Armorsmith will run you ~7.5p if you lack all materials. However you can reduce this substantially (to about 3.5gp) by buying some of the cheap insignia currently flooding the market. I would strongly recommend reading reading this post before buying Fine Crafting Materials.
As a general note, this guide assumes an average amount of luck with the random number generator in the game. You may find yourself in a position where you need to discover one additional recipe before the next set of insignia unlocks. Fear not, just make a mask. To help avoid this, be sure to do your crafting in a home server (not an overflow!) where you have access to your server’s WvW Artisan Bonus (which increases your critical crafting chance).
Craft Booster: Craft Boosters don’t give you extra experience for levelling your character, they only give you an increased chance at critical crafting successes and thus increased crafting experience. Effectively, you require less crafting to get the same amount of experience as someone who used a crafting booster. You can multiply the discoveries you need to do by (2/3), e.g. 3 becomes 2; 9 becomes 6; 12 becomes 8.
Tiers
The colored coded sections of the Shopping List and Costs correspond with the follow tiers:
Definitions
Fine Crafting Materials: Fine Crafting Materials are items that you use with Bolts of Cloth to create insignia. Here is a list of all Tier1 Fine Crafting Materials:
Fine Mat A, B and C: This is a generic name for fine crafting material of the appropriate tier. It is up to you to decide which ones to buy (presumably which one is cheapest, but perhaps which one you want if you’re going to be wearing the armor). You can pick any of the fine crafting materials for that tier, so long as they’re three different sets.
Crafting Component: The individual part of a piece of armor, such as Bronze Chain Boot Panel or Bronze Chain Boot Lining.
Shopping List & Costs
Error: The instructions on how much leather and cloth scraps are incorrect. Refine the same number that you purchase.
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