Monkey Madness Continued.....

Guess this is it; the last installment of the MM-saga. In short, I finished it. Not without some trouble though. Traversing the tunnels twice was, eh, heart stopping. That would be the best description I can give. The first one, to get the gold bars enchanted was the worst. Of course I had the benefit of having done it once before. Still it got on my  nerves. That said, I think I found a new trick.

I entered the tunnels and clicked on the radar as far ahead on the route to take as I could. Once again I used the tactic of taking the damage by falling rock, healing when needed. I only turned on protect from melee when I reached the skeletons. And that is when the clicking way in front seemed to pay off: I didn't get hit by the floor spikes. It almost seems the 'automatic route' avoids them. The only time there was a hit from a trap: The one you can avoid using a plank, but that one dealt a hit of 7 which was manageable. At the end the sorry, but welcome sight of a gnome: Zooknock.

M-speak amulet made, child's toy acquired and the 2nd run. Not hard since I now knew what to expect, and Zooknock made the gree-gree. Instead of teleporting out I took the scenic route. A Karamja monkey on a leisurely walk, avoiding traps, but taking damage of falling rock. It seems the road-sign was missing. A short interlude where the diplomatic mission to Awowogei took place (and I can assure you I am not cut out for diplomatic missions), a cut-scene to reveal the machinations of gnome-monkey politics, a rescue of a fellow Karamja monkey and finally the battle between yours truly and a demon.

That was a tad harder than I thought it would be, and thus I bought a farm. I was careless and thus the first mission to save the 10th squad went down in flames. Magic flames. The ruddy demon had me for lunch. With 49 def one does not want to face this one head on. The second attempt went down without a hitch. Again, knowing what to do makes it easy. And so Monkey Madness is finished. It even got me past a few milestones:

And the 100 quest points:

Economics

Merch Gwyar posted her insights on RuneScape's economy and in all honesty I am a bit flustered about it. You see, I don't believe it. I don't believe there is such a thing as hyperinflation in the RS economy, however nice it sounds. I will concur there are price changes that defy the 'norm' (if there even is such a thing as  'norm').

The example given as proof of hyperinflation is the price of ranger boots, and of course they have changed dramatically over a period of time. But hyperinflation? I don't think so. Let's take a look at something that is considered to be a normal item. Iron ore for instance.

When I started playing (in 2005) iron ore could be had for 90-125 gp. The current price on the GE is 203gp (down 3 from yesterday). That doesn't sound like hyperinflation to me. It sounds more like a steady raise of around 8-10% per year. Still inflation, but hyper?  So maybe another article? Cowhide? Again the comparison with 2005: 100-150 back in the days where the listed GE price is 212 at the moment. That, once more, doesn't sound like hyperinflation to me.

Maybe I am looking at the wrong articles, so let me change directions. Guthan's Warspear used to be around the 6.5m mark, and I am sure about that, I got killed, lost one, had to buy it again; but now it sells for 1.5m. That is deflation, not inflation. Dharok's helmet shows the same decline in price.

Let's go back to ranger boots. Again 2005: 600k back then, and again I am pretty sure about that price: I did my lvl 2 clues faithfully and training range at Pyrefiends got me a fair number of them. Three of those resulted in ranger boots: One I sold, one I died with (and subsequently lost), one I still have. Yup, that is inflation, and you could call it hyperinflation since the price rose way more than, say, 10% per year.

But does that mean the whole economy is burdened by hyperinflation? Or are it just a few items that, for one reason or another, suffers from increases beyond what one would expect?

Are price changes dependent on other factors than 'mere economy'? Again 'if memory serves': there was a huge increase of the price of raw material when skill capes were introduced. With the introduction of the GE, to combat RWT, the general economy lost the input of raw materials by botting. And we all applauded that action. The funny thing is this: It doesn't seem there is a substantial impact of the loss of those raw materials: Prices are higher than before the 'extinction' of bots, but not by a zillion percentage.

So the only thing suffering are rare and semi-rare items. Rares I won't look at: Since the supply of those doesn't change (the number stays the same/will only decrease when one owning drops out of the game or dies with one) it can only be expected the price of those will rise more than items that have a renewable source. That leaves us with the semi-rares. The ranger boots, the god swords, the 3rd age items and all those other items that take hard work, zillion of tries, and multiple deaths to acquire. In short, items that take hard work, perseverance, to get. And therein, in my humble opinion, lies the crux of the matter. Hard work.

The work you need to do to get such an item. And, if the price rise is the way to judge it, more and more players are not willing to put in the work to get it, and so the price goes up. But that is not hyperinflation... That is the economy at work...