I just do gathering quests manually, as I don't know of any way to automate those steps. Just like in WoW, there's no shortcut to just doing each character separately. While I loathe the "gather 20 of these" quests, I do them because gathering is a decent way to generate some income, and as a crafter I can use the resources. I've been running through Zek, and am just about finished with those awful "find 5 of these tombstones" quests. Hooray