Just a tip on your gear, as well: Drop the Spur. It only goes to 4* and isn't very useful. Get a Brandish and upgrade it into a Nightblade - that'll give you bonus damage against Slimes and Gremlins.

The best way is to play the levels that you enjoy, and delay the game for as long as possible, to savor it all in before it hits you that Vanaduke isn't hard, and that the shadow lairs aren't THAT amazing.

The fastest way is to get a job some place, and then buy ce.

The fastest way without investing money into the game, is to make 50 or more craft accounts(the public library is a great place for this), and then use vatel's recipes to get each a recipe and AH for some mats. This should be able to make you enough to get to T3 in about a week or two. (note that you will indeed need to use multiple PCs) Make sure to go look at AH's mat section, so that you can bid low and then sell mats. If you wear some costume armor to look legit; eg steam mask+remove your shield, then you can also get noobs who are begging for cr to sell you their mats for incredibly cheap.

The fastest way to get crowns purely with skill involves tricking T3 players into inviting you to D23 of the vanaduke gate, where you can make around 10K CR doing vanaduke, provided that you can find a party willing to take you.

(miss)use your friends :) with that i mean let them do the non-profit first stratum, join at basil, finish stratum 2 (don't revive when not needed), repeat... (also when doing T3 runs you can sell good recipes (don't be greedy people won't buy them if your greedy) intstant profit (now that wasn't so hard was it?)

@Nalydx

You MUST make dusker set fore making Ash Tail, as Ash Tail is upgraded FROM dusker, then you can decide between Skolver or Vog from Ash Tail. Check Wiki more.
In short: Wolver ** --> Dusker *** -- > Ash Tail ------> Skolver *****
\___>Vog Cub *****

Hey Nald. Coming from a fellow tier 2 Player, I believe best way to make crowns at this stage is to do jelly king runs. Makes about 6-12k crowns depending on the amount of arenas in the gate. (That would be awesome if there was a gate with every depth an arena). Arenas in T2 make an average of 2k crowns, or a net value of 1300 crowns.) Just use your mist energy to do JK runs, and don't spend money on tempting items in the auction house.
Btw, here is how recipes work:
You currently have all 2* equipment. Let's take yourwolver helm for instance, and say you want to make dusker cap and disregard your other stuff.
Wolver cap = 2 stars. To get dusker cap, search "Dusker cap" (no typos) in auction house. Then, set the prices to lowest buy price (buy price in top right corner of auction house window.) This way, you have the cheapest recipe available for the Dusker cap at the top of the list. Note: Dusker cap is a popular recipe, so you most likely will pay at least 6.5k crowns for it instead of the normal 4k at basil at depth 13. After you get the recipe, you need energy. Here is the table:
200 energy to craft 3 star items, 400 energy for 4 star, and 800 energy for 5 star. For Dusker, you need 200 energy to make it. (Energy prices are insane now at 7k crowns, so it might be difficult). Lastly, ou need materials. Every material in the wiki is available in the auction house, except for zee cores. You can buy necessary materials this way.
Once you have the recipe, energy (200 in this case), materials, and previous item in the alchemy chain ( wolver cap, which you have), and 1k crowns (extra crafting fee), you can make a Dusker cap. Cost: 6.5k for Dusker recipe (4k if found at depth 13) + 14k crowns (200 CE- you can use full mist energy to save 7k crowns) + 1k crafting fee + 1k for materials (referred to as mats)= 15.5k total (13k if recipe was gottan for 4k crowns, 22.5k if Mist energy (referred to as "ME") was not used).
There you have it. How to craft new stuff. (In my experience, it is better to buy items at 3 stars, since it usually saves crowns anyways).