LONG VERSION: It used to be that crafting was cheaper for everything back when the steam storm brought in all those new people, CE costs plummeted and prices for gear on the market went up. Now, with the crowd mostly thinned out and leaving behind only a few remnants (me, for one), the battle between the people trying to sell gear and sell recipes for 3* items continues, the price of CE has gone up, demand for new 2* gear is now considerably less, and all the people who were/are madcrafting now have an overabundance of gear that they simply can't get rid of. I once saw a guy advertise in trade channel selling 15 caliburs for 25K crowns. You can find most 2* gear at 2.5-3K crowns or lower, and right now that's only the cost of the energy required itself, not including the craft cost in crowns and the material value.

SHORT VERSION: Better to purchase 2* gear right off the market. I don't know about the 3* gear, but that takes 200 energy to make, so if you see anything that's 3* and it's being sold for 12000 crowns or lower, it's a good buy. If you don't factor in the material value, it now costs 13,000 crowns to craft a 3* item; however, that's not including the 2* item required to MAKE that item, so add ~3k.

2* items at 2-3K: buy it.

3* items at 16K or lower: buy it.

Keep in mind it may be cheaper if you craft your own 3* considering it takes a previous gear item to make it. Just do the math.

Farming/obtaining crowns to get 2 or 3-stars item is still doable by just running T1 content over and over. Making some profit from T1 runs is still possible (of course try to go SOLO as soon as you can, to get all the materials) but the current Energy/Crowns ratio is very bad and will require lots of repetitive runs to actually make some decent cash.

The REAL pain comes when you try to jump from 3-stars to 4-stars items. That will require a *TON* of Crowns. Not to mention 5-stars items.

4-stars items costs: 10.000 (vendor recipe) + 2.500 (alchemy cost) + 24.000 (400 energy) + materials. That's a grand total of 36.500 crowns IF you get the recipe directly from the npc (Basil). Most probably you will get it from the auction house... and you still need the mats. All of this will probably cost you something around 40.000/50.000 crowns (if you have the 3-stars item already).

Now... I am not into spending REAL money... but cashing 40K for a single item needs some kind of dedication (and time, unless you never sleep and play the game non-stop).

I think that spending some real money for the 3500 energy offer will save you some time (3500 energy = 210.000 crowns more or less). With 4-stars gear you can have some fun in T2 (where Danger Rooms and Arenas can be a pain if you're not decently geared... and they give the best profit).

Just ran the numbers, if you were to craft an entire set of gear (helm, chest, shield, two weapons) from 2* to 5* it would cost a grand total of:

7250 CE

and 244500 crowns

you can get the CE by spending 20$, or save up the crowns and buy it.

The crown cost does not take into account buying CE for crowns, and at that it would take about 55 days (of earning 4.5k crowns) of daily farming to save up.....

So if you are buying CE with crowns, again assuming you are making 4.5k a night, it would take around 110 days of daily farming to save up for the energy alone, at current 6000Cr/100 CE prices.

If you were to play for free, it would take around 165 days of daily farming to get to 5* gear.....

*free to play, pay to win indeed* :(

stanfy, you are ignoring many things:

1. The prices you can sell mats for profit, which at a certain point can become your main source of revenue at starting from the deeper end of T2.
2. 4.5k crown is not the best you can get for successful runs. You can use the crown you get from 100 mist energy to possibly either get a margin of profit, and play for longer to get even more crowns.
3. Even if you aren't efficient enough to make your crown influx higher than your CE spending, you're still receiving a very considerable amount of mats to sell, which again are very profitable.
4. Tier 3 runs can net you 8-10k per 100 energy at least if done correctly through crowns and mats. And even more if you stumble into highly sellable recipes from Basil.
5. 5* gear, as much as others are saying it, are NOT necessary, unless you plan to fight something like Vanaduke. In fact, 5* weapons could even be weaker if you aren't past Tier 2, due to the nerfing of 5* equipment. Even then, they are only better once you are in the second half of Tier 3, and marginally so. When ignoring 5*, you reduce your costs by 40%.
6. Factoring all of the above cuts the time to reach 5* at least a couple months, bringing it down to 3 instead of the 5 you initially stated. Yet, what other MMO do you know where you can get the best equipment you'd need in only a few months?

> Say what you want but beyond the 4/5 different level themes,
> 4 (currently) bosses, and dozen or so armor sets
> (re-colors dont count) this game is quite lacking in content

That's true, and -overall- the game is very very simple: no classes, no skill-trees, ultrabasic auction house and so on. Still... it's very immediate and fun. The good thing is that you can do either pay and play faster OR don't and take it at a (very) slow peace.

As a veteran WoW player (by veteran I mean that I played it for years) let me say one thing: Blizzard developers are the KINGS of recycling and somehow manage to convince players that endless grinding, repetitive tasks (daily quests...) and infinite item replacing is the base for a fun MMO.

I was hooked into WoW, so I know what I am talking about. SKnights is NOT a WoW competitor at all (it's another genere, to be honest). But the good thing is that I can CHOOSE to waste my life to get a purple item and replace it the next month... or just cash some money and get "almost the best".

I wish WoW had such a feature. Do you want the super-fancy-amazing hunter Tier-11 armor set? Grind factions, do the same thing every single day for entire weeks/months... and then you finally get what you want (too bad, Tier 12 will come out soon and you will do that again). What if Blizzard gave me an option like "Pay 10 dollars for your super gear set and be happy"? Well...