Gathering/crafting

So over the past six months, I’ve been intermittently leveling my fishing, scribing, and woodcutting. However, I just want to get my scribing up, which is much easier than leveling gathering. Should I give up on leveling gathering and just buy refined stuff to craft with?

 

Buying is way faster, but expect your emeralds to vanish very quickly. However prices have dropped now since the update’s release, so it might not be as expensive as it was for me. I think you can buy avo paper for like 20e each now? Which is a great deal compared to the 128+ it cost before.