Questions about weapons and manufacturing skills..

The best weapons to me at my level are the glaives. They give good minimum damage while still offering excellent maximum damage. You'll notice during fights that you will benefit from having a high minimum damage value since on average your skill normally hit at around the minimum and median values. If you can afford to search the auction house for gears that have high minimum damage and good maximum damage modifiers. The next best weapons to me are the magic swords e.g. around my level many wizards go after the raybender. I usually stay away from Patakas (long staff) because even though they offer huge maximun damage their minimum damage is too low however don't ignore them if you can find one that is 2/3* with at least 2 sockets, especially if its purple stats are matk modifiers e.g. +?? maximum matk.

For me I personally choose 2 manufacturing skills but I put my sprirt point priority on attack skills for now. So I have lvl 2 manufacturing for apothecary and blacksmith. I actually plan to stop levelling so as to let y blacksmithing catch up. Materials for th Apot are easier to come by. Reason I say blacksmithing is because I realise that the more damage I can do, the better for me. The auction house is a great source of nice weapons but they can be very costly e.g. lvl4-5 gear 2-3* can range from 70-200k and of course legendary gear cost as little as 500k and up.

Don't spend too much time raising manufacturing skill early on though because in the time it takes you to find and manufacture gear to your level you could go grind about 100k worth of Dragon Quest items.

That said I still find the Apots items very nice (e.g. mana regen items and chi pots).