Problems with living in Blackzones are as follows (this is how we encountered them);
- The blawb is real -> 20+ man "caravans" are a daily reality you have to play around one way or another.
- T2 resources -> You need to import them, kinda like "no titan on Beta" in Perp.
- Town exit zones are gankerino centralino -> Works both ways of course...
All in all biggest hurdle is getting your first batch of PVP gear & tools into a Blackzone town. After that, you'll be hauling in T2 stone exclusively to upgrade guild island to T4-T5 so you can start crafting your own ***. Then you'll have to start importing T2 metal bars, planks, cloth, leather so that you can start gathering locally and refining in the Blackzone.
Once you got that sorted it's pretty much smooth sailing for small scale PVP or blobchasing. Group compositions are a reality (just make sure you have a greathammer/claymore with you for tackling, T5 must-have) and everything else is "bring whatever" weapon-wise.
For comparison, full set of T5 PVP gear (for myself) is like 32 T5 leather, and I don't remember how much metal/leather for my T5 claymore but it's dirt cheap. Comparatively, 1 T5 animal gives roughly 9 T5 hide, which requires 9T2+9T3+9T4 to process into leather.
TL;DR
Once the heavy lifting I mentioned above is done, most people can be self-sufficient from there on out. Weekly run of 999(stack) T2 metal or planks or leather, and you're so fine you'll be running into bankspace problems.