From what I was doing in beta I discovered it will be entirely possible to be a crafter in 4 seperate disciplines at a time. Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Clothier can all be done WITH PROVISIONING. I know because I did it. It required smart space allocation but I had absolutely no issues once I figured out what to keep. Anyone that says you cannot is not telling the truth. I made my own gear, food, and drink and equipped myself all the way to max level of the beta. Even if higher tiers contain more items at higher tiers I will have more bank and inventory slots as well. I even have wiggle room here because I also did Alchemy and Enchanting as well. I dropped enchanting because I wasn't getting returns from it (found no potency runes). I continued to do alchemy. But i'm being conservative in my statement and only listing 4 crafting disciplines even though the reality was 5 throughout and 6 for approximately 12 levels.
To be honest, my inventory load actually got lighter as I approached the end of their tier, perfected my space conservation, and less provisioning items were useful for leveling it up. Considering that I made all my own stuff, using all my money for inventory/bank slots was not an issue and I remained well equipped and I was still making a fair profit. Furthermore any alts coming after that character would be well equipped and make ridiculous profit by comparison.
People really need to try better inventory management instead of complaining about inventory/bank space and saying completely false statements on what you are able to do. I've done it, so I know it can be done.
Helpful tips:
- Do not keep alternate crafting styles on hand (sell them) unless you are going to use them constantly, you can buy the rocks for not too much for one off items and get them easily from extraction
- Do not keep lower tiered ingredients on hand or in the bank. Once you have better options and they no longer level you well, sell them
- Do not keep refined ingredient on hand and do not extract in the field, keep refined ingredients in the bank and only raws on hand
- Salvage all green items, do not use them for research
- Do not horde items for research, you will eventually get them all I promise. Patience young one. Only save ones you have personal interest in using and be honest about that.
- Abuse the wayshrines, if you discover a new wayshrine go back and craft/sell. If you complete an area and your inventory is near half full or over half full, go back and craft/sell
- When to sell: If you get as efficient as you can and you run around with 30/70 items then you would take time to sell when at 50+. This "half full" relative to your free space available.
- Inventory baseline: If you are running with more than 30 items baseline in your inventory, you shouldn't be lol. I managed to run 5 crafts with 30 items baseline and had what I needed.
- Provisioning and Enchanting. Choose one or you will have issues doing multiple other crafts
- Regarding skill points, choose wisely. You'll be balancing combat power and crafting power if you try to flesh out more than 1
- Regarding that choice, focused characters (like my Bow/Medium Armor/Racials) characters will find multiple crafts far less demanding as well as more beneficial
- Provisioning Specific: use everything you can while leveling, when lower ranked stuff stop giving much exp don't keep these specifc ingredients on hand, sell em.
- Provisioning Specific: In realtion to that you'll find that things like drippings, meal, etc are shared between many different recipes, don't sell those.
- Provisioning Specific: Pay attention to what drops and how much. If you find some elderberries once in 3 levels, keep it in the bank, things that drop often like drippings keep in your inventory (because you'll always get more)
It's really not hard. It just takes choices on what to keep on hand based on what is useful. You can keep all useful ingredients on hand and level all crafts, but you cannot keep every ingredient known to man on hand at all times for each craft lol. If you choose not to take available steps to manage your inventory then you are making a personal choice, that is not the fault of game design.
Edit1: Added some provisioning specific tips as well as a clarification on when to sell.