Read the wiki page "Crafting", and in particular the section "Upgrading".

Also, what Little-Juances said.

if you have seen this you shoudn't have problems. anyway, in any mission lobby, at the right side of the town square and at the center of the bazaar there are alchemy machines. you need recipes, materials, crowns and energy to craft. recipes can be purchased in the auction house, in mission or in the clockworks terminals. energy can be purchased with crowns. if you don't know hot to get materials and crowns, we are not playing the same game.

I don't know how many people read the tutorials. Besides impatience/laziness, another problem might be that people are reading them in a language in which they're not fluent.

Before missions were introduced, there was a vague sense that the game lacked structure. Newbies would arrive in Haven and not know what to do next. If they explored around and spoke with all of the NPCs, then they would figure it out --- go into an Arcade gate and gather minerals --- but many newbies did not speak to NPCs. Missions were largely an attempt to give more structure to the game, so that new players would have a default path for learning. But it doesn't work if they refuse to read or can't read.