I do feel there needs to be some really cool items to craft, but at the same time they can't be OP. If you had weapons, or abilities that did relatively the same amount of damage, but had special properties like "Poison Axe does damage over time" That would be cool. Or a club with knock out properties that would disable a player. Special armor properties would counter these adverse conditions or perhaps do the opposite.

A tribes religion would be a good indicator of how to counter what magic, or special properties their items use. So tribes would be scoping out what items they use, and rituals they perform.