Currently there is no more ways for newcomers to get strong without real cash, since you cannot anymore farm infinite ammount of players per day - now you can get only 10. Also, arena progression speed was improved, so taking 5 gems not anymore worth it, since you will drop down way too fast and will end up close to strong players which will farm all your arena rewards non-stop. Also, now newcomers cannot get good equipment from Cerber/Baal, since you will get useless "-20" lvl patterns, which are just garbage at that point (for example i am 60 lvl, i need 60 lvl patterns and i am getting 40 lvl ones, so farming them is no point at all). If i were some 30-40 lvl player today - i would just leave game, since all the changes which was made to game in a last month, just pulled weak players to be even more weaker.