Aye, still lots to be done by the looks of it. I expect phase 2 will end with the completion of this square area, maybe building a fountain or something in the middle of it? Then we'll have to wait for 5.3 for phase 3 etc I guess. I'll be honest, I haven't personally checked to see if the world visit restrictions are still in place but I haven't noticed any "wanderers" in ours so I think they must be.
Scrips wise, the new expert recipes at lvl 80 can give up to 76 for max collectibility and you still have 500 per the concerted works of your own server, plus you can ofc get them from gathering now too - some fish look to give up to 50 for example. Still not as easy to amass scrips as it was when we were getting 500 a pop on each server admittedly (though that was a little
too good to be fair lol), but it doesn't feel quite as much of a grind as it was in phase 1 after they put those restrictions in place. Unless you want to go for the Pteranodon mount that requires 500,000 points towards your skyward score as every DoH/L... Don't think I'll be doing
that grind lol.
Nodes in the Diadem are also just for the resources used in the restoration too, yep. Some of those are going for good money atm (or were) for those who aren't fussed about crafting with them. I've started levelling my other crafters now but I must've made 4-5m from them when I was selling rather than using. Working towards getting all of my crafters to lvl 80 atm then I'll go back to gathering in there I think
(There's a black parasol which you can buy for scrips too but I've not bought that one yet. The sky blue one I have in the picture being a Kupo prize. The outfit I'm wearing actually comes with a bobble hat but you get the crown as an achievement reward for claiming first prize 5 times)