Crafting

Crafting is a new way for players to obtain items, which may or may not be better than what they currently have. It has influences the Gambling system in Diablo 2, such as the ability to obtain a rare item or good quality item early as well as having randomization. Unlike crafting professions in other RPG's, where a player must craft items by himself, the Crafting in Diablo 3 is done by Artisans.

Mechanics

An open crafting window, with a rare Monk Claw being crafted, resulting in a claw that poisons, hits hard and takes health after killing a monster

A player visits an Artisan, selects items he wants made which are determined by the level of the Artisan, as well as any recipes the player has found in the world, provides a gold fee and Salvaging Supplies. The items will take some time to be crafted, allowing the player to continue his adventures without the hindrance of other conventional crafting systems. In order to avoid the crafted items being the same everytime they are crafted, every item that is crafted will have a plus 1 or more in random attributes, these attributes will finalize once the item is made. It is possible to craft rare items as well.

End Game

The D3 Team has repeatedly stated that they want a wide variety of equipment to make up a character's end game kit. Rare, Legendary, and Crafted items (as well as magical items and Set Items, perhaps_ should all compete for the top item in each spot. [1]

Jay Wilson: One of the key elements of crafting is that to acquire the best stuff you need the recipes to make them. and recipes drop. You might find those from final bosses in hell difficulty. It is our goal that some crafted items as viable as top tier items. we don’t want crafting to dominate. If anything, we’ll make them the smallest percentage of the items. But we do want to make some crafted items obviously the best in their area. So that when you get a max level char, they’re not wearing just rares/legendary/crafted. But a mixture.