Saddles can have object properties that apply to the animal wearing the saddle.

Sitting on a saddle (on the floor) gives a YAFM if you have sufficient skill in riding rather than the standard “It’s not very comfortable…”

With respect to other proposals about crafting (involving a craftsmen’s guild or even scattered craftsmen), the process of traveling back and forth to and from it might become busywork. So if players could craft things on their own, that might be better.

• Would probably need properly flavored terrain for workstations, like a furnace or smelter, for certain crafts, otherwise flavor is too weird. (But this creates the problem of having to travel back and forth to it again.)
• Fixed, non-simple recipes (e.g. existing scroll crafting is a simple recipe) are a heavy spoiler tax and should be avoided.
• This could be simple for certain types of items, as in requiring some silver or gold and a diamond to craft a diamond ring, but doesn’t explain where any magical effects come from, and also might weirdly tie crafting recipes to randomized appearances which have previously been meaningless.
• Probably requires a few more “base” crafting materials, some source of leather, some source of wood, etc.
  • Corpses could decay into bones, which disappear themselves with a longer timeout, but in the meantime can be used to craft bone stuff.
• One of the craftable items should be saddles, because they’re very hard to find for non-Knight characters who want to ride.
• Tallow candles should be relatively easy to make, because they can be made out of fat from slain animals.

Saddle bags, a container that can be equipped on a saddled pet. Looting the pet from an adjacent square will ask if you want to open the saddlebag, and if you confirm it will give you the normal container prompts to put in and take out items.

Some way to make riding effective in the endgame (mainly addressing the problem that no steed can wear an amulet of reflection and usually dies to too much HP damage from ray attacks). This could be an artifact saddle that either gives your steed reflection or makes monsters focus only on the rider, or simply have the player’s reflection extend to their steed similar to how magic resistance does.

Artifact saddle, that when invoked creates a “spirit steed”, which is automatically wearing the saddle and which you can ride.

Gods may grant a saddle as a sacrifice gift and unrestrict riding skill.