A staple of games with crafting as a major focus these days is mining. Mining is often done by finding a location with specific metal ores and gathering them. After that you smelt them into bars and you can further refine those bars into a variety of equipment, weapons or accessories.

Stone as a material

Stone tools are older than the human race as we know it. But using stone as a material in tools like they’re presented in games is still a bit unrealistic. Because of the small contact area on a pickaxe you will apply a lot of force on stone which causes it to break. But stone is not a material which can easily be shaped in such a way and it’s very likely to break if used as a material for a modern tool.
For a more realistic experience in games it might be interesting to present stone tools as their logical counterpart the prehistoric tools.

From copper to iron to silver

A logical progression for metal materials is needed because the materials will have the same progression as the equipment made from the materials. But this isn’t always realistic since some metals like silver and gold are a lot softer which makes it easier for them to be processed into detailed accessories.
Instead of a progression system going from iron to silver it would be better to add a way to make alloys early one so bronze could be introduced. Bronze is an Alloy from copper and iron which would add extra uses to those basic materials. Copper and Iron are normally easy to find as well because they are low tier materials so adding extra uses should make it more interesting to find a metal vein.