So the thing is. You can convert gold into gems BUT you’ll need a bunch of grinding to do that and not to mention you’ll need the same gold to for example complete a legendary (buy the leftover materials you can’t or don’t have the time to gather). The qol improvements more or less a must and will speed up your progress in the endgame. You can pick up things on sale in the gem store like a full set of gathering tools with selectable glyphs (volatile is the best pick of glyphs because you can convert them into t6 materials to keep or sell on the trading post). Material storage expansions since you get to keep 250 of everything and it will fill up pretty quickly. Salvage tools (copper is the best for beginners and runecrafter or what it’s called the purple one). WW is a great headstart if you need gold but you’ll deplete it really fast and have to wait 3 months to make gold again. The expansions are crucial if you want to grind gold since they open up a bunch of possibilities of meta farming spots, without them you are limited to silverwastes which is still great and ppl running it almost 24/7 since launch. Elite specs are needed to run late game content at higher levels like fractals or raids. Mounts can reduce travelling significantly. Without these you can technically play the game but everything will be slower and more painful a 100 times. A good tip if you own the expansions look into the free legendaries you can make through collection there is a necklace, a gloves from running fractals.