My impressions of the crafting system:
http://img12.imageshack.us/f/memereview.jpg/
I seriously don't understand why the crafting system is the way it is.
I can buy recipes. They're not cheap, but I bought some.
I can gather ingredients. Well, I can gather some ingredients as the RNG deigns to hand them out so I'm missing some ingredients of most of the recipes that I bought. I guess I'll get the remainder later.
Maybe. I don't trust the RNG of any MMO to be cooperative.
In the mean time, my default equipment has leveled up several times. So I'm not sure if my now improved equipment is now better than some of the simpler gear. This MMO is supposed to be an anti-grind MMO, but I'm actually dreading buying new gear as new equipment apparently needs heat grinding to be fully effective.
Then there's the star system. I understand that there's some restrictions based on star levels, but I'm not sure if I should buy zero star or one star or two star equipment first. Again, every purchase, as far as I can tell, means more grinding for heat.
Oh, and I'm going to have to spend money or mist energy for every attempt, and I'm pretty sure I don't get a refund if I buy "the wrong gear". (Plus, I'll lose time spent grinding heat for gear that I end up replacing.)
There does to be a shortcut--merchants seem to sell up to two star items. You need to have quite a few crowns for some of them, and I've got a bad feeling that they're going to be inferior to crafted items. (And even then, there's still the heat grinding issue.)
If there's a casual-friendly, low/no-grind solution to all of this, I'm willing to listen. There's information on the wiki about all weapons, but the list of swords is far more of an information overload than helpful.
And, to top it all off, I understand that I have to get four 4-star equipment items to see all of the game. Given my difficulties trying to figure out how I'm supposed to get a recipe for a 2 star item and the ingredient drops to fill them out, trying to figure out how to get a 4-star weapon sounds very unpleasant. Right now, cryptography sounds like a simpler hobby than Spiral Knights.
1. You do as many runs as possible (for heat, Crowns, materials, and recipes)
2. Once you get the recipe of the item you wish to make you look at the materials and requirements (now you realize what your missing example Beast Scale) you realize you have to kill beast type monsters for this drop so you try to find a map with a lot of beast type monsters and you kill them.
3. You can trade for the materials you are missing (Crowns or CE is usually used in this process)
Now as for the crowns are hard to get etc.:
Honestly just do runs once your in T2 and T3 the crowns average (For myself) 5k to 8k+ a run EASILY, and if you solo you make a lot more. If you need energy well save up the crowns for Ce.
This game has many players who never bought CE to well be great players its some work, but beats paying for crystal energy.
As for weapons and Armors:
Each weapon and armor has special abilities and each monster is weaker against certain type of weapons so there really no "Good Weapon" which is great against everything. More you train up your weapons you will figure out some of the ones you have are useless and will switch to a new weapon.
We have the Wiki which lists majority of the weapons, armors, which monster drops what etc. So spend time reading that if you dont want to waste your energy and ask players in game what they think is good and what they think is bad etc.
Training gets easier once you complete your armor, helm, shield....and well move onto 1 item training its real simple. I usually level up a 5* item in a day or every other day so ya its not so hard, and you have to figure out which maps give you the most heat etc.
^Those are some tips I hope that helps.