>>471549>where is it safe to go cheap?First of all, some percentage of the price will stay - it will simply be exchanged by your time. Time to research what's good, time gathering experience being /out/ and finding out what works for you and what doesn't, and time to wait for and find good offers, end-of-season sales, discounts, used products, and so on.
>So if you want cheap, you need to be patient, thorough, knowledgable, experienced and self reliant.As I already said, stuff like clearance sales and thrift stores are good places to look for gear.
What gear you need, what properties the products need and what you can safely disregard depends a lot on what exactly you do, and in which climate/region/season you do it, what your level of experience is, and so on.
These factors make it hard to just tell you "you can cheap out on X but buy the highest quality Y you can find. Here's 10 links to X and Y".
If you want specific help and suggestions, you need to provide specific information to us.
The only thing I can tell you is
Footwear and backpack are pretty important, and you should spend a lot of money OR time on it. Meaning that it's very well possible that you get a good backpack that fits your needs very cheaply, but you will have to spend a lot of time researching for it.
For clothing in general, your first priority should be to know what exactly you need.
After that, determining a good material that fits your need (soft shell, goretex, wool fleece, maybe you just need a pair of jeans, etc).
And finally features (pockets in the right places, snowguard, a hood or not, etc), the cut, and sewing quality.
>tl:dr;1.determine EXACTLY what kind of /out/ activity you do and in what climate you do it
2.do a lot of research, including asking outdoor store clerks, google, lurking on /out/
3.Finally if you know what you need, search/wait for a good offer both, on the internet, and in your city's outdoor stores, second hand stores, thrift stores, flea markets, etc
