The Tip.It Times


Issue 199gp

The Other Combat Triangle

Written by and edited by Tip.It

Over the years countless arguments and fights have broken out on which type of game play is "the best". Questers claim that it's all about the story and with it unlock some amazing items. PK-ers, and stakers too back in the day, were in it for the thrill of besting their opponents and looting their items. Monster hunters seek a similar thrill against monsters that are near impossible to defeat. Skillers are in it to get as many skills as possible to level 99. And Merchanters like nothing more then to see their pile of gold grow. However, his greed for gold is universal though, as you need some GP to make GP.

With the updates of the last year or so, quite a few things have changed. Staking became no longer profitable, and with the Grand Exchange merchanting had become a walk in the park, and even skilling lost its edge when many items are readily available in huge quantities. People were also stuck to the Bounty Hunter mini-game if they ever wanted to have any hopes of looting other players. Of course the vast majority of the people want to do it all, at least to some extend, as these days, there are few methods that are a sure-fire way to gain a set amount of GP. So today I'd like to talk about the three major money making groups, and how they relate to one another.

The first group is the one who focuses on Combat. Whether they are die hard DK-ers, great GWD-ers, team up in a large group to tackle the new Corporeal Beast or head into the Crater to best the guy on the other end and take his stuff, they are after valuable drops from creatures or players that they know, or can at least predict how they behave, and can slay them in large numbers. With the Grand Exchange as middle-man all you needed to do to get your items cashed in is put them up at a reasonable price up and go back to killing stuff. Coinshare took away this middle-man, and allowed you to instantly cash in those items at the current medium price.

The second group is composed of the Skillers. Those mining Gold Ore, cutting Yew Logs, crafting Nature Runes, farming Herbs or otherwise gathering raw materials have gathering GP as a main goal, and we call those the DIY Skillers. They take the GP over XP approach to things. The other "version" of a Skiller is the one that will buy the thousands of Gold Ores to raise their Smithing, not caring much if they stand to lose a couple of million in the process, in order to reach their goal. Of course once they reach a higher level, the money starts flowing in, think of level 91 Runecrafting for example.

The last group is made of up the Merchanters. These guys are often frowned upon, as they are sometimes solely, and even maliciously, responsible for driving up the price of certain items. The Grand Exchange is the perfect tool for them, buying a whole bunch of items that you expect to rise in price a bit, and then selling them. To put it in comparative terms; it's like having Ancients Magiks available to you on F2P. You don't need to go on forums anymore, or stand in World 1 screaming your lungs out, you literally don’t have to move an inch to make millions. Some people get together in groups and buy out any semi-popular item, drive up the price till a certain point, and then flood the market with all those items at a raised price. This is in my humble opinion close enough to organised "crime", but there are no rules against it.

As you can see, very different ways of making money, and each with varying degrees of reliability. Some are frowned upon, and some are needlessly flamed. But believe it or not, they do depend on one another.

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way. Without people that spend weeks on end in the Slayer Tower, or Godwars Dungeon, the items they provide to the economy would be very rare, and as a natural law of supply and demand, the price would simply be unaffordable for the average Joe. Similar with Skilling, if they do not make and sell the hundreds of thousands of Prayer Potions (for example), the price of those would make especially the harder "boss-monsters" unprofitable (or far less profitable) to kill. And lastly Merchanters; they do not provide anyone with anything, but merely skim a bit off the top. And still they help the whole process.

Merchanters are known for driving the prices up. And while one group of people is content to go with the flow and buy and sell as the price rises and falls, the price bump of Saradomin Brews and some related products on September 6th was the doing of large groups of price manipulators, not willing to sit around and wait for the market to move itself (the organised crime I spoke of). Skillers, or in this case, those making those very Brews who paid attention to the market have sold their items when it was on the rise. Quite a few people who normally frown on this type of merchanting made a small fortune for themselves riding along on this wave, making their work far more profitable then it would normally have been.

Merchanters can also thank the warriors for something. If they don't use the thousands of potions and items of food, these would become far less popular, and thus less profitable to merchant with. A good example is the time just after the Wilderness was removed. No amount of price manipulation could drive the price of food or potions back up, so merchanters were left with the items not normally used in extremely large amounts. So each of these previously established groups seems to depend on another, at least to some extent, to make their work even more profitable.

Having highlighted a few of the less obvious economic ties between these main money-making groups, I am now curious. What group do you place yourself in? And, other than the argument that it is good money (because they all are), I want to know what made you choose this particular category. More than that, each of these groups seems to have a knack for hating the other two. Arguments such as no-lifers come to mind. Of course without flaming, is there a reason you may not like one or more of these groups?

PS: I'd like you all to know that the new Multi Site Steel War has been announced. Go to the Event section on the forum to check it out!

Did You Know...
... That with the Pawya and Grenwall update to Hunter, the last "useless" produce that Farming can give you finally also has a use other then food? You can use a Papaya now to boxtrap a Pawya. While most Farming Products can be used in Cooking, Herblore, other Farming uses, or even Summoning and Quests, The high level Papaya Fruit Tree produced food that was not used for anything other then Farming payment. Even flowers help with Farming, preventing crops from going bad.(Thanks to the Tal Shiar Alliance!)

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Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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