Oh, you'll be completely caught up since the new Renown system will give you level appropriate gear. Even as it is, you won't have anything to worry about difficulty wise ever if you set your companion to healing mode. The higher tiers of gear are only really necessary if you do end game content, and even then it just makes things faster as they're completely doable with the basic gear. Except for the harder tuned stuff obviously, but everything else is easily doable with just basic stuff.....
That said, that's how it was before, I have absolutely no idea how the new stuff is tuned with the new gear set bonuses and such.
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Maybe I'm overblowing how much time I actually spent playing, because thinking back on it there really wasn't that much to do and I wasn't dedicated to playing as it was that dinner time/ get ready for the next day/ kids homework time of the day.
Regardless, I enjoyed what I played. Looking forward to my next character play through to see the other side of things.