Undoubtedly the most time consuming part of crafting in Age of Conan is the
gathering of materials.  Even with the new and improved streamlining of
recipes, certain items will always be more difficult to find than others. 
This guide will give you a solid overview of gathering crafting materials plus a
few tips that will hopefully save you some time.

You learn to harvest the same way you learn to craft.  You speak with a
harvesting trainer in one of the resource zone villages and take on a quest to
gather items from whatever you are learning to harvest.  The trainers will
have you gather basic items and a rare item to progress to the next tier of
gathering nodes.  DO NOT delete or use the items that you need for the
quest because you need to give them to the trainer to complete the quests. 
If you use them then you have to gather the same amount all over again to
progress.

As a side note to save some time, it doesn't seem the taking on the leather
gathering quest from the skinner actually does anything.  Leather drops
from animals whether you train or not and you do not need to progress this quest
in order to gather various tiers of leather.  We'll be sure to update this
guide if this changes in the future

You may take on 4 harvesting skills, which is really nice for the classes
that need multiple node materials.  For the most part, you can get all that
you need for your recipes if you are dedicated enough.

Talking About Tiers

Gathering is bound by the same tier rule that crafting is.  Your recipes
are given in tiers so the materials that you will need to complete those recipes
also come in tiers.  Below are the level ranges for each crafting/gathering
tier along with the most common adventuring zones that will yield nodes and mob
dropped materials for each given tier.

The zone levels are a good guideline but not really the rule so if you are
gathering from mob kills remember to check the level of the mob you are killing
and make sure it is within the level range you need.

What You Need and Where to Get it

Now for the crafting class specific goodies.  You want to make something
and gosh darn it, you just aren't sure where to find it.  Believe me, we
know this pain!  At least one item in each recipes will need to be purchased
from the tradeskill merchant and the rest is up to you to find.  Most of
these things can sell for quite a bit of coin on the vendor so you'll really want to go out and get your own materials.  Here is a run down of what you will need to craft and some
of the better places to find it.

Alchemist:  Herbs, plants, extracts, etc are often found on humans. 
They will drop in caches which you open from your inventory to transfer into
your resource pack.  Animal items will be found on the
corresponding animals (i.e. feral blood comes from wolves) but you can also get
some those from the caches.  A great tip - visit the Villas in The Noble
District.  The caches drop with frequency here and the loot will scale to
your level!

Architect:  All the plan ingredients are purchased from a tradeskill
merchant in the resource zones.  They are silly expensive but you don't
have to do all the harvesting legwork!  You do need harvested items for the
construction pieces, and those all come from harvest nodes.

Armorsmith: Your metals, stones, and cotton come from harvest nodes. 
Silks are human mob drops and leathers are animal drops.  A good tip for
tier 1 leather harvesting is to stick with the "prey" mobs.  You can kill
those really quick with ranged combat and harvest much quicker!

Gemcutter:  All your gems, uncut and
pristine, will drop from human mobs.  Some are more rare than others so
never toss a gem out when you get one, even if you don't need it at the moment.

Weaponsmith:  The metals, stone, and woods are all from harvest nodes. 
All of these are pretty easy to gather in the resource zones.

Resource Zones versus Adventuring Zones

If you spend a lot of time out and about in Hyboria you may find that you
have little use for the resource zones.  Nearly everything you could
possible need can be found in the adventuring zones, however, for those who are
more focused on crafting the resource zones may be a better choice.

Resource zones are top notch when it comes to node harvesting.  The
concentration of nodes makes it easy to make your way around the zone quickly
harvesting as you go.  By the time you get back to where you started, nodes
have refreshed and are ready to utilize again!

Adventuring zones end up being the better pick for humanoid and animal kills,
particularly if you're already out adventuring.  You can use the mobs in
the resource zones for mob dropped materials but it can limit how much and how
quickly you can kill when you are dependent upon a small camp rather than having
an entire adventuring zone to play with.  The upside of using the resource
zones for these is you don't have to deal with a full zone of pesky aggro-happy
mobs, you can just grab what you need. 

If you do choose to use the resource zone for your mob-dropped materials,
remember to create a waypoint on your map so you remember where you found what you
were looking for or use the maps that I have created.  These maps not only
tell you where the mobs are, but also indicate what tier they are.  You'll
notice on the maps that these zones have different mobs so if you can't find
something in Poitain, check Purple Lotus Swamp for what you need!

Always check the trader for reasonably priced materials, ask
your friends and guildmates to save materials that they obtain through
adventuring, and keep a nice stockpile of recipe items in your bank! 
Remember to keep this page bookmarked because there will always be items that
you can never find and yet you desperately need.  Having a quick guide on
hand can make all the difference in the world and can save huge amounts of
precious gaming time.