Crafting and gathering self sufficient??

[Niwashi]

Yes. Some of the higher tier mats may be rare and therefore time-consuming / frustrating to try to farm when you need them. On the other hand, trying to farm everything in advance so you have it in stock to craft with would quickly use up all your inventory/retainer space, so you'd need to find a balance between which mats to stockpile and which to gather only when needed. Most crafters add in which to just buy as needed into the mix as well, but so long as you have all the crafters/gatherers and at least one combat class maxed, that "which to buy" category is optional.

What's more, for the most part while you're leveling up, a crafting class of level X will need items that can be gathered or made by other classes at level X, so it's worth keeping them near each other in level. (One early exception is that a level 1 Weaver needs a level 15 Botanist if they don't want to buy all the Moko Grass they'll need, but that's vendor purchasable and really cheap.) It's ok (though rarely necessary) for your gatherers to be ahead of your crafters, but you don't want it the other way around. And you'll want all your crafters to stay near the same level in order to supply intermediate materials to each other.