[7thGate]

I tend to agree, don't farm components unless you're forced to for whatever you're doing. There are some though that you can get off vendors if you keep an eye out even if they're farmed components because they're common or because the source comes from somewhere where there is an obvious vendor to drop them on.

I liked Rancid Wolfkiller as a stepping stone from Spine Break to Athropic Sap, both because it was decent damage when it applied and the only non-storebought ingredient is chunks of meat, and you can usually find a vendor that has a lot of those sold to them eventually because they're such a common newbie drop.

You can sometimes get Soot Hemlock, Choking Asmag or Black Henbane at the druid vendor in lavastorm because mostly people vendor these drops for gold, and that's the closest vendor for anyone who can't gate. I have stacks of Soot Hemlock still for when I feel like messing around with Blinding Poison, because I found a vendor up with 430 of them and bought out the entire supply. If you're able to hit some of these, you can fill in with Choking Asmag or Dilapidating Ash to smooth the difficulty curve upwards with a higher propotion of successes.