Hello, first off i have a n3ds xl euro on 9.8 firmware, i saw that theres ways to downgrade to 9.2 and theres alot of custom firmwares but i dont want to risk it, especially since its a n3ds and those apparently can get bricked with ease. Anyway i saw that gateway is about to release their new update for up to w/e firmware it is that can be downgraded and was wondering if i should get a sky3ds+ or a gateway 3ds? or maybe something else? Thank you for your time.
If you want ease of use and not wanting to downgrade, Sky 3DS+ is the way to go, it works even on system menu 11.
Gateway is obsolete and their implementation on A9LH is risky for now and not worth (and I'm an actual Gateway user). And it requires downgrading to at least 9.2 anyway to get working, since it requires kernel exploits.
I've done downgrading on N3DS twice (mine and wife's) and nothing happened, installed A9LHax on both.
If you don't want risking a double downgrading process, you can do the Plailect guide
https://github.com/Plailect/Guide/wiki until the end of part 3 (RedNand), doing the guide to this point will leave you at 9.2 with menuhax+CFW. If you want to stop there I suggest setting CTRBootManager so it autoloads luma3ds for you alongside menuhax.
But if you follow all the guide properly (including steps like "double system formatting the emunand") the risk of having bricks (softbricks including) are very low.
EDIT: While Sky3DS is easy to use for offline gaming, when you try to play online it's another matter, since you're going to need to mess with the template file that the writer use. Gateway is drag-and-drop after setting up the environment but also requires patching the ROMs for online play.
CFW is the way to go nowadays, it's free and give less hassle to deal after setting up.