I want to make sprites with the opposite abilities of my 3 I have now, and they're pretty costly. I was curious if anyone has any rough guesses of how much it costs.
The sprite case costs 2100ce itself, one Evo Catalyst, advance, and three ultimate Evo Catalysts add up to 1950ce I believe.
Players have their own ways and decisions on leveling their sprite. Being an older player and having amassed a lot of random materials, I'd like to ignore the material costs and only refer to the pet food crafting cost.
I'm sure most players who know a bit about how heating pets work, as far as I know and as I do myself, players feed random materials and only use pet food to level until they reach 4*, so this can be considered.
Converting the energy costs to crowns isn't entirely needed or the best thing to do in this, since energy costs can vary slightly. The previously mentioned energy costs currently, roughly add up to 280,000cr.
I just don't know how many orbs and stars are needed to level to max. 4* Orbs cost 200 to craft one, and 5* Stars cost 500 to craft one.
Seeing the number 280,000 pains me already.
On top of all of this, how much minerals would this take?
Unless I misunderstand you, there is a section of a wiki page devoted to exactly your question:
https://wiki.spiralknights.com/Battle_Sprite#Economics
At the end of the section is a table summarizing the total costs in minerals, crowns, and energy. I think that it doesn't include the ordinary feeding minerals. But that's okay, because you want to ignore those.
Let us know if you want information not offered there.