Zbrush is a great artist tool, unfortunately a poor pipeline ingredient, due to weird design decisions and poor level of automation, even if you take into account the plugins. Its sculpting tools still give best results, despite Blender and 3D Coat catching up (especially Blender - for non-hero sculpts I prefer Blender, much faster and easier to setup a quick sculpted scene). Good thing about ZBrush though (compared to other paid soft) is that there is no maintenance fee, so all upgrades are free (curious how long this will survive). Once a year there is a ZBrush Summit when you can buy it with around 200$ off. I think the main purpose of ZBrush mini is to boost sales, recently Blender made a noise with its cloth brush for sculpting.