I rarely ever buy any actual healing items. Occasionally I'll pick up a few Tents or revive items if enemies/teasure chests have been stingy about dropping them, but by and large 100% of my money goes into upgrading my equipment. Unless my gear is at the maximum level available, I am not happy. This usually isn't a problem though, because most games assume item purchases in their money acquisition curves.

I never played past Suikoden 2, but my policy there was to just pick a core selection of teammates and focus on upgrading only the people I actually expected to be using. With the exception of one part in Suikoden 2 which requires you to have about 18 combat-ready characters, this policy worked out pretty well for me.

I find that works well in most games with large casts, actually. Instead of trying to use everyone, especially if party membership is mutually exclusive, just pick your favorites and let the rest sit on their duffs in the rear rank. It's more economical that way, and you'll probably be able to carry the dead weight with your maxed out guys when you're given a forced party structure.

Money was never an issue in Suikoden 1, though. Since you can save your game on the same floor as Gaspar, I'd just keep winning millions and millions of moneys off the dice game. Too bad they caught wise and set an upper limit to how much you can bet at one time in SK2.

For Final Fantasy-type games, I'll buy a reasonable number of each cure item (between 5-20, depending on how cheap they are). I'll come back after I've learned what the enemies in the area can throw at me and adjust my stocks accordingly. For straight HP healing items, I'll go to 99 if I have some extra money lying around, but I like to rely more on steals/enemy drops (I love stealing shit, I think I have a kleptomaniac lurking inside me) and I don't usually have problems with this approach.

Ugh, the Kalpa tunnels. I hated them and couldn't be bothered to learn the patterns - I would just put the controller down and let Kei run into shit. Maybe if I play the game again (I know I will eventually, since I've gone through 3 or 4 times already...) I'll give it more of an effort. All I did for money was grind at the Tower of Kagutsuchi 3 save point. =/ It took a while, but I figured hey, as long as I'm leveling from it it's not a waste of time.

Of course, getting 100% on your Compendium helps a ton for subsequent playthroughs.

Oh God, me too. I do the exact same thing, saving all the "rare" (or even uncommon) items for the penultimate or even final battle. I just can't use them if I think I'll need them more later.

Quoted for truth.

For those of us who don't like spending hours in random battles, money is really hard to come by in SMT. There's a few instances where the game chucks a load of cash at you (Beating the cursed corridor for example) but even these windfalls are only good for a couple of decent demons with the skills you want. A cheap demon with Pierce skill is essential for money efficient fusing. Personally, I didn't spend much on items in SMT, relying more on life drain/mana drain skills to heal my party and spells to cure ailments. Like Enk though, I blow at the Calpa tunnels.

With hard-to-come-by items like elixers and high-end weapons, it's better to be too conservative than too wasteful.

It's not an RPG, but my first play-through of Silent Hill 3 is still proof of that. For some reason I was under the impression that the fight on the carousel at the end of the amusement park was leading straight into the final boss battle, so I used up my best ammo and healing items accordingly. Only to finish the battle and discover that there was an entire (fairly LONG) final area of the game left to finish, for which I basically had no decent curatives and almost no ammo left. It's not fun to have to fight through hordes of the hardest monsters in the game with the katanna because you blew almost all your shotgun ammo and have to hoard what remains.

It happens to me alot. I always end up buying more than I actually need. This goews ditto for weapons in games like Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn Of Souls where I end up buying 99 of EVERY ITEM AVAILABLE. O_O

I don't always stock up on items, not even in FF games (but I liked it that we could have 99 of everything). I'd usually use magic and curative spells simply because you can cure all party members with a spell as opposed to items (Potions, Hi-Potions, Elixir etc). My sister even called me a cheapskate when she saw me playing FFVII and helped me stock up like 99 of everything when I walked away ^^;;

lol, same here, just that I rarely use those items for the final battle because most of the time my party members are just powerhouses by then :D

I think I don't play enough RPG to determine my buying habits yet.. but so far for FF, Star Ocean and Grandia series I depend heavily on magic rather than items.

In the old days I used to buy a little of each, until I played some games that were either difficult or had one shop far too distant from the other (without save points), and a friend of mine told me "why don't you just buy like 99 potions ?", and I thought "Why not".

So that's what I've been doing ever since. As some other people said here, priority goes for weapons but whenever there's some extra I buy tons of healing but rarely I buy status curing itens.

I never fully stock up to 99 of any item. I figure if I get up to 99, then I fight an enemy that I can steal that item from, or it drops it, and I can't carry it because I'm maxed out, then that's an extra 100 gil or whatever I could have saved up for something else. So normally, I don't purchase more than 70 of an item, and I start selling once I get over that. I always buy the newest of each weapon and armor though. I also refrain from using any items for anything. I will use magic to cure instead, since magic can usually be restored for the price of just one general healing item, so using magic is a lot less costly.

Final Fantasies were pretty stingy with money until 6, I believe. I remember in 5, Phoenix downs were 1000 gil, while staying at an inn or a tonic were only about 50 gil.

I hate item hording. Not because I don't like spending money, I just think it makes the game easy and unrealistic. I would rather see item management of some form. I think of Earthbound as a prime example. But then again, thats just me.

For other RPGs, I try not to stock up too much.

Yup. Saving for those Silver swords at the elf town took quite a while, especially if you had multiple characters that could equip them. It was important to get them since they were so powerful compared to your other weapons. Man I loved those swords.

For just about every RPG that gives out money generously, I usually just stockpile every healing item you can get from stores. This also applies to most of the Tales series (especially Tales of Legendia) give tremendous amounts of Gald.

I haven't hit any RPGs that don't really give out money, although I heard that Tales of the Abyss is notorious for its low Gald yields, at least for the first half of the game.

It depends on the RPG, but normally I wouldn't spend too much on items. 50 on Potions/healing max, 20 on antidotes/cure condition type max. I never found the need to get 99 of something because you'll never even use half in the entire game.

I really dislike RPGs where money is flown around so easily that there is no point in bothering to make money. I can recall a few games (like Enkidu said, Persona series) where money is a big issue, and I would need to hit the slots or something to make money quickly. It's in those cases I'm loose on selling. If I don't use it, it's sellable.

I'm spoiled on this issue myself. When I played through the first Lufia game and went through the beginning Fortress of Doom scenario with Maxim and his team they all had a random number of certain items between 60-99. So whenever I go through to buy a lot of the same item I never straight out buy 99 of them, but vary the number to make it seem like I've had to use them through thick and thin to give it the more experienced look.

Honestly, which one looks more like a believable list..

99 Potion
99 Hi-Potion
99 Ex-Potion
99 Miracle
99 Antidote

or

83 Potion
79 Hi-Potion
89 Ex-Potion
61 Miracle
90 Antidote

Just adds another level of realism for me.

My spending habits are like this: 20 of each status-curing med, 30 of tent/heal everything at save point items, and just pile up on cure items from fights. In FF7 X-potions were never a problem. The birds you fight in the Wutai area drop them all the time. From going there for Yuffie and leaving, you can easily get 99. In shadow hearts is a bit more spending as pretty much all items have a need at some point.

I used to max out on my items... then I started being a cheapskate that hates spending all my money. Although i'll still max out my items if it doesn't put too big of a dent in the total amount of gold I have. It just feels so comforting when I have a whole lot of money that I can use in an emergency. I guess what it really comes down to is the game and how easy it is to get money. :beer: :milk: :megaman: :beer:

I'm definetely guilty of this habit.

I don't nescessarily buy 99 of each item as fast as possible. Usually throughout the course of the game, I usually buy items in multiples of 5. Items are usually the last thing I buy when I go into any item shop. All my money is usually reserved for weapons/armour/magic. Usually if I have any surplus money it goes to maxing out my item list. Sometimes there are just games in which money is so tight i just keep my items at a healthy count, as long as I have one of each item esepcially if the game keeps an item completion list I'm the happiest kind.

I'm in the process of playing a game in which money can be pretty tight and thats Dragon Quest VIII. I'm actually getting pretty close to finishing it but I still want to do everything possible such as getting all the items and finishing the entire alchemy recipe list. I highly doubt that'll be getting 99 of every item, but in rpgs that specialize getting a lot of money relatviely quickly and easily more than likely I'll have 99 of quite a lot of items.

I remember back when I was playing Final Fantasy 7. During most of the game, I was nearly always bankrupt. That's because I used to always made sure I had as many potions and elixers as possible, so my habit of buying too many potions meant that I barely had any money to buy new weapons. However, thanks to a "W-Item" technique which allowed you to dupe your potions, purchasing potions from shops became a thing of the past :)

However, by the time I reached near the end of the game, I had loads of cash, and by then I had no need for money :D

I almost never buy items in the Final Fantasy series.
The only things I buy are Hypers, because I want faster limits, but not long ago I discovered it also lowers your magic hit chance.
It's ridiculous how much Ethers sell though, sell 2 get 3 tents for free.
I would only use sadness, when fighting Midgar Zolom for Beta, but for some reasons Tranquilizer are much easier to steal, I didn't have to buy it.

I played some FF4 Advance lately (which by the way is an excellent port) and ran into a rather embarassing episode. I'll share it with you guys nonetheless, because it really fits the topic:

So I'm in the second town and have some money to spend already. Going through the motions of my FF routine, I stock up on weapons and armor first (or try to, as there isn't anything useful for my my characters yet), buy five units of each status recovering item (except those expensive thingies that cure petrify), three Phoenix Downs and twenty regular potions.
A short while later Edward joins the gang, who I immediately find to be as useless as a hole in the knee. But he has that Heal skill that recovers about ten to twenty HP for each character. Not a complete loss I think and brawling myself through the next dungeon, I use it frequently. Until during one battle, halfaway through, the game tells me, "No healing items left.".

What the...? The skill - which I didn't remember - used up all my potions and throwing down with that Ant Lion actually became at least a bit challenging. I guess that's one way to be pushed out of your RPG buying habits.

It honestly depends on the game for me. I think I might have been one of the 3 people who got 99 of every item possible in FFT: Advance. Yes, even those damned sword that cost 10000 each. It got to the point where I had 5 million in unspent....whatever the currency was, and I thought, what the hell...

Elder Scrolls III...yes, one 3! My compy isn't good enough for Oblivion yet...I sell all non-book, non-magical items I find. I fill everywhere with books I do not have and weapons I think will be useful one day, but I never use. I collect all those useless little charms to, and I have so many, I actually kills things with them o.O

I did the same damn thing. Only, it was my first time through the game, so I clenched my teeth and tried to force my way through as well as possible. I made it, but I never went back to Edward again for tricking me like that.

Lately, I buy nothing at all, saving all my money (unless the game requires it to progess further). Then when I get to the end of the game, I splurge on whatever the hell I please. It's interesting to see what I can scrounge up until then (and it's more challenging that way).

Unless the recovery items are really cheap and your at a point where enemies drop enough money, I might max them out, but I usually just buy enough to get a nice even number, usually around 20, because in most games there rarely seems to be a moment where you actually have to use them. There's usually a spell that does the job, or the effects are gone at the end of battle.

It really comes down to the game. If it's a game where you can only carry like 9 of each type like the mana games, then yes, I like to stay prepared and carry the max, I mean it's not like 9 is a whole lot, but 99...just seems a waste of money.

About the only game I can think of where you go through 99 items pretty fast is Valkyrie Profile, and that's only because of the auto item skill, which cures all status effects automatically and uses elixirs at a certain percentage of your max health.

I like to stock up on healing items. In the beginning I just take as many as I can afford. It makes me feel secure and sometimes it's necessary when you don't have a healer in your party during parts of the game. If I have enough money toward the end of the game I max all healing/battle effect items out. But that's only after buying any armor/weapon upgrades. Sometimes even after getting everything you could possible need your still left with tons of money.

Money is definitely a joke in some games. I remember having 1.2 million gil in FF7 AFTER buying 99 of EVERY buyable item, be it consumable or equipment.

Grandia Xtreme's a bit different.