Hireling question

imjanko

So, I recently upgraded to hireling 2 (Blacksmithing), and I haven't noticed a difference at all. I still get one chest per day, and for the last three days, all it contained was Dwarven Ore (3).
Is it only at higher levels that these really start to give you anything worthy, or were they nerfed after the duping bug?
should rating 2 get you two chests, or just a better chance at more (or better) stuff in them?

Shadrail

The hireling will always give you items equivalent to the level of the character that opens the box.

SirAndy

Shadrail wrote: »

The hireling will always give you items equivalent to the level of the character that opens the box.

@Shadrail
Not exactly. The items are according to the highest level of the craft across all your characters.
;-)

imjanko

But when you "upgrade" to level 2, shouldn't you get...more?

SirAndy

imjanko wrote: »

But when you "upgrade" to level 2, shouldn't you get...more?

Yes. What level is your character and what level is the craft in question?

Bazzakrak

imjanko wrote: »

But when you "upgrade" to level 2, shouldn't you get...more?

According to the wording on lvl 2, the hireling will send you more and "possibly" better items.
And at lvl 3, he will send in even more and possibly even better items twice per day.

So yeah you should get more, but not garantied better

What I have noticed is I get more and better of the special items when I upgrade my hirelings, the ore/cloth usualy come in stacks of 4 at lvl 2 and stacks of 5 at lvl 3.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO

I want to know if you skip opening them for a few days if they are stacking because I tried to test this on my low level characters and I didnt notice any extra loot in the bags after three days. Also when im supposed to be getting 2 bags of loot per day on my main why is it that I only get one bag? Im assuming they are stacking together, but I honestly cannot tell. To be on the safe side I make sure to log in every day to open them.

Im going to do an extended test on one of my low level characters and wait a whole week before I loot his hireling bags. Ill report back here if I find anything out from this test. It should be pretty obvious if the loot bags are stacking if I wait a whole week.

Charwyn

- The bags can't stuck through 3 days -> You have to claim them daily.

- Better CHANCE doesn't always mean better loot.

UrQuan

Yeah, if you don't log on to a toon with a hireling on any given day, you won't get anything from the hireling for that day. Don't know why, but that's the way they implemented it (despite a tooltip that would imply otherwise). You need to check each toon's mail at least daily, although you can wait as long as you want before actually opening the chests. The contents of the chest aren't determined until you open them, and at that time they will be random, but the odds of getting things like tempers will be dependent on your craft skill.

imjanko

I'm level 34 and my blacksmithing level is around 20. Got 3 Dwarven ore again today.

darkuniab14_ESO

So....
If I have a level 3 character with level 3 smithing (enough for 1 point in hireling), I log into that character so the mail shows up, log off and then log onto my main VR10 level 50 smithing and claim and open the bag with him, what should I expect from the bag?

1. Bunch of crap iron ore?

2. lvl 50 smithing ore?

UrQuan

darkuniab14_ESO wrote: »

So....
If I have a level 3 character with level 3 smithing (enough for 1 point in hireling), I log into that character so the mail shows up, log off and then log onto my main VR10 level 50 smithing and claim and open the bag with him, what should I expect from the bag?

1. Bunch of crap iron ore?

2. lvl 50 smithing ore?

Level 50 smithing ore.

Leijona

Is this intended that way? Or is it a ... let's call it mistake?

Laharl_Overlord

Leijona wrote: »

Is this intended that way? Or is it a ... let's call it mistake?

It's been reported, but most people seem to think that's the way it should be. People flip out if they hear the word "nerf", although the proper term would be "fix".

Cheatingdeath23

I would be happy to get Dwarven Oil every day. Mine alternate, Dwarven Oil is a common day, sometimes worse, yesterday I got grain solvent.

It varies. I now have 2 grain solvent and 2 legendary tempers after having a Level 2 hireling for three weeks.

SirAndy

darkuniab14_ESO wrote: »

So....
If I have a level 3 character with level 3 smithing (enough for 1 point in hireling), I log into that character so the mail shows up, log off and then log onto my main VR10 level 50 smithing and claim and open the bag with him, what should I expect from the bag?

1. Bunch of crap iron ore?

2. lvl 50 smithing ore?

@darkuniab14_ESO
Actually, it doesn't matter which of your characters opens the box. Since your highest character is a VR10 with level 50 smithing, even if the level 3 character is the one who spent the skill points for the hireling and opens the box, you'll still get the level 50 scaled loot.
;-)

PS: One important thing to remember, a chance to get high level mats is just that, a chance, not a guarantee ...

Cwx87406ub17_ESO1

In the tool tip It says the hireling will go out daily and return with materials but if I am off for 3 days I still only get one bag. That is a problem IMHO I should get a bag for each day. I also noticed it dose not start your daily timer until you receive the bag from your mail. The timer should be based off when you picked up the skill line and you should get a bag for each day. Just saying. You spent the skill points it should do what it says.

xxslam48xxb14_ESO

Alright like I said I was going to do I waited a whole week (well only 6 days) and there is definently not 6 days worth of items in the bag! So if you want to get the full amount out of this log on to your characters once per day or your losing out on potential legendary craft mats. I believe the bag had 3 jute and a gem or maybe a motif mat if you want to judge wether that is 6 days worth of mats or not.

SexyVette07

The type of raw material you get is tied to the skill level of the craft. If you are 4/9 and can make Dwarven metalworking stuff, youll get dwarven ore. If you are 9/9, youll get the highest level raw materials.

The hireling rank determines the upgrade materials you get.

bluddenguttzb16_ESO

These are my own observations in relation to the crafting bags:

The crafting skill level of the charcter who opens the bag seems to determine the crafting material received; my low-level blacksmith currently always receives Iron Ore while my higher level ones always gets material suitable to his crafting skill level.

Since upgrading to Hireling level 2/3, the higher level chacter now receives ore one level above his skill level; he now gets Calcinium although he can only craft Ebony.

At Hireling level 1/3 they receive 3 pieces of ore.
At Hireling level 2/3 they receive 4 pieces of ore

I haven't paid a lot of attention to the racial items (jewels). Actually receiving anything seems to be random but is more likely as you level-up the Hireling Skill. Also, the number of different items and the quantities of each seem to tie-in with that skill level.

As for tempering items, they seem to be completely random. I have had low-level characters receive legendary tempers and high-level ones receive nothing at all for days; although I suspect that the chances of receiving them probably does increase along with the Hireling skill level.

kennylindbergeb17_ESO

xxslam48xxb14_ESO wrote: »

I want to know if you skip opening them for a few days if they are stacking because I tried to test this on my low level characters and I didnt notice any extra loot in the bags after three days. Also when im supposed to be getting 2 bags of loot per day on my main why is it that I only get one bag? Im assuming they are stacking together, but I honestly cannot tell. To be on the safe side I make sure to log in every day to open them.

Im going to do an extended test on one of my low level characters and wait a whole week before I loot his hireling bags. Ill report back here if I find anything out from this test. It should be pretty obvious if the loot bags are stacking if I wait a whole week.

At Hierling 3 you get it twice a day every 12 hours so 8am and 8pm if that is the time you pick up mate

knaveofengland

I have level 1 hirelings and I get all sorts to the lowest to the highest so I think at thee moment its a lot random , remember the game is new so please give it time eso will sort out any bugs , by the way bugs great for fishing

Laharl_Overlord

SirAndy wrote: »

darkuniab14_ESO wrote: »

So....
If I have a level 3 character with level 3 smithing (enough for 1 point in hireling), I log into that character so the mail shows up, log off and then log onto my main VR10 level 50 smithing and claim and open the bag with him, what should I expect from the bag?

1. Bunch of crap iron ore?

2. lvl 50 smithing ore?

@darkuniab14_ESO
Actually, it doesn't matter which of your characters opens the box. Since your highest character is a VR10 with level 50 smithing, even if the level 3 character is the one who spent the skill points for the hireling and opens the box, you'll still get the level 50 scaled loot.
;-)

PS: One important thing to remember, a chance to get high level mats is just that, a chance, not a guarantee ...

This is wrong. The loot depends upon the character opening the box. If the level 3 opens the box he will get iron ore. Make sure you open with your level 50.

ZoM_Head

Shadrail wrote: »

The hireling will always give you items equivalent to the level of the character that opens the box.

Got Raw Jute on my level 24 character using Flax and moving on to Cotton.

Some people reported good stuff, but one of my characters got some low level random stuff, i de-construct and get better items and faster than the silly emails.

Deleted the character eventually and decided that old fashioned search and gathering was much more rewarding.

Cheatingdeath23

Elmojito1000eb17_ESO wrote: »

Shadrail wrote: »

The hireling will always give you items equivalent to the level of the character that opens the box.

Got Raw Jute on my level 24 character using Flax and moving on to Cotton.

Some people reported good stuff, but one of my characters got some low level random stuff, i de-construct and get better items and faster than the silly emails.

Deleted the character eventually and decided that old fashioned search and gathering was much more rewarding.

I've received 3 grain solvent and 3 legendary tempers since getting my hireling several weeks ago.

It isn't going to ever supply you with enough to NOT do the old fashioned search and gathering, but it is a nice perk to randomly get very nice tempers.

Laharl_Overlord

Elmojito1000eb17_ESO wrote: »

Shadrail wrote: »

The hireling will always give you items equivalent to the level of the character that opens the box.

Got Raw Jute on my level 24 character using Flax and moving on to Cotton.

Some people reported good stuff, but one of my characters got some low level random stuff, i de-construct and get better items and faster than the silly emails.

Deleted the character eventually and decided that old fashioned search and gathering was much more rewarding.

The hireling brings items based on the crafting level of the character that opens it.

If you want to get the most out of hirelings, put them on all your alts. I personally only play one character, so I made 7 alts for use as mules and hireling farmers.

- Put a bunch of mats in the bank for deconstructing.

- Create alt. Skip the tutorial. You'll start with 3 skill points, enough for 3 hirelings. Daggerfall is the best faction due to close crafting tables.

- Deconstruct with alt until you hit level 3. Activate hireling. It doesn't take much to get to level 3. Do this for 3 crafting styles - blacksmith, woodworking, clothier or enchanting. You can also grab 2 skyshards (you start with one) and have 4 hirelings on each alt.

- Once the hirelings start coming in, log into the alts just for a second for the mail to arrive. Then use the main to open all the mail.

It's pretty quick and easy to set up initially and only takes a few minutes per day to gather the mail. Hirelings are on a 24 hour timer that starts when you receive the mail, so just note the time you get your mail and try to get it about the same time the next day. Yes, it will keep rolling later and later which is annoying.

I have 4 hirelings on all 8 characters, so I get 32 hireling chests per day. I don't play any of my alts and my main is only level 30 (I level slow...). I generally get between 1 and 3 legendary upgrade mats per day and about the same amount of epics. Plus tons of ore, wood, fabric and runes. I've been doing this for about a month now and have a healthy stock of epic and legend upgrade mats waiting for when I'm ready to use them. Hirelings are actually pretty awesome.

Kanar

I've been doing the same thing. Since we are forced to use alts as mules, may as well get some added functionality out of them.

Taurus498

@Laharl_Overlord is correct.

Here is a very informative video on this issue.

*snip*

I personally think that the devs really need to fix this and fast, so that the Hireling chests are actually tied to each individual character that the Hirelings belongs to, so that the chests can only able to be opened by that character the Hireling belongs to.

As it currently stands, it's far too easy to accumulate large amounts of rare crafting materials, as you can see in the vid above.

EDIT: Removed the video as it looks like there is indeed an exploit with the current Hireling system, and the Devs are now currently looking into it - http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/757895/#Comment_757895

lowf

Thank you for dispelling all the rumors flying around on this thread, I was planning to post something similar til I saw yours!!

Laharl_Overlord wrote: »

The hireling brings items based on the crafting level of the character that opens it.
...
Hirelings are on a 24 hour timer that starts when you receive the mail, so just note the time you get your mail and try to get it about the same time the next day. Yes, it will keep rolling later and later which is annoying.

Fun facts, there are two, lets call them "features", at play here, both of which would be VERY difficult to change from a software engineering standpoint. The first feature is that the contents of chests are calculated when they are opened, the second feature is that chests from your alts can be accepted and opened by your main.

--disclaimer-- when I say hard, I mean it would require a one off engineering solution, that wouldn't fit into the original design of the rest of the systems they are related to, this doesn't mean that Zenimax won't change it, it just means it would be a significant investment of engineering time so I don't imagine it will be prioritized over fixing dupe bug, balance play, creating new content, etc. As well, this bug doesn't really hurt anyone, even with 8 hirelings, I get 1-2 legendary tempers every 1/2 days, that's 1 epic-to-legendary upgrade every 20-40 days for a lvl 1 blacksmith, or 1 epic-to-legendary upgrade every 10-20 days for a lvl 50 blacksmith, doesn't seem that OP imho. (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/68548/temper-expertise) --disclaimer--

One possible change that would "fix" this "feature" would be to calculate the contents of the hireling chests when they are sent in the mail, and base the contents on the crafting level of the receiving character.

Let's start by considering why chests are currently calculated at opening time instead of received-in-the-mail time: this is a simple storage issue, if the contents of each chest takes 1 kilobyte of space (the size of a small text document on your computer), now let's say that 1 million people have a single point in a single hireling type, 1,000Bytes * 1,000,000 = 1Gigabyte of storage space, per day, being used. This is space that can't be reclaimed and reused until these people open their mail. Seeing as there are far more than 1 million players (I believe) and many players will have more than one character, with more than one hireling, this would be very costly to do.

So, the next possible solution would be to bind the chest to the character with the skill point in the hireling when the mail is sent. That way no other character can accept the mailed goods.. Well, here we have an amusing problem.. The mail system is designed to explicitly NOT allow any character-bound items to be mailed, *ever*. So this fix would be in violation of that explicit feature, mail just doesn't support sending bound items, period. To change this would mean implementing a very specific loophole for this very specific use case, and if implemented poorly could create a loophole by which all bound items can be mailed, thus it would be hard to implement correctly.


This is why I assume this won't be changed soon, and I hope it won't be changed ever! 8 toon hireling build FTW!

huntgod_ESO

I'm curious how the OP missed the thread that addresses these specific issues and has 20k+ views and is the top thread on the entire board.

Cheatingdeath23

lowf wrote: »

Thank you for dispelling all the rumors flying around on this thread, I was planning to post something similar til I saw yours!!

Laharl_Overlord wrote: »

The hireling brings items based on the crafting level of the character that opens it.
...
Hirelings are on a 24 hour timer that starts when you receive the mail, so just note the time you get your mail and try to get it about the same time the next day. Yes, it will keep rolling later and later which is annoying.

Fun facts, there are two, lets call them "features", at play here, both of which would be VERY difficult to change from a software engineering standpoint. The first feature is that the contents of chests are calculated when they are opened, the second feature is that chests from your alts can be accepted and opened by your main.

--disclaimer-- when I say hard, I mean it would require a one off engineering solution, that wouldn't fit into the original design of the rest of the systems they are related to, this doesn't mean that Zenimax won't change it, it just means it would be a significant investment of engineering time so I don't imagine it will be prioritized over fixing dupe bug, balance play, creating new content, etc. As well, this bug doesn't really hurt anyone, even with 8 hirelings, I get 1-2 legendary tempers every 1/2 days, that's 1 epic-to-legendary upgrade every 20-40 days for a lvl 1 blacksmith, or 1 epic-to-legendary upgrade every 10-20 days for a lvl 50 blacksmith, doesn't seem that OP imho. (http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/68548/temper-expertise) --disclaimer--

One possible change that would "fix" this "feature" would be to calculate the contents of the hireling chests when they are sent in the mail, and base the contents on the crafting level of the receiving character.

Let's start by considering why chests are currently calculated at opening time instead of received-in-the-mail time: this is a simple storage issue, if the contents of each chest takes 1 kilobyte of space (the size of a small text document on your computer), now let's say that 1 million people have a single point in a single hireling type, 1,000Bytes * 1,000,000 = 1Gigabyte of storage space, per day, being used. This is space that can't be reclaimed and reused until these people open their mail. Seeing as there are far more than 1 million players (I believe) and many players will have more than one character, with more than one hireling, this would be very costly to do.

So, the next possible solution would be to bind the chest to the character with the skill point in the hireling when the mail is sent. That way no other character can accept the mailed goods.. Well, here we have an amusing problem.. The mail system is designed to explicitly NOT allow any character-bound items to be mailed, *ever*. So this fix would be in violation of that explicit feature, mail just doesn't support sending bound items, period. To change this would mean implementing a very specific loophole for this very specific use case, and if implemented poorly could create a loophole by which all bound items can be mailed, thus it would be hard to implement correctly.


This is why I assume this won't be changed soon, and I hope it won't be changed ever! 8 toon hireling build FTW!

You make some good points, but I think the easy solution is this:

Instead of binding it to a character, but avoiding the storage issue of sending the items, they could include a single line of code with each "chest" so that when the chest is opened, it references the source character.

Example: I have a main and an alt. Both have hirelings. I receive the mail on my main and open it immediately-- it automatically references my main account UPON opening the chest. I switch to my alt and open the mail (but not the chest). I then switch back to my main and open the chest-- it automatically references my alt account (despite me opening it with the main).

I'm pretty sure a single line of code referencing the intended character solves it. That said, I don't think it is that giant an exploit as it is. I plan on starting up 6 more alts and investing in hirelings, but it will be a pain in the rear to "harvest" each of the chests each day.