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.

Tallow candles are edible and provide a decent amount of nutrition.