Summer Sweep Up - Hunter & Skilling

OSRS Grand Exchange market analysis · Aug 19, 2026 · 10 items affected

Market analysis

Nest supply jumps 50 percent, seed and fur prices slide hard. The core mechanic here is a straight supply shock dressed up as a quality-of-life pass. Birdhouses now roll five times instead of ten but triple the per-roll success chance, netting roughly 50 percent more nests, while XP on every tier below Redwood gets gutted by 40 to 60 percent. That combination breaks the old calculus where birdhouses were run for XP with nests as a byproduct. Now the nests are the point, and the XP is incidental, which means volume-focused players will run birdhouses more aggressively, not less, just for the loot table.

This starts moving markets from day one because birdhouse cycles are short and the playerbase that farms them, ironmen, gim groups, and bulk skillers, will pivot immediately once the patch notes circulate. The effect compounds over the first one to two weeks as stockpiled nests and their seed contents hit the Exchange in waves timed to birdhouse collection cycles roughly every 50 minutes. Unlike a one-off drop rate buff, this is a permanent structural increase to nest throughput, so the price floor for nests and nest-sourced seeds should settle meaningfully lower rather than dip and recover.

Sellers are the mass birdhouse crowd who no longer have an XP reason to avoid running lower-tier birdhouses purely for nests, since nest yield scaling is now decoupled from how badly a tier's XP got nerfed. Buyers are farmers who want cheap access to Magic, Yew, and other nest-exclusive seeds without RNG exposure themselves, and they'll benefit from softer prices. On the fur side, falconry's QoL fixes, no movement lock and catch-through-full-inventory, raise catches per hour for casual and bot-adjacent grinders alike, so Larupia, Graahk, and Kyatt fur supply rises and those who craft or buy outfit pieces get cheaper inputs.

Several changes look tradeable-relevant but aren't strong desk plays. The Molch Pearl cost cuts to the Fishing sack and Angler's outfit pieces are denominated in a non-GP currency gated behind Aerial Fishing engagement, so they won't move GE volume meaningfully since the buyer pool is narrow and slow. The Venator Bow engine rework is a PvM targeting fix with zero supply or demand implication. Coral yield curve changes only matter to a thin, low-liquidity market that the Exchange barely prices efficiently, so we're passing on it despite the headline attention it got in the blog.

This read flips if Jagex adds a meaningful nest sink, such as a high-value quest or minigame that consumes empty nests or specific seeds in bulk, which would absorb the new supply instead of letting it accumulate. Watch how fast the Ironman and mass-birdhouse community actually adopts the new nest-farming meta; if uptake is slower than expected, the price decline could take three to four weeks to fully show up instead of hitting immediately.

Impacted items

• Bird nest (empty) · falling. Birdhouse rework nets roughly 50 percent more nests per run while XP has been gutted on low and mid tiers, making birdhouses a pure nest-farming activity for the mass-running crowd. Supply hitting the Exchange should rise sharply and steadily from day one. Expect a multi-week grind lower rather than a quick bounce.
• Magic seed · falling. Nests are the dominant tradeable source of high-value tree seeds, so a 50 percent nest supply bump feeds directly into Magic seed flow on the Exchange. Farmers who previously relied on scarce nest RNG to offload seeds will see softer prices. This is one of the clearest second-order losers from the birdhouse change.
• Yew seed · falling. Same nest-supply mechanism applies here, just with a less dramatic price impact given Yew seed's lower baseline value. Expect a gradual softening as accumulated nest stockpiles get opened and sold over the coming weeks.
• Larupia fur · falling. Falconry no longer locks players in place during the chase and allows catching with a full inventory, both of which raise effective catches per hour. More fur reaching the Exchange from casual and bulk hunters pushes prices down for crafters who buy fur for range outfits.
• Graahk fur · falling. The same falconry throughput gains apply directly to Graahk kills, increasing fur supply. Outfit crafters benefit from cheaper components while sellers see incremental price erosion.
• Kyatt fur · falling. Falconry QoL fixes lift catch rate across all kebbit types it targets, Kyatt included, so expect the same modest downward supply pressure as its sibling furs.
• Redwood logs · rising. With every lower tier losing 40 to 60 percent of its birdhouse XP and Redwood left untouched, Redwood becomes the only birdhouse log that still delivers strong XP alongside the nest bonus. Demand concentrates here for anyone still training Hunter through birdhouses, which should push price up despite it already being the priciest tier.
• Maple logs · falling. A 55 percent XP cut with only a shared nest bonus makes Maple birdhouses a worse XP-per-log proposition relative to Redwood or cheap bulk-nest farming with Regular logs. Demand for Maple logs earmarked specifically for birdhouses should fall.
• Mahogany logs · falling. The 50 percent XP nerf pushes Mahogany into the same awkward middle ground as Maple and Teak, no longer efficient for XP and no cheaper than Regular logs for pure nest farming. Expect reduced GE demand from birdhouse runners.
• Shark lure · falling. Alry's new 100-lure pack sold for a single Molch Pearl injects a large, cheap alternative supply channel that bypasses normal GE purchase entirely. Existing Shark lure stock on the Exchange faces real undercut pressure as players route around it. This is a fairly direct crash risk for a previously stable consumable.

Source: official Old School RuneScape update. The analysis above is our own.

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