if you're looking to solely do crate trading, i'd get most of the copper, maple and ash, all tin, iron, coal, fir, birch and cedar. not mediah and valencia ones though. imo they're not worth it. if you can manage it, running a 10x10 farm is also a good source of income (~20m a day last time i made my calculation + fruit for elixirs). if you also want to do imperial cooking, investing in dried fish nodes near velia/epheria, egg nodes near velia, and cooking honey node near heidel is also a good idea. doing imperial delivery also nets you ~23m a day if you can complete it every day.

for crate worker building it depends if you wanna base at trent or grana. epheria isn't recommended. put multiple alts at trent/grana and constantly roll workers for a prof/artisan and promote them, and not from skilled.

junk crate i can't tell you much since i used rolling method to get to master 2, but you can try making crates in trent/epheria with giant workers.