Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nope, this is not a "wah wah inflation" thread; I have a legitimate question!

I came back to Gaia in late January after being a very occasional visitor between 2010 and 2013. I was lucky enough to have a few valuable items to sell at high prices and some spare change to spend on RIGs, so I've been able to keep up with the inflation (for now). Most users I've seen are in a similar situation so, although we collectively (?) think gold generators are beating the crap out of the Gaian economy and prefer to avoid them, we're not broke yet.

So, here's my question: Say someone, either a new user or an old one without a "valuable" inventory, wants to buy items that aren't in the gold shops. Can they actually afford anything in the Marketplace?

For reference, I was there when MCs were introduced, and they became affordable for the average Gaian around April/May 2014 provided that they saved enough gold. At the time, this represented less than 100k gold. Now even the sealed MC envelopes are prices at several million gold. Has there been any non-cash ways of quickly earning gold to compete with cash users?

Alternately, how's the inflation treating you?

I didn't have many valuable items before the inflation. When I stopped playing 4 years ago, my account was worth around 2millions gg, when I came back in late 2013, it was worth over 20millions gg.

Yes, with that amount of money, it's still hard to make a nice looking avatar, because I can only buy a few items in the marketplace for it that are not gold shop items.

Playing Booty Grab and zOMG! doesn't help as much as it did before, since they keep giving around the same amount of money like they did years ago. So, we need to play them quite a lot now to be able to "compete" with cash users.

If one couldn't rely on irl cash, then one have to rely on more of their skill/talent, luck, and persistence.

- Receive items through charity/contests/etc and Daily Chance (philosopher caches can get you quite a bit of gold). Check "free grant link items" threads frequently.
- Zomg/Booty-Grab
- Draw art, make profiles, bump threads as a service.
- Make a resourceful community contributing thread.
- Do some offers (but be careful of scamming ones), and spend GC wisely.
- Vend. It will always start out slow, but once you get the hang of it, you will rake in the money easy. Current economy is so out of whack, this shouldn't be much of a problem once you net a couple mil.

I agree with RainbowKitty above me

Though I don't drown it kinda hurts im in the poor bracet irl and im kinda poor on gaia too

I have items probably worth alot from before this GCash crazed inflation that im not willing to part with because I like them and I know I may never get them back if I sell them

So im stuck between a rock and a hard place I can't even get the fur color I want lol... no GCash and it's WAY to expensive gold wise

I remember buying a kiki kitty for 50k back in 2005 and thinking that there was no way I'd ever spend that much again. Shows what I know. The inflation is completely insane! I don't want to sell my old stuff, for the same reason as Rikku. >_>;

The only option seems to be gc, but who wants to spend real money on pixels?

I'm one of those old users who is lucky enough to have hoarded a bunch of random stuff over the years...but these animal items I fell in love with have drained most of that gold, and it has made me contemplate those newer users as well

this account I'm on now is brand new - I have funded it with my older items. but I noticed the welcome fairy granted me 10k as a new user, and each day grants 3k (unfortunately my vision is terrible and I didn't notice that in the messages until a bunch of them had expired cat_stressed )so it's like gaia is TRYING to help new users, but tbh it's too little too late because 10k doesn't mean much anymore. cat_rofl remember back when people QUESTED for 10k items? it felt kinda amazing to see that 10k fairy grant for a moment. cat_xd I DID get lucky and found a golden magical gift box, and apparently those sell for 450k, so that's cool. but my other account I can't remember ever getting a golden giftbox

so basically for a new fresh user I think it'd be a combination of luck, selling things using your artistic skills, and knowing how to vend once you're lucky enough to build up to a few million. cat_surprised

I've read that white inks and monarch butterflies are high price items in MP, and those can be found in towns and stuff, right? so I guess a new user could try their luck in towns every day hoping to find that. cat_ninja

it's a crazy state of affairs, that's for sure. I feel kinda forced towards buying GC at this rate, and I haven't bought any since the CS first opened a long time ago. I've done some free offers but the most I've gotten I think was 160. (those 100 gc surveys are so hard to complete without getting the dreaded "we're sorry you don't qualify" when you're 3/4 of the way done haha) cat_gonk

It holding me back a little bit but it's nothing I can't handle. I'll earn about 10,000 tickets or so and sell a couple of things from Prize and Joy. Although it does take awhile but I'm patient.