Currently, even Tier 1 forging ingredients are very rare, and the rarity just scales up with tier. Instead of making ingredients incredibly rare, I suggest making them more widely available, while also overhauling Quirks and Defects.
Point 1: Boon Compounds:
Make all Boons Compounds only add Boon points, with Item rarity affecting how effective your forging is instead. You can also decrease the crafting ingredient rarity to make especially ineffective Boon Compounds.
This will help with my next point.
Point 2: The Centraforge.
Add an option to “Overclock” the Centraforge. Overclocking brings the effectiveness of forging up to 100, while also adding a chance for a Quirk or Defect to pop up each round. The chance of a Quirk or Defect scales up with how much Effectiveness was compensated for.
Lower level players will need to make use of the Overclocking ability to increase effectiveness, while higher level players would be able to get enough boon points on their own.
This creates a smoother transition from low-level crafting to high-level crafting, and is also not over-powered, because any benefits will be counteracted by the Defects and Quirks. Hopefully, high-level crafters won’t need to make use of Overclocking, if it is implemented well enough.
Since this is just an Idea, please leave any suggestions you can think of!