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I think one of the biggest qualifiers for the quality of a fantasy work (ie; being GOOD) comes down to its magic, which is a misleading term to not just encapsulate the magic or supernatural in the world, but how the magic is exploited or used by the people in the settings that live there. With some fantasy settings, magic is more of a soft-science, but this degrades away the quality of "feeling real" in the same way real life occultist feels real (despite not being real). Therefore, there are certain types of magic that tap into the verisimilitude of the reader, which create the sense of the fantastic.
Some of my favorites aren't even from folklore/mythology (though a lot of them are), but from random one off statements and lines on random tables in D&D books. Things like encounters where Orcs bang on drums to make them more successful in battle (which actually works), or LotR style magic items like the one ring that just makes people more POWERFUL for wearing it, which somehow is both a leadership bonus as well as something mystic and includes elemental powers and shit too. Like Gandalf wearing the Narya (the Flame ring), which both gives him magic powers over fire like liting up the pinecones and shit BUT ALSO making him a more powerful warrior, or making him better at surviving fire too because it's fire??? And then even modern contemporary video games touch on it sometimes; like Brogue with its "Scrolls of Power" which you can use on ANY item and it just makes it better or enhances what abilities it has already, but if you imagine how this actually works "in universe"; can you use it on a cup or a boot or a door and all of that can also be enhanced through some vague "power" stat? How do you quantify something immaterial like that? In a game- you almost can't- but that's the kind of magic I wish to quantify.
I literally see it- the GOOD fantasy quest, just barely able to pierce the smog of genre fantasy. It's right there, the unreachable plateaus of literature.
