new team suggestions/help

[Meeo]

anybody give some advice on how they tend to gear new teams? Since i am mostly doing rifts and IA's.. and kinda avoiding dungeons/hard questing.. Would crafting my 5x clerics be the best route? (not really explored the crafting system in rift yet).. or is the crafting gear at lower levels going to gimp me?

What about all that planarite i am getting? can that be used to buy good lower level gear?

This may or may not still be in the game, but as you do IAs you "should" start to get Chests of various color items ( sometimes even low-level epic gear). The more IAs you do the more chances you get to get the gear chest. This is a very nice system as the greens/blues/purples you get are usually ready for your call ( however sometimes youll get one that is not). The gear is already soulbound so you can not trade it.

As for trade skills. I usually setup 3 toons to do all of them. Piloting toon usually is the gather(Butcher, Miner, Forager), while my 2 next favorites are the other 6 tradeskills. (IE: Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, Runecrafter, then Artificer, Tailor, Apothecary). I have never done survival or fishing, but those skills are considered secondary and i believe all toons can pick those up, if you wanted to.

In terms of gearing off tradeskills. Depending on how much resources you have available, the gear from IAs should be better then what you will usually wear from a tradeskill up to a higher level. However, if they are no longer doing the gear chests from IAs then crafting is a good bet.

[Krago]

This may or may not still be in the game, but as you do IAs you "should" start to get Chests of various color items ( sometimes even low-level epic gear). The more IAs you do the more chances you get to get the gear chest. This is a very nice system as the greens/blues/purples you get are usually ready for your call ( however sometimes youll get one that is not). The gear is already soulbound so you can not trade it.

As for trade skills. I usually setup 3 toons to do all of them. Piloting toon usually is the gather(Butcher, Miner, Forager), while my 2 next favorites are the other 6 tradeskills. (IE: Weaponsmith, Armorsmith, Runecrafter, then Artificer, Tailor, Apothecary). I have never done survival or fishing, but those skills are considered secondary and i believe all toons can pick those up, if you wanted to.

In terms of gearing off tradeskills. Depending on how much resources you have available, the gear from IAs should be better then what you will usually wear from a tradeskill up to a higher level. However, if they are no longer doing the gear chests from IAs then crafting is a good bet.

You have it dead on balls accurate for the IA mechanics Meeo.
If you do the randoms you will also get a bonus.
I received a ton of green chests, a fair number of blue and I believe 1-2 epic chests from 30-50.

By the time I hit 50 a lot of my gear pieces were lvl 28-40 with some mid 40s in the mix.
I also ran some instances along the way as I got bored of the same IAs in Freemarch and Silverwood along with a bunch of Rifts.
I also configure my trade skills the same as Meeo.

I would save all the Planarite up and then buy ( if you don't have access to one of the world event ones ) a Sigil of the Five for 7500 Planarite.
This will give you 4 lesser slots and 2 greater slots for any essences you receive along the way.

I didn't find the need to buy any equipment along the way but i did craft some pieces every now and then but nothing spectacular.
Running the 5 clerics I was able to smoke pretty much anything I came across.

Cheers.