Tips on Avoiding Runescape Scams

For Runescape players out there, there is next to nothing more horrible than losing your most prized items--not because they were taken off of your slain player's body, but because you were tricked into giving them to someone in a legal trade.

There are a few major scams that abound: the 'Hey, give me your items real quick and I'll give you something cool.' scam, the 'Drop Your Items and Hit Alt + F4' scam, scams where one player goes into the Wilderness following a player they believe to be their friend into a trap, among others.

A scam that has worked extremely well in the past for many a scammer is the one that goes like this:

Someone advertises a Rune Scimitar certificate for trade. You've been looking for a Rune Scimitar for a while, so you go to the player and tell him you want to trade. He offers a trade with you, and you accept. He puts the Rune Scimitar certificate on his side, and just when you're about to put your money, the scammer will switch the Rune Scimitar certificate for a Mithril Scimitar certificate.

When you confirm the trade, you'll find that you just bought a Mithril Scimitar for the cost of a Rune Scimitar--something of a 300% overpaying.

A variation of this trade scam works basically the same way, except instead of switching the certificates at the last minute, trying to time it before you accept the trade so that you don't notice, the scammer will put the Rune Scimitar up on his or her side of the trade, and you'll accept it, having checked time and time again that it is, in fact, the Rune Scimitar, because you've heard of this scam before. But this time, the scammer will exit out of the window and claim that his computer froze or something, and will re-initiate the trade with you, the idea being that you will be in a hurry, put your money up quickly and accept the trade, without noticing that the scammer has switched the Rune Scimitar certificate item he had been trading earlier with a Mithril Scimitar.

These scams work because the Rune Scimitar and Mithril Scimitar look very similar to the new player or hurried player. These two scams work on rushedness and impatience. Always be careful with who you trade with and make sure you inspect the trade carefully. If a trade goes bad, and you have been scammed, report the scamming via the Report button in your game screen.

Another very well-established scam is this:

A player goes around advertising that he is starting a clan (or faction, or club, or party, or whatever you want to call it.), and that one of the requirements is that you have X item. For the purpose of this example, let's call Item X a Mithril Scimitar. The would-be clan-leader that is a scammer also advertises that, if you join his clain, he would be willing to take your Mithril Scimitar and give you a Rune Scimitar--just for being in the clan.

Because you're a cautious player, you'll wait for one of the others that are being invited and initiated into the clan to exchange the Mith for the Rune first. You see the two players go toward each other, trade initiated, and a few seconds later, the person supposedly receiving the Rune Scimitar exclaims something to suggest that they are extremely satisfied. They go show everyone that they did, in fact, get their Rune Scimitar. Now, you're convinced for sure.

You go give the guy your Mithril Scimitar, and then he runs away with it, without giving you any Rune.

Here's the trick: all or most of the people supposedly joining the clan are friends of the scammer. They pretend to exchange Mithril for Rune, and show everyone to prove it; then, when they ask you to give them your Mithril, they do. They then run off with your Rune and Mithril Scimitars.

In an even more advanced measure of this scam, once the trade has been completed, the main scammer who is supposedly dealing out Rune items will log off, and then his comrades will exclaim that they've all been scammed! They then all claim to report him, and tell you that they'll go log into the different Servers/Worlds of Runescape to go look for the revealed scammer.

They will try to get you to log out and check another World as well; but once you do this, it becomes impossible for you to report him, because your event log and screencapture from that logon session have been cleared!

Be very careful who you trade with, Runescape players.

For a game, it's a very treacherous world.