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TWIRP Minigame Indexes The TruthScape Glossary of RuneScape Terms and Slang

Last but certainly not least, I have a few extra special indexes, or "extras" as I like to call them. These measure certain interesting characteristics of the marketplace, but don't really fit logically into any of the preceding index groups.

Three of these indexes focus on different aspects of the high end of the market, while the other three are truly unique and so are each described separately.

What these indexes have in common is that they track generally expensive items sought out mostly by richer and more experienced players. Where they differ is what those items are and how they are used.

The indexes are the following:

• Discontinued Items Affordability (TWIRP-X-DISCa): This index tracks the affordability (inverse cost) of discontinued RuneScape items, commonly called "rares".
  
  
• Luxury Items Affordability (TWIRP-X-LUXa): This special index specifically focuses on "luxury items", which I define as gear that rich players value and like to buy, but that most players don't consider essential. Included in here are items like godswords, Bandos and Armadyl armor, third age armor, high-end treasure trail rewards, and a portion of the Discontinued Items Affordability index.
  
  
• Powerleveling Affordability (TWIRP-X-POWa): This index keeps track of trends in the affordability of items typically used "powerleveling". Skilling examples include high-level Construction planks, expensive Farming seeds, high-end logs and fish. Combat powerleveling is measured via items like red chinchompas, cannonballs, and certain runes and potions.

This is a simple index of the 50 items (or item sets) whose prices I feel are the most important to the economy. It is unweighted, so all percentage changes impact the index equally. The 50 items are as follows:If you read my explanation of why I use weighted indexes, you may recall that I mentioned the limitations of simple indexes that use only small numbers of items and don't use weights to indicate importance. That said, I felt that it might also be useful to have a simple index of the affordability of the most crucial items in RuneScape, so I added the Key Items Affordability Index, abbreviated TWIRP-X-KEY.

• Equipment and Armor: Full rune armor, full Veracs set, granite maul, abyssal whip, amulet of glory, amulet of fury.
  
  
• Skill Raw Materials: Raw materials by skill type:
  • Construction: Oak plank.
    
    
  • Cooking/Fishing: Raw lobster, raw monkfish, raw shark.
    
    
  • Crafting: Flax, cowhide, green dragonhide, black dragonhide and uncut gems (collectively, via the TWIRP-C-DROP-GEM subindex.)
    
    
  • Farming: Watermelon seed, ranarr seed, snapdragon seed.
    
    
  • Firemaking/Fletching: Bow string, maple logs, yew logs, magic logs, yew longbow, magic longbow.
    
    
  • Herblore: Vial of water, ranarr weed, kwuarm, snapdragon, snape grass.
    
    
  • Prayer: Dragon bones.
    
    
  • Runecrafting: Pure essence.
    
    
  • Mining/Smithing: Coal, gold ore, iron bar, steel bar, mithril bar, adamantite bar.
  
  
  
• Combat Supplies: These items are used mainly to support combat activities:
  • Ranging Ammunition: Iron arrow, cannonball.
    
    
  • Magic Runes: Air rune, fire rune, chaos rune, nature rune, death rune.
    
    
  • Food: Lobster, monkfish, shark.
    
    
  • Potions: Prayer potion, super set (super attack, super defence, super strength), Saradomin brew.

Note that the reason the equipment and armor is all melee gear is not that I ignored ranging or magic; it's simply that those combat styles don't have armor or weapons that are both commonly used and particularly price-sensitive.

This index, abbreviated TWIRP-X-ALCHa, tracks changes in the cost (or affordability) of using the high alchemy spell for training. The index is a bit different than the others because it doesn't track the affordability of a specific set of items, but rather the differences between their market prices and their high alch values. It also takes into account changes in the price of nature runes, since those are needed for high alchemy.

When this index goes up, it means that it is more affordable (you lose less money) to train magic by alching the following four commonly used items: maple longbows, yew longbows, magic longbows and green dragonhide bodies. When the index goes down, it means that the cost of high alching these items is increasing.

This index is a real "oddball" because doesn't track price changes at all. Rather, it provides a very approximate (thus "crude") indication of the volatility of RuneScape prices—that is, how much they are changing.

This index is the only one that is not oriented around a base value of 100. In fact, the Crude Volatility Index numbers have no inherent meaning, they are just intended to give a relative indication of how much prices are swinging in the economy, by comparing their values one week to the next.

Note also that this index is calculated each week based on the previous week's value and not a "base value", so it has no percentage change figures associated with it.

TWIRP Minigame Indexes The TruthScape Glossary of RuneScape Terms and Slang