Jasonmrc

Quick Reference Links

RuneScape News Post; Grand Exchange Database
Grand Exchange Database
Manual; The Grand Exchange.
^{I will be referring to the above links throughout the article.}

The Grand Exchange Database. This update is a site addition connected to an in-game location. As many of you know the Grand Exchange is a place in northwest Varrock which players can go to in order to sell items to anyone in RuneScape, regardless of the world they’re on. The Grand Exchange Database is an instant link to the current in-game price of every tradeable item in RuneScape – and you don’t even have to be logged in to use it!

The Index

For active merchants this page can be very useful. It shows the five most dramatic price rise percentages, the five most dramatic price drop percentages, the five most traded items, and the five most valuable items. Since the first two are based off of price change percents and not cash, these are commonly cheap items. When I wrote this article Fever grass was the most dramatic price rise, rising 33% to 4 gp each. Black dragon-hide coifs (0) was the most dramatic price drop, dropping 19% to 258k.

Below these there is an “Item of the week”, which shows any item in RuneScape. It shows the item’s current average price, 7 and 30 day price change percentages, a picture of the item, and a link to a graph of the item’s market history. One item a week is not often enough for this to be useful. Seeing as RuneScape has over 3,000 items, this makes it take nearly 58 years for it to show every item in RuneScape once. Just think if even a quarter of those 3,000 items were thrown up a second time? That would make it take just over 72 years to show them all! If this was to be changed to “Item of the day” it would be immensely more useful. It would change that 58 years to just over 8.

Global features

Another feature of the Grand Exchange Database is the left hand alphabetical sidebar. Being what its name states, it has a vertical list of the alphabet. Each letter links to a page containing every item starting with that letter. There is also an “other” link, which lists every item starting with a non-alphabetical character such as numbers and quotations.

Sitting at the top of every page (below the banner) is the scrolling marquee. It goes through the prices of 10 items each time it scrolls. It can (and will) keep scrolling through different items without refreshing the page. If you wanted to, you could view the price of every item in RuneScape that way, though it would take a long time.

The search bar is just what its name says, a search form in a bar shape. You can search by name, price, and whether it’s a member’s item or not. The main problem with the search bar is not how it’s laid out but how it functions. Unlike the in-game Grand Exchange, this search will bring up anything which has your search term as a keyword (a keyword isn’t necessarily on the item’s page; I’ve gotten results of items which weren’t even related to my search). If the Grand Exchange Database search operated like its in-game counterpart it would be much more efficient.

Item pages

If you go to an individual item’s page you’ll first see its title, then its description, followed by its current market values and price change percentages, and ending with a graph of its trade history. The title is just that, the item’s name. The description also does not need to be described as it’s just a basic item description as one would expect. The current market values have three numbers. Firstly it shows the item’s current minimum on the left, and then in the center there’s the current average or “going price” of the item. On the right is the maximum you can buy or sell the item for. Right below these prices are the price change records, which are very useful if you intend to merchant as they show how much the price has changed in the past 7 and 30 days.

Below everything else there is a graph which shows the item’s market history. This is scaled by whatever ratio is closest to the item’s price. For example, a 500k item will have a 7-9k change at each line, whereas a 10 gp item will have a 1 gp change. The bars for this graph are colored three different colors: yellow, orange, and red. Yellow is the daily average – it shows how the price has changed over the past few days. The orange bar shows the 5-day average – how the price has changed over the past 5 days. The red bar shows the 20-day average – how the price has changed over the past 20 days. You can only see the 20-day average when viewing the 30-day chart.

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The Grand Exchange Database (or GEDB) is definitely a welcome addition as it makes it much easier to view current prices without logging in. One great addition to it I can think of is adding a “Favourite Items” list which you must log in to access. When you view the “Favourite items” page it could show the current average and today’s change, just like the search result page. I think this would be very useful to merchants or market-watchers like myself.

Since I’ve started to rate RuneScape updates I’ll rate this one.

9/10

They did well with it for a beta, and it should be extremely useful when it’s fully released.

I think that’s all for this update.

Head on over to the Grand Exchange Database!