I skimmed through the thread and I didn't see this advice given, so here it goes.
If you're new, after getting to lvl 60, focus on getting your cash shop things first, before your gear. The cash shop things will constantly go up in price. They will never be cheaper, but gear will constantly be becoming cheaper to get. 5.01 will supposedly make it much easier to get basic/mediocre endgame gear. So if you prioritize gear, you will have to spend more on the itemshop things, and if you prioritize itemshop, you will have to spend less on gear.
I'm not saying blow all your resources on runes, but... try to buy 100 crystal chips every week and use what you have left on gear. Most importantly - find a pace that is suitable for you. If you can't make it to buy 100 cc every week, make it every other week.
this is indeed a very good and important advice which i forgot to mention!
also, if you want to make a reincarnation later, you can enjoy all shopitems with it while the normal gear does not help the reinc
as its true that shopitems got more expensive its important to mention that goldincome also got up far
i calculated it in some topic and the result was that in sum the items are actually cheaper now than they were at level 51 times
CC should be bought when there is sale =p
this is true however a new player may have not enough gold to buy the largest (best because cheapest) pack of CC; thats why i recommended buying them over AH since prices on AH are still lower than buying small amounts from shop
both, seller AND buyer profit there
Mail.RU never had a CC sale in the Russian version of the game.
thats the part i am absolutely curious about; we will see how it goes on
it would be sad if they really stop the CC sales; that would be most likely a reason for me to stop further upgrading of my runes (at least until i have various other things like fatality scroll and so on)