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A reflection on the Grand Exchange
The Grand Exchange, I had anticipated this being a great success, my only concern was that if there was no control the price of items would just plummet over night, Jagex put in the 5% price change margin which prevented my only real fear.
It has been around a while and people are getting used to it, most of peoples stock piled items have been sold and the prices are starting to return to normal, most of the rants have died down, my opinion is the Grand Exchange is indeed Grand, it is good for all, it is great for people who want to buy stuff or sell in bulk, it is great for merchants and it is also an extension of your bank.
The prices on GE are not the same as before, that is a fact, some things are dearer some are cheaper, it is impossible to generalise on price changes because there is no set pattern.
The price of herbs has dropped, this may be because Herblore is a non profit skill, the price of pots is very low, at current price super attack pots are less than 300gp, that is a ridiculous price for such a useful pot.
The price of raw fish has dropped, this may rise with the fall of the bots after the unbalanced trade update, no signs of that yet, cooked fish is cheaper than raw so you make a loss cooking fish.
Logs were an interesting case, the price of Yew and Magic logs went on the GE at a very high price, I left these as I guessed the price would drop to the pre GE price but no the price went up, the price of logs was at an all time high, I guess there was a fletching boom, as people saw the price was so high more people were cutting trees to cash in on the latest money making scheme, as a result of that the prices are starting to fall as more logs are becoming available, supply on demand at its finest.
Now dragon bones, this is where I took advantage of the market, when they were introduced to GE they 1.9k, I went away and came back later and they were 1.55k quite a drop in a few hours, so I bought 25k dragon bones, I used them on my alter to get 99 prayer and sold the remaining bones on GE for 2.2k, the price has risen now to 2.5k, pre GE they were 1.8k and 1.5k before the piety prayer, interestingly the price of dragon hides has sky rocketed as well.
The price of high level ores has remained the same but low levels ores have dropped, this is the time to buy coal and iron ore.
Runes dropped in price they were very low for a long time, I guess this is because of stock piled runes, I have 12k nature runes and 27k law runes, I don't need to sell so I keep them, many others will have many more and just put them on GE to get rid of them, they have recently started to rise I guess maybe because the player stock piles are going down but I think it more likely because the free Law companies can no longer operate more people are buying laws, nature runes have risen but not by much, I anticipate the fall in prices of nature runes because Alching is no longer free xp, the price on GE will not fall below the alch price, alching is a slow and monotonous way of magic xp but popular because its low, free or profit making costs, I guess people will use combat spells so they can recover some of their cost from drops.
Armour, dragon hide is an end product of crafting and the price has dropped because crafting is a very popular skill and there are always people crafting dragon hides as one of the easiest methods to craft. the price of rune plummeted and is just starting to rise again dragon has remained about the same.
Seeds, the price of tree seeds does not effect me as I get mine from my kingdom, I have noticed that magic tree seeds have sky rocketed im not sure but I guess Yews would have as well, I have also noticed that Calquat seeds are very low about 35K as opposed to over 200k for Magic seeds, I believe the xp from Calquat trees is similar to Magic, the only difference is Calquat can not be looked after by a farmer and take longer to grow, at that price difference you can afford to lose many Calquat trees and still be saving money, I lose about 1 in 5.
Weapons, dark bow has dropped from 3.2m to 2.3m, dragon scimitar and dragon long are hanging around cost price, whip dropped and has now started to rise again, the DDs or DDP++ as it is now known has fallen below the cost price, dragon dagger cost 30k in the fairy place and P++ used to cost 15K, put them together and you have a DDS for 25K, I know many of the use of the DDS has been taken away with the liberation of the wilderness but it is still a very powerful weapon.
There are many people who say that it is no longer possible to merchant, I have always said the good merchants can thrive with the GE and the bad ones will moan, a good merchant will adapt to the changes in Runescape and learn other ways to make money through trading, the only difference now is you need to be on the ball with prices (easy with the GE) and be alert and watch price trends, make the most of updates and speculate using the Runescape announcements, Ok you need some intelligence now instead of just luck but isnt that the way it should be?
I use the GE as an extension to my bank If I am going somewhere new and I don't know very well I will wear rune boots instead of dragon, I can buy these easily at bottom price and sell them again if I am finished often for max price, this is the same with almost anything.
Despite peoples addiction to moaning there are no drawbacks to the GE, Ok prices have changed but not to any great extent, it is just a case of adjusting to these prices, if you keep thinking of things as pre GE price you may buy many things and not others, if you just accept prices as they are and buy what you want you will have what you need.
I was going to do a full wilderness and unbalanced trade summary but this post started to get a bit big, I will do those at a later date.
13 comments
I agree 100%. Despite all the bashing that is going on in the Runescape community and some prices indeed being off, the Grand Exchange simply works.Moreover, it brought new opportunities for merchanting and money making. Just a few I used so far: making and selling rings of dueling (before they discounted too much), making and selling glass orbs, speculating on pure essence, buying snapdragon seeds, growing herbs and selling potions. Each of these methods yielded several millions and there are other countless ways to use GE for your advantage.
And that's not even counting fun of discovering all these ways and schemes.
I said it at the time and I still stand by what I said. The Grand Exchange is the best update for me personally to date. The reason Is I can now sell things without all the auto typers and trawling through forums.For me personally this is a great thing as I hated selling things to players, I have no idea why but I always struggled with it. Now I place in Exchange leave it and come back to it when it’s sold.
I am more of a skiller compared to a fighter, I only have 99 mage as a combat 99 and have been training up some stats, I have decided to train at spiritual mages, I am getting about 60k ish per hour up there but mainly as they have drops of lots of pure ess, runes and of course dragon boots, on average I take 15 pray pots with me up there and just start hacking things. On average I have been returning back to the reality with 4-5 pairs per run. Now pre G.E this could have taken me an hour or two to sell them, Now I put them in the G.E and go back up there to get more and collect my cash when I’m done with my 2nd run. Its faster safer and less hassle.
Huge thumbs up from me.
I agree 129% the grand exchange update is one of a kind update, teh best to :). 
w00t i l0ve the grand exchange to the bone, lovely update indeed fellow chaps :]. HOrrible update on stat portion of ur runescape inventory thing with the summoning update. 
the g.e. is absolutly great!. cause now i can train constant instead of waiting for hours to sell my drops every once in a while. most people think of it as a horrible update..u have to think of the goods of it ,which nobody does ..but dont get me started on the wildy update...thats an entirely diffrent story... 
yup, i have to agree the update is by far one of the best, although many players do not appreciate this update i find it so useful and saves ALOT of time, i use to dread going to world 2 just to buy an item or spend ages looking on forums. great job.. now im just waiting for the player v player single pking update to come along. 
The grand exchange is kinda like an investment. you could make loads or lose it all. anyway i agree 100.1% 
ye i agree also 129% about this update, but the wildy still has lots to go. :D 
Yes I totally agree, Grand Exchange has made 'life' alot easier. I can now sell and buy iteams with ease. It has also earned me a good few Mil, around 6M in the past week or so from Merching my expensive items, eg: Bandos Godsword. 
Your review was very well thought out, however, the users you have failed to take into consideration are the lowly free users. Some of us don't care for the game (or perhaps don't have the real life funds) to pay the monthly fee. I was a free world crafter before the GE, buying uncuts for 1000 gp (in the case of diamons) or less, and then making amulets out of them, stringing them and enchanting them until I had a finished power amulet or lesser enchanted amulet. From a power amulet i would make 5-10k. In the current state of the GE, though this may change in time, enchanted amulets are selling for the same price or less than the uncut gems. So now, unless a free member plans on paying in the future, there is no motivation for a free player to pursue the crafting skill.I also double as a chef, and the high level foods like anchovy pizza and chocolate cake are a lot easier to sell using this system, and the prices are reasonable for now. Before the GE, it was hard to get noobs to realize that anchovy pizzas healed more hp than swordfish and should sell for more money. Now the people who actually have knowledge of the foods can affect the prices fairly.
It's a whole new perspective down here O_O
It is a case of swings and roundabouts, free to play is no different from members, crafting is an expensive skill and we are also affected by the prices, the difference with members is we can lose even more money because we can craft Dragonstone.You just need to find different ways of making cash, as you said you have a better trade for pizza now, some players such as yourself found a new way to make cash others complain and quit.
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