I've got a vet character that still doesn't have the 120's he needs because he cannot afford them...

So I feel ya. Of course, he needs the most expensive ones - magery, eval, resist... etc...

JC you are overstreaching here.

120 Magery is a vanity/convenience scroll. You can get along in PVP with a 115 scroll just fine. I mean - are you casting EV's and earth elementals in PvP? No mostly poison, explo, flamestrike etc all are if not 100% very close to 100% at 115.

No way you need 120 med. 110 med with an extra 2 MR is the same as 120 med.

Brit library armor? Not needed.

That ring price is totally over-inflated. I would toss that sort of a ring down at the bank if I had it.

For about 5-10 mil you can get a pretty darn good character put together.

The only 120 skills that are NOT over rated are weapon skills, Eval, Parry. The rest are harely noticable from 115 to 120.

If you want to be uber l33t cool and have legendary skills - fine. But it is not a requirement to be successful.

Have you ever done PVP? You are always casting Energy Vortex, Earthquake and Resurrection. Do you run around 90% lower reagent cost? Because it is the same thing.

I know a decent character can be made for ~10-20 million gold. I am just showing how much it can cost to make a top of the line character. The suit pieces I am reusing add at least another 50 million to that total.

or working hard and not spending nuttin works

I never complained about anything; just posted showing how much it is costing. I don't really make characters anymore. But when I do it is costing tens of millions. The last one cost about 30 million I think.

I sell em for for 10GP per on Pacific

yesss it could but man who tames stuff like that ;P lolol that be hardcore...

*cough* I've gotten a full set of all the zoo armor ...
Anyways.. you could always build a suit like my sampire... including necro mark and 15 fishing pole.. with a gorgeous suit.. over 500 million I'd estimate.. but then again.. my pvp mages also all have 200-300 million gold suits on them.. I don't spend money on scrolls though.

I've been working on my first mage for about 8 months now. So far I've spent:
110 magery scroll, 115 in EI, meditation, resist, 120 spellweaving and wrestling: total about 2.5 million.
Rune beetle carapace: 2.5 million
Kasa of Raj'in: 2.9 million
Runic arms, legs and gloves: 1 million each
Necklace of the magi: 400k
Totem of the void: found one (saved 1 million, more or less)
Scrappers with 16% LRC and +11 EI: was a gift (saved a helluvalot)
Jewels and the LRC/LMC suit I used for training: less than 50k for all of it.
Total spent: 11.3 million

Add my complete collection of super slayer spellbooks at about 3 million and it comes out to somewhere between 14 and 15 million.

But I don't have my 120 scrolls yet. I'm waiting to earn those.

So yep, it's expensive. Especially for a newer player. But now I can share the suit between my 3 mages (bard/tamer and weaving).

On the other hand, once you've done it once, it's really simple to do it again.

And on arrows: I just started an archer on Europa (ok, converting a sampire since I already have one elsewhere) and I've decided that it'll be too much trouble to try to train it. I'd have to use another character to kill the ratmen archers to get the arrows, then trade them over to my first character without the use of a house. Luckily I have people I trust there. Unluckily, they're mostly on different time zones than I am, making bringing us together at the right time rather difficult. But killing a dozen rats to start the day makes for a great gold saver. The problem is getting good enough to kill them, which may be impossible without making your own arrows (boooooring! At least for me).

Probably because with this changes these days you would need to return to the original archery type.
Archery/Lumberjacking/fletching at the beginning

Lumber your wood and kill birds for feathers and you will get there, just slower.