- Maybe you are in areas that are too high for you? There is a certain path of progression if you want to make sure the party levels are consistent with the enemy levels. In fact, once you know your progression, you will end up consistently higher than your enemies... Since you are Lvl 6, have you tried going to the western beach?
- Weapons can have elemental magic. If you have a sword that does 1-2 fire damage, it will ignite anything just like a fire spell. Same for the enemies, if it's a fire skeleton it's going to do fire damage and not slashing/crushing. Also, there are things that encourage elements, e.g. you are already warm and you stand next to a fire spout = you are now burning
- That's weird and you should report the bug to the devs
The crafting system does require you to read unfortunately. It's not like Final Fantasy where crafting recipe books are literally X + Y = Z. You kind of just remember or keeping a spreadsheet for yourself.
A lot of it is logical, e.g. wheat + mortar/pestle = flour, flour + water = dough, dough + apple = apple pie dough, apple pie dough + oven/furnace = apple pie
