Exploits are a problem. Gold farming is a problem. Combine those two and you’ve got a giga-problem, and you’ve also got a story out of Old School RuneScape where one player reportedly made six figures in real-world cash thanks to an exploit in the Soul Wars minigame.
The exploit in question was used by a player by the name of Lyrn, who first bragged about his deed on Twitter and then shared details with YouTuber SirPuggers for a recent video. According to Lyrn, a patch to Soul Wars from last November let certain items award more points than intended when imbuing was reversed; Lyrn exploited this error specifically by repeatedly imbuing Black Masks for 250 points and un-imbuing them for 400 points, which in turn generated millions of points per hour with the help of bot scripting.
What was he doing with all of those points? Selling scads of basic resources on the auction house: The resources themselves don’t cost very much, but the factory-like setup Lyrn had put together effectively meant he could print in-game gold – supposedly 500 billion of it – which he then sold 400B of for roughly $120,000 in cash. Puggers points out how prices of those same resources tanked in value during the timeframe of Lyrn’s racket, which seems to support his claim.
The exploit that was utilized in the scheme has apparently been patched, prices of the resources have further recovered on the market, and some even call to question whether Lyrn actually performed this scheme at all. Still, there are dots connected that are outlined in the video below.
