Are the runes equal to their cubing cost when it comes to trading nowadays?

Hello everyone,

Apologies if that is not the correct place for the thread, but I think that it's more of a general discussion rather than price check

Whenever there is a discussion around the runes in some forum (even the official one) there is always someone that will mention the word "High" rune and some arbitrary number in which for example

Lo and

Sur are very close and

Ber and

Jah are quite close as well. We will leave

Cham and

Zod out of the discussion. If we are to check some sites selling/"trading" items for $$/FG (from what it seems you can buy the same with $$, so...) that will certainly be the case, but with slightly bigger difference (I won't mention names, but I think the first result in google are obvious to anyone).

In practice almost nobody is going to trade (in-game) a rune for lower versions unless they are at least close to 95-100% of the cubing value. You can make a game and wait to verify it, you can check the threads here and it will be the mostly the same. Obviously there will be exceptions if someone is in a hurry. The reality is that people will always try to up-sell to whatever the market can bear, but be dirty cheap when they want to buy something.

Just example from this site:
trade/jah-t1102548.html
trade/jah-t1103773.html
The same guy wants to buy

Jah for

Ber, but sells

Jah for

Ber+

Sur in the SAME TIME (and yes it's in the same non-ladder).
That is how trading works even in real-life (resellers, scalpers, whatever) - if you can make a profit, you will make a profit. I'm not blaming the guy, don't get me wrong. It's just to prove the point that nobody really wants to give their highER rune for less

My personal experience - Before few weeks I was trying to find

Lo for Grief for

Ohm + 3x

Gul +

Ist (or 93.75% of the cubing value, that is what I had TBH). Most people who entered the game wanted something like +

Mal+

Um+

Pul,

Ist, 2x

Mal, 2x

Ist (!!) etc or 99.X-106.25% of the cubing value, so I just continued farming until I was able to cube it myself (and that was probably for days)

From what I can understand it seems like in the past there was a massive issue with rune duplicates and therefore everything lost its value and was a "HIGH" rune, but nowadays outside of bots (maybe) that should not be the case, so we are simply on the cubing value even tho high runes are almost matter of luck and they just "drop" instead of being cubed. Back in the days of the original I was a kid and only played it for some time very causally, so even tho I'm aware of what the game was, the online drama is kind of unknown area to me.

What is your opinion on the subject? How should the runes be traded one to another considering what is realistic? As I mentioned the arbitrary price is completely useless if it's respected only when someone searches for a rune, but nobody sells

You can cube up, but you can't cube down.

So the only way to break a higher rune into small change is to trade - naturally the market will favour the seller in this case hence trading will never achieve 100% cubing value as you correctly observed.

And you're right on the old/ legacy economy - duped runes are so rampant that most high runes were trading at/ near parity whereas the D2R economy has more rational high rune values, discriminating by level and desirability (ex

Cham and

Zod)

Dupes were theorized but never proved on D2R Live Bnet.
It may just be massive botting.
Blizzard had done 2 banwaves during this ladder yet there are streamers who would walk DC 10 times a week so it seems farm bots are still alive and well.

"Are the runes equal to their cubing cost when it comes to trading nowadays?":
only the lesser desirables runes will have a market value equal to half the next tier rune (

Gul equal 1/2 a

Vex and

Sur equal 1/2 a

Ber),
so no, you shouldn't expect every rune

Conversion trade to be at cubing value.

Regarding HR market prices, there will always be someone who would have massive amount of HR trying to make a marging profit selling those to other who want to convert one for another fast.
About your example,

Jah = [Ber Ohm ; Ber Ohm Vex], expecting more is predatory and an actual trade shouldn't happens that often.
As you point out, you can trade on another market, be it IG or another website, or outride paying money.
So others markets may have their own prices that I cannot speak of.

As a personal note, why would I frack an HR for more lower market values runes?
It take more place in stash so I would only make sense to do it if I can make a profit out of the trade (if I ever bother doing so), with the problem of doing the reverse trade while keeping a profit and in a reasonnable amount of time...

This is far from fully up to date but you can look this :

forums/how-much-is-x-rune-worth-t290116-100.html

Check actual price history for more accuracy though

I recently traded "down" my

Sur for a

Lo, but I don't mind because I really wanted it to make my Fortitude, this is non-ladder so the price difference doesn't strike me as too important, if this was in Ladder then I would have been more stringent and asked for a bit more in trade for trading "down," since per cube recipe it takes two

Lo for one

Sur but nobody cubes them when it gets to that high rune because they are more useful to trade/sell or just use it yourself.

during winter when I had few Jahs. I really earn decent runes out of it. Just trade

Jah for

Ber and something and then

Ber for

Jah and so on.

It was kinda annoying to check trades but it was fast way to get runes.

I think you can always find trades like this anytime.

If you know the market and item value, you can do it with anything. For example I bought

Windforce for

Ist. When I joined lobby to put it on my bowa, I saw game N

Windforce o 2ists. so I sold it right away without even shooting single arrow.

Tip check game names in lobby. Create your own - clear entire game - all good areas including bosses keyruns etc. It would take you hour or something then make new run. When I create game just to sell / buy stuff. I always chose price which is in my favour. Yeah I do sell same item here for fair price (I think). But there are guys who just doesnt know/want to use trading websites like this one. So for them its really hard to see real price of any item. And for them if they really really want your item and have some rune which they have no use for and you offer them item worth same price. They will go for it.

Its like fishing. Every trade has its buyer.

If someone is stupid and overpaying by a lot, then its his fault.

I just want to ask you all dont overvalue (like

Vex instead of

Ist) items on trading website.