It might be designed that way so you dont miss out on some items, the problem with the enhancement bench being a seperate way to progress gear is that enhancements dont pop up on the side of your screen like craftables, so you could have a crate full of guns ready to be enhanced but wont know unless you stick your head in there. What I really wish is there was some way to just straight up see if something that can be enhanced upgrades into something else later without having to invest the resources into enhancing it. Like a sort of 'tech-tree' thats visible in the journal or bench itself. Because some weapons and armor only enhance once, some dont enhance at all and some have an entire progression path of upgrades.

The workbench also doesnt tell you if an armor piece or weapon is enhanceable before you craft it, I know the devs probably want to keep the upgrades shrouded in mystery for spoiler reasons but personally I'd really just prefer full transparency on what im potentially investing resources into.

Splintered crossbows can't actually be used as weapons, so they're only for crafting or scrapping, which is why the lodestone crossbow isn't made in the enhancement bench.

The problem with the enhancement bench is that it's just the workbench with a worse interface. It's not enhancing anything, it's creating new items using old items as one of the components. The workbench already did that pre 1.0. In fact some of the already existing recipes just got moved over.

It sounded like it would be a way to customise gear, but it doesn't. The new recipes it ads could've just been added to the workbench. There's no real reason for it even to exist.

one way they could fix this, is by having the enhancer itself locate the upgradeable objects from storage, making it so that anything that can be, or can eventually be upgraded would be retrieved from storage by the enhancer and added into an " waiting list ", upon doing so it would apply an new ( perhaps green? ) highlight around all the resources required for those upgrades / eventual upgrades, pinning any missing resources on the hud until located.
-- the enhancer does currently have its issues, though all fixable in time.

Originally posted by coslie:

The new recipes it ads could've just been added to the workbench. There's no real reason for it even to exist.

The real reason for it to exist is because it could have been added to the workbench. There's way too many items in the crafting menu and the extra bloat would only make things harder to navigate.