Yup. That's me. I started HZ a few days late and played so slowly that I had not yet done a cursed wolf quest when the merge struck. I made it to Pally 100 and Fitter 100 last year, and have enough levels in almost every craft to make all of my own equipment except for metal armor.
I never made much money at all from crafting. I only crafted for people when it was convenient for me, and then I'd do it for free. Maybe made a couple hundred silver in tips over the years.
I make most of my money from farming gems. Even after the PB nerf I still made plenty of ready cash. I'd just log in, find a PB who bought gems at full price, and make one run for each type of tier 5 gem, then go do something else. The rest of my money came from consigning dragon crunchies at 25% of HV. They sell in minutes at that price, although I stopped that once I made my own dragon.
I get my comps partly through hunting and partly through shopping. I always had my equipment planned out way ahead of time. When I reached the level for new triple teched mithril armor, it was waiting for me in my vault. The last few odd and difficult pieces might sometimes come from Nadia, but that was rare.
So, Nadia has been priced out of reach now. That's not a problem.
Equipment is probably going to decay. That may or may not be a problem. If it decays slow (5000 hours) then I can probably keep up with the comp hunting/buying. If it decays fast but doesn't need comps to repair, then I may grind out another 45 levels of armorer so I can do my own repairs there too. If I can't keep up with the comp hunting, I'll get some casual armor made with triple tier 3/4 techs. (I'll never wear unteched mithril when I can hunt tier 3 & 4 comps with ease.) In all the above cases, I'll also play less.
If the decay ends up being a constant thing like offline hoard leak was, or it stops being fun, then I'll give my wealth to some lucky random newbie and say good-bye to everyone.
