So as a person who went through this back in 2016, then, stopped playing again after a few months, and now here I am again... I built up a sampire with almost no artifacts and can mostly hang, but yeah, you will need to craft a bunch of stuff. My build is 120 sword, 100 tactics, 100 parry, 100 chivalry, 100 bushido, 100 necromancy, 100 resist spells
In my own opinion, before you can get a bunch of legendary items and only have self-crafted stuff, you are looking at:
-Hit chance increase is probably most important, since every time you don't hit you dont leech, and then you die
-Defense chance increase was the one I ignored most; I still only have 5 and kill a lot of stuff
-ring and bracelet both probably have to have 10% swing speed increase first before other properties; you have to find these as loot; I farmed succubus and balrons in Fan Dancer Dojo; I also farmed status from the city on my shard that gave a SSI bonus of 5%. A total of 20% SSI is ok if your stamina is usually over 180, but having more SSI and stamina is always great since you WILL lose swing speed when you get hit hard; there is no easy way to get SSI other than artifacts, so ring/bracelet are your go to (can use Chivalry for Divine Fury but that's just yet another spell to cast every fight...)
-assuming you are always in vampire form for life drain, you don't need hit life leech on your weapon
-you want as much hit mana leech as possible on weapons, so you can spam special attacks; this is what I mass crafted with runic hammers looking for 100% mana leech with no other properties besides the 40 percent damage increase from being exceptional; earning the whetstones from Shame to remove the DI is stupid and ridiculous until you are established or wealthy
A "pretty good" weapon after runic reforge and imbuing (and assuming you can't yet do all of this with artifact armor/clothing equipment) would be:
-Damage Increase 40% (because its exceptional crafted and you can't get rid of it without Shame ********)
-Mana Leech 75+ (from runic reforge probably)
-Stamina leech 30+ (from imbuing) so you get stam back, not swinging at max speed is a main way we die; in a perfect world you would never lose stamina, but having it as leech on weapon makes bosses especially much easier, so consider this property on boss killer weapons)
-Hit lower defense 30+ (from imbuing) because you can't afford Mace and Shield or equivalent yet; frankly even if you can get it the rest of your armor pieces are probably not ready for the stamina/dex reduction by giving up a crafted head piece to keep your swing speed maxed, so putting HLD on weapon is best until you are very well geared
-Slayer - and yes, probably one for every enemy type; I really rebelled on this when I first started my crafting because dammit the stuff is expensive and irritating to farm, but having the right slayer property makes a HUGE damage difference
-(on a weapon specifically for spawn advancement I would trade stamina leech for Hit Area)
-(if you don't need slayer, like for certain bosses who don't have a slayer type, then probably Hit Lower Attack)
For me, I started with runic reforging a bunch of double axes to 100% mana leech, then turning them into various spawn killers. Next phase would be bladed staff boss killers. This is assuming your basic goal is power scroll farming. For general content, I have found a double axe to be just fine, with whirlwind and double strike - in general, when slayer isn't in play, a double axe doing double strike (with EoO) out damages a bladed staff doing armor ignore (with EoO) (again in GENERAL, there are factors). Also keep in mind I use consecrate weapon when advantageous, so a no Chivalry build will have different results.
For armor, you want to just do an imbue job that gets your stamina (and thus swing speed) up to the max for your preferred weapon. the runic reforge part, as far as I was able to tell, boiled down to about +10 hit points, so I skipped it. Then there is a bunch of complications with armor enhancements, but also I haven't gone down that road yet. Main point was getting +3 hit point increase, +8 mana increase, +8 stamina increase, and 7% lower mana cost on 6 pieces of crafted armor, which got me to requisite levels with just imbuing and no runic reforging.
Again, I'm also returning and have almost zero artifacts or rare drops, but am having a blast, so it can be done. Most artifacts are "edge" rather than necessary. That said, the theoretical "best in slot" for most pieces is an artifact or a legendary random drop, so crafting only gets you to the threshold.
Gyb