Free to Play? or Pay to Win? Quite Simply.... grab your credit card, there is no other way.
But... here comes the gritty stuff... as you get higher in levels you must "grind" a small handful of dungeons several times to gather loot to craft better armor and weapons. Now... normally I would say grind and that would mean maybe 4 - 5 times.... even up to 10 times I would accept as a grind... but in Vindictus... grinding can and will mean you will repeat a single dungeon upwards of 50 times to obtain 1 type of loot for one piece of armor, I timed how many ingame hours it took me to obtain the loot ingredients to make a "Swift Set" (which is by no means a great set... it is merely a stepping stone set) and I clocked 37 game hours on grinding 3 dungeons for the required loot.
Now... if that hasn't made you reconsider playing Vindictus perhaps this will, As you level up the repair cost on gear goes up... now up until about level 60 you usually always make more money in a dungeons than it costs you to repair your gear. But after level 60 you will always LOSE money, the average dungeon pays anything from 6 - 10 thousand gold for the dungeon and your repair costs will exceed that by a large amount. The reason they do this is because they want you to BUY their 2 day expiry set to farm with as there are no repair costs. So they sell you a $2 a day armor and weapon set that has no repair costs so that you can make some money back after you bankrupt yourself repairing your armor.
Please remember I really did like and enjoy this game, but lets be honest here, they designed this game to be Pay to Win. There is no way to beat this game without spending money.... it is practically impossible unless you have someone else feeding you items and gold. Unless you are a freakn hack n slash god and never get hit you will end up flat broke repairing your gear.
So let me sum up.... grinding is an understatement, and Pay to Win is the bottom line. But it is totally doable for free up until about level 60... then the only way up is with your credit card. It is a real shame in my opinion as the game has so much potential... but the greedy, money grabbing people at Nexon won't let you enjoy their world for free.