SureAI

Is it really true that some of the best items in the game have to be created through the crafting skill? I guess there are many set items in the game and not sure if Crafting skill is useful or not?

Crafting is one of the better trade skills in my opinion. Generally the armour sets are better than what you can craft (because the enchantments are very strong) but your own weapons will be somewhat better than what you can find. That loading screen info is wrong by the way. There are no recipes for legendary items. You can only make normal weapons and armour (and improve them). There is a special backpack recipe though.

Also, you don't need more than 50 points in the skill to craft every item (the backpack is supposed to require 80 but I have read that the recipe is bugged and doesn't actually need that much). Pumping more points into it doesn't improve your items much further.

I crafted a Pyrean shield, which required crafting level 31. Then I upgraded it. Now it blocks 48 damage, and it is light armor, better than any other shield I have found, even heavy armor ones. The thing is, you can upgrade items you craft yourself, but you can only add 1 enchantment. Many things you find have multiple enchantments, but for me, I often don't care about some of the enchantments and only use an item because of one particular enchantment, such as improving bows or sneak. My current playthrough I'm trying out an elementalist-archer type, so I might try crafting a robe.

Question. Where do you craft pyrean stuff? I have pyrean blueprints that require 31 in handicraft, I have more than that. Yet when I open the forge the rune stuff for example appears in the crafting list, while the pyrean stuff ain't. http://prnt.sc/cabjzu
http://prntscr.com/cabkng - the rune is greyed out because I don't have the materials on me, but the pyrean stuff does not appear at all in the list.

Thank you

Tanning rack, weird right

I don't think it's worthy. As others already said, there is nothing beyond 50 handicrafting skill and I haven't found any blueprint for any legendary weapon during my 78 hours playthrough.

Alchemy is pretty much useless but the paralisys poisons as you won't be able to do stronger potions than the ones you find at the very first dungeon of the game while investing on it, not sure about 100 skill tho, but it might not change anything significant.

Enchanting is similar to alchemy.

...So, if you're playing as melee character, then raise your handicrafting skill to 50, by doing so, you'll be able to craft stronger weapons before they become droppable in the world.

One other advantage of raising your handicraft skill is that you can upgrade the items you have made to higher levels , as long as you haven't enchanted them.