This idea would require a complete rework of forging, so it would be a big undertaking, but I think it would make forging more skill and less RNG.
Here is the relevant part of the trailer for Potion Craft, though I do recommend the game anyway, so maybe watch the whole thing.
This game has a handful of different enchantments you can navigate to on a map. Each ingredient has a shape that it moves you around on the map. You have to decide the right ingredients and strengths to use to navigate past obstacles, utilize shortcuts to be more efficient, plus some other tricks to tweak your path around the map.
I haven’t played this far but, later on, you are able to use very expensive ingredients to rotate your path and get more creative with the ingredients on hand.
Video at a timestamp for seeing the rotation mechanic:
There are also expensive ingredients that can be used to warp over/past the bone fields that destroy your potion and waste all your ingredients.
While I don’t think this exact system would be good for Boundless, I think something like this would be a good start.
If I were to design this for Boundless, I would likely keep the ingredient options restrictions we currently have, plus add in quirk fields rather than just the bone fields Potion Craft has. To be honest, I would probably set it up with fields for applying the boons as well, so you would have to use your ingredients to navigate through boon fields without touching too many quirk fields.
To make it even more interesting, adding some quantity of RNG to the layout of the forging map would be fun. Keep the zones in approximately the same space, but change up the shapes of the fields. This would make the general “get there” navigation part the same, but would change up the “navigate the fields” part so you aren’t repeating the exact same steps every time (and also preventing botting).