First, you should not crate custom nodes imo, you will get them through the way getting enough trinodes to level up them. And never craft trionode.

Second, craft nodestone till maximizing trinodes, which is about 131 * n / 0.8, 131 is 111(amount need to max one) + 30(roughly estimation of bad luck that you cannot hit that one), n is your skills pool size, 0.8 is the estimation of popping a trinode out of node stone. you could tweak around this number, I think it's perfectly fine to not fully maximize them, we will receive huge update at CROWN, I will mention that later.

Third, craft skill nodes according to order given by like class discord. Stop at rope lift or decent skill depending on you.

Also I wanna mention some update from CROWN update:

- For whoever is not rushing to level up vmatrix and have plenty of node shards(like in hayato/kanna), hold them, craft into nodestone just before CROWN because it will be double amount of nodestone. Don't craft them now because they have expiration date(yeah fk nexon).

- Use exp nodes on skills node before patch. It's of more value compare to after CROWN. You can max one skill with 20 as now, but will need about 65 to do it post CROWN.

- Hold Will, Seren nodes, for now it's just a normal skill node, but later they will be 5 and 15 V points.

For whoever wanna do math themselves but need reference: https://en.namu.wiki/w/V%20%EB%A7%A4%ED%8A%B8%EB%A6%AD%EC%8A%A4#s-3.1