Quote from Valkyrio;1156390:
Have you looked at the requirements for potion making? You will be needing lots and lots of gold herbs, so an herb farm is pretty much essential.
You'll also need an herb farm until rank 5 herbalism
Actually, it's extremely easy to obtain mass quantities of gold herbs from rafting. It's only 6 stars for 10 gold herbs.
On the other hand, I find it difficult to acquire mass quanities of bloody/mana herbs without an herb farm. For some reason, rafting doesn't give them out, and ecology is boring. I've heard that there are some places on the world map where you can find patches of them, but I've yet to see one. And getting them from dungeons is, needless to say, too slow. Solea is not as bad but definitely not ideal.