Road to Restoration - GE Improvements Preview

Afternoon 'Scapers!

Back in our February blog, we began the conversation around potential improvements to the Grand Exchange.

One message came through loud and clear: many of you are happy with the system as it stands and simply want access to more accurate market price data. Some of you even told us that this change alone would make for a worthwhile update!

After reviewing your feedback and exploring the available options, we've reached a similar conclusion. As a result, improving market price accuracy became the primary focus of this update.

Today, we're taking a deeper look at the Grand Exchange and sharing what's coming up for this exciting project in the near future!

The big changes relating to prices

This change relates to what we call the "Market Price" - the value you see when examining an item. We won't be going into too much detail about exactly how this figure is calculated, as shedding too much light on this topic can lead to it being more intentionally manipulated, but for the purposes of this discussion: It's enough to know that the Market Price is derived from a set of recent trades and is updated periodically rather than in real time.

With that in mind, we wanted to ensure that, as part of this update, market prices update more quickly and with improved accuracy to real-time trading value. Here's what we improved to the end:

• An item's historic market price previously was only able to change a maximum of 5% every time the market price of the item updated. This has now been increased to a maximum of 20%. In practice this means that item prices will catch up to real-time trading values much quicker.
• The triggers at which an item's market price gets recalculated have been tweaked. Most items will now require significantly lower trade volume in order to trigger an overall market price recalculation.
• We will introduce a "recent trading price" which will be the average value of the last 10 trades.
• This will be much more volatile than the market price but will provide additional information especially if items do still lag behind the real trading prices.
• The icon for this is the down/up arrow symbol, whereas the market price is the hand with coins symbol.

• Completed trade data will be sent to RuneScape Wiki for long-term price tracking in a much more accurate manner! This is a hugely requested feature and we're delighted to be able to make this data available through the Wiki. Thanks to it, you will be able to explore historical price movements, identify trends over time, and gain deeper insights into the state of the Grand Exchange economy.
• Items will now display your current buy limit usage, showing how many of your available purchases have already been used. You'll also be able to see exactly how long remains until that buy limit resets, removing the guesswork and making it easier to plan your trading activity.

The UI

Alongside the market price improvements, we've also made a number of quality-of-life updates to the Grand Exchange interface. The images shown below are still a work in progress and may not represent the final implementation exactly, but they should provide a good indication of the direction we're taking and how these changes will look when they arrive in-game.

At a glance things feel similar, but here is a list of what to look for (see the labelled image below):

• Recent Trading Price can be found just below Market Price (A on the image below)
• Added the previously mentioned Buy Limit Timer so you know when it resets. (B on the image below)
• The default quantity has been changed to 1 instead of 0 (C on the image below)
• Addition buttons will still round to 1,000 (1 → 1,000 → 2,000 rather than 1 → 1,001 → 2,001)
• Right-click options have been added to +/- 20% button to set a custom percentage (+/-1 to 99%)
• If not set this will be 20% by default
• Right-click options have been added to the overview screen to quickly relist offers at +/- percentages and at market price
• Added Recent Searches (D on the image below)
• Before you have entered a search term, the search box will display the last 3 items you selected in a search, as well as your favourites.
• We've removed "edit mode" for offers
• Editing the price is now available on the in-progress offer screen without the extra button press
• The client and server should be more in sync with one another, so the price you see is the price you set.

Our goal was to preserve the familiar experience you know and use every day, while giving the UI a visual refresh that modernises its appearance without changing its core functionality.

These changes form part of our broader Road to Restoration UI initiative. As part of this effort, we're moving away from flat backgrounds that cause buttons and interface elements to blend together, as well as reducing unnecessary frames-within-frames. Instead, we're focusing on cleaner layouts that allow important elements to stand out naturally.

While these may seem like subtle adjustments, they have a significant impact on the overall feel of the interface, making it less cluttered and helping key information draw your attention more effectively. Ultimately, the side-by-side comparisons give a better overview.

Searching improvements

The UI aside, we've made some really exciting changes to the search functionality which will pack quite a punch and make using the Grand Exchange a lot easier! Aspects of this are something we're keen to get your feedback and suggestions on, so do read on a bit further!

• Common acronyms will search the full term.
• For example, "zgs" will search "Zamorak Godsword" and "Zaros Godsword". Check out the full table on these below!

• Similarly, prefixes will be replaced with relevant text
• For example, "3a" will be replaced with "third age". Check out the full table on these below!
• The search bar can now use common keyboard shortcuts such as ctrl+a to select all text and ctrl+v to paste
• Ironman players will no longer see items they cannot purchase

Your feedback also raised some issues with buy limits in commonly used items - particularly where items can be consumed much quicker than buy limits. This project was focused more on the GE system itself, but we've updated a few item types.

An important thing to note here is that we will, as always, be actively monitoring these changes when they go live and may make further changes if we feel they are necessary to maintain a healthy economy and trading environment.

Short-hand Search Terms

Here is the full list of short-hand search terms mentioned above:

Is anything missing from the list above? Do let us know!

Prefixes

Replaced prefixes include:

Underscores are used to indicate spaces. For example, typing "d long" becomes "dragon long".

Is anything missing from the list above? Do let us know!

That's it for now! You'll of course be keen to hear when these changes are coming to a Grand Exchange near you...

We are currently in the final stages of implementing these changes before it all gets sent off for testing. This week is a key opportunity for us to still implement some of the abbreviations and prefixes that you believe should be included, so please do get involved in the discussions on Reddit and Discord as soon as possible!

We'll be ready to share a specific release date in the very near future, so do keep an eye out for that news in the coming weeks.

- The RuneScape Team