Tradeskill viability/usefulness

[Xallis]

Thinking about levelling specifically tailoring for monk armor/bags. But wondering how possible it really is to do any tradeskills being piss poor. Tailoring you can at least get most everything you need to get startes while levelling and most people will be willing to get rid of spider silks for spell money or whatever but blacksmithing/alchemy seem like they're going to be delayed a bit if you aren't having others actively feed you mats to get to banded and beyond.


I guess the real point of this post though is: are tradeskills really worth it and if so which ones? Anybody can benefit from some extra ac or a non rusty weapon at low level but how big a difference will a blacksmithed mace make vs something you find by lvl10?