Dragon's blood isn't required until 5th circle spells - I gathered 10,000 dragon's blood before I managed to get beyond 4th circle (although that was an unhealthy number of hours spamming eagle strike to get there).
What I did for RP is have my mystic start with 50 imbuing, use my gargoyle pet to do my hunting for me (since I blew all my starting reagents in an unsuccessful fight against a single slith since my mysticism/evalint started too low), then used the gold and junk loot from that to imbue cloths/jewels with LRC.
Alas, for mystics there is no realistic source of basic reagents except for vendors. I'm sure I saw references to an intention to add a "New Haven"-like experience for new gargoyle characters. I don't know if they still intend to add this layer or if they gave up on a new character experience, but this would be a good place to add quests that efficiently generate reagents.