Regarding this, I will address it when we get around to addressing the economy. Likely, i'll redo it in a system that encompasses everything rather than just alchemy in a more... resource economical manner. So what currently works, won't in future, but on the same note, what will then work will work better.
Archer and I threw around some ideas which lead to the concept of giving all classes an addition 2 skills per level. These skills can be spent on skills where they want them to. Additionally, new skills to represent tradeskills will be added to the skill list. If players choose to be better at persuasion than black smithing, that's fine, but similarly, if they whine later because they can't be a black smith, then that's too bad. Players will be limited to 2 trade skills, to stop wizards from being douches and being masters of everything in the world. This will be enforced via the level up script. If you have >1 point in more than 2 trade skills, then you will be forced to relevel. Assuming of course that's acceptible with admin and server owner. What this skill would mean is, we wouldn't have to write a skill script for the potions/mining/whatever we want to do, which in turn means we save on resources as 2da files are, at max, a meg. The skill 2da is about 40 kb 41 after adding trade skills. 2da files are also read more swiftly with the enging than scripts, and they dont have to be handled in game per say and soak up potential lag-free-ness.
So, in short, don't worry too much about tradeskills for now! If you can work them out, great! Otherwise, I'll work on a system during/after the class additions are done for implementation.
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