The Fractured Archive opened on 20 October at 11:00 UTC. By the evening of 21 October, about a day and a half later, – of the – high-value PvM items tracked here were trading below their pre-release price. This report covers which items fell, which rose, what the new rewards are really selling for, and how the launch compares with Theatre of Blood and Tombs of Amascut.
Not financial advice, just gold pieces. Fractured Archive figures are real Grand Exchange trades, from the OSRS Wiki’s real-time price data. Theatre of Blood and Tombs of Amascut use Jagex guide prices, because trade-level data doesn’t go back that far.
The common explanation for the volatility is that players are selling expensive gear cheaply to pay for the new rewards. The data mostly supports that, with two caveats.
Average traded price in the 6 hours before release (05:00–11:00 UTC on 20 Oct) compared with 17:00–23:00 UTC on 21 Oct. Hover a row for prices and trade counts.
The 13 items that existed for all three launches. Theatre of Blood and Tombs of Amascut are measured 3 weeks after release using guide prices. The Fractured Archive is measured after about a day and a half using real trades, so treat small differences with care.
Both spirit shields and the Elder maul fell after all three raids. The Kodai wand fell 15% after Theatre of Blood and 37% after Tombs of Amascut, but rose 26% this time, having already dropped 22% in the month before release.
The mildest of the three. The two spirit shields, Kodai, the Armadyl crossbow and Ancestral fell the most, and six items moved by less than 10%. Dragon claws and the Dragon hunter crossbow both rose about 26%.
The harshest of the three. Six of the 19 items fell by more than 30% within three weeks, while the Avernic defender hilt more than doubled.
"Low" is the lowest sampled guide price in the 8 weeks after release. The Ghrazi rapier shows how quickly a launch can turn: it rose almost 40% in the first week of Tombs of Amascut, then fell to more than 40% below its pre-release price by mid-October.
Jagex's guide price moves only a little with each update, and a brand-new item starts from a placeholder, so for the first few days it badly misreads the market. Every new unique here first traded far above where it is now, and has been falling since.
Hourly average traded price since each item's first trade, each on its own price scale. Hover for prices and trade counts. The first few hours had only a handful of trades each, so those early prices are a rough guide.
The Horn of Bran swung the most. It opened around 2.07b, dropped to 1.05b by midday on 21 Oct, recovered to 1.56b by the evening, and slid back to about 1.26b. The Rondache and Zorya's tome, the two most traded new items, fell the furthest: both are around 80% below their first hour. Theatre of Blood had the same guide-price lag: the Scythe of vitur's guide price was about 176m in mid-June 2018 and about 403m by early August.
How far the Horn of Bran's real price is above its guide price. Players are paying about 1.25b–1.27b for it, while the guide still says 15.6m. If you use the guide price to value a drop, you could be off by a factor of 80. See the live price on the OSRS Wiki real-time prices page.
The gap between the Inquisitor's mace's lowest and highest hourly prices after release. It fell to 300.1m three hours after the raid opened, rose to 428.3m that evening, and by the evening of 21 Oct was only 4% below its pre-release price, having already risen 35% in the month before the raid.