A Handful of Questions

I've been wondering about the game recently ever since I came back a few days ago; Is recipe hunting still effective like it normally is or was?
I'm slightly perturbed thinking about if I would be making some good crowns or I would be just completely wasting my time. Another thing that just occurred to me as well, the NPC knights that carry things around Haven day to day for an astounding amount of time; Just what armor are they wearing?
Thanks for spending your time answering this if you do, I appreciate it.

the npcs walking around haven are using the type of proto gear before the "art update" I think
most npcs use it and its easier to tell between a player and one of them

There's still a market in recipe hunting.
I get whispers every now and again from people asking if they can buy something from me.
While we wait for someone with more knowledge to come along, here's what I can tell you. You can still make a lot of money reselling recipes. There are two categories:
* Recipes to upgrade boss items, such as Divine Avenger and Polaris, are not in the Hall of Heroes.
* All other recipes are available in the Hall of Heroes.
I've heard that you can still make money selling non-boss recipes, but you'll have to be careful about it, as the market can't be anything like it used to be. Also, for some reason certain boss recipes don't sell well (Dark Briar Barrage, Sentenza). So you might want to inspect the market for a while before investing a lot of crowns.
I can't answer your question about costumes. Cheers.