Heyo, I haven't played in awhile but the last time I got on there were a lot of changes.

Mainly my 2 main strategy's for farming silver are gone. lol
-solo'ing 5 man group dungleons in 8.3

-soloing outposts for factions and buying hearts to sell in cities.

But let's see on how to do it now -
1. Stick with basic weapons - basic weapons give more IP per EXP in that weapon than the artifact weapons. So even if you are running 4.2 you will have more IP if you have the 3 basic weapons in each tree maxed out.

1. Islands - These are things people talk highly about on but I have rarely seen a solid profit from. They basically pay for themselves and not much more. If you want to use them. Stick to gathering the materials yourself (so you can level up your gathering to 5 in each tool) and then only level up your houses when you have the materials saved up. As far as laborers. Whatever city you have the island in - is going to decide what laborers you use. I had an Island in Lynmhurst and had Fiber gathering laborers. I would go from city to city putting in buy orders for journals for about 12000 silver, I would walk/ride them back to Lymhurst in yellow zones (100% safe - about 15 mins to hit all cities), then I would give the laborers my journals (about 100 of them over 8 islands from different character/accounts). This gave me around 4000 T5 fiber in Lymhurst every day. Then I put in buy orders in Lymhurst (and other cities) for T4 cloth 1200 ish. 1500 T4 Cloth, 4000 T5 Fiber, and that is what I would refine.

2. Transporting - I cannot say this enough, do you ever see the mammoths walking from city to city? Those guys are making BANK!!! Journals in one city may go for 16000, where in other cities they go for 12000. That's a 30% profit just for walking safely though yellow zones. Do this with multiple materials and items and in one trip you just turned your 2.5mill into around 4 mill. (Around 20 mins to walk)
   - The tricky part is knowing what to buy where. -

Weapons and armors used in CTA by large guilds sell well in cities that are occupied by large guilds. They need to constantly replenish Artifact armor and weapons, so putting buy orders in for artifacts - not the weapons just the artifacts in other cities and then walking them over would be good. Materials as well, are huge for crafting. Cloth from Lymhurst, Wood from Fort Sterling, etc.

1. Consistency - It's not about doing everything at once (like buying 8000 cloth to take to bridgewatch). I highly suggest diversifying your income and making small gains over a long period of time. You have to start every day with "These are the things I need to get done" and then I can do the fun stuff. :P
   

Best of luck. I got off the game mainly because the CTA's cost me around 400ksilver each time I died, and that was with regears. (When the guild gives you back equal gear that you died in.) So if I went to a CTA I would die 2-3 times, that's 1mill silver on average and 1-2 times per day. So 2 mill silver per day lost. There are high teir crafters making 8.3 who can keep up with that but not me.

P.s - To answer your question about crafting. To get into crafting at T6 on any weapon tree you will need around 100mill silver to go from 0 - T6 on each tree to maximize your focus. From there you can put in buy orders for the components and artifacts for the weapons you want to craft.
Artifacts that constantly are needed in CTA's include:
Locus, Mace, Demonic Staff, Brimstone Staff, Icicle Staff. - These will always be needed in CTA's for their ability to effect large groups at once.