Re-gearing questions

So i came back after a 6 month break, left about 2 months into 3.0 because of moving + work, anyways i'm here for advice on gearing up my crafts again, i think the only thing i've actually bought on my character red scrip wise was Galleykeep's Frypan.

Now i was looking on ffxivguild and people have been talking about not worrying about crafting the mh and body since the red scrip pieces are better, true? Anyways i'm not sure what my current stats are on my other crafts since i'm not in game atm but my Cul is 757/684/391. It's probably lower on my other crafts since i don't have the i180 main hand.

I know the first thing i need to do is craft up the i170 accessories, that should be np however i'm playing catch up right now so last week i wasn't able to get any red scrips, this week however, i plan on getting some red scrips tomorrow. I'm not sure how getting the items from gathering work, i think you get red scrips then buy favors with them, then go to a node and use it to get the item or something? I'll read up on that later.

I basically need advice on how to proceed on re-gearing my crafts since i know each crafting classes need the i170/180 piece and not the shared pieces outside of accessories. Like gear up wvr or ltw first to craft other pieces etc etc.

Also, seems tier 4 control materia has jumped up dramatically, 400k per on Excalibur, and i only have 13 mill, over melding will suck big time...

Today, I just spent 30 million Gil and used 10-20mil worth of stockpiled materia to get from somewhere close to where you are to 3-star on one class. You have a long road ahead of you. If you can use gathering favors to get mats for crafting gear, that will save you a heck of a lot of Gil. That's where most of my 30 mil went.

I've spent some 9 mil to get my 150 gear 2** able. You have to invest a lot of money, but you don't lose a lot of red scrips on chest/MH/whatever and can favor gather and make a lot more 170 gear in less time. Back in the day, I had 12 mil and went to 3, but it was worth it. Specially nowadays. I love 3.2!!!

All i need to be able to do 2* on my i150 gear is like 10 more control which shouldn't be a problem, 10 more without Seafood Stew that is. I'm just not sure what to gear up first, GSM/CPR for accessories, which i think is a good choice or LTW/WVR. I plan on gathering all the items myself, i have the stats on my gathering classes to do it. I just want to know if spending red scrips on the main hand and body is worth it or spend it on something else because i've read you can hit the stats with those 2 i180 pieces on ffxivguild.

If you don't use grade V materia, you need to pentameld the i170 MH with grade IV materia to EQUAL the stats on the i180 token MH. However, the i180 MH has no CP on it. If you meld the i170 MH, you can trade ~4 of another stat for 4 CP. Same with the new offhand, from what I can tell, I haven't paid close attention there. I crafted one MH, said screw this, and used tokens for my other three primary crafter classes.

That said, keep in mind that the token MH takes 26 crafter red scrip tokens. 1 gatherer red scrip token gets you 5 favors which gets you ~15 red scrip mats. 20 red scrip mats and 1 crafter red scrip gets you 3 two star mats. The crafted MHs take 4 two star mats each. This means that the i170 MHs cost ~1.78 gatherer red scrip tokens and 1.33 crafter red scrip tokens (and quite a lot of time, and luck on the craft), instead of *26* crafter red scrip tokens. So, it's up to you - which would you rather spend, just 26 crafter red scrip tokens, or 1.33 crafter red scrip tokens, 1.78 gatherer red scrip tokens, millions of gil, and a ton of time? If you have crafter red scrip token stockpiled, the answer is obvious. If you don't and do have a ton of time to burn, well, the answer is also obvious.

Also, on the subject of high grade materia, if you have time to burn, the new master books have extremely cheap 60** items that take crystals and common mats, do nothing, and can be quicksynthed (with 850(!) crafts). These are clearly designed for spiritbonding the i170 gear, which convert into grade IV or V materia (something like 95% chance of IV, 5% chance of V). So, if you want to spend time to get your materia instead of gil, get a ton of astral birch lumber for 0.44 gatherer red scrip tokens and 0.33 crafter red scrip tokens each, and SB them, and convert them. With 9 tokens per week, you can spend a whole week's tokens and get, on average, 19 grade IV crafter (or gatherer) materia and 1 grade V crafter (or gatherer) materia. So, depending on RNG, you could get all the materia you'd need to surpass the i180 MH stats with i170 melds and the i170 MH in the same time it'd take to get enough tokens for the i180 MH. It would just take a TON more work and effort.