Item crafting, modding, skill gems? It's all very obtuse.

I've only gone through the first two Acts of PoE 2, but upgrading items is odd. It's not impossible to understand by reading the tooltips and trying various orbs and whatever else I can use on my gear; it just feels...err, janky. I can't think of a better word.

The problem is that I'm hoarding all these consumable items when not trying to hoard anything. I'm using what I can, even some rare orbs, to upgrade my gear, but I still have large stacks of lower-level orbs that keep piling up in my stash tab. Wouldn't combining lower-level orbs to create rarer orbs like perfect skulls in Diablo 2 make sense? Maybe there's some skill or function I can unlock later in the game, but this should be implemented early in your playthrough. You can have an item quality potential cap, so you're not creating unique-level items at the beginning of Act 3.

I'm also concerned that most of my inventory and stash will eventually consist of skill and support skill gems (on top of all these crafting materials). Like orbs, I'm using what I can, but I'm starting to put unused skill gems overflowing from my skill slots into my stash tab. Can there be a separate inventory system for gems, orbs, and other common consumables while your stash tab is filled with only (at least mainly) armor, weapons, and jewelry?

Other things, such as armor quality, seem very bizarre to me. What does 5% armor quality mean versus 100%? Some tooltips could be further expanded upon and explain more. I'm still trying to figure out how to deconstruct (disenchant and disassemble items at the salvage table) to get specific crafting materials. Beyond generating orbs (seemingly straightforward), there's much more to learn there, and there shouldn't be a high learning curve to generating your crafting materials from items you don't need.