Despite my constant attempts to undo myself, I've decided to go into endgame crafting. I know it's long and tedious, but I've gotten to the point that long, overly-drawn out payoffs are what's keeping me invested in the game.
But once I came to the conclusion that I wanted to endgame craft, I realized I have NO clue what to do. I had gotten my LTW to be able to barely do one star recipes, but that was it. Don't even ask me to make Hard Hippogryph Leather. So my question is this, how does a crafter go from fresh to 4 star?
(I know one of the obvious answers is melding, but with so much new content out there for crafters, I feel like I'm just playing with plastic shovels in a cement box)

My current crafters:
CRP 50 crftmnshp 312 ctrl 313
ARM 15
LTW 50 crftmnshp 322 ctrl 309
WVR 50 crftmnshp 273 ctrl 291
ALC 25