused the problem comes back into chat and starts spamming again. Claiming how terrible that merch clan is and how much better this other one would be. He gave the specific example of the collapse a few hours before. The names of the higher ranks seemed familiar, if not the same as were screaming in the other clan about what item to buy.

Here’s the thing, anyone can get a rank in a clan chat. All you have to do is go to a heavily populated world, heavily populated area (like GE or PC) and advertise about joining the clan chat. Boom – there’s your rank in a few hours. This does a number of things. First off, gives that person a false sense of power. They are not included in the actual plan as to what’s going on and are going to get scammed as well. Second, it gives members reassurance that what they are taking part in is not a scam. If everyone’s complaining about losing money, even the people with ranks, then something must have surely gone wrong and it won’t happen again, right? A clan wouldn’t scam its own ranked players, who earned that rank only by advertising that clan in order to drive prices up, would it? Ugh.

When the one who was blamed for the problem came back in clan chat again and started spamming for the second time about how bad that particular clan is at merching, he advertised his own merch clan. Also in doing so, attacked specific members. All this while the leader of the chat sits idly by. If he scammed everyone, why are you still letting him fight and pick arguments in your chat? It’s a bit like watching wrestling. This does two things, either has the person switch over and try the new chat, which is already merching a new item, or install some sense of loyalty in the original clan, meaning you’ll wait a few days, take their side and then try again.

I wouldn’t be surprised if everything was staged and both clans are run by the same people. Look at it like this, you hear of a merch clan through advertising, you join and invest. Your investment fails, someone comes along and says ‘they’re not doing it right, join us.’ The first clan has to wait 2-5 days so they can stock up on a new item before its announced anyway. You want to try and recoup your cash quickly so you see what this competitor has to say. The same thing happens. Merch clan A comes up and says, ‘see they aren’t as good as us’ and this continues back and forth, sucking everyone dry of their cash. Because of the constant want of power, more and more people advertise. The ones who got ripped off never even mention a word to the new ones being ushered in.

On the surface, it appears there’s a lot of merch clans out there, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if there were just a handful of separate ones and the majority of them fall under the same umbrella of one giant clan. The different facets, different roles, Andy Kaufman/Jerry Lawler-esque scripted rivalries and arguments are all very intriguing. It’s almost as if you’re watching a soap opera if you take a step back and try to figure out what’s going on with these clans. Its also very easy to get caught up in all the fast paced drama, the potential for large sums of cash, etc. Don’t fall into it. I do have to admit, it has been highly amusing observing all of this as a fly on the wall. Just don’t get involved.

Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel

Vaskor’s link to an article about one of the former leaders of GoldMerch, one of the larger merchanting clans on Runescape, was really interesting to me. I decided to do a little research into some merchanting clans to get some more info.

Just to put it out there, I don’t really merch. I’ve never been in a merch clan. Being able to dictate market prices in order to boost your own profits has always seemed suspect to me. The article openly stated that they used people in order to make cash, while others would lose it. Not only that, but if you just happen to need whatever object is being merched is, chances are you won’t be able to get it, and if you do it’ll be at a highly inflated price.

Individually figuring out trends, buying low and selling high, is completely fine. Blatant price manipulation is another. However, as annoying and distrustful as I see it, it is within the rules. For some people, this is how they want to play the game, and who am I to say what they can and can’t do? We all play differently, its what makes the game great.

I came across an interesting website which lists about 40-50 merch clans, what item they’re buying, what stage of the process they are in, and what the dump price is. I’m on the fence about posting a link to it or not. On one hand I don’t want to give any free advertising, this site has never been about helping out merch clans. On the other hand, it would serve as a good warning. Perhaps you wanted to buy a certain item, you can see that maybe this isn’t the best time to do it. I think there’s too much risk so I’ll just say if you can work Google, you can probably find it.

So I turned private off and decided to sit in a few of these clan chats. I have to say I was impressed. It’s rare you log into full, public chat and see no spamming. I shortly realized it is because usually only 2-4 people in the chats have ranks and can actually be ‘heard.’ The format is basically you PM a ranked player, and he/she’ll answer your question publicly in the clan chat for all to see. They’ll also reiterate the dump prices over and over. Usually the title of the clan chat is the item which is being merched.

Contrary to my preconceptions, for the main part, everyone seemed incredibly polite and helpful. Which, the more that I think about it, has to make sense. Everyone in these chats are the ones who are making the ranks their money. Most state that the entire clan votes on items, however checking the items which they have selected, seeing their prices change a couple days prior to the ‘vote’ points out that these are predetermined and have already been hoarded by the few ‘in the know.’ The ‘vote’ is a way of making people feeling included. Comparable to the government limiting the use of butter during WWII, to make people feel involved in the situation they have no control over. The dump prices are set up so that the few who started the merching can get out, while the item is still selling. Anyone who stays in up to the so-called ‘dump price’ is going to be at a loss.

These clans are really run like well thought out businesses. There’s research involved, a certain hierarchy established, a routine to be followed, etc. They do generate enormous amounts of profit for those who utilize them well. Its easy to see how a player can stumble in one of these chats and get carried away. You’re in a clan chat with 100 other people, all of which are seemingly going to do the same thing, the prices are in fact rising on said object, it feels like you can’t lose. Then all of a sudden everyone dumps before you and you’re at a loss. If you try to speak up about your loss, you can’t. No one can hear you, unless you PM a ranked player and why would he let your complaints be heard in front of all the new potential buyers.

I didn’t invest in any of merchandise. Its just not my thing. It was interesting to sit in and get a first hand account of how these things work though. I’ll be keeping tabs, jumping in a clan chat here and there just to make sure I’m not getting burned if I need an item. I’m sure if you do it right there’s a lot of cash to be made, but I’ve made it this far and I feel as if I’m doing quite alright.

I had a lot of time to check the chats while I sat at the GE, checking the prices while I was working on a Fletching level. Got that up to 82. It was about time I put some of those Maple Logs to use. I got my Thieving to 71 a couple days ago. I figured I’d go check out Pyramid Plunder and wow. What a difference a room makes! I went from averaging 5000xp/run to about 8500-9000xp/run with a few runs being over 10,000xp. I quickly knocked out level 72 in that and have a feeling this will be less annoying to get to 75 than I thought.

Also congrats to Jaxana, who's helped me many times with tips, advice, events, good conversation, with her getting 3 99's in a span of about 10 minutes! That was awesome.

All I care about is me, my drums and you,,,

Ok this isn't a RS post. One of my most favorite directors in the world just passed away. I grew up with Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Planes Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Vacation, etc... Ducky, Cameron, Ally Sheedy in the Breakfast Club are people I watched over and over and love. So this post is for John Hughes... He has nothing to do with Runescape, but has done something for us who grew up in the 80s...