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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Skill Optimization Guide for RuneScape       >  The RuneScoop Skill Optimization Guide for RuneScape - Reference

Selection Assumptions for Equipment and Supplies The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide for RuneScape

The costs of skill inputs and outputs have no influence on how quickly you can perform skill activities, but they can have a dramatic impact on how profitable or costly they are to train. My SAP calculations are generally based on Grand Exchange median prices, and are updated daily as prices adjust. However, there are some inherent limitations on how accurate this information can be, and it’s important to understand these issues.

The guide’s profitability/cost figures are computed based on a set of item prices polled from the Grand Exchange, which change on a daily basis. Resource skills don’t tend to be dramatically impacted by daily price changes; if you are fishing sharks or mining gold ore or whatnot, the profitability of these activities will change by only a few percentage points as prices go up or down.

In contrast, other skills can be dramatically impacted by even small changes in the cost of items, especially skills that involve processing inputs into outputs. For example, consider smithing adamant bars into unfinished adamant crossbow bolts. An increase of a few percentage points in the cost of bars, or a decrease in the price of bolts can turn this from a money-making to a money-losing enterprise.

Skills that involve making items that are subsequently converted to money via high alchemy can be similarly affected. Their profitability is also affected by changes in nature rune prices.

Little quirks in the Grand Exchange can wreak havoc on certain methods. In most cases, this is not really because of the Grand Exchange itself, but rather due to Jagex’s price controls, which mess up supply and demand in the game. Simply put, the price controls mean that Grand Exchange prices don’t always reflect how much players feel an item is worth.

My methods assume that you buy and sell items on the Grand Exchange at their median price, but often you’ll find that items buy or sell at their minimum or maximum price instead of their median price. Depending on your luck and how the market is at a particular time, this could mean you earn or lose more than my methods indicate.

Again, the methods that involve buying raw materials, processing them and selling the output are the most susceptible to these problems. If you plan to do something that requires you to buy expensive items to process and re-sell, it often makes sense to do this in relatively small batches to test the current state of the market, before you make a big investment.

In an effort to prevent what they consider to be abuses, Jagex has instituted a number of limits on item purchases and sales in the GE. These include making you wait several hours before reselling an item you just purchased (or vice-versa) and restricting how many of certain items you can buy or sell in a period of time. Usually these don’t have a big impact on most methods, but they can matter in some cases. If you can’t buy enough items to do a particular activity, it can be impractical regardless of how much sense it makes “on paper”.

Jagex also has price floors on some items that make them nearly impossible to sell, and price ceilings on some items that make them nearly impossible to buy. I’ve tried to avoid these in my methods but Jagex tends to impose them without warning.

Game Updates

Changes to the game can have an immediate impact on the supply or demand for certain items, making some training methods immediately very lucrative or extremely expensive. In general, whenever Jagex puts out an update to a particular skill—especially a high-level update—everyone rushes to level that skill and its cost of training skyrockets. That can also lead to certain input items becoming unbuyable, distorting the skill ratings in this guide. So beware!

Selection Assumptions for Equipment and Supplies The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide for RuneScape