What happened to cause prices to go through the roof these past months?
 

Some items have literally doubled in price, doesn't that seem strange to anyone? I've seen prices fluctuate of course before, been here since year 1, but this seems crazy

Prices are already coming down again. The fungi was up to 85, now its 75 and going lower. The nos was up to 80, now under 70. etc etc etc.

Changes do the supply and demand schedules alone do not explain changes in pricing as we've seen them. Increases in demand should also correlate to higher rates of farming of certain items, which should keep the price at or near equilibrium.

Aggregrate Demand-Aggregrate Supply model is probably the real reason.

Short term spikes in demand in conjunction of "market makers" artificially increasing prices through selective item purchasing/hoarding is the likely reason.

The other possibility is RMTing and plat duping, but I'll only find that the likely scenario if prices don't come down relatively sharply in the next 2 months.

Not totally true, because there is only 1 spore king camp, and its usually camped 24/7 anyway.

Add amount of "new" players x which will be inclined to aquire item y (= Fungi etc.).

a) as pointed out by splorf, certain (easier) camps will be claimed more often
b) farmers who've been hibernating are active once again
c) more players doesn't equal more items flooding the market due to a/b and d
d) a lot of people suck at this game. I've seen full groups wipe at Fungi king cus they're just terrible players.

Are necromancers welcome at the King camp? Or do min maxers hold it most of the time

King is usually camped by duos or trios. A necro can add onto any of those duos or fit into most of the trios just fine. Whether you're "welcome at King" has less to do with what is at the camp than who is at the camp, though.

And of course "min maxers" hold the camp most of the time. What would you expect? A random assortment of non-60s and rogues with bone razor mainhands and clerics who like to roleplay paladins holding down one of the more challenging and most rewarding mobs in the game?

Players are interesting things.

A seller's objective is obviously to get as much as possible for a given item, which is fairly straightforward. Why price Item X at 75k when they've been going for 85k etc etc.

Buyers should be more wary. Anyone who's saved up 30k or more in an effort thats taken them days/weeks/months won't want to just throw it at the first person who advertises an overpriced item...will they?

From that, probability suggests that we've either:

A: got a serious RMT problem.
B: got too many people playing the "EC game", buy low/sell high.... buy high/sell higher.

...maybe a combo of the two. The more inflation comes into the picture, the easier it is to make big money reselling a high priced item. What's an extra 5k to someone that'll spend 70k on an item? Not much most likely, however they sourced it.

While the price will surely continue to drop on Fungi's over the next month, this weekend I bought a fungi for 65k. The prices are dropping and I could see it settling again at about 55k.