Drop rates are God awful on this game. Do not kid yourself, even with spending money, there is no catching up whatsoever. Farming loot is essential, but almost impossible to get what you need. You could spend a whole days worth of energy and never get a specific gear fragment out 50 or 100 needed fragments on up that you need for one slot out of 78 slots for one character out of 5 characters. You could spend thousands of days on leveling one character and still not get anywhere.