Crafting worthwhile for new character?

[Niwashi]

I read I will not be able to keep that leveled as I am playing.

It's not that you can't keep crafting leveled to match your combat class(es), or even that it's particularly hard to do so. It's simply that doing so does take a fair amount of time, especially if (as is often recommended), you advance multiple crafting classes and at least a couple gathering ones together.

For people who are in a hurry to reach endgame levels, whether that's to join their friends who are already doing endgame content or just to follow the story with a minimum of interruptions to it, taking the time out from that to level crafting can bog things down too much for their taste. If you spend most of your time questing with your gladiator and a much lesser portion of your time on crafting, then your GLD will outstrip your crafting classes' levels, and you won't be able to craft your armour.

If, on the other hand, you're the type to take your time and explore a wider range of activities from the start, and find you like the game's crafting system enough to spend a fair amount of your game time on it, then, as others have said, you can certainly do all of them in tandem and keep your crafting at a suitable level to make your GLD armour.

It's just a matter of deciding which type of player you are. For many, it works better to focus first on a single combat class and advance all the way through the story until they reach endgame, and only then broaden their horizons to pick up extras like crafting. There are many others who like to do them all together, or even get their crafting a bit ahead. And then, of course, there are the players who never get interested in doing any crafting at all. The game works for any of those three patterns.

That you're interested enough to have asked the question suggests you probably don't fall into that third category, so it will come down to deciding whether crafting early in the game is worth the time it takes. To decide that, you'll first need to see whether you enjoy crafting itself, so I'd suggest picking up armorer and crafting your way through the first 15 levels or so. That won't give you all the skills you'll eventually have, but it's far enough to get an idea of how the crafting system in this game works, so you can decide whether you enjoy it or not.