RuneScape Forum Archive | The Value of Money

Eren Lapucet

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Now, while some people might think that 1,000% is way too much, I think it’s reasonable considering the words “massive” and “revelation”. For the Shield of Arrav, 1,200gp is just too little, both using PGPE, and if we compare it with rewards given by other nobles in quests, which are in the thousands of gp. Surely the reward for recovering the Shield of Arrav is reasonably worth 12,000gp back in the day. As for Asgarnia Smith, 320gp using PGPE doesn’t seem like enough for his reaction, but 3,200gp does. For the Varrock museum, 5gp is a joke, considering that PGPE is pretty reliable for small amounts of gp. 25 or 50gp seems just right to even start qualification as *worth a lot”.

Although, there is a counterargument to this theory. In Dimension of Disaster, Aris reveals that silver coins were used sometime before the player was born. Now, quite a few basic food, drinks and clothing in 169 are worth a handful of gp, and some things like beer cost only 1-2gp. If inflation was 1,000% as I am proposing, then it really would have been difficult to buy these cheap commodities 20+ years ago unless you had some form of money worth, say 1/10th of a single gp. But silver coins would be going out of existence at this point.

On the other hand, the existence of silver coins in the past, and the fact that they have gone out of existence, *is* evidence for high levels of inflation. We can sort of resolve the above problem by being loose about the exact years that things happened. I'm too Unaligned to have a forum signature.

15-Jan-2016 04:59:55 - Last edited on 15-Jan-2016 19:14:38 by Eren Lapucet

Eren Lapucet

Posts: 1,658 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Things that don't fit

This section is a collection of a few things that just don't fit in with other data.

Managing Miscellania: You can pay up to 50,000gp for 10 workers a day. That's 5,000gp a day per worker.

According to the mourner Sanchex, Mandirth used to pay him 76,000gp an hour.

Postbag (joke, but still relevant): Karim earns 1gp a month after paying bills.

Gnome restaurant food ranges between 70-450gp. Drinks are 30gp each. This is about 10 times more expensive than food/drink otherwise.

According to Duke's Dilemma, it costs 20k to upgrade Lumbridge guardsman equipment (meaning they get rune swords and shields). But 20k will barely get you one sword or shield, let alone sets for the 5 added guards. This might be an argument that there's a problem with using Duke's Dilemma as a source for anything. Although maybe this can be resolved if we go with the "when you buy things in bulk they are cheaper" concept, however that already brings up the question of whether there are really only 5 new guardsmen, or we have to use scale theory, and that just complicates things further. I'm too Unaligned to have a forum signature.

15-Jan-2016 05:00:58 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2016 05:36:38 by Eren Lapucet

Eren Lapucet

Posts: 1,658 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Bonus: Gnomes

Food sold at Gianne's Restaurant at the Grand Tree range between 70gp and 450gp, making the food quite expensive. While this can be easily waved off as having no basis to lore, it's important to note that during Plagues End there is reference to the mayor stocking up on "Gnome delicacies". This implies there is something fancy and exotic about gnome food, which justifies it being expensive. This also shouldn't be too hard to accept at face value (just look at the ingredients and the drinks). Yet, apparently this is common gnome food, and from the Gnome Restaurant minigame we know that gnomes of all different social classes eat this food.

There are at-least two examples of bribes: During The Grand Tree, Femi offers to sneak you inside Tree Gnome Stronghold if you didn't help before for 1,000gp. During Monkey Madness, you can pay Glouph 200,000gp to do the slider puzzle for you. These two values are quite higher than the average bribe amount, which we established earlier to be 73gp.

We also note that gnomes seems to possess a high level of intelligence. Gnome children are incredibly smart, and have a working knowledge of philosophy (as you are all aware thanks to dank memes). There are gnomes that are magicians, travelers/explorers, researchers, inventors/engineers, ambassadors and entrepreneurs (eg. look up Winkin).

The gnomes also have a large army, implying they have the resources to maintain one. Their army seems skilled (recall they have an agility course and a national sport, so they are physically competent). They have shown military intelligence in battles such as Atarisundri.

Unlike goblins or even dwarves (remember, half of Keldagrim is dirt poor), there doesn't seem to be any poor gnomes. They all look happy, healthy, and well to do. And this begs the question. Are gnomes possibly richer than the average human? It's hard to say. But one thing is for certain: Those pesky gnomes are up to some nefarious plot. I'm too Unaligned to have a forum signature.

15-Jan-2016 05:02:28 - Last edited on 03-Apr-2016 05:39:40 by Eren Lapucet

Eren Lapucet

Posts: 1,658 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

Bonus: Value comparison

Someone pointed out that SsVivid made a similar thread in the roleplaying forum on October 13, 2013. I was previously unaware of this thread and decide to compare some of our values. Interestingly some of our values were quite similar, and are posted below.

SsVivid's estimates
Working peasant's yearly income ------ 11k
Working classman's yearly income ----- 18.5k
Low noble's yearly income ------------ 57k
High noble's yearly income ------------ 265k
Small basic house ---------- 10k
Mansion ------------------- 50k

My estimates
Extremely Poor: 3,650gp-7,300gp a year
Middle Class (slightly poor?): 18,250gp a year
Well to do Middle Class: 36,500gp-54,750gp a year
Middle/Upper Class: 109,500gp-182,250gp a year
Houses: Several tens of thousands of gp. I'm too Unaligned to have a forum signature.

15-Jan-2016 05:02:40 - Last edited on 30-Aug-2016 21:20:47 by Eren Lapucet

Eren Lapucet

Posts: 1,658 Mithril Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile

And that's the end of the thread! My original plan was to clean up this thread and make it more professional, but after re-reading it I feel like it's fine (read between the lines: I was lazy). I conclude from my analysis/examples above that there is sufficient evidence for PGPE, even though there are quite a few cases of LFD's. At the very least, PGPE it is a good model for thinking about RS currency. I'm too Unaligned to have a forum signature.

15-Jan-2016 05:02:47 - Last edited on 30-Aug-2016 21:20:02 by Eren Lapucet