Risk vs. Reward in Crafting

I think there should be a cost to experimenting in crafting to find new recipes. I think that cost should be that you expend the ingredients you're using. If there's no recipe for the combination you're trying out, then you no longer have the ingredients.

 

So where is the reward? You find the recipe is valid? So I spend a good amount of time harvesting ore nodes, smelt the ore into ingots, and trying to discover a recipe, I then waste my ingots with nothing to show for it other than a big blank in my recipe book?

Personally, I hate the idea. I would be fine if you lost the components you purchased (chunk of coal, curing salt, etc.) but the actual harvested ingredients? No, that would completely turn me off of crafting.

I think the majority of people will hit a wiki instead of trying to discover the recipes themselves anyway. Since the recipes are the same for everyone and there is a very large wiki with the recipes, the idea of losing all your harvested components would be that much more encouragement to turn to the wiki first.