Event Recompense

[Jumpy]

That sounds like a personal problem and a topic brought up in a manner that screams "I need X to do Y!"

If people have good journals / bio and a great development for an item they wish to craft, the dev items in it come as secondary. Obviously you won't be able to do everything without the proper items, but in general anyone, and I mean literally anyone, can get themselves a unique by simply having a few scenes that delve into why this particular weapon/armor/pendant is special and unlike the rest, and with an application they can get something special.

I've seen people apply for a unique pendant using Amber as the 'dev item'.

You could also get another DM to run your event. People shouldn't be rewarded for doing absolutely nothing, and while most events end up never being run you have to remember that most event ideas also suck and are posted as power grabs rather than IC drive to do something different. It's much cooler when an Elder tells you to find a harmonic quartz to complete your instrument and it leads you to asking for an event in the aim of getting just that than going on random events and asking for that. It's also far easier to run an event where you know and understand the character's motivation to seek out something rather than "let's go to arcanium mines and get ourselves arcanium!"

Hell, even that really bad idea becomes cooler if you do it with a group of people with the aim of gearing up a group of young troublemakers.

tl;dr your idea sucks, people shouldn't be rewarded for doing nothing, and some events are never run.