Essence

Essences are one of the materials necessary for crafting tools and equipment of later tiers, starting with silver. They require large amounts of resources to craft, or large amounts of time to acquire through combat. Once you get to the crafting level required for silver your main roadblock towards crafting future gear will be acquiring these essences.

They can be acquired in three ways: either you can get them directly as drops from various levels in PQ, alternatively you can craft them after learning the recipe from a scroll, and the third method is through the tower where various types of metal spirits will drop their respective essences (e.g. a silver spirit will have a chance of dropping a silver essence).

Lost Scrolls
Rarely you will find lost scrolls as drops from PQ, these can be consumed to learn a recipe necessary to craft the related essence. The recipe requires 75 ores of the same material as the essence, 50 coal, and a crafting level three higher than the level required for the first crafts of the same material (e.g. a silver essence will require crafting lv23 to craft).