Return and homing rings work only when you are in a region controlled by your nation. It immediately warps ya to the outpost of said region which does translate in a cheap method of warping to your home nation. Also considering that they reduced the recast delay to only 1 hr rather than 24hrs it makes it more feasible. Course with not many people pting in the old school pt zones its a bit pointless to depend upon a zone to reliably belong to a certain nation since Beastmen tend to take over areas due to lack of pt activity.

Places like Ronfaure and Gustaberg and Sautaburata or staples like Valkrum and Qufim are reliably controlled. Perhaps Qufim is less so at least here on Asura.