Runes of Magic US / AU

Hi Gdar- welscome to Taborea. There are numerous "currencies" that can be earned in RoM. If you are doing dailies(and you should) then you are already familiar with Phirius Tokens and game gold.

The black codex vendors are "Collectors of Ancient Mementos". You gain Ancient mementos, or 'mems' as a drop from bosses in the instance runs. The lowest level run to have mems in Origin. IT is level 50 or 52, and you get there through Jade Valley in the northwest corner of the Aslan map. Heart of the Ocean is east of Boulderwind Village. It requires a set of attunement quests to enter. You want to get in on instance runs with friends and guildies. You don't have to reach the level of the instance to enter it, but the ones that have attunements will require you to finish those quests. Everyone in the party gets to loot the boss for however many mems it drops.

There are more Codex vendors you can reach outside Hall of Survivors, and then every zone after that has vendors with higher and higher levels of gear as you progress. Most players prefer boss gear to codex gear, but there is certainly nothing wrong with the codex stuff. Some codex gear seems to be oriented to specific class combos. For example they sell axes with healing bonuses. That's useful if you are a priest/warrior or druid/warrior, but pretty much no one else.
Enjoy the game. We need fresh prey..I mean.. new players. OMG- I can't believe I typed that out loud.

Welcome, Gdar. Pretty much every instance after level 50 has bosses that drop mems. The higher level the instance is and the higher the difficulty mode you're on, the more mementos you'll get. Hall of Survivor gear is pretty good so once you get to level 55 you should see if you can get a party for it. Hopefully you'll get some good drops and,if you don't, there's always mems that you can use.If I remember correctly, it's only at the higher levels that the gear bought with mementos that have attributes for specific class combos (the earliest I can remember this happening is for the Sybal Pass sellers). I just stopped by Hall of Survivors and they sold the same hands and shoulder pieces as easy mode bosses dropped along with some other gear. This gear is better than normal mode Heart of the Ocean drops so probably the memento gear was used to get strong enough for normal mode of the most recent instance.