I was there wearing a ML martie robe with a hobbled together luck suit, holding a jaana's staff long before the luck was actually useful, lol. And it's pretty cool luck does play a role with quest rewards now.
But nowadays it's easier to imbue a weapon, as itll take less time grinding for the recipes and the materials for imbuing are also much, much cheaper than some of those craftable artifacts. You need peerless mats for most of those, when you can imbue up to 90% intensity properties on your weapon with mats you'll get from using the imbuing skill to unravel trash loot you would normally not even bother picking up.
Even at only 90% intensity on 5 properties, the resulting weapon will still be much more powerful than any of the craftable artifact weapons. This is also why most of those recipes are so cheap to buy on VS.
Fret not, however! Your efforts are not wasted. The real draw there doing the heartwood quests are the recipes that are still useful, like some of the potions, and the runic tools. I have yet to verify, but afaik with most crafting skills having revamped bod reward systems, heartwood quests are still the only way to get fletching runics. And those are always in high demand.
I wish the devs could show some love for those old craftable ML arties, even if it's understandable less love than they gave to the revamped doom ones.
@Alkaseltzer, if you're recently returned I definitely suggest looking at imbuing and giving it a go, it's the funnest crafting skill (well imo, the only fun crafting skill...) and between the imbues and the very potent reforging, it will get you back in the game very quickly.