Oh rly? Making curios hard? Lol.
I used bronze steeds, glimermoss and poppy flowers to level up vandal alts and they were ready in 4-6 days. Enough for me and with constant production of alts I don't need to play more than 3 hours per day to make everything I need to do: mine some copper and tin ( around 4 smelters of ore of each), harvest fields that need harvesting. As I'm feeding only one character with FEP food I don't need much fields and also having cheese make everything easier. Milk a cow, cook some rennet, put that inside curding tub and wait some time. Come back, fill cheese trays and make rotation inside cheese farm. It's done very very fast.
Trading? Who need to trade for resources when you can find the node and take stuff with vandal alts. And what is most needed? usually clay and water. Clay you mostly need once to make ovens and smelters and some treesplanter's pots. After that you don't need much clay anymore, so only thing needed it then water, but heck even with q30-40 water you can make everything good enough q and that is not even hard to find. Or maybe trade few flotsams around and buy good water for trees and leather. For cooking doesn't make so much difference.
But as I said enough of this here, here is a thread about war between one shitholes and another shitholes. I made new thread somewhere, use it.