I keep getting wiped by bosses, this would be less devastating if repairing items didn't then require me to spend hours farming tier 1 essence for repairs. I should be able to just go back to the crafting stations and repair for free; only repairs out in the field should cost essence.
I don't know if you noticed so just in case : you can extract T1 essence from T2, T3 and T4 from the inventory. 1 T4 essence gives you thousands of T1. But yeah, a repair station sounds a good idea. It would take materials instead ins of essences to repair items.