Why do Ist is used as the "base currency" on trades?

Hi

I was wandering why do

Ist is used as the "base currency" on trades...

My guess is that because it is the highest rune that could drop in the "bonus rune drop" from the Hell Countess.

Is it the reason? Or is there another one?

May be a couple different reasons, but I believe because

Ist is one of the more common runes used for many runewords/bases.

For example:
Infinity, Call To Arms, Chains of Honor, Exile, and Magic Find (6 Isted PB, IK

Helm,

Shako, etc)

And with the range of rolls being so wide on Infinity and CtA, some people may need A LOT of Ists to get the roll they're looking for.

But with a game as deep and complex as this, I could still be missing the real reason! Would be curious to hear what other people's thoughts are as well.

Ist has become the base currency for mid-level trades not specifically because of countess (though it somewhat plays into it) but simply because

a) runes in general have become the currency of the game
b)

Ist is mid-level enough to be relatively common among those trading in that range -> availability of said currency
c)

Ist is still high enough to hold some relative value as a currency, without having to resort to paying 20349209430294 of them as you would with say a

Tir
d)

Ist actually has a solid long-term use in and by itself (both as part of common runewords but also in and by itself for the mf), adding to the inherent value of the rune as a stable currency

The real "base currency" really depends on your trading range though.

Ist tends to be the mid to higher mid level.
Low level trades often revolve around

Pul or the like.
And once you look at actual top-end high-level trades, you're really only looking at Jahs and Bers.

(level in this case being solely a measure of item quality combined with rarity, nothing to do with your char level or the like)

Adding for low level :

Perfect Gems, perfect amethysts, some Runes (

Ral /

Hel esp.) and Keys, are also common trading stuff.

Schnorki wrote: 5 months ago

Ist has become the base currency for mid-level trades not specifically because of countess (though it somewhat plays into it) but simply because

a) runes in general have become the currency of the game
b)

Ist is mid-level enough to be relatively common among those trading in that range -> availability of said currency
c)

Ist is still high enough to hold some relative value as a currency, without having to resort to paying 20349209430294 of them as you would with say a

Tir
d)

Ist actually has a solid long-term use in and by itself (both as part of common runewords but also in and by itself for the mf), adding to the inherent value of the rune as a stable currency

The real "base currency" really depends on your trading range though.

Ist tends to be the mid to higher mid level.
Low level trades often revolve around

Pul or the like.
And once you look at actual top-end high-level trades, you're really only looking at Jahs and Bers.

(level in this case being solely a measure of item quality combined with rarity, nothing to do with your char level or the like)

MUCH more complex

A question I've been wondering is how the heck did

Ist value shoot up so high while

Jah/

Ber decreased so much?

Used to trade around 15-20 Ists for a

Ber, and close to 30 Ists for a

Jah!

Now you can get a

Ber for 5 Ists and

Jah for 8-9. I would've thought rune value would move together, but really all over the place these last few months.

Zero187 wrote: 5 months ago

A question I've been wondering is how the heck did

Ist value shoot up so high while

Jah/

Ber decreased so much?

It's not so much that

Ist have increased in value, but

Jah/

Ber have definitely decreased a lot in value. It has to do with availability. It's just natural in a free market - when there are more sellers than buyers, not all sellers will be able to complete their sales, and since lots of people are not very patient, hoping for quick trades, they will start lowering their asking prices to complete their trades faster, and then others follow suit, and so on.

In the current ladder,

Jah/

Ber started at ~20

Ist each when they were still fairly rare (still not quite as high in value as they used to be early in previous ladders though), and has since dropped a bit, still higher than the current NL values though.