You also have a chance at uv upon craft, so I usually roll at 5 star personally :)

It depends on a lot of factors, like Bopp said. Here's what I do-

1. If the gear is already 5*, roll single UV tickets until I get one of my desired variants.

2. Look into buying the gear piece off another player for a reasonable price. Whether this works depends on how big of a UV you're after and how much you're willing to pay. It's almost never feasible to buy 5* + CTR V. High or something like that because it's going to cost you a fortune and that's if you can find one for sale from someone quitting the game or something.

3. If the gear isn't found for cheap enough, get it at 2* + unbind it if necessary + craft it to 3*, punch it, sell it. This gets you 2x chance for natural UVs and 1x variant for your new gear piece, and it lets you sell to those with lesser interests in mind- for example, you probably don't want CTR low uvs because those are just lows, but newer players with more of a budget in mind should definitely be looking out for those gear pieces- they helped me a ton when I was new. If you're a REALLY high roller going for very highs/maxes then you can sell highs, meds, all of your "failures" for a pretty decent profit that can turn into more rolls, decreasing your costs tremendously.

4. If the gear is brand spanking new i.e. just came out yesterday I ragecraft a good 60-80 of it and sell even the variant-free pieces on the auction house. Due to the high demand for these kinds of new items, lack of recipes and therefore crafters etc. they're likely to sell tremendously fast and for more than you're paying to ragecraft them. You both generate crowns and a good shot at an acceptable unique variant.

It depends on what type of UV's your after and how strong you want them to be.

1) Weapon UVs, high or very high: Buy these from other players or roll on a 2* version of the item you are after. Rerolling your current 5* level 10 items will be a waste of money if you're after these because you will not be able to resell any unwanted UVs. Keep in mind that a 5* weapon already has a certain damage type/other stats that can't be changed. Say you are rolling on acheron and want ctr or asi high+. You'd be rolling over ASI medium and CTR medium, both of which could fetch at least 80-100k crowns on a brandish. Even damage bonus UV's that are unwanted can still probably get you back like 20k if they are VH. Slime/Gremlin bonus would be ok to get on a nightblade to resell, however fiend/undead VH would be worthless on it. A brandish can still branch out, while nightblade is stuck with shadow dmg.

2) Weapon UVs, but satisfied with medium: If you have lvl 10 5 star weapons without at least an ASI or CTR med, you can punch these to get them. It's not worth recrafting over because medium is the lowest UV that's really worth anything, so anything you get that you didn't want in the first place, won't be profitable either.

3) Armor UVs: specific high/max: buy the first one from other players. Armor doesn't really need level 10 anyway to be effective, and if you want a specific UV (say shock or fire), then you're most likely better off to buy them from other players. If it's a popular armor piece you will find it. If it's an unpopular armor piece, just roll and hope for the best.

4) Armor UVs: just looking to improve your current armor sets? Roll away at punch, you'll get a useful one eventually.

Just some general tips:

- Always roll on an item that can still branch out as much as possible, so that once you get a good UV, you can still decide what 5 star version of the item will suit it best. (For example a piercing max UV is a lot more valuable if you roll it on a skolver suit instead of a snarbolax suit, so roll it on a wolver suit and if you get piercing, craft it to skolver; if you get shadow, craft it to snarbolax)

- Something that disagrees with previous posts: Do NOT upgrade items to get more chances for an UV. Not even once. The orbs cost a lot more for consecutive upgrades, so simply crafting multiple 2 star versions would grant you way more UV chances. Upgrading to 3* costs 200 energy to buy the orbs, for 1 extra chance at an UV >< spending 200 energy on crafting 2* items grants you 4 UV chances. Upgrading to 4* or higher for UVs is even worse, because at that point the item is bound to you and if you get an unwanted UV, you can no longer resell it to make some of the cost back. If you are planning to get UV's on your stuff, make sure that the UV is already on any item you are upgrading from now on. The only reason why you'd roll on a bound item in the first place is because you already invested into it, mainly considering the radiants you'd have to spend on a replacement item.

My thoughts on this are that if I have something at 5* heat level 10, it would cost me 6.3K Energy worth of my own time, i.e. 4-5+ hours of grinding and hating my life. 6.3K = 630,000K is more than enough to get me a good med or high most of the time.

Yes definitely

that's why I split up my post because we need more information to decide which on a strategy. If he only wants the best UVs, then it will be worth buying them for a reasonable price and going through the effort of recrafting and heating his new item.

But if he is fine with medium UVs, then he should definitely just go for rolling his items he already has because heating them to level 10 is not worth the trouble in this case.

Also to give OP some more info:

My personal UV strategy always involved looking at how many desirable UVs there were possible.

Say on a Bomb, the only desirable UV for me is CTR, meaning that when I get a high or very high roll, I still only have 1/7 chance for it to be a desirable UV. This is a very low chance, which is why I would just buy bomb UVs from other players. A brandish however has 2 desirable UVs for me, being CTR and ASI. This means that when I get a strong UV, there's 2/8 chance that it'll be CTR or ASI (the other 6 options being the damage types). For most weapons, you are usually after 1 of the 8 UVs and because of that I've always bought the weapon UVs. The only weapon I've rolled for very highs myself are my cutters, because I wanted damage bonus UVs on them, which made the chance of getting a desirable 'Very High' a 'very high' chance.

On armors it's different though. The top UVs to get for armor in my opinion are Fire, Shock and the 2 natural defenses. That said, Freeze, Poison are also nice to get on an armor. So you see that out of the 10 possibilities, 6/10 are quite good to get as a max UV. I'd usually buy the armor piece with 1 of the most favorable UVs (Fire or Shock) and then try for 2nd and 3rd UVs. Once you get a high or max for your 2nd and 3rd UVs, there's a good chance that it'll be a useful one too. Even better is when you manage to find someone who is selling an armor piece with 2 max UVs on that you want, since these items are in low demand, you can usually get them for way less than it would take you to roll them yourself.