Ever since Minecraft first launched, gaming has accepted that it’s not a proper video game if it doesn’t have some form of crafting system. Whether involved and detailed, or boiling down to plopping resources onto a workbench and choosing the recipe you want, crafting has become a staple of gaming over the past decade. (G2A)

Crafting often plays a pivotal part in player driven economies, which are typically found in MMORPGs. This is due to the fact that players in games with player driven economies are generally only allowed to train a few of a game's tradeskills. (Giantbomb)

In this method, the recipes for crafting are neither immediately known nor acquired in-game, but must instead be discovered by the player through combinatorial trial and error. The player is generally presented with a crafting interface in which they can combine the resources they have collected, and is tasked with finding valid outputs by trying different arrangements of inputs. (Game development)