Uvtha I am curious what you buy from NPC vendors?
Myself? Gems. mainly, as gems are an important resource in the post imbuing world, and I personally would like imbuing to be cheaper, as cheap as possible in fact, so its cheaper to make suits and people mind less losing them. I have literally spent millions on gems, in fact gems are a big reason why I don't stock imbued stuff, I can't get them myself without hours of tedious work, I have to buy them, they are too expensive to use them for crafting training gear, and I think that's stupid.
Bags and dyes as well (both of which which should be craftable).
I never said no one buys anything, I actually listed things they DO buy, like gems, regs, bottles, blank scrolls, and the other things that you can only get from npcs like boats, house tools, etc. I'm sure I'm forgetting things people buy. The fish ingredients like we both mentioned.... oh yeah! LOBSTER TRAPS. God. That expansion...
None of these things are supplied by the community with any regularity because they are too much of a chore to get yourself. Making farming the only source of gems for example would be pretty disastrous, because I think quite literally everyone wears imbued gear, and that's a LOT of gems and no one wants to farm them 5 at a time.
oh and yes all sorts of new people harvest leather to get started.
If I were new I would do cloth personally, it sells much better, and is easier since the sheep are all in one closed in area. Heck, harvest spined if you gonna harvest leather. Lizard men aren't much harder than animals.
Also, I want to be clear again that I don't think anyone would switch from buying leather from newbs to buying tunics and cutting them up, so I really don't think it would effect player to player sales one iota. I know I sure as hell wouldn't do it, because like I said, it would be more involved than just going out and killing a dozen cows, something established people currently clearly cannot be bothered to do. People re-forging and running bods already have enough repetitive crap to do.
Now if mining could pull out say...100 gems at a time... that would be at least slightly different.