The idea of special material components is an interesting one, but they're also extremely hard to price and balance. There are a few core problems with this article that would need to be resolved.
Access & General Mechanics
The general rules on components are far too vague. Leaving too much up to individual GM interpretation is necessarily going to cause conflict and inconsistency, especially for activities that occur during downtime (such as harvesting materials). It's hard to parse how any of this is supposed to really work. For instance, searching for materials doesn't tell you where it's appropriate, how long it takes, whether you receive 'units' or 'materials' for your time, or what the "found at rate" actually does. The Use, Pricing and Selling (everything needs a definitive value, it can't be up to a random person's will), and Growing/Making Components sections all need to be rewritten.
Components
There's a lot to talk about here, but I don't think it would be very productive to go into each option specifically. There are frequent issues with undefined rules, but the biggest problem with this system is that most of the components fall into a few categories:
- Useless: Sometimes due to being overpriced, but generally just not being worth the headspace for the effect. The very first component, Bitterweed, falls here; you can spend 50 to 100 gp to make a healing potion remove the Sickened condition and replace it with the significantly more detrimental Staggered condition. Other components that fall in here include Red-caps, Bullet Nuts, Honey Poppy, Knot Lilies, and Sheepstick Reed (there are no cloth items worth more than 600,000 gp, which there would need to be for there to be any potential usage for the component), Honey Bud Ants, and so forth.
- Broken: A lot of the components have malformed mechanics that either don't work or obviate ability standards (such as by inflicting a debilitating condition without allowing a saving throw). Taun doesn't list the amount of Fast Healing it grants, for instance. Other components in this category include Dizzy Cap Spore, Reaper's Kiss (Necrotic damage doesn't exist), Firestarter Legs, etc.
- Crafting Staples: Many components affect crafting in such a way that they're either mandatory for certain types of items (they reduce the cost by more than their value), or produce effects for far cheaper than their real value. One of the most egregious examples are Lucky Shells, which produce a superior effect to the Luckstone for only 1,500 - 3,000 gp. Other cases are Glade-Touch Vines (for any item that costs 30,000 to 60,000 or more), Dread Talons, Blessed Stone, Aquacite, and so forth.
- Mandatory Tools: These either completely replace existing options due to being superior in either or both cost or effectiveness, or are so powerful they'd end up as a staple for every character. For example, a unit of Edict Feathers costs 100 to 200 gp, and can be used by any character. Equivalent options to that are a scroll (which 1,125 minimum and has usage requirements) or spellcasting services (450 gp, assuming you don't have to pay for a round trip for the caster)- significantly more limited and expensive than the Edict Feathers, which put long range teleportation in the hands of everybody cheaply and much earlier.
- Spellcaster Buffs: There are a lot of components that just boost save DCs for specific sorts of effects or increase spellcasting efficiency. Some of these are worse than others (mostly the ones that are Common), but there are two main players that would cause more harm to gameplay than any of the others. Blue Devils cost 25 to 50 gp per charge and increase the save DC of a spell by 2 (1 if you're female, which makes female characters literally worse at being offensive spellcasters than male characters)- this is sort of expensive at low levels, but quickly becomes something you can afford to pop into every offensive spell you cast, making one of the most powerful character types (offensive casters that force saves versus losing fights) even more powerful. Catalyst Shards are similar. They cost between 100 to 200 gp, and let a spellcaster cast a spell as a move action- allowing casters to nova even harder to end fights really quickly if it's necessary.
I'm not sure how you'd fix these issues. There's a huge amount of raw material to work through, and a lot of the mechanics are down a dead end path and need to just be scrapped. If this is something you want to carry on with, it would be a good idea to decide what exactly your goals are with a system for more spell and crafting components beforehand, because this… doesn't really do much to improve the game, and has a lot of outright harmful material.
