Sink (economy)

Money sinks (also known as gold sinks) are ways for Jagex to remove in-game items and money from the system, usually to prevent inflation, and keep the price of items at a moderate level. Various methods of acquiring raw materials, such as Mining, Fishing, and Woodcutting exist, generating consistent amounts of money into the economy each day. Money sinks are an attempt to keep the money that is being generated from creating unwanted and excess inflation.

Examples

• Construction - Large amounts of money must be spent on items such as marble block, gold leaf, and magic stones at shops, and are not attainable any other way.
• Summoning - Ingredients for making familiars and pouches must be bought from Summoning shops at some point.
• Shops - Money is removed from the game when players buy from them, however these also return some of the money if a player sells to a shop
• Degradation of armour such as Barrows armour, Nex armours and Chaotic equipment - requires a fair amount of money to be repaired and needs to be repaired regularly.
• Mobilising Armies - Players must exchange raw materials and skill-related by-products to get investment points which can only be used in this activity.
• Tolls - Such as boat rides.

Shortfalls

Money sinks do not work as effectively as intended, shown by near constant inflation:

• Players may consider training money sink skills to be wasteful and unrewarding for money spent.
• Some methods may be unpopular or only available to higher-levelled players or members.
• Changes have rendered some methods no longer effective, such as gravestones increasing the amount of time a player has to recover their items.
• Many updates Jagex have implemented have reversed many of the methods they put in previously.
• Some toll prices can be reduced or avoided through different methods.