Everyone knows - gearing is expensive... and not only that, as soon as a new levelcap comes the old gear gets less useful or even worthless
Thats the reason for players to either not gear at all or just gear until they reach a certain point of strenght; this certain point usually is (or at least in my case was), where you can more or less oneshot your "farming-mobs"
once this is reached the only reason to get stronger gearwise is if you wish to improve your char for pvp or raids (i do not name astralsectors here since they offer no purpose except getting even stronger gear)
for pvp the economical usage is very limited since you have a fixed amount of BG-emblems each week anyway so what is actually left is the joy of beeing (vastly) superior in pvp, a luxury thing
so instead of gear its much more profitable to upgrade runes / buy items from shop, which wont become useless after some time!
now, there always have been different kinds of farmable mobs with different stats
for example when i started this game, max level was 51;farming-situation was:
low level farmers -> frontier (golems) <-- i spent so much time there i will never forget it, my best farmingexperience i ever had (although my runes were 444333 and no pat5 available on my server), i gained ~200 gold / hour there while exchange rate was like 1:7 or something
middleclass farmers -> wandering isle (undead) <--- when i had my summoner reincarnation it was great to farm there nonstop, i had already level 5 runes in offense and due to summ mechanics i could gain ~ 720 gold / hour, however exchange also was up already at this time
high-end & top-farmers -> kingdom of elements (the old one with cradle!) <--- outside cradle i was abe to farm but due to weakness it was more efficient on other places, i remember seeing bards & psionicists farming there, cutting through fire elementals like a hot sword through butter, it was such a pleasure to watch this... allods looked like a hack'n'slay-game when watching these farmers... it was my biggest wish ingame to be able to farm like this one day!
so back from our little trip to the past of level 51, how is the farmingsituation now?
i would call the lions at "ferris, lost terminal" lowlevel-farmingmobs... they drop proper loot and are easy to kill (and allow AOE!)
KOE mobs are medium... die not so fast but reward is higher (proper AOE is not possible for most players)
mobs outside the laboratory (mechanical snakes) are highend, they drop a LOT of valuable loot (similar rates to the rabbits in umoira before grey loot was reduced ;O)
however these mobs are so endurant its almost impossible to oneshot them, which will offer a new target regarding gear
so if you upgrade your gear, you can again farm more efficient
also, with next sector unlock most likely there will come even more valuable mobs for killing, but they will be so endurant, with low gear no reasonable farming will be possible
now, if enough time is spent with farming these mobs, gearing maybe not only is "refunded" (amortization of upgrading gear costs) but even more profitable than staying at for example blue gear all the time
if seriously planned, an amortization schedule should be done however to make sure its worth this way, this here are only toughts without maths to back it up!
(i am aware, that farming mobs is not the best way of gaining gold these days, but this might be relevant to those who simply enjoy farming more than pvp/astralshipthings/auctions/goblinball but also want to gain gold this way)