Scarcity of jewelry materials

pentolino18

Maybe I am missing something obvious, but given the prices that upgrade jewelry materials have on the market I think I could be right.

Everything about jewelry is pianfully slow to get and seem to be the result of specific dedication in discouraging the playes to not pursue the road: levelling the skill line is very slow, resource node are less common than any other resource, and on top of all, you don't get full upgrade materials when you refine the dust, you just get a tenth of them at a time. Getting 24 zircon plates (I think this is what you need for a full golden necklace + rings) could take me years, literally.

Why is that? Why is not jewelry like the other crafting? Sure you can't get as many gold swords as you want, but you can reasonably have a couple of them with a fair amount of dedication; that is not cheap or easy, but it's doable multiple times. Just having a single golden amulet seems like a legendary achievement to me, having a full set like something that will be in the stories you tell your sons when you're old...

Sarannah

Yeah, jewelry crafting has many inconsistencies.

-Jewelry nodes are too rare, made even more so because some people only farm those. (psijjic portals have the same issue)
-Crafting writs drop WAY more superior master writs than materials to make them. Solution: Green and blue upgrades should not have grains, only platings.
-Most jewelry trait materials are much too rare, besides the basic three all of them are too rare. Solution: Give jewelry dailies a small chance to drop any trait materials.
-Jewelry crafting daily uses much more platinum than other tradeskills use their maximum material. Solution: Give a jewelry hireling, this does not compensate everything, but does have quite a large impact. Hirelings give around 3 base materials per mail, gathering mails on 18 characters = 18x3 = 54 materials. Which comes down to about two free jewelry crafting dailies per day on an 18 character account.

Just my thoughts.

bmnoble

They set it up that way on purpose so the gold jewelry from rewards and the golden vendor would still be special.

EnerG

Honestly i dont mind the price of materials. But im in a fortunate position of playing a long as time ans i have the means to make gold.

A jewlery hireling and increasing the drop rates on grains from any activity even a few percent would go a long way without making them super common

pentolino18

I agree, the hireling would definitely be welcome, I forgot to mention them...

I am ok that having a fully upgraded jewelry should cost more than armor for example (you only have three items per build and two types), but definitely not this much. A sensible reduction of the palting/grain ratio would also be very beneficial without disrupting the game much; maybe cut it to half the current value? But really anything lower than 10 would be nice.
Also nodes should be as common as ore nodes.

There's much that can be done to relief the pain... let's hope for that

Living_Tribunal

Just from one character having max jewerly doing doing the crafting daily, I got 10 chromium grains in 1 week. Not too shabby.

thorwyn

Getting 24 zircon plates (I think this is what you need for a full golden necklace + rings) could take me years, literally.

A full set of rings + necklace requires 9 zircon platings and 12 chromium platings (assuming that your crafter is maxed out).
If you have a bunch of crafting alts, you will get a steady supply of zircon and chromium grains as well as surveys which brings you even more chromium grains.
It still takes a while, but I think it is a good thing that at least something in this game does not come instantly.

Cave_Canem

get one character:
for jeweller - level to 50
spend the points to 5/5
do the daily writ for jewellery
you will often earn gold

for more profit - get all you characters up to 50 and 5/5 and daily them all

more extra bonus: get crafting skills (tailor/blacksmith/woodwork) to 50 and 10/10 for extra gold materials

for piles of gold materials: get 18 characters to 50 and 10/10 do writs everyday and never run out of crafting

This is the way.

Hamish999

To add to what @Cave_Canem said. Make a farming toon (max speed, and the CPs for farming nodes) and do your surveys.

MaraxusTheOrc

I kind of like the scarcity. Makes it feel meaningful. Purple jewelry is just fine for 95% of content. If you want gold, gotta work for it.

Ragnarok0130

I love the jewelry crafting and upgrade system but its too inconsistent compared with other crafting lines. There's no crafting minion to send you mats daily, nodes are rare, even the possibility of getting good upgrades mats from refining jewelry raw materials seems dreadfully low when compared with smithing, woodworking, and clothing.

Kisakee

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

I love the jewelry crafting and upgrade system but its too inconsistent compared with other crafting lines. There's no crafting minion to send you mats daily, nodes are rare, even the possibility of getting good upgrades mats from refining jewelry raw materials seems dreadfully low when compared with smithing, woodworking, and clothing.

You're just not investing enough time to not have problems with it when you're always short on those. If people would decide to play more they would have more materials or gold to buy it. It's simply a "them"-problem.

And of couse jewelry mats are harder to get, you only have three pieces of it. A full armor not only needs 8 items per piece but you have 7 of them.

wolfie1.0.

Sarannah wrote: »

Yeah, jewelry crafting has many inconsistencies.

-Jewelry nodes are too rare, made even more so because some people only farm those. (psijjic portals have the same issue)
-Crafting writs drop WAY more superior master writs than materials to make them. Solution: Green and blue upgrades should not have grains, only platings.
-Most jewelry trait materials are much too rare, besides the basic three all of them are too rare. Solution: Give jewelry dailies a small chance to drop any trait materials.
-Jewelry crafting daily uses much more platinum than other tradeskills use their maximum material. Solution: Give a jewelry hireling, this does not compensate everything, but does have quite a large impact. Hirelings give around 3 base materials per mail, gathering mails on 18 characters = 18x3 = 54 materials. Which comes down to about two free jewelry crafting dailies per day on an 18 character account.

Just my thoughts.

Green and blue jewelry mats drop way more often in the world space and you need just 1 and 2 plates to complete a jewelry writ.

Purple plates are where the difficulties start as these can be as hard to source as gold plates

tmbrinks

Ragnarok0130 wrote: »

I love the jewelry crafting and upgrade system but its too inconsistent compared with other crafting lines. There's no crafting minion to send you mats daily, nodes are rare, even the possibility of getting good upgrades mats from refining jewelry raw materials seems dreadfully low when compared with smithing, woodworking, and clothing.

The upgrade drop rates for jewelry grains from refining are identical to the upgrade drop rates for BS/WW/Cloth. I've refined just a few materials and even share the data in my signature, so it's not anecdotal!

You actually get more upgrade jewelry materials from daily writs than you do with BS/WW/Cloth. You are guaranteed at least a grain with each max level jewelry writ you do, you can't say the same for the other crafts.

Gold jewelry drops from in-game content. Complete a vetHM trial, guaranteed gold jewelry piece. Gold weapons/gear only drops from leaderboard rewards, so you're limited to 1 piece a week per character.

And as others have said, it's to keep jewelry "special" to not dilute those vetHM trials and their rewards, and to keep the golden vendor viable as a gold sink.

LalMirchi

Quoting our resident expert here, the jewellry does not need to go golden, purple or most often blue is fine depending on your requirements.

tmbrinks wrote: »

If you are running with Arcane/Healthy/Robust traits, the improvement you get from upgrading tends to be fairly minor.

Things to look at.

1) If you are running other traits (infused, bloodthirsty) the improvement you get from blue -> purple -> gold is much more significant
2) The 5th "special" set bonus that is upgraded. For some sets, the 5th bonus doesn't change as you upgrade, for others it does, so that'd be something to consider if you want to upgrade.

Purple jewelry is adequate enough for all content outside of score pushing min-max type builds, maybe trifecta seeking groups.

If you're doing normal trials, vet dungeons, anything outside of "end end-game" content, blue jewelry (with appropriate enchantment upgrades) are perfectly viable.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/7071390/#Comment_7071390

Dawnblade

Regardless of writs giving 1 grain guaranteed or how most everything in-game can be completed with blue jewelry, it is annoying how grindy and costly crafting and upgrading jewerly is after all these years compared to other crafting skills.

I don't know why they didn't add it at launch with the other crafting skills - did they really want to make jewelry special, hold something back to add later, run out of time, who knows.

However, by the time they added it, they wanted it to be a grind for grind's sake - and so it is.

SeaGtGruff

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Sarannah wrote: »

Yeah, jewelry crafting has many inconsistencies.

-Jewelry nodes are too rare, made even more so because some people only farm those. (psijjic portals have the same issue)
-Crafting writs drop WAY more superior master writs than materials to make them. Solution: Green and blue upgrades should not have grains, only platings.
-Most jewelry trait materials are much too rare, besides the basic three all of them are too rare. Solution: Give jewelry dailies a small chance to drop any trait materials.
-Jewelry crafting daily uses much more platinum than other tradeskills use their maximum material. Solution: Give a jewelry hireling, this does not compensate everything, but does have quite a large impact. Hirelings give around 3 base materials per mail, gathering mails on 18 characters = 18x3 = 54 materials. Which comes down to about two free jewelry crafting dailies per day on an 18 character account.

Just my thoughts.

Green and blue jewelry mats drop way more often in the world space and you need just 1 and 2 plates to complete a jewelry writ.

Purple plates are where the difficulties start as these can be as hard to source as gold plates

Unfortunately, after the changes that were made to the Jewelry Master Writs, the blue plating (Iridium) is now very scarce for me; I'm lucky if I have 2 of them for doing a single Master Writ.

whitecrow

It's just like the real world.

MidniteOwl1913

Dawnblade wrote: »

Regardless of writs giving 1 grain guaranteed or how most everything in-game can be completed with blue jewelry, it is annoying how grindy and costly crafting and upgrading jewerly is after all these years compared to other crafting skills.

I don't know why they didn't add it at launch with the other crafting skills - did they really want to make jewelry special, hold something back to add later, run out of time, who knows.

However, by the time they added it, they wanted it to be a grind for grind's sake - and so it is.

Yup, it's pretty damned grindy! And yes soooo overpriced! A hireling would help a lot.

zaria

I run jewelry crafting writs on 7 alts most days, only thing I tend to run low on is the platinum ounces as the return from quest and surveys don't give enough back. On the other hand they are cheap.

phaneub17_ESO

The 18 character hack is the way to go, all 5/5. you get around 2-3 gold plating every week, you get enough to gold out 3 jewelry every month. I currently have golded jewelry on all my characters except for 2 of them, they're not even "good" sets either! 6 sets of Hist Whisperer with Triune and Indeko enchants for my hybrid characters; 5 sets of Heartland Conquerer, 1 set of Agility for my stamina characters; and a variety of sets for my magicka characters like Crafty Alfiq, Frostbite, High Isles, and 3 sets of Willpower.

I'm guildless and a solo/casual, I have a lot of time on my hands and nowhere to sell anything so I either hoard it or use it.

Amottica

pentolino18 wrote: »

MWhy is that? Why is not jewelry like the other crafting?

Zenimax specifically stated they wanted jewelry upgrading to be rare/not as common as upgrading armor and weapons. That is the reason it is as it is.

Sarannah

Personally I have no supply issues with zircon and chromium platings. The epic master writs drop so infrequent that it balances out with the amount of zircon grains, same goes for chromium master writs. And upgrading-wise, zircon isn't that hard to gather. Chromium grains for upgrading are a bit harder to gather, but this is fair as it is used to upgrade items to their maximum possible quality.

Jewelry surveys do lift the need for platinum for a tiny moment, but platinum still goes down way too quickly.

PS: In my previous post I forgot to mention a single jewelry crafting daily completion only gives 7 platinum ounces, versus all other crafting skills giving 15(ore, wood, cloth). This is on 18 characters: 18x8 = a 144 platinum ounces loss per day versus the other crafting skills. This quickly adds up, especially next to the no-hireling and the platinum nodes being rare.

pentolino18

Amottica wrote: »

pentolino18 wrote: »

MWhy is that? Why is not jewelry like the other crafting?

Zenimax specifically stated they wanted jewelry upgrading to be rare/not as common as upgrading armor and weapons. That is the reason it is as it is.

Ok that's the answer I was looking for. Ok got it.

As for the common answer "use N chars (even 18! which also costs more money)", seriuosly, how many hours a week can you play? I have two kids and a full time work; I can only play sort of casual and I see that I have no particular issue in having upgraded armor or wheapon (it takes some time but I'm ok with that), and instead struggle in getting upgraded jewel, because multiplying the time it takes means months for me: when I get to the point I have the mats I have probably switched equip or char...

In the end, ok, jewelry upgrading is not for casual players, that's it; it's like veteran trials hard mode or what is the hardest thing you can do in ESO, not gonna happen for me. Ok, fine.

Rowjoh

Multiple chars levelled to do Jewellery daily writs plus occassional node farming sessions nets a hellava lot of mats in a reasonably short space of time.

You have 18 character slots for many reasons. This is one of them.

Put the ground work in upfront then reap the rewards.

ceiron

If you set up the other crafting etc right then you can generate enough base income to buy as needed the rarer stuff. Just farming jewellery to decon is quite easy tbh anyway. Also sounds like you crafting line is not maxed which will significantly reduce costs and improve drops.

OsUfi

After a year of playing and doing daily writs on one character, I only have 1 set of gold jewelry because it popped up on a golden vendor.

I do believe scarcity is a good thing. But the current scarcity is just a bit too much. Some of us simply do not have the time in our day to run 18 writ alts.

Kisakee

OsUfi wrote: »

After a year of playing and doing daily writs on one character, I only have 1 set of gold jewelry because it popped up on a golden vendor.

I do believe scarcity is a good thing. But the current scarcity is just a bit too much. Some of us simply do not have the time in our day to run 18 writ alts.

The game is like work - more work, more money. If you can't spend more time that's nothing the devs have to care about, that's totally on your side. You decide what's best for you and how much time you invest but making other peoples time spent worthless by making everything easy accessible is not the way.

hrothbern

pentolino18 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

pentolino18 wrote: »

MWhy is that? Why is not jewelry like the other crafting?

Zenimax specifically stated they wanted jewelry upgrading to be rare/not as common as upgrading armor and weapons. That is the reason it is as it is.

Ok that's the answer I was looking for. Ok got it.

As for the common answer "use N chars (even 18! which also costs more money)", seriuosly, how many hours a week can you play? I have two kids and a full time work; I can only play sort of casual and I see that I have no particular issue in having upgraded armor or wheapon (it takes some time but I'm ok with that), and instead struggle in getting upgraded jewel, because multiplying the time it takes means months for me: when I get to the point I have the mats I have probably switched equip or char...

In the end, ok, jewelry upgrading is not for casual players, that's it; it's like veteran trials hard mode or what is the hardest thing you can do in ESO, not gonna happen for me. Ok, fine.

Perhaps you should make your post into a help question: "How to get better jewelry & newbie playing only x hours per week, having ESO+"

Getting many alts having Jewelry skill developed goes then on the slow track and perhaps only for characters you made to play with over time.

For purple:
1. use for your set with jewelry NOT a crafted set but a overland set of which you can get purple from dolmens are just buy it. Normally the trait fits the general purpose of the set, but if you want to improve the trait for your purposes you can do that with transmutes (typical Infused or Dawn-Prism). Transmutes from dungeon dailies or doing 25k AP per month in Cyro (good for 50 transmutes per month per character).
2. whereby noted that the 5th item of some sets has the same effect in white jewelry as gold jewelry like mechanical acquity etc)

For gold:
If your set with jewelry is also sold at the Golden Vendor, bide your time, buy it for "roughly" the same price as one chromium plating reducing cost to 25%. It can happen that this golden jewelry is even sold in kiosks at less than the Golden Vendor price.

EDIT
And yes, for gold that means that if you saved up slowly the 10 grains for a chromium plating, you sell (!) that plating to buy the proper gold ring.

ceiron

Further to the above. Pay attention to the trading patterns. Currently zircon on ps eu is up to 50k per but before the last two events it was as low as 25k.

Also individual grains tend to go for more then entire platings.

When zircon was 25-30k the grains were about 3.5k per.

OsUfi

Kisakee wrote: »

OsUfi wrote: »

After a year of playing and doing daily writs on one character, I only have 1 set of gold jewelry because it popped up on a golden vendor.

I do believe scarcity is a good thing. But the current scarcity is just a bit too much. Some of us simply do not have the time in our day to run 18 writ alts.

The game is like work - more work, more money. If you can't spend more time that's nothing the devs have to care about, that's totally on your side. You decide what's best for you and how much time you invest but making other peoples time spent worthless by making everything easy accessible is not the way.

I'm firmly in the belief games should be engaging and fun first. Not work. I really hate work analogies when applied to games.

Though, I agree, I even say in my post scarcity is a good thing. I just think the current scarcity is a tad too much. They could dial it back a bit without handing them out like candy.