In a word: DON’T.

Buying gold online is a sure way to get your Runescape account banned.  Not only that, you might lose all the other Runescape accounts that you have. Jagex will log your IP and ban any account that is originating from that particular IP address.

For the gold sellers, (the vast majority of which are in China), this is no big deal.  For them it is a matter of losing a single level 3 player because they are constantly creating these mule players and using them on proxy servers. If one gets caught and deleted they have plenty more to take its place.  This is why if you ever purchase gold from one of these sellers you will not see a higher level character giving you the gold. They make sure that their higher level money making characters are never associated with the gold transactions themselves.  They will then use these higher level gold maker accounts and have them trade with a shadow account.  That shadow account will then trade with the gold trader account. This way the truly valuable gold maker account is always insulated and for the most part safe from scrutiny because it is never actually associated with the gold trader accounts.

So when Jagex does finally catch one of these low level mule gold seller accounts, they track the IP interaction that it has with other players. Once they have enough activity they ban the original gold selling mule and every other character that traded with them for massive amount of gp with nothing else of value being given in exchange.

What these means for you is that your character (whatever level it might be) will be permanently banned.  So that level 73 character that you have been working on for months will be gone and all your hard work along with it. And there isn’t a single thing you can do about it. Jagex will not listen to your appeals because you broke the rules.  The gold sellers will not care because they got their money and you got their gold.  You will be out of luck. 

But you might think you can outsmart Jagex and use a mule and shadow account of your own.  If you end up doing this Jagex will not stop at just banning your level 3 mule, they will as said before ban every character associated with that particular IP address. This means that not only do you lose your level 3, but you will lose your level 43 magician and your level 63 ranger and your level 93 warrior and so on.

So is it worth trying to trade real money for gold in Runescape?  Let’s review:

1.  It is against the rules of the game.
 
2.  You will eventually get caught because Jagex is not looking for you but for the gold sellers. However when they find the gold sellers they will find you.
 
3.  You will not only lose the account that you used to trade to get the gold, you will lose all your accounts associated with your IP.
 
4.  You will lose the gold you just traded for.

Buying gold online will never go away. There are just too many companies doing it right now and until the laws concerning the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) are clarified through case law, the advantage will be to the gold sellers.  However, if you want to have an account and play on it for awhile then trading gold online is not the way to go. Rather, dedicate yourself to your character, train it well, be a productive part of the community and enjoy a guilt free life.

Bottom line: Don’t trade gold.

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