If I understand the skill system correctly, any combat character can gather any crafting materials out in the real world without developing any crafting skills and any crafter can craft any item without developing any combat skills. Also, any skill point spent on crafting skills is a point NOT spent on combat skills for a given character level, even though the character will be facing mobs his or her level who have all combat skills.

If this is correct (and please correct me my understanding is wrong), doesn't this encourage the creation of separate crafting alts who specialize in nothing but crafting and get all their mats from the combat mains?

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Some people like it some don't. I hate alts, I always stick with one character. The good thing is Blacksmithing here covers Armours and Weapons, so you can be self suficient. I hate crafting alts because they hurt the economy. It's much nice trade stuff with other players. But to answer you question, you can use your main to gather all crafting types untill endgame whilst you adventure and have a million alts for every profession being supplied by the main. That's good because in many games you are limited to what you can harvest/gather and then you end up have to level 2-3 alts.

Yes it does.