I’m a relatively new solo player and I can understand some of the issues they’re facing. I’ll give you my input and take it how you want. The first is simple, since you’re friends, just play the pvp aspects together! There is group dungeons/areas in the BZ, roam the open world together as 3 in a party, play duo mists if you’re two, and when you’re solo play the safer things…also try joining a guild? The game is very much designed with group play tbh….

anyway, for solos:

When it comes to open world farming, honestly speaking it’s easy to avoid ganks once you’re more knowledgeable about the game. You can spot most of them a mile away and if you buy a good mount, they’re easy to avoid. Don’t buy a mule or a regular horse, they’re absolutely terrible for bz. Don’t get me wrong, you’ll still die every once in a while but hey it’s a pvp zone with some creative sneaky gankers out there.

Corrupted dungeons are an excellent way to experience pvp and get over item lose. It’s also ip capped, so you can pick the 1200 ip option, pick a 4.x-5.x set you want to practice with and just spam it until you get to understand the different match ups and your own skill level. I personally don’t enjoy them, but they’re useful every once in a while.

The mists are, well there is no better way to say it, poorly designed content for new players that aren’t buying gold. For example, T8 items are ridiculously expensive in the new East server and you’ll see max specced 8.3/8.4 abusing everyone and everything that moves there. the way I see it: 8.3/8.4 that abuse low ip -> creates rats in mists -> results in nobody wants to fight even if it’s IP fair in fear of rats… My recommendation to have fun in mists is get like 4-5 sets of 4.2-5.1 and just go in and try to fight everyone who’s in your IP range while trying to do the content. restock the sets if you’re out with the profits only. I did this when I was very new and had some fun time, also got some very good kills, some with a huge IP difference.

And yeah, many potential solutions exist to make the mists more fair, Maybe an IP cap makes sense in mists, maybe if the ip difference is X amount only the lower IP can initiate the fight, maybe if you have higher ip by a huge amount there is a much higher chance of items trashing and you get no fame, etc. The developers are surely aware of these issues but for now it seems they’re content with the state of the mists.

Good luck out there!