Yeah, I am super disappointed in the variant crafting rules for Treasure Vault - for permanent items they seem like a massive step backwards from the base rules, which are themselves a step backwards from 1E crafting rules (although combining crafting feats was sorely needed).
Well, I'm going to change my mind on this now that I've gotten my PDF and seen some of the other variant rules.
While Complex Crafting is great for consumables and lower-level items but not very good for level-appropriate permanent items, the Deconstruction variant that allows you to transform one permanent item into another similar item and maintain 75-80% of the value (rather than the 50% you get for selling it) is huge.
I *almost* really like the double speed crafting time reduction option - item quirks are really flavorful. The main problem I have with it, though, is the chance to completely ruin the item on a critical failure (i.e. a nat 1). For a permanent item this is just too harsh. Yes, you can hero point to reroll, but imagine how much it sucks to hero point a nat 1 into another nat 1 and ruin an item that could represent half of a player's total wealth.
Yes, the books allow the possibility of cursing an item and even the possibility of the GM allowing a mechanism to remove the curse, but that puts the burden on the GM to fix a flawed system. Reducing crafting time at double the rate isn't a strong enough benefit to warrant such a severe punishment for critical failure - particularly when there isn't even a critical success effect to somehow balance it out.