Sink (economy)

Sinks are methods of removing items and money from the system, usually to prevent and control inflation rates, and keep the price of items at a moderate level. Various methods of acquiring raw materials, such as Mining, Fishing, and Woodcutting exist, generating consistent amounts of money into the economy each day. Sinks are an attempt to keep the money that is being generated from creating unwanted and excess inflation.

There are two major types of sinks: money sinks (also known as gold sinks), which remove coins from the game, and item sinks, which remove any other item.

In general terms, think of anything on the luxury side of a player's in-game life as a money sink. Also, almost all high-tiered armour and weaponry are tied to money sinks and/or item sinks.

Examples

 * Construction
 * Degradation of armour and weapons, such as Barrows armour, Crystal equipment, Abyssal tentacle, and all toxic weaponry/equipment - requires a fair amount of money to be repaired and needs to be repaired regularly.
 * Tolls - Such as boat rides, mine carts, and wheelbarrows.
 * Bonds - require money to be converted to tradeable items.
 * Well of Goodwill
 * Instance fees
 * Death

Shortfalls
Money sinks do not work as effectively as intended, shown by near constant inflation:
 * Players may consider training money-sink skills to be wasteful and unrewarding for money spent.
 * Some methods may be unpopular or only available to higher-levelled players or members.
 * Changes have rendered some methods no longer effective, such as the longer death timer increasing the amount of time a player has to recover their items.
 * Some updates Jagex have implemented have reversed some of the methods they put in previously.
 * Some toll prices can be reduced or avoided through different methods.