Foofighter said:
Indeed. My own strategy to protect against inflation has been to keep my "spending gil" in the form of easily liquifiable items: gold beastcoins, gold ingots, platinum ingots; because I know that those will at a minimum track inflation and possibly beat it.
I also try to keep any decent armor, even if I'm not using it regularly. For one, to have for level-capped events. But also to have to sell if the price goes through the roof momentarily.
"Prospecting" the market is a very good (though very time-consuming) way to cash in on other people's impatience.
I still hold that even if people were patient, and the newbs farmed up the stuff for the high-levels, and even with the gil sinks; inflation would still exist simply because every time you get a drop, you add "stuff" that has a value to the economy. The only things that take away from that are consumables.
Let me see if I can clarify what I was saying before:
Every time a beastman is killed, gil is added to the game. From what I've seen, I don't see the server keeping a tally of how much gil it has given out in quest rewards and drops and adjusting shop prices and availability of drops to compensate. If it did, this would all be much more controlled.
In any case, the fundamental rule applies: "buy low, sell high." If you don't like the high price on something like onions, for goodness sake just jump on a low-level job or a mule and go farm them--one night will get you a couple stacks. Then decide whether you want to turn them into kabobs, or sell them and let someone else lose money on the kabobs.
