For what's it's worth, I've just reached the level where I can effectively lumberjack and now can get at allot of the resources that are so highly priced. It takes a bit of effort to get to that level. But you need gold to function as a crafter and to get that I've found it's far more effective to have at least one combat character. Once you can hack chars like ogre lords, Undead Gaurdians (Stygian Abyss), etc it is not too difficult to come up with a million or so with some effort. For gem's for imbuing, as well as magic junk to unravel, I like repeatedly doing the Farmer's quest. It's also a nice training quest to get your combat char up to par. And fun.
I don't know about scripter's, never met anyone that uses that sort of junk. But I have learned that if you can mark the location of tree's or ore spots that are spawning what you want, you can be very effective. They do change what they spawn, randomly, but the change isn't so bad that marking locations isn't worth the while, if you devote the sesion to mining or lumber jacking. But I wouldn't trust the locations after more than a couple days for either skill. I usually keep a bag of rune's and start out by visiting each one. As the resource for which it was marked shifts I move it to a different bag and commence looking from there till I find something worth marking the location for again. That sounds like it wouldn't net much, but actually I've pulled in a boat load of yew and ash, both of which I had very little of prior to this practice, especially yew. In general, I think it's important to be systematic in how you appraoch it. If you randomly spend a bit of time on one or another skill, you'll be at it for quite a while and sitll not advancing in any particular one.
Best to aquire a soul stone or three, then focus you char one a single skill untl it's at the level you want. Having a low overall skill point count will actually help you gain faster in a particular skill. It's not so bad for combat stuff, but for trade skill's gaining past 80 or so can become a real drudgery.
SElling stuff to NPC's, I've found isn't gunna net you much for time spent. Selling stuff via venders can, but just like in the real world, that's a skill all in itself. Location, potential market, competitive pricing, etc all come in to play. LOL, I detest that sort of stuff (marketing is a vulger word in my dictionary, however, neccessary it might be), but they are necessary skills if you want to sell to other players. Having a vender in the Luna shoppin mall, where SearchUO can then add what your selling to it's database would proably make sense. Having what people want is of equal importance. Low level craftables are not terrible marketable because it's easy to have a low level crafter. Selling collored ingots or boards can be very profitable (ever notice those venders are usually empty or only have regular or oak boards available?). Artificats are neccessary and extremely popular, but again, you need a combat char to aquire those. And usually a group to fight with since DOOM and peerless runs are really not for solo chars. Imbuing isn't really the answer here, either, because Even with A high or GM level Imbuer/blacksmith/crafting god char, you can't imbue weapons that are equal to a few of the articacts, though I'm finding that can really customize armor/weapons to fit a particual fighter and then the whole combination becomes much better than trying to peice together a marty fighter. In the end, success at getting Arties is really about having a successfull war party, with few exceptions. Anyways, that's what I think
