Crafted gear generally gave the best damage/defenses, you could make set of +5 sneak, over 100 all resist with wearable stuff, immune to slip, +1/2 to any stats and intiative, unique crafted weapons were best in game at level 20, improve damage/defense of loot, creat any spell in game on scroll, create grenades/arrows, so on and so forth. Make and sell stuff for tons of money to buy stuff...
By leverage the crafting system, you could pretty much take a character at any comparable level and make him much more powerful and/or effective in combat. From a min-max perspective it's required to use.
Seems I glossed over an entire aspect to the game. Damn...
