Edition #9 · Week of August 31 – September 6, 2026
Four studios spent this week rearranging the plumbing, not the furniture. Albion Online's Dragonfire update turned a whole class of goods into a consumable input, Path of Exile 2 opened a second live economy without closing the first, WoW Retail priced convenience at seven figures, and Black Desert deleted a slice of its order book. None of it was a headline feature. All of it changes what things are worth.
Market Movers
Albion Online's Dragonfire update turned mounts into feed. Albion Online's Dragonfire update landed August 31, bringing open-world dragon attacks, the floating-island Ancient Lands realm, and the Dragon Sanctuary raid against Azaryon the Fire Dragon. Azaryon rarely drops a Fire Drake Egg, raised in a Kennel into the Firewing Drake flying mount — and raising it means feeding the drake other mounts. That is the first time an ordinary Albion Online mount has been a raw material rather than an end product, and the tape moved accordingly: Adept's Riding Horse is +35.5% on 152 trades and Journeyman's Riding Horse +17.9% on 160. Meanwhile the bag complex kept bleeding — Expert's Bag, our top-volume Albion Online item at 204 trades, is −35.7% at 19,277 silver. Same silver, different aisle. Dragon Bone and Dragon Wing enter as new crafted inputs; worth an alert before Albion Online's Season 34 opens. (patch notes)
Path of Exile 2's Forbidden Rites opened a second economy without ending the first. The PoE 2 0.5.5 Forbidden Rites event league went live Friday September 4 at 20:00 UTC — and PoE 2's existing Runes of Aldur challenge league did not end. Two parallel PoE 2 league economies now run side by side, expected to hold until PoE 2's 1.0 free-to-play launch in December. The design choice that matters is where the currency comes from: every campaign zone in Forbidden Rites hides a Ritual, and those Rituals pay crafting currency and gear while you level, instead of the endgame-only unique drops Ritual normally hands out. A league start that front-loads currency into the campaign has a very different first week than one gating it behind maps — expect early crafting inputs to clear cheaper and faster than a standard PoE 2 open. (Maxroll)
WoW Retail is about to price convenience at seven million gold. Blizzard posted the WoW Retail patch 12.1.5 PTR development notes on September 3, and buried under the Kith'ix raid and Aqir Invasions is the biggest vendor gold sink of the Midnight expansion: the Sporebearer Fungal Strider, 5,000,000 gold in Harandar, available only until WoW Retail's Midnight expansion ends. It carries a repair vendor and mailbox; the auctioneer and transmogrifier NPCs cost extra, taking the package to roughly 7 million. A time-limited seven-million-gold item flagged weeks before it ships is a demand pull-forward — WoW Retail goldmakers have until the patch to build the balance. No live date confirmed.
What Our Data Shows
Final Fantasy XIV's Black Star is three different markets wearing one name. Black Star was the single busiest item on our entire FFXIV board at 385 trades, printing 8,008 gil (+4,114.7%) in aggregate — while on the FFXIV world Gilgamesh it sold at 700 gil, −80%, and on the FFXIV world Behemoth at 1,299 gil, −18.7%. Per-world market boards do this, but rarely this violently. Anyone moving Black Star between FFXIV worlds had the trade of the month.
FFXIV's ingot slide resumed. Last edition's bounce on the FFXIV world Adamantoise did not generalise: Lar Ingot is −78.4% on 307 trades across our FFXIV coverage, with Purussaurus Leather −70.2% and Blackseed Cotton Cloth −40% on similar volume. The other half of the board went the other way — Mountain Chromite Ingot +610.9% on 277 trades. Crafters are rotating tiers ahead of FFXIV's patch 7.56 on September 8, not leaving.
FFXIV's ceiling didn't move. On the FFXIV world Balmung, Occult Earrings of Blood held 23,189,895 gil (−0.9%) on 12 trades — equilibrium, at twenty million a piece.
Path of Exile's league discount on a Mirror is 56%. Mirror of Kalandra prints 444,507,000 chaos (+19.5%) in Path of Exile's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league against 1,003,180,000 chaos in PoE's Standard league — and the Allflame side is the one still rising. With PoE's 3.29 league in week six, that spread prices how much Allflame stock has left to migrate.
Around the Games
Guild Wars 2 closed the Festival of the Four Winds on September 1, and the GW2 Trading Post tape stayed as narrow as it was during it: Iron Ore at 74 trades, +8% was the only item on our board above five. Everything interesting in GW2 is queued behind Code of Creation on September 15, which closes Visions of Eternity with a new map, raid, Fractal and new legendaries — the legendary-material bid is the trade to watch. (announcement)
WoW Retail's Season 2 profession-tool frenzy has burned off: the six Sin'dorei tools that traded 215–249 times apiece last edition are down to three or four prints per realm, and Sin'dorei Alchemist's Mixing Rod shows +40.1% at 2,800g on the WoW Retail realm Area 52 on four trades. The re-spec window closed on schedule.
WoW TBC Anniversary opened its Arena Season 3 at each realm's first weekly reset — September 1 on NA, September 2 on EU — ending the WoW TBC Anniversary Season 2 offseason gear discount. With that game's Phase 3 epic gems still gated behind Mount Hyjal mining, Black Temple drops and Indormi's designs, jewelcrafting stays the best margin there.
Path of Exile ran the first of four ExileCon 2026 qualifiers on September 3. RAID: Shadow Legends made the Cowardly Lion summonable on September 4 as its Echoes of Oz event passed the fusion window. Quiet weeks for WoW Mists of Pandaria Classic (Phase 5, hotfixes only), WoW Season of Discovery and WoW Classic Era.
The Wider Market
Old School RuneScape shipped Summer Sweep-Up on September 2, adding a tradeable supply chain: elemental jewels now drop from NPCs and combine with matching runes and an Amulet of Magic into elemental amulets worth +2 elemental max hit and +10 Magic Accuracy. Unsireds from the Abyssal Sire are stackable now, changing how OSRS Sire loot is held and flipped. (Jagex)
Black Desert did the bluntest thing any studio did this week: the September 3 maintenance reset Central Market orders and listings for a defined list of items, settling players in silver at each item's Central Market base price as of August 28 rather than at market — standing orders destroyed and paid out at an administratively fixed number. (notice)
Lost Ark pushed its second server merge from September 2 to September 9, announced September 1, after the August 26 first phase ran about 35 hours of downtime. Because a Lost Ark merge cancels every auction house listing and mails the items back on a 30-day claim, the delay moves a forced-liquidation window seven days right. (Massively OP)
Storylines to Watch
- Albion Online's Dragonfire mount economy — mounts became a crafting input on August 31, and riding horses bid 18–36% on our board in week one.
- PoE 2's road to 1.0 — the 0.5.5 Forbidden Rites event league opened September 4 alongside Runes of Aldur, giving PoE 2 two live economies at once into the December 1.0 launch.
- WoW Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5 — a 5-to-7-million-gold, time-limited mount surfaced on the PTR September 3; the expansion's biggest gold sink is on the clock.
- Black Desert's Central Market intervention — the September 3 listing reset paid out at August 28 prices, not market prices; the precedent matters more than the items.
- Lost Ark's 2026 server merges — phase two slipped to September 9; every auction house listing in the affected regions gets cancelled on the day.
The Week Ahead
- Final Fantasy XIV — patch 7.56 (Beastmaster, Dawntrail main scenario conclusion), September 8 UTC
- Lost Ark — server merge phase 2 (Balthorr→Inanna, Gienah→Arcturus), September 9 UTC
- Albion Online — Guild Season 34 begins, with Invasion Day, September 12 UTC
- Guild Wars 2 — Code of Creation, final Visions of Eternity update, September 15 UTC
- RuneScape 3 — Leagues II: Equilibrium ends, September 21 UTC
- Dune: Awakening — console launch (PS5, Xbox Series X|S), September 22 UTC
- Guild Wars 2 — Code of Creation raid challenge mode, September 29 UTC
- Path of Exile — ExileCon 2026, Auckland, November 7–8 UTC
- Path of Exile 2 — 1.0 free-to-play launch, December 11 UTC