The weird thing about "veteran" gatherers saying that there are "too many items" is that when I was trying to level cook I had to buy ALMOST EVERYTHING from an npc because botanists didn't feel like it was worth their time (or something) to sell cooking ingredients. Trying to find a tomato, or any spice was an utter nightmare. I had to take up botany myself to stop myself from losing to much money on leveling cooking. In my experience no other crafting job had to buy most of their items at npc to level.