In general the pattern seems to go scrip gear < crafted gear < augmented scrip gear < pentamelded crafted gear in terms of highest stats. Regular scrip gear will let you craft any of the one star stuff, crafted should let you craft the 2 star (maybe with a few cheap melds or food), augmented scrip and pentamelded should let you do 3 star at this point. Your ability to HQ the items will suffer a bit with lower stats but its still possible to HQ a lot of non end game stuff even with just scrip gear.

But if you want to HQ the 3star stuff reliably, your best bet is pentamelded crafted gear.