I also saw the prices and thought, "man that's discouraging." but then I thought "well I've done this before from 0 and never used any of these gears, let's see how to make it there."
Now, if you're doing WoE or PVP or BG, then yeah I don't have an argument for that. Plain and simple there's nothing to be said there. I can admit that.
PVM-Wise, which I think is what a lot of people enjoy as well (correct me if I am wrong, if you do pvp/woe/bg then I don't think it'll apply)
I spent free time playing, I work a full time job, leisurely enjoyed the game on weekends. Bit by bit I saw the features available, Eat Gear, Merry Badger, Mini VIP attainable from in-game farming, gramps and how it operated. Eve Natalia as well.
Started off with Eden gears, went with spring rabbits, moved on to snowier clips and evil druid armor, married characters on free VIP weekend, used ice creams for leveling. Leveled a lot of chars at gramps, collected a lot of loots, made safe cert, secured decent equipment, kept leveling and saving up stuff, eventually I found out about grandma boxter and i re-rolled items I got from other players who supported the server and made purchases. And I eventually got a few rares. sold and rinse and repeat (Sometimes I lost big time too lol).
not a single time did I feel frustrated because I was somehow enjoying the game despite people telling me I wouldn't be able to.
My next question is: how do you make zeny on here yourself? what is your approach.