game with crafting that isnt just given recipes or trial and error????

i'm yearning for a game with an expansive crafting system, where you discover recipes through experimenting, but instead of just randomly combining things until it works, something where you can make inferences about which ingredients to combine to make which results, based on information given to you in the game and just common sense. like a little alchemy or infinite craft, but integrated into a larger game so there's actually stakes. potion craft is almost right, but the discovery system with the whole map thing can be really frustrating and take away from the satisfaction of finding the correct recipe, plus since crafting takes up almost all of the gameplay it runs into a similar problem to the sandboxes where the stakes don't feel very high. i know that when i write it all out like this it makes it seem like i'm very picky, but this doesn't feel like the kind of thing that should be hard to find in video games, i know there must be something out there thats just perfect for me!!!! any suggestions are appreciated