The system itself would be a lot better if there wasn’t so many trash drops and useless items. What’s the difference between all the basic helmets except some have larger armor values? The Lupine helmet is especially useless as you get less armor but more of a useless stat (health regeneration). How many wands are there? 10? That means you have to drudge through multiple crap weapons just to get the base type that you’re looking for, and that’s before you get to the bonus ranges for each base type.
Getting the base item is hard enough, then you have to drudge through the crafting process without the item fracturing, and that’s before you get to damaging and devastating fractures where you don’t just stop progressing your craft, but actually lose progress and end up with a weapon worse than when you started. If you don’t have any uniques to get you through, you’re not just left with your original weapon, you end up with nothing. That’s the gambling aspect the OP is referring to.
Heck, the base items were so bad I went through 10 levels without a single useful chest slot, do you know of a game where the beginning items were actually worse than nothing at all? Here are my suggestions:
Cut the number of base items in half - there’s just way too much clutter and nobody enjoys leaving piles of garbage on the ground.
Drastically improve the remaining base items - a base caster item should be much better for casters to the point that you would rather take a base caster item than a good axe or sword.
Remove white item drops completely (early game is just littlered with nothing but white drops) - every item should at least have 1 affix when dropped from an enemy. If you want a completely base item, that’s what the armor shop is for.
These changes will definitely mitigate the gambling aspect where a wrong dice roll can ruin your item and improve the chances of finding a decent back-up item where you can attempt the craft again.