Just throwin my list up. I will edit as I think of things.

To start, something simple:

Cube Recipes :
1. Make items eth - I don't know if it is possible with how realm is set up now, but it is a nice way to add some dmg or defense without adding in new items.
2. Repair items - This goes hand in hand with making items eth...no sense in making eth if you can't repair them somehow. This one was more of and edit to the existing recipe idea. I always liked it when you could use a tp scroll for armor, and a id scroll for weaps. Is simple but enjoyable recipe.
3. Socket items - This one is a big maybe. You can socket already, but I was thinking along the lines of all items under one easy recipe. Along with the capability to get the exact number you need. It could possibly make it too easy to make runewords. But, if the recipe used something that you had to farm then balance could be restored.
4. Return items from their sockets - There is already a remove items from sockets. But it destroys the items that were in the sockets. This is useless imo. But, if it were to give you the items back, it would be useful.
5. Lyf had this idea and we expanded on it...Maybe certain areas that are never ran anymore could have a use. Like the keys for ubers being able to drop from certain areas, along with where they drop now. Or an increased area to find rare items, giving the opportunity for insane rares to be found. Or maybe materials for certain things could be made to drop. Such as the socketing recipes...I don't know what exactly the best ideas would be, this is just for starters.
6. I was also thinking back to some other mods I have played and what was useful there. I remember a mod where certain stats were added to the craft recipes to make them worth while. Like I remember making blood body and having a 1 out of 10 chance to get like a lvl 10-15 concentration aura on equip. This made crafting gear for mercs very good. Another example is that I remember a meditation aura on caster helm. Another useful addition to item stats is having all torches found having tele on them. Again just some ideas.

New update today. Thanks to dys for suggestions, some of his eth/repair stuff was implemented, and ill look further into the socketing thing.

yeah that last idea of yours sounds very appealing DyS, i like the idea of having auras on craftables. its a whole 'nother set of something to occupy yourself with for when you got the high level to make those things. i like the idea of setting those modifiers on chance, but i think there should be some additions other than simply auras. there are alot of good stats out there. personally i would like to see the modifier chance for the following:
+ to skill (non class specific)
#mod for + to skill for category of skills
+ stats that are added based on the time of day/ level/, as they can be pretty nice. also scaling the strength of the stat from lowest to possible highest would be nice, as i cant stand it when you simply craft anything and its too godly. not to say that you couldn't get a godly crafted item.. but you really gotta have some fails to appreciate them better.
maybe even some of those nifty nv stats would make for an interesting way of crafting; one idea of which is popping in my head is monster state transformation. hehehe. yeah im crazy i know.
i mean lets face it. crafting has always kinda gotten the shit end of the stick, thanks to blizzard and their lame ways. lets give back to the community a reason to save all those worthless runes and gems i say.

now as for the areas of which to farm we could do basically what you posted, but keeping in mind to keep them spread out throughout the acts, rather than each type per act. youve got rares, uniques, gems, runes, anddddddd SET ITEMS. one thing were definetly not too short on is areas of which noone hardly goes to. act 1 has lots of those tunnels, the pit, mausoleum, the one next to mausoleum, act 2 has arcane sanctuary, halls of dead, stony tomb, and lets not forget all the fake tal rasha tombs(farm city)act 3 for example has been looked down upon pretty horribly so we could have a field day with that one. act 4 pretty much just has..nothing really but maybe we could modify data out in the open areas. personally i think it would be good for gems myself. and act 5 has quite alot of bonus areas as well. all im saying is if we decide to go down this route, i think it would keep the interest peaked if we really did a good job of spreading the specified drops around. anyways, those are just some of my thoughts i wanted to share.

p.s. to all who care to know, my laptop has been pissing me off hardcore lately.. screen turns black on startup and cant do shit. at all. so yeah getting that straightened out and ill be back on and running as soon as i get it back, so thats why noones seen me for a while. hope all this info comes in handy odin. =)

mausoleum and pit are actually 85 lvl areas - you can get any item from monsters at there, I do runs in those quite often. But still I like your idea, there is tons of places people never visit.

Rune drop chances did not go as planned I guess, 100ish countess runs and my highest rune so far is Lum, I have no idea about changing drop rates but I guess it's not easy to get it right.

Annihilus. basically impossible to get now, not too many players and you need XX amount of sojs to get it, maeby if any uniq rings could be used to activate world event.

Cubing keys to other keys would also be nice, like 3 terror > hate and 3 hate > destruction.

If there is way to change stats of runewords with server side modifications that would also be nice, now there is a lot of useless rw's that you need high runes for. Wind, Destruction and Wrath for example, maeby if those could be made to other types of weapons.

@sende yeah i remember you telling me about the drop rates in the act 1 areas. i was just suggesting adding a significantly higher drop rate for a specific type of item type per area. like set items or uniques or rares and runes--you know that sort of thing.

Just a quick update tonight, I tweaked the rune drop rates further for Blood raven, Griswold, Hephasto, Countess, and Council members - these guys should be QUITE rewarding now.

As an aside note (not mod related per se) the Uber spawn chances have been increased significantly so we've got a chance of spawning him soon!

I'll be adding some more changes soon & appreciate everyone's feedback.

After the newest update today at around 9:20 pm est I did 10 runs to search for runes. Each time I killed Countess, Blood Raven, and Griswold.
Here is a list of things I noticed:
1. Tomes only stack to 20 instead of 100.
2. Blood Raven and Griswold dropped 0 runes.
3. The best rune I received from countess was IO.
4. The cube recipe Eth+item=Ethereal item no longer works.

I noted that the cube recipes for repairing ethereal items weren't working either. If this change is permanent, this is not good, as most of the items on my two characters are ethereal.

Yep basically I botched the update yesterday to hell & back. I wasn't even home when I made the changes so I didn't have time to test them.

I've rolled it back to prior patch & will apply the rune drop stuff when I have time to properly test it first. I'm also still looking at all the suggestions above, I might slip in some more customized recipes later with auras etc if I have time.

Thanks for the notification,

odin