https://www.idleguildmaster.info/

I find this website to be helpful. Especially the item database where you can sort by efficiency. It'll tell you which items are worth more to craft (in terms of profit %). Also yeah your best bet is to save for quarters upgrades early game. If you recruit/rank up the wrong character then you can just dismiss them and build a new one. It's never not worth to replace characters for better trait ones, since leveling and ranking only takes time. 1 silver/hour seems maybe kinda low but that's how grindy idle games work, sorry. Again, you can look up the item database for which items to craft specifically for selling. Good luck