how rare are essences and how do i view mine?

So far I've only gotten one from a dungeon, if you get one it should appear in your inventory.
But I'm a bit new as well

thank you!

Free essences are fairly rare. You can obtain them from spinning the festival Wheel, nurturing egglings/hatchlings, as drops from dungeon chests, as prizes from the Jinxie game, and as drops from the sylesties in question (a nytekrie essence from a wild nytekrie). I play Sylestia a lot, but I've found very few essences.

You can buy essences from other users on the trade broker for gold. You can also buy essences from the diamond shop, but those ones cost diamonds. You can trade with other users to get diamonds, but the most reliable way to get diamonds is to use PayPal--it's how the site is supported.

The free essences you get are the Normal kind--they're kind of inaccurate with colors, and you can only give them one visible trait or two carried traits. With diamonds, you can buy the same essences, but you can also buy better ones which allow for more traits and better color accuracy.

Just to add on to what Velyanthe said, you can also get essences from doing missions and opening the satchels.

Overall, getting essences from the game is quite rare, but it is possible to get the better essence (enhanced essence) as well. But those are super rare. Mythical essences can only be bought.