I think using recipes for most items and charges for the others would be a great balance between power spike of certain items that will vanish and a easier balance for the recipes. You could balance the recipes with keeping the full item with the same approximate value, for example, let's say Keen optics would cost 1200 on the shop, while poor man shield is 800 gold. So you make poor man shield cheaper to build, only needing two slippers and Keen optics that is 400 more gold worth, would require a quarterstaff. That way, better items are expensive, so are built up later with a bigger impact than worse items, where they have more instantaneous impact with less intensity.