Dont forget players like asmongold using farm bot exploits . getting thousands of gold for being a streamer.
Getting companies to donate and give best information dump.
Getting ahead in general cause best crafters got the most materials which equals even faster leveling.
I started by grinding the materials for a few particular trade skills. In these professions, I was among the first people to sell key items - Starmetal & Orichalcum gathering tools (1-2k+ each), then pristine jewelry (2-3k+ a piece).
I was able to use these proceeds to purchase materials for further profession training, at a time when material prices were much lower. Also I leveraged buy orders (which few people seemed to use at the start) - I was able to get iron ore for 0.01 each, and similar extremely cheap prices for other key materials.
I’m now 200 in all trade skills apart from fishing & weaponsmithing (no interest in anything I can craft from WS)
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Once you obtain a decent amount of money, the easiest way would be to place buy orders through the trading post. Depending on your server, you might be able to make back money while leveling your craft.
For example, the cost of Oakflesh ingredients can be cheaper than selling the potion itself. That means you can level up your crafting and make back the money.
Another route I’ve seen people do is place buy orders and sell the item back for a higher amount. Unfortunately, there isn’t a quick get rich scheme; people are putting the work into to it and getting rewarded in doing so.
If you are leveling armoring, arcana, weapon, engineering, jeweling, etc. see if you can borrow trophies from your friends. This way when you’re leveling it, you can sell some of the items and make some money back.
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Crafting is really very cheap and easy IMO. As I’ve said before I played other games where hitting cap took many months. Here you can just easily buy your way to cap in a day or 2 if the market is in a good spot.
Getting to 200 isn’t really a big deal, it’s fairly easy. However for say armor crafting, the bonus gear is like 2k each (besides the common drops) and the trophies are like 75k each…
That to me just ruins crafting
I leveled armoring first and was just focusing it, just going to ck rawhide and boarsholm over and over again, then arcana, alot of mote, azoth water and hyssop farming, then jewelcrafting a lot of silver runs. I havent basically anything from anyone. Just used a lot of hours.
Invested time is likely just going to be the biggest factor of difference. Post 1.1 it became a bit lengthier, but it certainly wasn’t easy mode already to begin with.
Another good possibility is buying your way there. That way it can be really fast. You do need the coin in order to make this possible though. Dedicate crafters in pre-existing guilds are likely easiest to fall in this category.
Company crafters got to 200 because the company fed them mats via purchases from the trading post and a collective effort from their membership.
Your taxes aren’t just sitting around collecting dust
Thank you all for the replies! It’s very interesting to hear different opinions from people that have been playing through different times and that have experienced leveling up in different ways.
I need to take some time and munch all this information and come up with a strategy that would work with the current state of the game. It could be a mix of different activities like playing the Trade Post, gathering some resources, trading them for others I need, planning how much of the different resources I will need to level up the tradeskill. Maybe focus on just one tradeskill at a time instead of leveling them all together.
It also looks like being part of a big company and doing some regular trips out there to collect caches from elite regions might help with hard to find reagents.
If you guys have suggestions please keep them coming.
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I leveled engineering to 200 before the changes, and then leveled it to 200 after the changes on a different character. It was literally a walk in the park before compared to after.
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pre-1.1 before the devs made it clear that they don’t want casuals playing their game.
Well… that’s kinda worrying. Out of curiosity, how long did it take to level up engineering the second time?
Easy answer from me. I didnt
Took forever to get Eng 200
They likely own a territory and were fed money by the company.
The amount of gold companies owning territories like Windsward have access to is insane and disproportionate to what anyone else can do.
You need cash. You can level any profession from 0 to 200 with a 30k investment
I watch you do Weaponsmith or Jewelcraft with 30k i’m curious 
I’ve got the gathering skills to 200 and most of crafting skills to at least 100 before 1.1. That was not a total easy thing. I’m playing something about 3-4 hours a day. The way to make the grind less annoying was just to change activities from time to time. If I would only focus on crafting, especially on smithing, I would run out of sand flux and or money quite soon. If I swith after a while to faction quests, I’ll get those refining materials from the chests and can buy the material converters too. Then I can com bck and craft further.
Just yesterday I’ve started an unexpected grind in jewelcrafting. Going throug my stored gems, I’ve found out, that Ive about 300 cut flawed ones - too weak for my char but I couldn’t through them away. So I looked at stone cutting again and found out, that I need not cutted ones fpr making fusion gems. So followed several runs on silver to insert the cutted flawed gems there and to salvage the items. Raised my jewelcrafting and got the uncutted flawed gems. Now I need some motes/wisps/essences to do the fusions - no pain, was going to harvest some solk together for later armouring.
Exchange activities and enjoy the game.
EDIT: Got engineering to 150 yesterday, weaponsmithing and armouring are even lower. Plan to get the last both to 200. Haven’t even started Furniture stuff.
I’ll give you weaponsmithing. It is more expensive
Jewelcrafting is even cheaper because you can sell low gs jewels for 1 and 2k or even more sometimes…
Lol 30k. You’re nuts.
It takes ~400 Starmetal ingots to raise weaponsmithing 4-5 points around 120. To get it to 150 would take more than 30k even if you were only buying the ingots on my server.
The more work you do yourself, of course, the less you have to buy. But if you’re just using gold to buy everything, 30k won’t get you even close to 200 in any trade skill.
Crafting is way more slower and expensvie. Before patch 1.1 (worst patch so far) for crafters it was hard, but now it is a pain. You could lvl fast crafting low items, which are cheap (taxes) and crafting stations could be T3. So you could craft anywhere, just get enough material with you. Now you need T4 and T5 stations at 150+ and storage logistic is more difficult.
I also think, many players, but also companies used several exploits to lvl fast by spending loads of gold buying ressources. Well known issue. Especialy when they maxed most skills. Noone would tell you. They only say its timeconsuming. Nope, its not the truth. AGS knows that but they do nothing. Check the numbers behind and you will see how they managed to become rich, while maximizing crafting skills at the same time . Player numbers decreasing continously, crafting stations often lack of quality… Makes it even harder.
Again, it is hardly possible to lvl all crafting skills up to 200 with legal methods as a solo player.
Please do a video. It will be the most watched ever…if you can get Furnishing 0-200 for 30K… I spent more than 40k getting from 175-200 this past week. Better yet…start a character on Camelot and I’ll give you 30k to do it.