2 (head + body) * 9 (lines) * 4 (status prefixes) * 4 (star levels) = 288
Of course, there's also the starting Padded Cap + Armor for starting the alchemy line, but you can buy that from Greave. Anyway, this is going to be ridiculously frustrating with the amount of recipes that Basil already sells (all of them). Maybe we could remove some of the non-exclusive recipes from his selection? What do you think?
Edit: math was wrong see below
While you have a low chance to get the particular recipe you want in a single run, you can buy a different recipe and trade with someone (or just buy off AH). The sheer quantity is a bit ridiculous, though.
I wouldnt get anything from the AH until February, 4* guns are priced at 5* range, just look at the raptor recipes, there was like 5 at 30k last night, better to run basil and actually collect crowns while looking instead of paying twice what you should
There's still 2 recipes ( helm and body )for each set of armor though, so there's really 126 recipes.
36 *5 sets is too many, but we can narrow the field a little.
I'm guessing the Snakebite (poison resist) sets will prove less popular. I'm also guessing most people won't have enough orbs/crystals for the specialized sets (Hazard, Guerrilla, Ghost, Hex, Wraith, Keeper), so they'll opt for the generalist sets (Pathfinder, Shade, Sentinel). That reduces the total to 9.
Of the 9 remaining, there's one combination that stands out as really stellar: Firefly Shade (which should be nice for both FSC and devilite levels). Slightly below that is Firefly Sentinel (for gremlin/construct areas and Machine Shop 13). Grizzly Shade is specialized for HoI prestige mission, Falcon Shade is made for the GitM prestige mission, and Falcon Sentinel should be nice for farming the twins.
[If I already had a Shadowsun set (with Fire UV for use in FSC), I might be tempted to compare it to Firefly Shade. Sadly, my Shadowsun set looks a bit underpowered. Damage +4 doesn't compare reasonably with CTR+2, ASI+2, Dam+2.]
Well, you're not exactly doing the math correctly- basil always holds a certain number of recipes by star level at least, and you overdid the number of recipes. It's more like..
For reference, Klipik made this visual- http://i.imgur.com/yThPjFo.png
5*: 36 recipes (3 damage variants * 4 statuses * 3 defense types)
4*: 12 recipes (4 statuses * 3 defense types)
3*: 12 recipes (4 statuses * 3 defense types)
2*: 3 recipes (3 defense types)
1*: 0 (purchased directly? I'm assuming you can't craft the 1* version; I do not know!)
Total: 63
But like I said, basil doesn't just pick one of the 63 recipes to spit out- he picks some of each category possible. So it's far more fair than you're making it out to be.... since basil does give you multiple of these recipes, and you or someone you know that likes you (and will sell you that recipe) only needs to find the correct recipe once, and then you're done forever.
That being said, it does kind of feel like a good 50% of his recipes are shaded sentinel falcon helms of the sacred dragonfly bear pathfinder recipes, and I do still think that this 36 new 5* armors business is kind of ridiculous.