Slowly but surely, the treasure in your character's inventory is becoming more useful. The latest example of this is the ability to convert your character's trade skill production into gold and/or resources.
Here's how it works. Go to your Treasure tab. If you have any sort of trade skill production in your inventory, you will see a link to "Convert to Gold." If you click this link, you'll be taken to a short form where you can specify how much you'd like to convert.
If one of those trade skills happens to be Herbalism, Hunting, or Mining, however, you'll also see a button to "Convert to Resources." Click this and you'll see a very similar form where you can enter the amount to convert.
Note that converting your production into resources is a random process. You will get a randomly generated assortment of crafting materials and ritual components that come as close in value as possible to the amount you entered. Sometimes this may be a few silver pieces less. Don't worry if it is, since you get to keep any remainder.
As for how the treasure is generated, the system produces what you might think of as a random roll chart when it creates your treasure, with the probability of getting a certain treasure inversely proportional to its value. For example, you are five times more likely to get a Common Toxic Herb than you are an Uncommon Toxic Herb, since that costs five times more. Likewise, you are five times more likely to get an Uncommon Toxic Herb as you are to get a Rare Toxic Herb. And, of course, you don't stand a chance of getting something at all unless you convert enough production to cover its value.
It sounds complicated, but it's actually pretty simple on the player end. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
On a side note, trade skills that aren't useful for gathering resources or creating equipment (i.e., Cooking, Brewing, and Farming) automatically generate gold instead of production, since that's all you could do with the production anyway.