u/LordRumpo

Springs currently instant-buy for 7998gp. An increase of just over 5k from when Treasure Hunter was removed 6 months ago. They've risen by 3k in the last month alone. Since there's no current sources for these, this price increase shows no signs of slowing down.

The untradeable version, Tight Springs, cost 10.1k each if using the wiki's listed Invention component sources, which don't have anywhere near the required trade volume to supply the entire playerbase. That's also not counting the opportunity cost of the time required to disassemble these items or waiting for machines. Additionally, Tight Springs are more expensive for players with low invention, due to the Junk Reduction unlocks and master cape perk.

Using magic notepaper could be an alternative, but these are now also in limited supply and thus becoming more expensive, though more slowly. This also makes inventory management more difficult, since most mobs drop multiple types of salvage. On top of that it makes killing mobs less AFK, because you have to click through potentially dozens of salvage items every time you loot items.

Using high level alchemy is another alternative, but this is only available if you're using the standard spellbook, and requires you to have the runes in your inventory or rune pouch. And again, it makes combat significantly less AFK, since you have to alch potentially dozens of salvage every few minutes, with a 3 second cooldown between each alch.

At the current prices, everything up to large adamant and tiny rune salvage costs more to clean than the gp you gain from it. It's only a matter of time before this happens to huge adamant and small rune salvage as well, and potentially higher tiers after that.

Can we please get another source for springs? A cost reduction when adding charges to the spring cleaner? Significantly cheaper Tight Springs? An alternative way to clean up salvage drops? Replacing salvage with GP drops? A "Salvage Pouch" item?