Case study – one of my characters is now level 25. I have dropped over 30 silver in buying additional materials just to keep my crafting up to speed with my level (and I’m doing it the efficient way using discoveries, not spamming, btw). Another character I rolled a couple days ago is only level 8. She has over 30 silver just from selling jute scraps gathered during the normal course of play, and spent less than 3 silver buying crafted level 4-5 gear. YMMV, but if it keeps going like this later in the game I don’t see any chance of crafting being profitable. If it does improve at some point, it seems to me that the most efficient path is to wait to start crafting until later levels when the amount of cash you earn from general play trivializes the expense of completing the lower level crafting tiers.