Quote Originally Posted by Lobotomite View Post
The greatest cost of entry for you will be melds, which can be very expensive, especially on smaller servers where fewer people are converting them. I spent about 5 million on mine, and they're not even optimal, just enough to push me over the threshold with Baked Onion Soup.
Yep, at the moment, grade 3 materia should be far more affordable than before due to the crafting scene being mostly dead (at least on my server). I used about 12 million worth of materia on my i150 build and that was with pretty much grade 3 overmelds only. Prices have now fallen by up to 75%, so there's no better time to get into 2* crafting.

Grade IV melds, on the other hand, are insane. To compare, I used 6 million worth of materia to meld three of my i170 accessories. Only 2 of the grade iv overmelds attempts actually succeeded (25 attempts at 29% before the first succeeded), so they're still virtually all grade 3 overmelds.