Scarcity of jewelry materials

runa_gate

One thing that's left out of this discussion is that you absolutely do not need gold jewelry. Purple jewelry is easy to get. Gold jewelry only matters for some traits, and makes basically no difference for health, stamina or magicka traits. Those who are would benefit for gold jewelry are doing the content for which one would obtain such items, and certainly buying upgrade mats is an option... as one of those who do writs on 18 characters a day I am always surprised that stacks of gold upgrade mats sell basically instantly, but chromium certainly doesn't.

As someone who constantly helps players get gear and upgrade it all to gold I've almost never had a request for gold jewelry mats that I didn't talk them out of, as it wasn't for some niche Harmony build or something like that, but just because they naturally thought gold would complete their Sets, without actually seeing that for millions of gold you're increasing stamina or magicka by.. 90! It's pointless.

Kisakee

runa_gate wrote: »

One thing that's left out of this discussion is that you absolutely do not need gold jewelry. Purple jewelry is easy to get. Gold jewelry only matters for some traits, and makes basically no difference for health, stamina or magicka traits. Those who are would benefit for gold jewelry are doing the content for which one would obtain such items, and certainly buying upgrade mats is an option... as one of those who do writs on 18 characters a day I am always surprised that stacks of gold upgrade mats sell basically instantly, but chromium certainly doesn't.

As someone who constantly helps players get gear and upgrade it all to gold I've almost never had a request for gold jewelry mats that I didn't talk them out of, as it wasn't for some niche Harmony build or something like that, but just because they naturally thought gold would complete their Sets, without actually seeing that for millions of gold you're increasing stamina or magicka by.. 90! It's pointless.

Let alone that perfected trial jewelry will always come in golden state when recreated. Getting your crafting up is way more important and worth it on the long run than anything else even if it takes like half a year to max out everything.

tmbrinks

Sarannah wrote: »

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.

While true that you only get 7 platinum back from jewelry writs, the writs themselves only require either 25 or 30 ingots.

While BS/WW/Cloth require between 38 and 42.

The surveys return the same for both.

All 4 are actually quite close to one another on their average return from the daily writ itself.

Now, the scarcity of platinum in the overland, and no hireling, is a thing.

Jewelry = Amount from no survey (7) * Rate of no survey (0.875) + Amount from survey (19*6*1.5) + Rate of survey (0.125) = 27.5 mats returned

BS/WW/Cloth = 15*0.875 + 19*6*1.5*0.125 = 34.5 mats returned

(Note, this is assuming that plentiful harvest is actually working at 50%, it's more like 40% from all testing I've done and seen) They are 26.075 and 33.075 respectively using 40%

Edit to add the math.

pentolino18

OsUfi wrote: »

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.

exactly my point; also it's not true that you have 18 char slot, you have 9. To get 18 you have to pay for 9 more (on top of monthly ESO+ and yearly upgrades + what you spent so far). Everyone is free to spend their money as they please, but I see no value in that, given that I struggle to have time to play a single char.

But let's assume I have 18 chars and I wanna put them to farm upgrade mats. Say everyday task takes 5 minutes per char (I'm including load times and the time it takes to switch char). This means one and a half hour every day of what I would compare to setting the board up when you want to play a board game; one and a half hour spent doing the exact same thing 18 times in a row, every day. That's not fun, it's kind of work; and one I don't get paid for (actually I pay to do it). Not for me. That's it, you made your point perfecly clear. Cheers and thanks for all your insightful input.

Amottica

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.

Do the jewelry writs, with jewelry leveled up to max, on each character each day. That is the easiest and fastest way to get the upgrade matts. It does not take long. Ofc, if you miss a day because of RL that is, well, just life.

TaSheen

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

I haven't found this to be true at all. Terne isn't too rare, but Iridium! On each account I have five to six times the Zircon and Chromium platings as I have Iridium platings. It's annoying.

ThirdEye_PULSE

At a time when they talking about accessibility, jewelry has long been in a position where a good amount of players will never have golded jewelry. Its just too expensive and hard to justify for the small increase in stats. I mean even purple... if i want a jewelry piece in purple i will farm it or buy it outright on trader before i ever consider upgrading it. Its been like that for as long as i can remember but seems worse since i came back from 2 year break.

pentolino18

ThirdEye_PULSE wrote: »

At a time when they talking about accessibility, jewelry has long been in a position where a good amount of players will never have golded jewelry. Its just too expensive and hard to justify for the small increase in stats. I mean even purple... if i want a jewelry piece in purple i will farm it or buy it outright on trader before i ever consider upgrading it. Its been like that for as long as i can remember but seems worse since i came back from 2 year break.

I see that too; I'm fine then with 2 blue jewel and a purple one (that's what I have so far). If in time I will be able to upgrade them to all purple, I will do it, or simply sell the mats since they have insane prices on the market and the gain is minimal. I like to have my gear maxed out, I did it in the witcher 3, in cyberpunk 2077, even in Zelda: breath of the wild; I won't in ESO.
After all I'm keeping ESO+ as long as I have the crown to buy the DLC I would like to have; after that, I think I will stop that.
But ESO reminds me, from a cost point of view, of the times when I payed for the Super Nintendo games, they were about 75 euros each, 30 years ago...

Rowjoh

thing is guys and girls, the mats are not scarce at all.

You do however need to put a process in place and be prepared to put a little bit of a shift in to maximise the harvest.

Pro-tip:
Create at least 10 alts (the more the better) max them all in jewellery crafting then do the daily writs every day.

Trust me, you'll be swimming in platings before you know it

ThirdEye_PULSE

Rowjoh wrote: »

thing is guys and girls, the mats are not scarce at all.

You do however need to put a process in place and be prepared to put a little bit of a shift in to maximise the harvest.

Pro-tip:
Create at least 10 alts (the more the better) max them all in jewellery crafting then do the daily writs every day.

Trust me, you'll be swimming in platings before you know it

Perhaps. But even if the mats are easy to get, theyre often worth so much that the tradeoff between a purple and gold jewelry isnt worth the amount of gold you can get from the mats. Thats the conundrum i often encounter when i have the mats to upgrade my jewelry. Like, is it even worth it?

If the mats werent worth so much, upgrading jewelry would be worth it. Right now... not so much.

I also dont think the mats could possibly be THAT easy to get considering how economics work. If everyone could easily get the mats to gold jewelry, the cost wouldnt be so astronomically high compared to golding armor and weapons. The simple law of supply and demand clearly shows us in this circumstance that getting gold mats for weapons or armor is a lot easier than getting gold mats for jewelry.

Also, cant see many people farming 10+ alts everyday just to be able to play with gold jewelry. That isnt a simple or easy solution and the majority of people dont find that fun... therefore, will never do it.

YandereGirlfriend

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.

It's actually pretty easy - takes about 20 minutes per day to do them all if you pre-Craft the pieces on your characters and just run from the writ pick-up board to the chests and back again.

phaneub17_ESO

18 characters is not really a lot, there are players who have 30-50 characters with multiple accounts. But here's the thing, if you don't plan on playing those characters, rotating them around, or are taking a break playing them then you can mass craft in bulk the items needed for the daily quests. With the maximum of 210 slots available, 15 days worth of items is doable.

With the 15 days method basically you craft 100 of each Provisioning item that takes 6 slots, 100-200 potions and poisons that takes 8 slots. The rest are on 3 day cycle doing the same thing so when it comes to blacksmithing you make 5 of each Dagger, Shoulder, and Helm for example, same with clothing, 5 of each Elemental Staff while 10 of each Resto Staff, Bows, and Shields. When it comes to Jewelry you make 20 Rings and 15 Necklaces.

Now all you do is pick up the quests from both boards and turn them in, takes 2-3 minutes per character at most no time wasted crafting each and every day. You don't collect the boxes until the very end or at the end of each week. So you may have 7-8 writ boxes each week or do all 15 at once. Doing them all at once gives you a better look at ratio statistics on how much gold grains/plating you get out of them, you can get a full gold plating instead of 1-2 grains. If you have ESO+ then opening the alchemy and provisioning ones early is no big deal, they mostly contain crafting mats which then goes back into the crafting bag.

I'm low on platinum, what do I do? Pewter. Learn to cycle between Platinum and Pewter, you get Surveys either way, burn through the Pewter for a few months then switch back to Platinum once you have enough from Surveys.

OsUfi

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

18 characters is not really a lot, there are players who have 30-50 characters with multiple accounts.

Sorry, but 18 characters is a lot.

ThirdEye_PULSE

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

18 characters is not really a lot, there are players who have 30-50 characters with multiple accounts. But here's the thing, if you don't plan on playing those characters, rotating them around, or are taking a break playing them then you can mass craft in bulk the items needed for the daily quests. With the maximum of 210 slots available, 15 days worth of items is doable.

With the 15 days method basically you craft 100 of each Provisioning item that takes 6 slots, 100-200 potions and poisons that takes 8 slots. The rest are on 3 day cycle doing the same thing so when it comes to blacksmithing you make 5 of each Dagger, Shoulder, and Helm for example, same with clothing, 5 of each Elemental Staff while 10 of each Resto Staff, Bows, and Shields. When it comes to Jewelry you make 20 Rings and 15 Necklaces.

Now all you do is pick up the quests from both boards and turn them in, takes 2-3 minutes per character at most no time wasted crafting each and every day. You don't collect the boxes until the very end or at the end of each week. So you may have 7-8 writ boxes each week or do all 15 at once. Doing them all at once gives you a better look at ratio statistics on how much gold grains/plating you get out of them, you can get a full gold plating instead of 1-2 grains. If you have ESO+ then opening the alchemy and provisioning ones early is no big deal, they mostly contain crafting mats which then goes back into the crafting bag.

I'm low on platinum, what do I do? Pewter. Learn to cycle between Platinum and Pewter, you get Surveys either way, burn through the Pewter for a few months then switch back to Platinum once you have enough from Surveys.

Your presuming we have the time to even get that many characters up and running and maxed in a specific crafting trait... ie jewelry. Not everyone finds crafting fun. I find it tedious to even log into one character a day and do my dailies/research. But i have too... i need it to compete in PVP. Besides, i make more from PVP and have a hell of a lot more fun than i ever have from crafting.

I like to spend my free time on game having fun. I dont have much free time. I work a factory job. Coming home and doing factory work on 18 alts isnt fun for me.

Thats not even the main point. The main point is jewelry upgrades is no where near what equivalent armor and weapon upgrades cost. And the benefits are minimal. The majority of players will never see gold jewelry, and if they do its from gold vendor. How isnt that an issue?

Rowjoh

For the sceptics amoung you:

If we just focus on the gold mats for example, once you have your jewellry alts set up:

10 chars nets approximately 4+ chromium grains per day / 28+ per week / 112+ per month = 11+ chromium platings per month.

18 chars nets approximately 8+ chromium grains per day / 56+ per week / 224+ per month = 22+ chromium platings per month.

Factor in some node farming sessions now and again plus the surveys you'll be able to collect on and refine, you can add at least another 20-30+ chromium platings per month.

so even on the 10 char method you'll be clearing a total of 30+ cromium platings per month, and all 18 chars will net you in excess of 50+

Everyone knows that many players will happily grind, farm and queue for all sorts of things for weeks and months on end, yet this aspect is no different at all.

You're welcome

ThirdEye_PULSE

Rowjoh wrote: »

For the sceptics amoung you:

If we just focus on the gold mats for example, once you have your jewellry alts set up:

10 chars nets approximately 4+ chromium grains per day / 28+ per week / 112+ per month = 11+ chromium platings per month.

18 chars nets approximately 8+ chromium grains per day / 56+ per week / 224+ per month = 22+ chromium platings per month.

Factor in some node farming sessions now and again plus the surveys you'll be able to collect on and refine, you can add at least another 20-30+ chromium platings per month.

so even on the 10 char method you'll be clearing a total of 30+ cromium platings per month, and all 18 chars will net you in excess of 50+

Everyone knows that many players will happily grind, farm and queue for all sorts of things for weeks and months on end, yet this aspect is no different at all.

You're welcome

Okay. That seems like a great way for someone to grind out gold and gold their jewlery if they like to turn their gameplay into a factory line. How about people that barely like logging into their single crafting alt? Is it reasonable that mats for golding jewelry is 10x or even higher the cost of golding weapons or armor for minimal benefit? I feel like thats the point of OP... not to make his own little alt factory and think thats fun gaming, like farmville or something lol.

OsUfi

Rowjoh wrote: »

For the sceptics amoung you:

If we just focus on the gold mats for example, once you have your jewellry alts set up:

10 chars nets approximately 4+ chromium grains per day / 28+ per week / 112+ per month = 11+ chromium platings per month.

18 chars nets approximately 8+ chromium grains per day / 56+ per week / 224+ per month = 22+ chromium platings per month.

etc, etc

1 daily battleground = 10-15 minutes.

1 daily dungeon = 15-20 minutes.

A couple of daily quests in Deadlands, Blackwood or High Isle = 10 minutes.

Loading, waiting, and writs on one character = 10 minutes.

I have at most an hour a day to play. Often half an hour.

If I lose a battleground, tough, no daily reward for me. I have no time to try again. I do a dungeon first, because if I get a really long one, I get no battleground.

You can wave numbers at people all you want, normal folk with daily lives outside of the game don't have the time or ability to farm chromium that way. The fact that it has to be done that way at all is honestly *** poor.

TaSheen

It doesn't take me 10 minutes to load and do writs on one character - more like 3 minutes. And I have only satellite for "broadband".

Nestor

First, you don't need Gold Jewelry, the stat boost over Purple, or even Blue is small. The Set Bonus on its own is more important. I have yet to Gold anything, and i have plenty of Platings, enough to do several sets.

Jewelry has always meant rarity, it should take effort.

Now, top tier crafting writs have a nice temper return, that is low effort.

Hamish999

Another thing to consider if you are thinking of doing daily crafting writs for the mats is that doing them on 8 max crafting levelled toons will net you over 1 million gold a month just for handing the writs in, plus all the rubbish gear that you will just vendor or deconstruct from the rewards.
That's enough to buy four chromium platings a month.

OsUfi

TaSheen wrote: »

It doesn't take me 10 minutes to load and do writs on one character - more like 3 minutes. And I have only satellite for "broadband".

Phrased badly. I thought the "and" would be enough.

"Loading, waiting, and writs on one character = 10 minutes."

Meant loading the game, loading areas, waiting for a dungeon as a healer, and writs.

Rowjoh

however you want to deny or make excuses, the fact remains that jewellry mats are NOT scarce at all.

Once you put a little effort in upfront, its easy to accumulate a lot of mats AND gold - over time.

Remember that this is an MMO, not a 50 hour single player game as some people here seem to want it to be!

OsUfi

Rowjoh wrote: »

however you want to deny or make excuses, the fact remains that jewellry mats are NOT scarce at all.

Once you put a little effort in upfront, its easy to accumulate a lot of mats AND gold - over time.

Remember that this is an MMO, not a 50 hour single player game as some people here seem to want it to be!

[snip]

A year of playing, doing dailies as I can on one character, and the only reason I have golden jewels is thanks to the golden vendor. That's about 800 hours.

The only suggestions I see here to get them is to game the system by running a stack of crafting alts. They're scarce.

[edited for baiting]

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic.

Thank you for your understanding

pentolino18

OsUfi wrote: »

Rowjoh wrote: »

however you want to deny or make excuses, the fact remains that jewellry mats are NOT scarce at all.

Once you put a little effort in upfront, its easy to accumulate a lot of mats AND gold - over time.

Remember that this is an MMO, not a 50 hour single player game as some people here seem to want it to be!

[snip]

A year of playing, doing dailies as I can on one character, and the only reason I have golden jewels is thanks to the golden vendor. That's about 800 hours.

The only suggestions I see here to get them is to game the system by running a stack of crafting alts. They're scarce.

[edited for baiting]

yeah they made it perfectly clear; if you want to craft golden jewels you gotta think of ESO in terms of a work, not a game. At least for my definition of "gaming". Maybe I'm too old to have so much time to waste (also this word is strictly IMHO) on this.
I can understand people who play sports or fighting games to the point they are professionals; here I really can't, probably it's my limitation

h9dlb

The price of chromium platings on pc EU has fallen by 100k in the last 6 months. Was around 320k in January now they can be bought for 220k

hrothbern

h9dlb wrote: »

The price of chromium platings on pc EU has fallen by 100k in the last 6 months. Was around 320k in January now they can be bought for 220k

I wonder how much of it, I guess not all, has to do with the recent change of account wide achievements with as effect that accounts with many daily writters but with only one or a few with many (crafting) achievements, now get the higher yields of that on all their daily writters

FlopsyPrince

MaraxusTheOrc wrote: »

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.

Many of us do not. We can upgrade everything BUT jewelry, even after many days of crafting dailies.

bmnoble wrote: »

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

[snip] They set up many things differently than they are now. They do change things. They did make JC master writs better a while back now, but not better enough to truly relate to the costs of doing them.

Upgrading a ring or necklace, even if you only have 3 of them, should not be so much harder than upgrading the other pieces.

[edited for baiting]

Tberg725

Idk about anyone else but heck I’d be happy IF we got ONE chromium plating AT LEAST when we decon a golden piece of jewelry heck it takes 4 platings to make right? so how is it when we decon them we get back ONE chromium grain and most of the time nothing at all lol

Roxxsmom

Kisakee wrote: »

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.

You make this sound like the game is a job or college course instead of a hobby we do for fun in whatever spare time we have.

Some people have work, families, school and so on and don't have hours and hours each day to play. What play time they have is precious, and they'd like to spend less of it on a farming grind. There's a bit of a paradox that making gold in game is also a time-intensive grind, so folks who don't have the time to farm mats also don't have time to farm the gold to buy them.

I get that MMOs are always going to reward those who have more play time, but surely there are some small adjustments that could narrow the gap a bit. I saw some good suggestions here of ways to do this without making jewelry platings dirt cheap. I've been puzzled for a while at the lack of a jewelcrafting mat hireling, for instance (also at the lack of one for alchemy mats). Changes don't have to be all or nothing. Even reducing the number of grains needed per plating to, say, 7 would make a difference and probably not have catastrophic effects on the economy or ruin things for the folks who do have more hours to play each day.