For new players, crafting can be a tad confusing, even overwhelming. Istaria's crafting system is actually lot simpler than it might look. Here's a step-by-step guide to dragon crafting in Istaria.
Basic dragon crafter's guide
If you're familiar with the mechanics of the game, feel free to take a look at the other guides offered.
How do I craft??
The first step to dragon crafting is applying your abilities to a hotkey bar. This makes using the abilities necessary for gathering certain materials, etc.
To do so, open the character window with either the "C" key, or using the menu. Then, go to the abilities tab.
Next, select craft, and drag and drop all of the abilities to any hotkey bar. You can open another hotkey by right clicking on it and selecting "new hotkey bar".
Mechanics
A dragon's craft abilities are basically built in tools. These abilities are necessary for gathering and crafting different resources. Which one you use depends on what resource you're after. The resources that we'll be working with generally fall under 3 categories: Stone, Metal, and gems. Metal requires Dragon Mining. Stone and Gems require Dragon Quarrying. Once you gather your materials, you'll need to use another ability, also depending on the item that you want to create.
Next, open up the knowledge/formulas window. You can access this via the start
menu, as well as the "K" or "F" keys. If the item you want is not in the formulas tab, open inventory (the "I" Key) and scribe the formula. To scribe a formula, as well as a spell, simply right click and select scribe. Now check again for the formula, and select create. Go back to your hotkeys you made earlier, and select whichever tool necessary to create your item. Then, where it says batches, choose how many you'd like to make. Now click create.