...
its interesting to read that
before the free mercs came, can you imagine how gearing was?
i honestly think it would be even less fun to you than the game seems to you now
the costs / upgrade were incrdibly high (if you regard the average income of gold these days), you needed MULTIPLE amalgam and beside AOD and alchemy Q there were no useful ways of getting it
so basically going to astral put you into the need of paying mercs or find a good group
then, on the island, the bosses dropped a blue useful item if you were VERY lucky (and improving greens to blues was not rally worth)
in normal case they only dropped green "crap", since cradle reputation gear was superior
also it was so difficult that even with a good group some isles were not finishable
for example spiderforest was a nightmare that time
(in the best times of "mercenary-astral" however this allod was the fastest, it could be beaten in 6 minutes (if you were alone with mercs or had competent players instead of slugs)
same with most of the other allods
the only one that was still timeconsuming was white 17 with the "waves" but no "next wave" button...
but as summy with pet on agressive you could just afk at this island and let the mercs to the job)
so in the end i came to the conclusion its more fun to take this part as the "end" of the game and start again, with a reincarnation
the only problem was, it was EXTREMELY hard to pass the tka-rik trails, especially for a new player without good items / gear, plus i played the worst class at this time
however after some long time i beat tkarik and started a reincarnation
leveling was so much fun and gearing was not at all
so i started to level again...
(at this point i had little interest in pvp at all, only leveling pvp was fun to me)
i started "serious" gearing at the time the free mercenary runs came, until orange gear
why not further? because gear above orange was simply not worth getting (although i got some teal items)
sometimes you dont have to reach the maximum of everything, its better to be happy with 90% instead of 100
so now, with all the gold thrown after you in comparison to the time before astral-academy, i feel like in paradise
also beeing no longer dependent on mercenary runs / groups to gear up is simply great
but i would also think it would be nice to have free-mercenary-astral with free TP again