Trading

Trading is the exchange of gold and items between players. Trading is one of RuneScape's oldest features and while not essential to game play, it plays a large part in the community and is utilised by nearly every player except for Ironmen who cannot trade with other players.

The Grand Exchange

The most common form of trading in Old School RuneScape is via the Grand Exchange. This system - headquartered in north-west Varrock - automates the process of exchanging items for coins by letting players set up to eight buy or sell offers for a desired price.

Compared to other methods, trading via the Grand Exchange removes the need for direct player-to-player interaction, the need to be logged in at the same time as the other party and greatly reduces the exposure to various scams. These advantages come in exchange for a 1% convenience fee and limitations on quantity.

Official worlds

The following official worlds are assigned to Trading:

World	Location	Members	Activity
301	United States (east)	0	Trade - Free
302	United Kingdom	1	Trade - Members

Player-to-player trading

Traditional trading via the right-click trade option has many use cases, among which:

• Avoiding the Grand Exchange fee.
• Overcoming the Grand Exchange's quantity limits.
• Exchanging gifts or loaning items to friends.
• Sharing the rewards of group content.
• Bringing raw material to players at a processing facility, such as pure essence to a player crafting runes at an altar.
• Trading in locations far from the Grand Exchange, such as sharing supplies in a boss room.
• Trading items for more than the maximum number of coins in a stack.
• Trading items that cannot traded on the Grand Exchange. Many of these items are useless but are prized by collectors.
• Trading with fellow group ironmen.
• Exchanging items between one's own accounts.

The official trading worlds are World 301 (for free players) and World 302 (for members). Those looking to trade directly with other players should be wary of a great number of scams that involve player-to-player trading.

For a few months prior to the release of the Grand Exchange, players could use the Trading Post to the find trading partners. The RuneScape Forums and third-party websites were also commonly used for this purpose.

How to trade

The trading process is relatively simple and divided into three steps:

1. Initiating the trade - Where one chooses their desired partner.
2. The first trade window - Where one makes their offer of the items to be traded.
3. The second trade window - Where the player is given one final chance to make sure they want to go through with the trade.

Players must be wary, as there is no way to undo a trade; any transaction is final.

Initiating a trade

To trade with someone, a player must right-click the person and select the "Trade with" option. The message "Sending trade offer..." will appear in the chat box, and "[player name] wishes to trade with you." will appear in the other player's chat box. That person must then accept the invitation by clicking on that message. If the offer is accepted, a trade window will open for each player.

However, if one of the traders has a certain interface up, such as bank, Equipment Stats, or trading interface with another player, "Other player is busy at the moment." will show up in the chatbox. If either player is an ironman, a message states that they "stand alone", preventing trading.

Players in a busy world who wish to see their trading partner's text may click on their "trade" tab at the bottom of the screen. This allows the player to see only their partner's chat and their own.

First trade window

Trading with another player.

The trade window has three main parts:

• Your Offer - To add to a trade offer, click on an item in your inventory; to remove an already added offer, click the item.
  • Players may trade only with what is in their inventory.
• Trader's Offer - Other player's trade offer.
• Wealth transfer scale - Calculates the values of all the items using Grand Exchange price as an indicator and then shows if the trade is balanced or positive to one or another player. Note if the value of items shown is too great, then the trade wealth message is displayed in red.

Upon entering the trade window, items gain a new right click menu consisting of the following options:

• "Offer" (offers one item), "Offer-5" or "Offer-10" adds that amount of the item to the player's offer.
• "Offer-X"—The player is prompted to enter a number, which will be the amount of the item to be added; one may use "K" for 1,000 and "M" for 1,000,000.
• "Offer-All" adds all of the item to the player's offer.
• Value Displays in the in-game chat window the current Grand Exchange market value of the item.
• Examine retains the same function as normal, displaying text to describe the item.

If an item is removed from an offer, a big red flashing exclamation point will appear where the item used to be with a message noting to check the offer. If the player attempts to accept the offer, they will be given a warning to double check the offer.

There is also an indicator showing slots left, accept and decline button. Once either player is satisfied with the trade, "Accept" must be clicked to proceed. When both players have done so, the second trade window appears. If a player does not wish to trade with the other anymore, "Decline" may be clicked to close the trade window.

Second trade window

The second window is a final confirmation of the transaction; no actual offering of items will take place in this window. Here, players are able to review which items have been offered by each party to confirm they are trading what they intended to. Numbers are more specific in these trade window; for example, if a player offers 10,435,672 coins in the first window, it will only display as a green 10M. In the second window however, the full value is shown and the player will see that 10,435,672 coins are being offered.

Any items modified from the first window will still be marked in red, this time with a bar that spans the length of the entire half of the other player's window.

Declined trades

When the player's trading partner declines the trade or performs some other action that has them exit the trading screen, the player will be notified with the "Other player declined trade." message. This change was made in response to ongoing scams.

How to check by yourself if an item can be traded

• Method 1: Try to withdraw it from the bank in noted form. If it can't be withdrawn as notes, you can't trade it.

This method does not work with stackable items. For stackable items, use Method 2.

• Method 2: Check for the price of the item via the Guide Price, Grand Exchange, or at a general store. If it says you can't sell this, you can't trade it with other people.

Drop trading

A risky form of trading involves dropping items for another player to pick up. In order to avoid third parties from unexpectedly picking up the item, this is typically done in rarely visited locations, or in the Wilderness, where items appear to other players immediately.

Circumstances in which drop trading has traditionally been used include:

• Sharing supplies with other players, in particular when using the trade window is inconvenient.
• Giving away items randomly (drop parties).
• Handing the dawnbringer to another party member in the Theatre of Blood.
• Transfering items from an ironman account to a non-ironman account.

As above, players should be wary of scams that involve drop trading.

Other

Other forms of exchanging items between players include:

• Group ironmen can place tradeable items in shared storage.
• Players can store raid-unique items in the shared space of Chambers of Xeric's storage units.
• The chest in the Party Room can be used to distribute items randomly.
• Oldschool bonds, Pete's candlesticks, miscellaneous keys, half certificates and weapon store keys can be given to other players by using it on them.
• Players can inform others of the location of a collectible resource, such as implings or gout tubers. This is sometimes done in exchange for a finder's fee.
• Cheese can be traded to ironmen by placing pieces on rat traps.
• Players can sell items to stores for other players to buy. Due to the decay and high fees, this method has little practical use. Historically, it has been used to overcome ironman limitations, detection of rule-breakers or for amusement.

Changes

Date	Changes
[[{{#explode:15 March 2023| |0}} {{#explode:15 March 2023| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:15 March 2023| |2}}]] (update | poll)	A new option has been added to the Settings menu which allows players to toggle whether the Trade option is shown on other players.
[[{{#explode:17 March 2021| |0}} {{#explode:17 March 2021| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:17 March 2021| |2}}]] (update)	Players can no longer trade members of the opposite team in a game of Castle Wars.
[[{{#explode:13 October 2014| |0}} {{#explode:13 October 2014| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:13 October 2014| |2}}]] (update)	Items that need to be traded between players during quests can now be used on other players to transfer them.
[[{{#explode:11 April 2013| |0}} {{#explode:11 April 2013| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:11 April 2013| |2}}]] (update | poll)	While you're trading, your trade partner's chat will appear on the Trade chat tab.
[[{{#explode:22 February 2013| |0}} {{#explode:22 February 2013| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:22 February 2013| |2}}]] (update)	This content was included when the Old School RuneScape servers officially launched.