Save your scrips for i180 variants.

[Aryssa]

I broke down the main 5 pieces of gear from the master books (i170, Head, Body, Hands ,Legs, and Feet) and did some math on how much it would cost just based on red tokens to craft all 40 pieces for all 8 DoH classes.

Total: 401 Red tokens.

This is for purchasing Purified Coke etc.. And doesn't even consider the amount of red gathering tokens required to gather the other items like swan feathers etc...

The i180 variants the same 40 pieces of gear (5 pcs per class), would cost 192 Red tokens total. (Approx. 22 weeks) if you capped scrips every week.

You're not going to see me spend millions on the MB for FCIII demimaterias, aethersands, and nearly three times the amount of scrips per piece.

Even if I was a MIN,BTN or FSH. Get every other component required for the material exchange. I'm still not going to spend 3 tokens per 5(HQ) materials. Or spend even more gatherer's tokens to require those items for the exchange in the first place.

Save your tokens, and wait it out...

[Shadowsun]

401 red scrips or 401 red tokens which would be 20050 red scrips and take 45 weeks?

[Aryssa]

Tokens, I apologize.

[Seyb]

Can you please show your calculations?

Head, Hands, Feet all take 3 red crafting tokens = 9 (27 if HQ)
Body and Legs take 4 = 8 red crafting tokens (24 if HQ)
That's 17 tokens and 136 for all 8 classes (408 if HQ)
I would never ignore the mainhand, though. This is another 4 tokens, but nets you the biggest raise in stats.

If you go by the 180is, that's 48 per class, so 384 for all of them. Again, I wouldn't ignore the mainhand, which is another 26 tokens per class.

[Aryssa]

You're absolutely right it is 384 for the i180. No idea how I missed that...I based the material breakdown from the the Adamantite Ignots, Griffon Leathers, Astral Silks, Aurum Regis Ingots required to make all i170 Head, Chest, Hands, Legs and Feet pieces. Totalled up the Purified Cokes, Moonsilks, Odorless Animal Fats, etc.. you can purchase 5 HQ per 3 tokens I believe.

Eg. Took lets say 300 moonsilks (5 astral silk per synth) 60 Astral Silks total. Divided 300 moonsilks by 5 (via purchase from npc), 60 exchanges for the HQ's they are 3 Tokens per 5HQ, so that's 180 tokens?

Again, I could be very mistaken, it was late...lol

[Thrustie]

I think your math is off. It's 21 red crafting tokens to craft a full set of gear for one job (only counting the head, body, hands, legs, feet and main hand since those are the slots that both crafting and scrips have access to). It's 74 red crafting tokens to buy all the gear for one job from the splendors vendor. It takes less than a 3rd of the time to craft the gear vs. buy it with tokens.

So for All 8 classes 168 tokens (crafted) vs. 592 tokens (purchased).

For every red crafting token that you use to craft, you need about 1.5 red gathering tokens though for favors. So you'd need around 252 red gathering tokens as well.

So total tokens would be 420 (crafted) vs. 592 (purchased).

Crafting is still technically the cheapest (token-wise) and efficient way to gear up. Of course, that doesn't account for all the mats you have to buy/farm, all the gathering favors you have to do and the possible cost of failing synths. Flip-side, the crafted gear is better with melds than the scrip gear.

[Mature]

I'm not doing red scrips for crafting cause I'm not rich ( only 5 million left) to do 16/21 scrips per turn in is gonna cost me lot of money on mats. and I mean LOTS. Bare in mind I have to turrn in the item 21 times and the amount of mats is what takes my money away. I already got 4 weeks worth of gathering red scrips and got my feet for miner.... And I spent NO A PENNY.

I personally think they need to either increase the turn in amount by triple or make a second option to turn in for more scrips

[AxelDH]

I think it does make sense to go for the 180 items in some cases, unless money is no object.

The crafted 170 main-hands, for example, need +15 craftsmanship and +8 control just to match the 180 ones. And with only 1 guaranteed slot, this wouldn't come cheap.

Lets say you go for Craftsman V, Craftsman IV, Control IV x2, CP IV, you would end up only +2 craftsmanship and +4 CP better off.

You could aim to match the stats exactly with 2x Control IV, 3x Craftsmanship III, which wouldn't be too costly I guess... but you're still spending money to match something you could get for 'free'. (Well, 1300 red scrips isn't exactly free, but still...)

[Roth_Trailfinder]

Unless you have someone feeding you the gathered stuff needed to get the crafting materials, you need to buy them, or gather them yourself. Given their cost, gathering them is more likely for most people.

When you are gathering them, you have a choice : spend those gathering tokens on gear, or spend them on Favors to try to gather the hand in items for crafting materials.

IMO it is better to save the crafting tokens for at least the main hand (which should make it far easier to get the folklore RGS items) in one or both miner and botanist .. which leaves you unable to get Favors, and thus unable to get the crafting materials for those almost 6 weeks (for both tools) anyway. Could save those red crafter tokens for when the Favor items become available, but how many materials can you get with your Favors? Maybe it is worth saving the crafter tokens, maybe it is better to get some crafting gear.

[PirateCat]

When you are gathering them, you have a choice : spend those gathering tokens on gear, or spend them on Favors to try to gather the hand in items for crafting materials.

Getting red scrips from folklore nodes is about all the new gathering gear is good for right now. You can get the minimum stats for folklore nodes without any of the new gear (and minimal overmelding on the basic level 60 gear) which also gets you the maximum appraisal progress anywhere else. At minimum stats you can reliably (if slowly) get HQ folklore items using the reveal -> gather +50% -> gather x5 -> HQ chance to 100% rotation.

It comes down to time. If you have time to use the bulk of your gathering scrips on favors, you probably also have time to cap on the scrips without needing to collect from the folklore nodes to get there. If not, then you'll have spare gathering scrips anyway and the new gear is a good thing to use them on.