Items
In RuneScape, items are physical objects that a player may have in his or her inventory. Players distinguish them by their names and graphics. The game additionally seems to distinguish items by ID numbers that are not visible to players in-game.
Characteristics
Items can be described by a number of characteristics:
- Graphics: All obtainable items have graphics. There are four main types of graphics items may have. All items may be held in the inventory and therefore have inventory pictures. This inventory picture also appears in the Grand Exchange box and the equipment screen, albeit its outline and shadow may vary. The inventory picture is actually a 3D model, though it is only shown at one angle and has an outline (usually) and shadow added to it. Most textures, also, currently do not appear on inventory icons*. Items may actually be seen in 3D when dropped on the ground, and will use the same model as their inventory icon (they may, however, appear at a different size or orientation, and will also be affected by graphical settings such as textures). The third kind of item graphic is equipment that is equipped on the player, which is a 3-D model that is usually more detailed than the inventory/dropped appearance. A fourth appearance for items is its appearance in a chatbox, such as when an NPC gives you an item, and it appears as a larger version of the inventory icon (with textures if you have them turned on). This appearance is also used on an item's Grand Exchange Database page. This fourth appearance may be seen any time for any item you can take anywhere, by attempting to insert the item into the primed body bar slot in Elemental Workshop 3. In addition, some items may have graphics for other situations, such as animations, POH mountings, or the player's head when talking to an NPC. All of these graphics will usually look similar to each other, normally only varying in detail. *Note that items shown on a Grand Exchange Database search page (on the RuneScape website) will have textures, even though they appear similar to their in-game inventory icons.
- Name: Most items have a unique name for that particular item. Some may have the same exact name, yet have different purposes. Members-only items have their name in orange colour and Free-only items, in light blue.
- Tradeability: Many items may be traded between players; however, many quest-related, holiday, and miscellaneous items cannot be traded (and cannot be transferred in any other way such as the Party Room) and therefore are often called untradeable items or non-tradeables. Almost all tradeable items may be traded on the Grand Exchange and therefore are associated with a certain price range of numbers of coins, which can change when the Grand Exchange updates its prices. The only tradeable items that cannot be traded on the Grand Exchange are a very small number of useless items such as burnt fish. Naturally, coins are an item that cannot be bought on the Grand Exchange either as they are the main currency in RuneScape.
- Weight: All unstackable items have weight which affects the player's ability to run. The higher a player's weight, the faster he/she loses energy while running.
- Item stacking (Stackability): Some items such as runes or coins will pile up in a single spot in the inventory. Other items such as buckets will take one spot per item and therefore are non-stackable. All items that are "stackable" have zero weight. Most non-stackable items may be converted to a stackable form using a bank note, but bank noted items lose most of their properties as they just become a piece of paper. Bank noted items may deposited in the bank and then withdrawn back as usable, unnoted, non-stackable items.
- Equippability: Some items, such as weapons or armour, can be worn, giving bonuses or penalties to combat statistics. Many equipped items also have other effects.
- The High Alchemy or Low Level Alchemy spells may be cast on most items to convert them into coins. The number of coins obtained per item is specific for each item. All tradeable items may be "alched", and items may be "alched" one by one while in banknote form. Even if an item is untradeable, it sometimes may still be converted into coins via the High Alchemy or Low Level Alchemy spell. An example of an item falling under this category is a partially degraded piece of barrows equipment.
Dropping and Destroying
Many items may be dropped on the ground. There is no limit to the number of items that can fit in one place on the ground. However, items dropped on the ground disappear after a certain time. Tradeable items appear to other players 60 seconds after being dropped, and disappear after another 150 seconds if not picked up. Untradeable items simply disappear 180 seconds after being dropped. Items received as a drop from a monster disappear 120 seconds after they were dropped, if they are left on the ground. Items dropped in the Wilderness will appear immediately, regardless of their value. This can be useful in "clan fights", where dropping food may aid an ally.
If Ranged projectiles are dropped on the ground as a result of their usage, they appear to other players one at a time, and correspondingly disappear one at a time.
Some items may not be dropped on the ground; they have no "Drop" option in their right-click menu. Instead, they have a "Destroy" option, which allows the player to remove the item from their possession. There is usually a warning screen that appears when this option is selected that asks if the player is sure they want to destroy the item, and also explains how to get the item again (or that it cannot be re-obtained).
Sometimes if a player wishes to drop a high-value item a warning screen will appear. The item is not protected by anything, so other players will still see it after 60 seconds, and it will still disappear after another 150 seconds. Be careful of what you wish to drop.
Discontinuation
Some items are discontinued, meaning no more can be created. Some discontinued items are tradeable; these items are worth millions of coins because of their rarity. Some discontinued items are non-tradeable; this includes non-tradeable "fun" holiday items as well as obscure items that many people do not know about, such as the War ship.
There are no discontinued items that have practical uses; some are used for showing off or for fun, and some you cannot even show to other players without sending them a screenshot.
The option to sell tradeable discontinued items to General stores was removed from the game because there is no reason to do so.
There are also many items that are, in a way, partially discontinued; they can only be created a certain number of times for one player, often just once, but can be brought into the game by new accounts. These items may be nontradeable or tradeable. The Amulet of Accuracy used to be an example of such an item, but updates in October 2010 drastically changed the mechanics of this item.
Categories
Trivia
- If one selects the option to "take" an item, and the item disappears before reaching it (or picking it up) a message that says "Too late - it's gone!" will show in the chat box.
- It is possible to get the text "null" to appear, by right clicking on an item that gets used at the same time as the click. Doing this can make the use option say "use null with X"- X being the item you are using it with.
- Items in the inventory will remain there even if the player is wielding them in an animation, such as woodcutting a yew tree.
- The maximum amount of an item the player can have on an interface (bank, inventory, grand exchange slot, etc) is 2,147,483,647 due to the amount being stored as an Integer. In the Java programming language, an Integer has a maximum value of 2^31 - 1 or 2147483647, due to it being a 32-bit programming language.
- On the 17th of August 2011 the take item animation has changed.
- As of the 31 January 2012, items have been colour coded to show if they are members items or not. Members items are coloured orange and non-members items light blue.