Edition #14 · Week of October 5 – October 11, 2026
Nobody traded this week; they positioned for next week. World of Warcraft Retail's auction houses sold harder than at any point since the Midnight Season 2 reset, with patch 12.1.5 due October 13; Path of Exile's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league got the one number its holders were missing; and EVE Online switched off most of its destruction. Three clocks, and in each case the tape moved before the content did.
Market Movers
WoW Retail's realm indices re-accelerate into patch 12.1.5. Week seven of the Midnight Season 2 liquidation was supposed to be the shallow one. Instead WoW Retail's realm indices went the other way: Stormrage −14.4% on the day, Azjol-Nerub −10.0%, Area 52 −9.7%, Illidan −7.9%, against −6.5%, −4.1%, −7.2% and −7.0% a week earlier. Blizzard gave sellers a reason on October 8, confirming that WoW Retail patch 12.1.5 cuts the lumber cost of most crafted Decor recipes and drops the Apothecary's Worktable's Black Lotus requirement from eight to one, while adding a wave of back-catalogue recipes. That is a dated, pre-announced cut to demand for two WoW Retail crafting inputs, and the people holding stock read it correctly. Expect the floor on October 13, not before.
Path of Exile's Allflame league finally has a death date. On October 12 Grinding Gear Games published its Path of Exile 1 3.30 timeline: the PoE 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league ends November 9 at 21:00 UTC, with PoE 3.30 following on November 13 and full details at ExileCon 2026 on November 7–8. Thirteen weeks of guessing resolved into a four-week runway — and PoE's board had already drifted that way. The Mirror of Kalandra trades at 364,562c in the Allflame league against 971,421c in PoE Standard, a 62.5% league discount and our widest reading yet. League-only wealth has a visible expiry now; PoE Standard does not. That gap usually widens into the last fortnight.
EVE Online's Crimson Harvest turns destruction back into supply. The event went live October 6 and runs to November 3. For its duration 90% of items from ships destroyed in PvP outside highsec survive as loot, and destroyed capsules have a 50% chance of dropping their implants — a month-long reprieve for EVE Online's largest sink. The live build went further than announced: Pochven is now a battleground, with Crimson Gauntlet and Tetrimon Base sites able to flip into flashpoints, and the October 7 patch seeded more roaming fleets there. More fights plus more surviving loot is the clearest supply shock on the beat this month; EVE Online module and implant prices are the ones to watch.
What Our Data Shows
FFXIV's Balmung is down 38.3% in thirty days. Our price tracking now has a full month of history on the FFXIV world Balmung: −16.0% on the week, −38.3% over thirty days, against an aggregate FFXIV board at −2.9%. Underneath it, Balmung's Occult accessories have not moved at all — Occult Necklace of Blood at 16,987,997 gil, Occult Earrings of Blood at 14,998,000, both 0.0% on twelve trades for a sixth straight week. The top of the FFXIV market is frozen while everything beneath it deflates.
FFXIV's Black Star stops being two markets. After three weeks of an absurd cross-world split, Black Star converged: 1,848 gil on the FFXIV world Gilgamesh (+174.5%), 1,130 on Adamantoise (+74.7%), 669 on Behemoth. Gilgamesh printed 10,486 gil a week ago. The premium didn't hold.
WoW Retail's Tarnished Dawnlit complex went fully two-sided. On the WoW Retail realm Azjol-Nerub the Tarnished Dawnlit Carver printed 850g, +1,601.7%; on Illidan the Sentinel's Armguards ran +782.4% to 300g and the Sentinel's Sabatons +430.8%. Against that, Area 52's Corsair's Boots fell 74.7% to 101g. Same family, same patch eve, opposite directions by realm — the Flip Finder exists for weeks like this.
PoE's Allflame catalysts bid while the league's gear sells. In the PoE 3.29 Allflame league, Noxious Catalyst ran +152.4% to 1.61c and Turbulent Catalyst +78.9% to 3.13c, while Allflame armour and weapons both printed −4.9% and the same categories in PoE Standard bid +6.0%. And a correction: last week's Allflame Fracturing Orb collapse to 3.70c was a thin print. It trades at 357c today, alongside PoE Standard's 904c.
Albion's mount unwind is over. Swiftclaw bid +9.2% to 58,958 silver on Albion Online's Brecilien (Americas), ending four down weeks — while Albion's Black Market (Americas) turned broadly red, Adept's Knight Boots −40.9% and Master's Bag −13.8%.
Around the Games
Guild Wars 2 shipped no build between October 5 and 11, and the GW2 Trading Post index printed 0.0% for a fourth straight week — 24,053 of 27,756 items unchanged, Iron Ore again the only item with real volume at 78 trades, −2.2%.
Final Fantasy XIV had no patch. Its October 8 enforcement report covers October 1–7: 547 accounts terminated and 68 suspended for RMT, 100 terminated and 57 suspended for botting, 137 terminated for RMT advertising — and Square Enix has folded vendor botting into the RMT line, which is why advertising fell from 355 while botting terminations jumped from six. The Fall Guys collaboration reopened October 7, paying Gold Saucer points, nothing tradeable.
Albion Online ran Guild Season 34's mid-season Invasion Day on October 10, starting double scoring, and closed its Fame Rush October 11–12; Dragonfire Patch 3 followed on October 12, making small yellow-zone Ancient Lands portals spawn roughly three times as often while cutting their rewards 30%, explicitly to hold inflation down. Path of Exile 2 shipped 0.5.5e on October 5, bug fixes only. RAID: Shadow Legends opened Hero's Path on October 9 with 5-star Perfect Souls for The Tin Woodman and Theimios the Everdrinker. Quiet all week: WoW MoP Classic, WoW TBC Anniversary, WoW Season of Discovery and WoW Classic Era.
The Wider Market
Throne and Liberty shipped update 4.15.0 on October 7, the sleeper economy change of the week: Unique Heroic Trait Enchantment Stones no longer drop from Colossus Vegamor directly but from Lucky Reward Chests awarded by chance to every contributor — and excluded from Guild Distribution. Supply of the Eye of Chaos input moves from loot councils to individual players overnight. Trait Resonance roll success rates also rose and a direct crafting recipe was added, so expect those stones to cheapen.
Aion 2 opened to free-to-play globally on October 5. A reminder of what you are buying into: direct player-to-player trade is permanently disabled, the Market is the only route, it sits behind a paid Membership and reportedly only unlocks at character level 45, and Founder-server and launch-server markets are kept apart for now. Aion 2 isn't on AuricDB.
RuneScape 3 is splitting its Grand Exchange. The October 3 RuneFest announcement confirmed RuneScape Reignited launches December 2 as a permanent character type with its own separate Grand Exchange — Veterans keep the existing one, you cannot switch, and the two types cannot trade with each other. Two order books, one game, no arbitrage.
Storylines to Watch
- PoE's 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league cycle — ends November 9, 21:00 UTC, PoE 3.30 on November 13; the Mirror discount hit a record 62.5%.
- WoW Retail's Midnight patch 12.1.5 — ships October 13 NA / October 14 EU; Decor lumber and Black Lotus cuts confirmed October 8.
- WoW Retail's Midnight Season 2 liquidation — week seven deepened instead of easing, all four tracked realms down 7.9% to 14.4% in a day.
- EVE Online's Crimson Harvest loot shock — live October 6, with Pochven turned into a battleground.
- World of Warcraft: Forever's new economy — the October 8 beta build added +20% dungeon XP; beta closes October 21, launch November 4.
- RuneScape 3's Reignited split Grand Exchange — new: two separate order books from December 2, with no trade between character types.
The Week Ahead
- WoW Retail — Midnight patch 12.1.5 goes live, October 13 (NA) / October 14 (EU), with weekly maintenance
- Guild Wars 2 — Nexus of Eternity raid Legendary Mode opens, October 13
- Albion Online — Dragonfire Patch 3's +15% Ancient Lands and Dragon Sanctuary bonus ends, October 18 23:00 UTC (Asia) / October 19 10:00 UTC (Europe, Americas)
- OSRS — The Fractured Archive raid launches, October 20
- FFXIV — Fall Guys collaboration ends, October 27 14:59 UTC
- EVE Online — Crimson Harvest ends, November 3
- PoE — 3.29 Curse of the Allflame league ends, November 9 21:00 UTC; PoE 3.30 releases November 13