Add Crafting Tutorial (Quest) to Act 1

If you really want players (especially new players) to use the crafting system, you should add a crafting tutorial in act 1 where you teach them how to do it.

Hand out a white item, provide a pile of orbs (that they can't just take and leave) and some equipment to reset the item back to white. That way you can give them the opportunity to actually craft a useful item for the first act without having to worry about wasting their found currency. This should obviously be limited to once per character (or even once per league).

If you're feeling fancy, you can wrap this into a proper quest, too.