so anyway i finally got my toothpick build dialed in and it flew amazing for like two flights and then on the third one i had a pretty minor crash, nothing crazy just clipped a branch at maybe half throttle, and when i went to pick it up the rear arm had a clean crack right where it meets the main plate.

frame is a cheap one i grabbed off aliexpress, 115mm ultralight thing, i think its 2.5mm carbon on the arms. not sure if this is just what happens with ultralight frames or if i got garbage carbon. the weave looked fine when i built it, no delamination or anything. debating whether to just grab another cheap one or spend more on something like a meteor or similar and see if the quality difference is actually worth it.

also the whole build is 78 grams all up with a small lipo so its not like im throwing a lot of weight at it

2.5mm arms on an ultralight toothpick are genuinely fragile, thats kind of the trade-off with that whole category. youre not gonna get the same durability as a standard 3mm or 4mm 5 inch frame. if you want to keep flying toothpick style i'd say yeah spend the extra bit on something with a decent reputation, the quality difference in the carbon between a reputable manufacturer and a no-name ali frame is pretty real. better layup, proper fiber orientation, less likely to have micro voids that cause catastrophic failure on low energy impacts like you described.

that said some people just buy like 5 cheap frames at once and treat them as consumables which is its own valid strategy depending on how often you're crashing

ive snapped cheap toothpick arms just stress testing them by hand before even flying, so yeah sounds about right unfortunately. i switched to a slightly heavier frame with 3mm arms and still kept it under 100g, flies almost as well and i stop stress eating every time i clip something