Runes of Magic US / AU

Not that hard with good guild. We are on L82, which is not that great in terms of gear. It has 2, maybe 3 good pieces, but L80 is still the bulk of top of the line gear. And since L80 been out for a while, the demand on L80 gear is relatively lowish, which pushes prices down. So, good time to jump in if you are serious about catching up.

Probably same as before. Shell stats still good, mentos are gear only since mento stats are craptastic junk. Plus, since someone at GF can't *cough* figure out how to make a new sale, we didn't have jewel sale in ages. No jewels = gear that can't really be made properly.

EOJs are still good, but harder to farm. Many EOJ quests that have been overly generous have been scaled down. POMs gear is still great, but POMs are now bound and less of them than used to be drop per boss, so few people farm POMs.

The statting part of gearing is a bit easier than before. XII stats (135/135) drop off zone mobs, and is just a godsend for gearing. They're available in pretty much every type of stat, and can get you statted quick with 3 XII stats and 3 shell stats.

Easy mode instances also drop yellow instance stats like Stam/matk, HP/matk, Stam/Def, Int/matk, Wis/HP, Hp/Patk, etc. They usually come with a yellow XII, and might take 39 more diamonds to extract with Random extractors if the XII is undesirable. But, still very much worth it.

In terms of cost of diamonds, its still pretty much the same. Expensive game is still expensive, and most normal mode instance have such an insanely low drop rate of good stats that makes it undesirable to progress to. Its either Easy or hard. Hardmode drops are pretty impressive in the 1 clear that I was able to participate in.

Plenty of new potential to stat and purchase gear.

The economy took a heavy beating and there's massive amounts of inflation. Diamonds cost around 130-150k each, as opposed to before you left where they were, what, 60k each?

Select runes are incredibly expensive. Recon and Raid being top of the list.

Frankly, due to a diminishing playerbase and hyperinflation, I'd suggest you liquidate all your gear into cash and re-roll. Powerleveling will cost about 150m to get both sides to 55. But if you have gear statted and appropriate to your level, you can easily get a billion or more gold, so it's a tiny cost. I sold my old Grafu Castle gear to someone for 800m. Severely outdated and terribly statted, but people buy that stuff.

Don't try to make Best In Slot equipment, you'll just run your account dry and you'll be only a little bit stronger than someone who statted their equipment on a budget.

Gold farming is obsolete. We have gold spammers pumping gold into economy now (kinda like Federal Reserve, only more so).

Main ways of making money when not geared:

1) Dogfarming - if you don't have dogbots competing.
2) Shell stats - dailies and minis
3) EOJ farming - there are some soloable events now
4) Being part of good guild - good guild will help you gear up if you have potential.
5) Crafting - not a huge amount of money, but good cook can still provide usable trickle of income
6) Bag stats - good bag stats from Sarlo sell for 500k easily

and farming aggs/rare items for people...the right buyer will pay a good bit of gold for a rare agg...