... potentially a stupid question, but you are using your habitat builder tool, right?

You need to find a habitat builder blueprint (then fabricate it). You can find them in different locations, but the easiest is on the island surrounded by smoke vents. You can't build a building from a fabricator. Too big.

in your inventory, there is a button that says recipes

It's not so much that it's complicated but there are a lot of things that aren't indicated.

Beyond basic material/augment/minor card/infusion/upgrade :

You can use advanced components instead of certain basic ones (gilded lumber as lumber, reinforced leather as leather, durable cloth as cloth, hybrid stone to make stone powder, focal shard as cut gem (made with lustrous ink)

There's soft and hard cap, caculated item per item (so not globally), most of them a unreachable except for some like crit (60%) movespeed (6%) etc. and diminishing returns are not the same for weapons/tools (stats above the soft cap is divided by 12) and piece of gear (divided by 8)

Upgrade does not affect crit and movespeed stats, and upgrade is not calculated in the same way for weapons/tools and piece of gear, I won't details that unless you want the exact formula for stats calculation

Offhands tool boost main hand weapon like the gear (spyglass boost off hand weapons)

Some augment aren't craftable, you can only find them in specific place and craft near them

etc.

Probably it's about gear score, which is required to clear certain gates but is only vaguely described as "upgrade your gear to get a higher gear score" rather than being given an in depth breakdown of exactly how gear score is calculated. Like if you had a lore entry that said "gear score is calculated by -" and then gave a breakdown of the math behind it I think it'd be easier. Once you already understand how it works it's not that complicated; simply add spells, charms and infusions to gear to make that number go higher.

I'll also say that while generally things are pretty straightforward it's not always obvious which parts come from which station. Like oil, if produced from an animal comes from the tanning station, but if it's from a plant it comes from the alchemy table. This is all of course different from oils used for cooking which come from a cooking station. Fortunately your traveller's handbook(?) has a list of crafting components so you can go look up where to make something if you ever get lost... but I'm not sure they tell you that's the case either.

A non-exhaustive list of issues I've seen people have:

1. Item level is confusing.  It used to be important, now it only matters on harvesting tools.  

2. No idea where to get things.  There used to be basic information in the codex, there isn't anymore.

3. Version differences.  The game's community is small.  You are more likely to find old information than new if you just google it.  This problem is exacerbated by certain loud, unhelpful individuals whose only comments on Reddit are that Reddit sucks and you should go to Discord, without ever answering the question asked.

4. Poorly communicated advanced crafting in-game.  The game does not teach you subsitututions like reinforced leather for leather.

5. Incorrect information from the community.  For instance, I've seen people here on Reddit recently say that you shouldn't use the same material more than once on an item.  This is incorrect, and I'm not entirely sure if it was ever correct.

6. Augments are weird because not all types have all tiers, and it's kind of unintuitive that it's sometimes best to have multiple augments of the same type of different tiers.

7. Minor cards are a pain in the ass.  To get an ideal item, you may have to change the card 3 times during crafting.

The annoying part about crafting is it’s tedious with all the sub crafting parts and not being able to sort materials by stat or anything easily.

You are right it’s not exactly complicated. It is tedious.

My issue is I have to start at the crafting station for the final object. Look at all the parts I need to make. Figure out which ones come from what other crafting station and then move to one of those stations. Find out that part takes multiple parts. Go to another crafting station. Figure out if I need to process a raw material for it to show in the crafting options for this part….finally make one part. Go repeat at least 3 more times.

They should implement assigning the people you recruit to crafting stations and manage the whole process through one interface and have the NPCs manage crafting.

Also give a preview not of just the stats but how hideous a mess of mottled orange and purple the clothing is going to be.

I agree, its not complicated just has a depth to it that many players are uncomfortable with. Personally I feel that it is fantastic and pretty intuitive. I love the steps from taking raw materials, refining them creating the different components, and then putting them all together.

I was a bit confused if there was other crafting in the game as you pickup so much fur, chitin and hides -- I was thinking making armour etc ..

but yeah just Alchemy.

To make a potion you need to use an empty flask from inventory

You don't craft 42, you craft the hatching enzyme.

Did you get the blueprint after she blew the sand away? Saw some other people recently had a bug where the arch isn’t there and they don’t get the blueprints after she blows the sand away

Tons of em. Old Alnaphar sets, two MC armors in Yulgar’s (retro labeled). Warlic has a whole list of them. Few can be found right from the travel map. Almost everything in UR boxes is MC and Z-Token stuff too.

"What Mastercraft means:

Mastercrafted items have extra power, versatility, or abilities which are paid for by having a higher price than normal items, instead of having penalties which would otherwise balance out the item's power so that it remained roughly equal to other normal items. A normal weapon with a trigger could deal 110% damage to undead, 95% damage to normal monsters, but a Mastercrafted weapon would deal 110% damage to undead and 100% damage to normal monsters, in exchange for having a higher price. That is Mastercrafting, partner. Accept no substitutes."

"Mastercrafting increases the cost of an item by 10% and yields one of the following:

1. Passive increase of one of the item's parameters (such as damage or BTH) by 5%
2. Enabling of the item to have a "free" trigger effect (generally increasing damage by 10%) without a downtrigger state
3. Reducing penalties associated with having expensive effects
4. Enabling the item to have a "free" skill without a compression penalty (but still having item compression pricing where applicable)
5. Combinations of the above or other similar effects

In other words, it gives the item abilities and whatnot in exchange for costing more, whereas normal items wind up being weaker if they have any of these."

Source: https://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=21935534

This game is based on a mathematical model that is fundamentally garbage, so much so that the developers break the "standard" weekly. Explaining it would be a hassle but now nearly every item in the game costs *1.1 gold in exchange for being 5% more powerful (this is relative to the item). Everything is measured in THE MELEE. A simple melee weapon swing in neutral-lean armor should deal 100% <expected damage>. The most basic mastercrafted (MC from here on) weapons deal 105% damage. A weapon could instead use the MC for +4.25 BTH (bonus to hit, AKA accuracy, expected to be at 85% normally), which would still equal 105% overall damage. Or an MC might be far more impactful like compressing 3 skills and a pizza oven into an armor without penalty. The armor might then also reduce <irrelevant thing> to gain <good thing>. And this is before even considering item synergy. There are even weapons that use MC to compress skills and toggles, and weapons that do the exact same thing but then re-apply additional MC effects depending on the weapon mode.

Even the most rudimentary concepts like establishing the value of elements does not exist in AQ. For example, you can pay gold for an ice weapon with a harm toggle that uses MC to enable the toggle, or you can get a really expensive gacha weapon that does the exact same thing, but uses the MC is a dumb way so you lose the ability deal ice damage in exchange for saving an unnoticeable 5% melee on the upkeep cost.

The "standard" has also been adjusted throughout the years and items are programmed separately (Flash limitation?) so even things that should be balanced may be skewed due to being outdated. For example, a weapon without a special might have *1.08, *1.09, +8%, or +9% damage IIRC. Multipliers are better than additive, of course.

What I'm trying to say is, AQ is very unbalanced and mastercraft means nothing. They game is functionally identical without the concept of MC items. Almost everything you get will be operating at a 105% baseline and be adjusted from that. Just look for items that do good things, do them well, and synergize with your strategy. Once you read 1,000 infosubs (item breakdowns, basically) you'll have an idea of how the devs try to make "balanced" but interesting items. Infosubs are found on the forum or The Gogg's Tavern.

You should really only start crafting after you've sent like 5 sets of henliner ships. After that, you can start crafting. Generally you only craft T4 artifacts and stones, but you can also craft T3 artifacts if your crafting supplies run out for T4.

At your level, you likely have better uses for GE, like epic research primarily.

As you continue to get better ships you'll get better artifacts and eventually enough materials to start crafting.

Also, keep in mind that if you craft 1 t4 metronome it's most likely going to be common. A T3E metronome with some stones is better than a t4c.

I'm kinda new so I might be wrong but based on the comments in the subreddit. They don't recommend crafting anything other than T4 because almost everything drops from ships. Even T4Ls drop from ships. Albeit very rarely. I've gotten a few.

A t3e metronome ( with stones ) is better than a t4c metronome. Plus focus on epic research first honestly

I seem to remember there being a slight difference in crafting speed based on the weight/size of the object you’re crafting that changes depending on where you craft it.

Crafting on a place with "clean surface" gives a small speed boost, I think around 10% almost imperceptible with fast crafting recipes

I believe if you also start crafting something really heavy, say an anvil, on a low str/weak character you won't be able to wield it again if you put it down for some reason and would need to move it to a table to craft.

Others have pointed out the speed boost, but to answer the question you're most directly asking about: I'm pretty sure you automatically use the best of the surfaces within arm's reach (counters, crafting benches, tables, etc.) regardless of how you access the menu. As such, it shouldn't matter whether you use the hotkey or the interact menu, so just use the one you find more convenient.

Oh you’re going to farm. At the bare minimum you will need to farm for the Blueprints required to craft the craftable items. Haven’t ever come across a spreadsheet of craftable items. But if you go to the Grim Tools item database, you can filter just for blueprints and then you’ll have a list of them. I believe I heard that you can even upload a character and filter for what blueprints you don’t have yet(don’t quote me on that).

Grim Tools Blueprints

Since Grim Tools was mentioned, it has a section for Factions and that will tell you what you can buy in faction shops. Leveling factions can be done on your first character, just do what you can for each group in Normal, Elite, and Ultimate (great for experience and leveling too), but make sure to by the 50% bonus writ as soon as you can with each faction (typically 3rd tier bonus, Honored).

Once you do that you'll open up the Mandates. Mandates give a 200% bonus and can be transferred to new characters and be used instantly. With those, leveling a faction on a new character is completely passive. You'll hit max status very easily which is useful for getting augments you want for builds.

You want to do this because this process will open up all recipes you can get for each group and recipes are account wide and the most useful things from them are the components you unlock.

Often, when I'm looking to craft a component to cover resists or damage for a character I'm playing, I'll just use the search in the smith, but I've unlocked nearly everything at this point (there are recipes you can find outside of this especially on ultimate)