How To Use The OSRS Grand Exchange

            The Grand Exchange is the economic center of the world of Old School OSRS and located northwest of Varrock. Learning to navigate it is essential to financially successful play. When someone chooses to buy OSRS accounts from Accountwarehouse, we want you to succeed in-game.  This means that we try to help players understand how to play the game properly and understand game mechanics when playing their new account.  Don’t get us wrong, part of the charm of OSRS is you can play just as successfully naked, living with the woods with nothing but an ax and a book of spells, but if you wish to demonstrate to your fellow players that you have the guile to swindle your friends and neighbors out of their iron bars then you are going to have to know how to wheel and deal here in the GE.  So even though you can skip the grind and buy OSRS gold from us, you will still have to understand how the GE works in order to spend your gold.

            We actually know very little of the exact nature of how the Grand Exchange operates since so much of its specifics are kept secret to avoid exploitation. Actually, a lot of the GE’s inner workings are specifically built around preventing people from profiting from technical mechanisms rather than in-game thrift and know-how but more on that later. The specifics, like the rules the algorithms use, are unknown but we do know a lot of how the GE operates based on player experience and deduction.

            Players interact with the GE buy creating offers to buy and sell specific goods. The prices are pre-set by a guideline algorithm that judges the current value of an item but these prices can be adjusted based on the player’s desires. The offers are then eventually matched and the exchange is made. The cash flow is based on if the buy or sell offer was made first. If a buy offer is made and the lower sale offer exists then the exchange is made and the additional cash is returned to the buyer. Similarly, if a seller makes an offer and a buyer has already offered a higher price then the sale goes through and the seller gets to keep the additional money.

            But wait, didn’t we mention an in-game pricing algorithm? That seems like a big influence on how this will all pan out. We did and it will. The pricing algorithm is also a mystery but generally follows the laws of supply and demand. The more people request an item, and the less that offer is met, the more the algorithm will raise the price. The prices are updated based on the frequency of sale, so items that have a low volume of movement can have inaccurate prices. Jagex is aware of this price lag and does offer up to date price assessment on The Grand Exchange Market Watch. The Grand Exchange Market Watch also tracks the volume of exchanges and makes this information publicly available, which is great info to have if you are looking to try and maximize your profit.

            Jagex has also voiced that they can, and will, directly intervene with the price guide and alter prices if they believe that manipulation is taking place. This is just one of many measures to ensure the reliability of the GE as a place of economic stability. There are also amount limits put in place to prevent intentional manipulation of the market, though no limits on selling. Players are limited in the number of item slots they have at the Grand Exchange and this limit is determined by the status of the player’s account. A free account has 3 slots available for trading and a player with a membership has 8 slots.

            Another measure put into place are limits on new accounts having access to the Grand Exchange. For a new player to have access to the GE, you need to have 20 hours of total gameplay, 10 quest points, and 100 total skill level. This is because most bot or black-market accounts are caught before hitting 20 hours. This can be a bit of a hassle for players who aren’t quest oriented, but 10 quest points can be accumulated pretty quickly with the quests in and around the starting area like Sheep Shearing and Cooks Assistant.

             While these measures are meant to help the market, Jagex understands that these limits can make certain types of exchanges difficult. There are ways available within the GE’s system in order to conserve slots for sale, such as converting armors into item sets. Tellers at the GE can do this (as well as undo it) for you an unlimited number of times for free, so it is definitely a space-saving resource you should look to utilize if you are looking to sell rare armors and the like.

            And this isn’t the only service made available by NPCs at the Grand Exchange. The most essential, like baseline necessary, are the various expert NPCs who can help you understand the value of various types of objects, via the GE’s algorithm. But some of these NPCs offer additional services that are pretty useful. Bob Barter, on top of knowing the prices of herbs and potions, can decant potions, taking any partially full potions and merging them to create full ones, This is also important since partially consumed items cannot be traded in the GE so you have to make sure those potions are tradable items and Bob is willing to help you do that for free (though he will charge you if you don’t have enough vials on hand). The other NPC who is extra helpful is Murky Matt. He can do for charged items what Bob does for potions, moving the charge to fully charge items. These guys are so helpful at getting your stuff sorted out.

            Those are the basics of using the Grand Exchange. Much like any economic exchange, there are certain nuances to using it to yield a profit but that, much like actual stock market advice, is a little dense. A lot of timing and guesswork goes into playing a market, any market, to your favor. Not to mention while Jagex rewards ingenuity, they clearly intent the GE to be used as a hub to meet player needs, not a place to go to test your stock market theories. While one of the best ways to make real-life money is to sell your OSRS account when you are done playing, plenty of in-game gold can be acquired by properly understanding and using the OSRS Grand Exchange.  Then again, OSRS is about doing what you think is fun, so if intriguing out the best time of day to sell loaves of bread is what you love then we think you should do it.