Disciples of the hand question

[Nutz]

So that means a maaajor amount of time. Would you recommend just buying gear then?

If your focus is combat, then yes. You'll get a fair amount of gear from dungeons and such as well anyway. Crafting your own gear to level up is very nice to do, but usually more of a benefit you utilize on your 2nd+ combat role since people tend to do the story and unlock everything up front and then go back to gathering/ crafting later. To hit all bases you pretty much want to level up all crafts, and to do that more effectively you pretty much want to level MIN and BOT as well.

It's there if you like it and I think it's a lot of fun, but it's not for everyone and definitely not required.