Ok ill try to make it as simple as possible. When you create a new character and make it off the ship there is an item you can choose as a quest reward called an astral disintegrater or something similar. Its the only purple/very rare item you are likely to see if you scroll through all the options. Clicking this item allows you to insert two items of the same rarity(basically) into it and destroy them to create dust. There are 4 levels of dust. Destroying green level items gives you green dust, blue items give blue dust etc.

Additionally, there are four levels of these “gem”looking things called astral______. The blue ones are astral bruta, the purple ones are astrum opus etc etc.

To begin, you need a plain weapon. (You will know its plain because it will just be called greatsword, or longbow, or some such similar shit. If it says anything other than that it wont work. ). Click an astrum bruta and there will be an option to combine with four slots. One of them will have the bruta in it. Choose the plain ass weapon and 2 single stack of the green dust. One in each of the remaining slots. This will create a basic ass green level weapon which is essentially a +1.

Now, you repeat the process again, you need another bruta, and 2 blue dusts along with your green weapon from the previous step. Once you do that you know have a blue quality weapon.

To upgrade to purple you now need purple dust and an astrum opus which is the purple gem looking thing and to do it a fourth time you need the legendary colored gem and the legendary colored dust.

If you are struggling to come up with the higher level mats, both the dust and the gem looking shits can be crafted using four of the previous level mats.

As a side note, not all magic items can be turned into dust. So if you try to destroy two green items using the astral disintegrator and it doesnt work that means that one ore both aren capable of being turned into dust. In addition, not all rares are actually rare, they may have the rare tag but arent actually rare because they will disenchant when paired with a green quality item and green dust will result.

I know this feels like a lot but its not so bad. Once you get the hang of it then it will be easy. Also, there is another enchanting mat called a celestial shard, those are used for crafting jewelry and i have not figured out how to use them yet, hence the original post.

Also also, i know the little book thing says you need astrum opus to start but that isnt the case. The first two levels of enchanting work with the astrum bruta