I just buy Volatile Life(there cheap) and transmute that on my soon to be 525 Alchs. They can crit too, last night I got 5 crits, over 70 volatiles for the price of 15 volatile lifes lol.

The mats are ridiculus I agree, hopefully we see a change to its accessibilty in the future.

Also, doing truegold, might not be the best money grab right now. I was occasionally reselling my volatile life transmutes instead. If you get air, thats like 40-50 gold more per element. Truegold sells like crap too, there isn't a huge demand for it as you would think(yet).