I really like how crafted equipment is leveled to be slightly better than most of what you can find in the wild. The problem is that crafting materials like stag hoofs and clay can’t be farmed very consistently. I think that an easy solution to this would be to sell them at the general goods merchant. They could be expensive and only restock after a certain number of hours, but if they were consistently there, I think that crafting would be greatly improved.
In short the general merchant should be guaranteed to sell rare crafting materials even if they have to be super expensive.