Old Runescape Scams Were Wild

Keep in mind these are just the scams involving the trade window from the early Runescape 2 days. ~Dishonorable mentions~ Herb seed scams Unidentified herb scams noted iron equipment swapped for rune big bones sold as dragon bones via a quick switch.

I must have been about 13 at the time, but I remember spending weeks standing in the W2 garden, flipping barrows items and trying to save up for that beautiful Guthan's set with the swirly purple effects I so desperately needed to have. At this time, the whole set was around 10m, with the spear alone being the bulk of it (like 8-9m.) Fell for the leaf-bladed spear switch last second and cried for hours, to my moms confusion.

I remember when I was really new to the game and a guy wearing full rune (g) was saying armor trimming for sale. I wasn't a member and didn't know about clue scrolls at the time so I handed over my full mithril set. He trades me again and says it's now trimmed and I could clearly see it was the same armor with nothing done to it. He was asking me for like 25k for doing nothing which I didn't even have so I told him I wanted to see how it looked on me before I gave him any money. He said ok and traded it back and I x logged. I don't think he knew how the scam worked. To this day, anytime I feel dumb, I think of this guy and feel slightly less dumb.

I fell for the 'buying Rune 2h 100k!' scam back in 2004 :d they they swapped it for 1004gp and due to the text colour not changing and no 'trade modified' alerts at the time it got me pretty good.

I remember as a kid someone tried to convince me I could dupe my black armor by dropping it on the ground and pressing ALT+F4. I fell for this scam, luckily for me however I didn't actually know how to do that right, so I just typed ALT+F4 into the chat and when nothing happened, I grabbed my armor off the ground and ran away, swearing at the scammer. After that, I learned to be careful and was never scammed again.

I went to RuneScape to escape a really bad childhood, and I was greeted with a cyber social interaction of greed and corruption, false friendships and dirty deeds. I am so glad I turned out to be a good person in the end, RuneScape taught me not to trust others and to be skeptical. But I could easily have gone into the life of a con artist/criminal due to my experiences in the game. I know it sounds insane "it's just a game bro" but when you are developing as a person, and you valued your RuneScape life over your real one, which I sadly did, it became a quintessential part of who I was. Gaming addiction as a teenager is no joke, and I am certainly a pioneer when it comes to the effect it has on our generations mental health. I'm in my thirties now, and because of the use of psychedelic drugs, and a year of absolute insanity, I have unravelled where the problems started, and where they cartwheeled from there. Now, I am no longer a boy, hiding from the reality, of what was done to me, and what I have done to others. I am a man now, and I can no longer hide in virtual worlds, I don't want to spend another second in games or behind screens, from now on, my life is out there in the fresh air. I hope if any of you are struggling, you can find the courage in yourself to face your problems head on, instead of hiding behind pixels.

I'm not afraid to admit at least 90% of us were young/desperate enough to fall for the doubling money at least once in their life.

Way back in the day, I was able to pull off trading the Black Desert Robes from The Shadow of The Storm quest off as Ahrim’s. I’m not sure why the case was, but at the time in RS2, the robes were an identical color to Ahrim’s robes, minus the chain texture from it being Barrow’s. You made them by rubbing the dark mushrooms on them from the obscure little tomb in the farthest corner of the desert at the time, they weren’t just the regular black wizard robes. However the sprite for it looked exactly the same at the time, or atleast 99% close enough to pass quickly enough if you were able to do a quickswitch in the trade window before trade notifications existed. I have never seen this mentioned in any OSRS/RS2/Classic videos regarding scamming, history, trade bugs, etc. Thought it was funny and would be worth sharing, even though I know people will always shit on me for it

I remember on classic there was a scam in the duel/trade screen where they’d add the cash as the amount stretched across the screen and then they’d add Needles to the end of it and you’d not be able to see the needles due to coins text but you’d see amount of needles but it’d look like extra coins had been added. Great video as always!

I'd love to see a follow-up on some of these as well. I remember before you had grimy ranarr, grimy Guam, etc.. all herbs were "unidentified herb" with the same sprite. You used to see people identify 1 in the stack to know what the rest were so you could sell off unidentified Guam's as ranarrs for a lot more. There was another that took advantage of people wanting to dupe items using the poh. You would have say 2 whips in your inv and drop one in your own house. Trade and show the victim you have only that in your inv then use it on a table or something. Wait a couple seconds, pick it up as well as the one you dropped initially and trade again showing both items. Now you just get them to try, and since there's an animation when someone puts an item on the table, once the scammer sees that, they kick out other players and lock the house. Then you just wait for it to show up

The 1711k was the best, most consistent scam in the game pre-ge. You would find someone selling materials (sharks for example), trade them, and put in 1711k. Wait about 5 seconds while they calculate how many sharks are worth 1711k, then decline and tell them the number they probably already calculated. Then put up 1171k in the next trade. Easiest 600k of all time. Worked nearly every try.

I fell for a similar scam mentioned in the last section. I was dumb enough and greedy enough to fall for it. Some guy was selling mole skins for 1m each. I got a PM from a guy asking me to sell him a mole skin for 2m each. I bought the mole skins and immediately hopped worlds. Only to realize it was a f2p world. My greed caught me lacking that day. Here's what made it worse. The guy pmed me a week later thanking me for the whip.

Started in 2006 July 4th, I remember going to the old Wildy picking up addy arrows in F2P I seen rares and was offered a piece of charcoal for 3k addy arrows, I was told it was worth 2m to the right buyer. I still have that same piece of charcoal in my account. Such a dumb way to lose hours of picking up arrows as a kid lmao.

I remember one of the more obscure scams from back in the day: the scammer giving a high level player in fancy gear half of an inventory of Limestone, and then ask the mark to smelt it on behalf of the scammer because their own smithing level is "too low". It would prompt to ask how many limestone they want to smelt, they'd typically select 'all', and then promptly blow themselves up repeatedly because that's what limestone in a furnace does. Most people aren't aware of that and get caught totally off guard or afk because smelting is generally a safe activity, and it doesn't seem like a scam since it doesn't involve giving anything away

Would love a deep dive of all types of scams, lures, etc. Ive always found them entertaining to see.

I've fallen for trimming scam once and lost my mithril armor. Hard lesson learned. Also I remember getting scammed for buying big bones then the scammer switched to small bones. I just wasn't paying enough attention.. Another lesson learned there.

I remember losing my vercas flail to 1000 willow logs that I thought was magic logs. That was all my net worth in 2007. I had barely rune armor and some dragon weapons. I put all my assets into castle wars, thousands of runes, bolts, etc. just to play castle wars.

Thank you for this video… just bringing back so many iconic memories and tears.

although simple, I appreciated the timer you put during your patreon read. as someone inclined to skip I didn't skip :)

when you said the words Rune HQ i unlocked a hidden memory and watched my whole childhood flash before my eyes, on a real note tho damn forgot about them.