Crafting vs buying early game (with no alts to help)

Ryanbushie

After gaining a solid understanding of the game from a few days of character hopping i have noticed while even being a perfectionist and doing every quest/getting reasonably lucky with drops , i find myself keeping gear for sometimes up to 6-8 levels. My question is , is there a way to get into crafting on your first character to be able to sustain your gear throughout the leveling process or should i just cough up what little gold i have bringing my gear up to date at hubs.

sadownik

Truth is you shouldnt have to either craft or buy gear - use what you find and worry too much if it doesnt fit your build. In fact its good to wear a ll 3 types of armour so you lvl them a little just in case.

UrQuan

Never ever ever buy gear from vendors (well, except maybe from PVP vendors who actually sell some decent gear).

If you deconstruct every piece of gear you find (except for gear with traits - you should be using those to research the traits) and harvest every resource node you come across you should be able to easily keep your crafting skills up with your level, and craft yourself new sets of gear every 4-8 levels.

Or you can just keep using gear dropped from mobs and quest rewards. Personally I think it's better to craft your own stuff while leveling, but you can do either.

Buying gear from vendors is just a waste of gold, though.

Ourorboros

In the early levels, gold is hard to come by, so save your gold. Gear is not that big of a deal at lower levels. I find using gear from loot and quests is fine, replacing it as it wears out with more of the same from higher levels. You can craft your own, but the biggest impact from crafting is crafted sets. You have to research traits to access those sets. A forum search should yield multiple threads on trait research and crafted sets.

Rosveen

Deconstruction is the fastest way to level up crafting. Looted items were enough for me, but items crafted by someone else give more inspiration, so the best way is to find a crafting partner (an alt works for this too, but you wanted to avoid it). Unless something changed, daggers gave the best results for blacksmithing: start at level 6 daggers and then every 10 levels appropriately to your crafting skill. Exchange, deconstruct each other's daggers, repeat.

Inactive Account

During your leveling up to Vet1 you can easily out pace your gear, but don't worry about that so much. Once you reach Vet levels your leveling slows down and you can fill in / build sets that work best for you that are level appropriate.

While you are leveling your crafting try to save up the items used to improve gear levels ie Tempers, Dwarvin oil...etc.
That way when you reach vet levels you can craft yourself some nice gear, not just greens, but some blues, or better.

Ryanbushie

So without the aid of an alt/guild crafters to keep my crafting increasing for my level (in this case blacksmithing) i would have to invest in passives. When would be a good time to begin to spend points on crafting passives instead of weapon/class skills?

Rosveen

I'm not sure which passives you're thinking about, there is nothing boosting leveling speed. All you need to start is the first passive: put a point in it every time your character level moves into the next tier of gear (level 16, 26, 36, 46 IIRC). If you research, and you should, invest in the research passive too. The rest can wait.

Inactive Account

Well that's a tough question to answer.

Ryanbushie wrote: »

So without the aid of an alt/guild crafters to keep my crafting increasing for my level (in this case blacksmithing) i would have to invest in passives. When would be a good time to begin to spend points on crafting passives instead of weapon/class skills?

Start your research A.S.A.P. ...with a but here.... It will help to choose what weapon you will use as a main and start with that.
As well start on Armour traits.

It's a long sloww process to learn them all, so focus on the ones you find yourself using the most frequent.

As for spending your skill points... well...spend what you feel is right. You can always change then out later.

As others have said above, deconstruct everything you can. That means all the ones you don't use. ( it does pay to save any higher level items that you can't use "right now". as long as they are only one or two levels above you; they take up inv space.)

Vizier

You can take your first character and craft. You are going to have tons of skill points to spread around aside from your primary armor weapon and class skills. You do not have to worry about gimping your toon over crafting. You won't be able to have ALL the crafting skills on a character you actually play but you can pretty much keep 2-3 crafting skills up with every toon and then pick one from your stable as time goes on to be your "crafter."

A good general rule of thumb is to craft and research for what you use early game. It's really no big deal to hang on to gear for 4-8 levels then craft a new set. your white armor will be as good or better than any green you find. DO NOT purchase armor or weapons from vendors. Waste of money. Save your cash for inventory expansion and horse training and incidental expenses. Once you get to end game and then purchase from guild stores if you don't loot or make it yourself.

Another method is to merely use what you loot. It's not pretty, but it's viable and can enhance your experience by simply not worrying about armor and such. You'll save time and money.

GLHF.