The Killer wrote:
How does alchemy bring inflation? All I can see so far is that alchemy actually makes you lose money.
Inflation isn't about how much money you lose or gain, it's about the amount of gp introduced into the economy.
So for every yew longbow alch 738gp is introduced, the money from the materials stays with the seller/harvester. So when a mass of people high alch, it drops the value of gp slightly.
In simpler terms, high alching introduces money when none is taken out thus changing the value of the gp, construction and summoning are the only things which stabalise this inflation (I took 6.5m out of the game recently on construction)