Best midgame gear set for chasing after T3 essence?

[ruby epoch]

So I finally made it to the wath, I have the nttc and (I think) jaunty bundles available in gears, what would be your suggestion of crafting material mix to make best gear in order to NOT get my *** handed over in the ascended antiquarian realms? I am 130 ish in gear level and my first excursion in a asc. antiquarian desert was short and not so sweet...
Or how would you suggest I look for T3 essence so I can buy new recipe?

[ember vigil]

You can go through dungeon or vault at the lower floor, where the three portals are. From left to right, Left: desert Middle: forest and right: swamp.

each run net you around 300-400 T3

once you have bought all of your essential excellent workbenches, refinement, etc

you can save up 1000, so about 3-5 runs

dont worry about gearscore because other grinder will carry you.

afterward you have 2 choices

you can grind for T4 right away or grind for T3 which is in the ascended realms.

T3 will extend the game out more and plus, it's cheaper on the essence if you're going for ranged stats gear

T4 is mostly melee and magik i think.

dauntless i guess is melee stats and mystic for magik

Clothing herma something gear which is T4 i guess is for magik while the other is for melee

currently they dont have ranged t4 but you can combine resources to make it a ranged melee or ranged magic depend on your material

the most optimal path i choose is to rush into firearms first so you dont bring a knife to a mob fight.

which cost about 200 t3 for a rifle and a shotgun (or a handgun if you like to prance around)

then rush a T4 tools (or axepick) mystik or dauntless is fine.

upgrade them up to T3 essence and you should be able to mine through the rest of the realms.

the rest is up to you to grind as the game doesnt offer much at this point.

[inner copper]

I made a calcularian set with t4 mats to use while farming for the expensive recipes.

[ruby epoch]

Thanks to all of you but most if not all of the sets you mentioned, you need T3essence to buy the recipe, no? My question is what did you use to go farm t3 essence in the first place.. I've look through the vendors and I seem to have the best gear t2 can buy.

[inner copper]

Calcularian is t2 iirc. Public vaults at the watch are a simple way to get some starting t3, alternatively you can run the first ascended realms at easy and they still drop t3

[stone anchor]

If you don't have a buddy to co-op with, and don't want to rely on being carried by strangers in the Vaults as was suggested above, then the other major options that the game provides to help with this sort of thing is for you to be able to make your ascended realm at the 'Easy' difficulty (I don't think you had specified above if you had already tried that), and then also you can activate a minor card there to also help (such as explorers, which decreases the damage you take by a bigger factor than it decreases the damage you deal, so it is easier to keep up sustain in a fight, or just escape it)

Once you no longer need the explorer card to win fights, then for essence farming I recommend the ghost card-- the fog it makes would be annoying for resource gathering, but for essence farming you can just run from major POI to major POI by marking them with a beacon on the map, and the card seems to give you a 50/50 chance of having the essence bundles give double essence. And then as you progress you can increase the realm difficulty for more essence also. (I've gotten over 2k essence from a single realm running extreme difficulty with a ghost card)

[real flame]

Calcularian is what I used until I could make hermetic clothing with t5 fiber and vault materials. I also like magic so I went with the mystic/mythic set since it boosts magic damage. I’m not min maxing this game until full release

So don’t have much advice as far as what you should be using to craft. Just whatever feels right to you

[ionic berry]

You could open the ascended faction realms on extreme and look for the agility or insight challenges to farm essence if you're getting trounced in combat on medium anyways. Once you have 75 t3 essence, race to the trader and buy the next faction card. Repeat until you're in an ascended forest hunt realm. Buy the explorer set for 75-100 t3 essence. I still use the gloves/boots/pack after I've bought all the other T4 sets for 1100 t3 essence a bundle.