[Guide] Managing and upgrading inventory space with provisioning

Jessabella · February 2014

I'm not much of a guide writer, this is my first, but it's just some tricks I picked up on dealing with limited bag/bank space, the cost of upgrades and provisioning. Most of this is copy and pasted from another post I made but some PMs I got from others has convinced me to turn it into it's own "guide". This is just my own play-style really and whats works for me!

Provisioning is fairly easy to lvl, I was 50 in it before my character could even swap weapons. But it uses a lot of ingredients and recipes. The ingredients tend to fill you up fast and have little or no sell value without cooking.

I only collect stuff as I am questing, I never farm ingredients or go out of my way to collect them, the way I might if I am running along and pass a rune node.

The Bank in Daggerfall, (Glenumbra) also is an excellent recipe and ingredient source. It has a lot of drawers where I often find recipes as well as crates and barrels and a cooking fire right inside. It makes managing inventory a lot faster.

There are cooking fires every where, as well as merchants to sell your finished items too, they are way more common then crafting tables, so if I get full I can quickly empty out. You only need 1 free space to cook, unlike extracting, where you need 4, so its easier to deal with limited bag space.

Also, I tend to look through the ones I can make and do the ones that will use up full ingredient stacks. clearing more bag space. For example if I can make 4 Horker Stews and that will use up all my Horker Meat, I will do that before cooking 7 Beef pastries and having 15 beef left over. Remember Cooking does need a spot, even if you have the finished food item in your bag already so by using the full stack of Horker Meat first I made a space for another cooked item.

At first I was not able to do other crafts at all because of space issues, but since I can make 6 items from 1 ingredient, a skill you can unlock, I find provisioning a good source of income. Since a stack of 100 of even the lowbie ones sell for 500, and it increases with lvl, I was able to use cooking to upgrade to 100 bag spaces and 70 bank. With so many crates, barrels, sacks, etc, finding stuff is easy and faster then searching for nodes to harvest and then vendor to an NPC, it's also instant, no waiting like harvesting.

I do not store any ingredients in my bank, just my bag so I can instantly use them at a fire, instead of auto pulling them from the bank when ever I see a fire and ending up with a full bag and 40 free bank slots back in town! I quickly learned how incredibly frustrating that was, especially when you find yourself destroying items or passing up loot in a dungeon only to port to town and see an almost empty bank that was recently full.

As far as other crafts, I use my bank to only keep weapons, gears and non- cooking ingredients since the possibility of running into a crafting table mid dungeon is far lower then running into a cook fire mid dungeon, and those are common.

One last thing, I also have someone in game who does not focus at all on provisioning, instead they focus on a craft that has no benefit to my char, so I send them all the materials I find that they can use and they send me any ingredients they find. Not only does that help me make money, but it's also like a 10 minute warning to me. When I get full I will send them a message (usually 3) attaching all the stuff I have for them, that makes 18 more spots for me before I need to find a bank/vendor/crafting table, and when they mail ingredients to me, I leave them attached to the mail until I am at a fire and can use them right away instead of taking up space.

@Daenerys and @MIng_ESO, just making sure you ladies see this! I would not have wanted to post it if you did not convince me I should

Srikandi · February 2014

Excellent guide

Hadn't considered that taking the skill that gives you extra products would be the key to growing your storage space

Seems like it's a good reason for any crafter to do provisioning for a while, even if they drop it after their storage is maxed!

kewl · February 2014

Thanks!

Jessabella · February 2014

@Srikandi, I had not even thought of dropping it later for other crafts.

That's a great idea because if you respec you get all those points back, and once you max out your inventory I am sure your a high enough level where funds aren't a huge deal so all the space dedicated to it can be put towards other crafts!

Icy · February 2014

Huh, interesting. I like the idea of that. Also very sensible to keep the cooking ingredients in your bag, not the bank.

Thank you very much for this.

_____________________________________________________________________
Greetings, Outlanders from the Debaucherous Tea Party Guild
Main: Reyven Indarys TESO: @IcyIC Zone: Sydney Australia GMT+10
Twit: individualchic Time: M-S 19:30-21:00, T/W+S/S 13:00-14:30

MIng_ESO · February 2014

Jessabella wrote: »

I'm not much of a guide writer, this is my first, but it's just some tricks I picked up on dealing with limited bag/bank space, the cost of upgrades and provisioning. Most of this is copy and pasted from another post I made but some PMs I got from others has convinced me to turn it into it's own "guide". This is just my own play-style really and whats works for me!

Provisioning is fairly easy to lvl, I was 50 in it before my character could even swap weapons. But it uses a lot of ingredients and recipes. The ingredients tend to fill you up fast and have little or no sell value without cooking.

I only collect stuff as I am questing, I never farm ingredients or go out of my way to collect them, the way I might if I am running along and pass a rune node.

The Bank in Daggerfall, (Glenumbra) also is an excellent recipe and ingredient source. It has a lot of drawers where I often find recipes as well as crates and barrels and a cooking fire right inside. It makes managing inventory a lot faster.

There are cooking fires every where, as well as merchants to sell your finished items too, they are way more common then crafting tables, so if I get full I can quickly empty out. You only need 1 free space to cook, unlike extracting, where you need 4, so its easier to deal with limited bag space.

Also, I tend to look through the ones I can make and do the ones that will use up full ingredient stacks. clearing more bag space. For example if I can make 4 Horker Stews and that will use up all my Horker Meat, I will do that before cooking 7 Beef pastries and having 15 beef left over. Remember Cooking does need a spot, even if you have the finished food item in your bag already so by using the full stack of Horker Meat first I made a space for another cooked item.

At first I was not able to do other crafts at all because of space issues, but since I can make 6 items from 1 ingredient, a skill you can unlock, I find provisioning a good source of income. Since a stack of 100 of even the lowbie ones sell for 500, and it increases with lvl, I was able to use cooking to upgrade to 100 bag spaces and 70 bank. With so many crates, barrels, sacks, etc, finding stuff is easy and faster then searching for nodes to harvest and then vendor to an NPC, it's also instant, no waiting like harvesting.

I do not store any ingredients in my bank, just my bag so I can instantly use them at a fire, instead of auto pulling them from the bank when ever I see a fire and ending up with a full bag and 40 free bank slots back in town! I quickly learned how incredibly frustrating that was, especially when you find yourself destroying items or passing up loot in a dungeon only to port to town and see an almost empty bank that was recently full.

As far as other crafts, I use my bank to only keep weapons, gears and non- cooking ingredients since the possibility of running into a crafting table mid dungeon is far lower then running into a cook fire mid dungeon, and those are common.

One last thing, I also have someone in game who does not focus at all on provisioning, instead they focus on a craft that has no benefit to my char, so I send them all the materials I find that they can use and they send me any ingredients they find. Not only does that help me make money, but it's also like a 10 minute warning to me. When I get full I will send them a message (usually 3) attaching all the stuff I have for them, that makes 18 more spots for me before I need to find a bank/vendor/crafting table, and when they mail ingredients to me, I leave them attached to the mail until I am at a fire and can use them right away instead of taking up space.

@Daenerys and @MIng_ESO, just making sure you ladies see this! I would not have wanted to post it if you did not convince me I should

I will add it to our site to make sure everyone sees it. This is a very nice and awesome setup..

Srugzal · February 2014

Besides being a series of strategies for provisioning itself, I think this is the first practical guide to inventory management I've seen, full of good, practical things that will apply to any activity that utilizes your storage capacity. Thanks for posting it!

Satyros · February 2014

Good points. Especially the "free" storage mail provides.

Ysne58 · February 2014

Nice guide @Jessabella

Ilawynde · February 2014

good job

Jessabella · February 2014

Frodos_Bane wrote: »

Besides being a series of strategies for provisioning itself, I think this is the first practical guide to inventory management I've seen, full of good, practical things that will apply to any activity that utilizes your storage capacity. Thanks for posting it!

@Frodos_Bane‌, Thanks, I tend to be a very practical person! I suppose OCD has it's good side! I had to come up with a plan because every time my inventory gets full I end up taking a coffee break

No matter what anyone says, there is such a thing as too much coffee.

Satyros wrote: »

Good points. Especially the "free" storage mail provides.

@Satyros, I wouldn't think of mail so much as free storage because you can not mail to yourself and mail does expire.

But since some crafts reward you with faster leveling when extracting someone else's stuff the trick on sending things to a friend can help any craft I suppose. This has helped me and a friend make progress in the notoriously slow enchanting as far as glyphs go.

Another example, you do enchanting and your friend does alchemy. They both use a fair amount of space, so by collecting all those alchemy herbs, you will get full faster but you instantly gain space as soon as you mail the herbs. By doing that I can sometimes get 2 more dungeon runs in before I have to pass up loot.

When my friend sends me their unneeded runes, I will leave them in the mail until I get to town and am ready and to use them or throw them in the bank.

ripple · February 2014

Well written tutorial on inventory management - thanks! I did provisioning a good amount last beta (though not past ~lvl 12) and had ended up in the "too much bank space, no space in the bags" situation, but hadn't thought through how best to work around it.

Jessabella · February 2014

@ripple thanks! I hope a lot of people can benefit from it!

Tamisan · February 2014

Very good, @Jessabella‌! Well-thought-out and clearly worded. Thanks!

Kalliope · February 2014

In all the beta's so far I haven't been able to figure out crafting. I am planning to restart with a new character this time and try some of your tips! I am such a solo player I think I've been missing out on a lot of the possibilities in game besides just following the quest lines and it will be fun to try something new! Thanks for the great post.

Jessabella · February 2014

@Tamisan, and @Kalliope, Thanks, always glad to help out other Mara's! We ladies stick together!

Corithna · March 2014

For myself I tend to focus on the three smith professions, while my leveling partner focuses on provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy.

For bank use, I do tend to store refined materials in the bank however I refrain from doing so with raw materials as any incomplete stack can not be auto filled if it's in the bank and will instead take up an extra storage slot. Refined materials on the other hand are created at crafting stations that tend to be somewhat near banks. *one caveat here are the set crafting workshops.

As we level I'm charged with creating new white armor and weapons for the both of us every other ding. As we quest I mail all the materials for professions I'm not focused on to her and vice versa. This as pointed out in the original post works out very well. Unused armor and weapon drops are sent to me for destruction. However out leveled gear that I crafted is sent to her for deconstruction to take advantage of the bonus to inspiration when you destroy items made by another player. This means she gets free advancements for virtually no overhead.

We will usually do a town run for crates, barrels etc once every couple of hours to help stock up. Ensuring we both loot as we go as they are now instanced to each player.

Some attention is paid to putting leveling points into the off professions for the purpose of buying the hireling passive for as many as we can. This is replicated on all possible alts. Signing into each alt at the beginning of each play session yields up a hefty load of materials for a minuscule time cost.

Tracking leaned traits externally is a useful tool. As is delaying the learning of traits until you can research more then one at a time. Ultimately this will save a mountain of time. Focus your research on armor weights and weapon types you (and your partner(s)) currently use. This will save you a lot of time instead of having to wait for another 12 hours for that restoration staff trait you decided to learn. Because, it seems that it's an invariable truth that you run across a trait your need or want while you have no research slots currently open.

Mules (I.E. alts) can be an extremely useful storage container. Drop all your goods into your bank and for each alts pull a predefined set of items that you will not be needing for a while for long term storage.

Always stay stocked up on lock picks. Any chest you come across but can't open for lack of lock picks is a lost chance at an item that has a trait you need to research.

If you see it, pick it, pick it up, or dig it up. An unharvested node does you no good whatsoever. There is however a caveat to this believe it or not. If you enter a lowbie zone to help out a guildie or buddy only pick the herbs and runes you run across unless that zone has other materials you need due to be under leveled in a particular profession. But don't skip the chests here as it doesn't matter what level item a trait appears upon, you can still research it!

With a trusted leveling partner there is no reason to ever run out of bag space while leveling up. Just mail the majority of the contents of your bag to them with the subject bump, return or whatever code you two come up with. They will do the same. When either of you get a mail with that subject line, just mail it back.

Once you hit the max level for gear using a particular material, a far better use for left over supplies is to craft out as many items as you can. Then put them up for sale on one of your guilds stores.

For alchemy only use the highest level of water you have the skill to make potions from. This is because you use the same herbs no matter what level the potion. The only exception to this is if your alchemy has out leveled your character and you need some potions for personal use. Otherwise sell off all your outdated water on the guild store.

Enchanting is an interesting profession where it is possible to require up to two mules to hold all the various runes you may need to store. Ensure you're saving all your runes, and any unused glyph you come across or purchase should be broken down as soon as possible. Pay attention to the names of runes as they are translated. They will give you reliable blueprints for what glyph they will create. Keep a log of glyphs you have created to avoid making duplicates unless you intend to use them on armor, weapons, or jewelry. New discoveries will yield up the best experience and help you to advance far faster then any other method I've found.

Provisioning is a topic that is far better covered in the OP then I've been able to come up with on my own. Bravo!

If any of my smith professions needs a lift I just share my materials with my leveling partner who crafts up a bunch of items in that profession for me to destroy. There is a synergy to this kind of team work that is amazing in it's results.

Finally, until you are in your mid 40's save up all your quality upgrade materials {*smiths} refining and hirelings have yielded up. This is because all the over land quests and mobs are balanced around a player having at level white gear. Top this off with the fact that packs of mobs are much easier to down as a team, and you will find that your gear carries you all the way to this level with no problems. There are a few solo instances where you might need a bump in gear but they are infrequent and worth waiting to see their location prior to spending these upgrade materials. Keeping in mind that it take the same materials to convert a white to a green level 5 item, that is does a white to a green level vr10 item. The same is true with traits gems. Save them up during your leveling experience, once you hit tougher content you'll be glad for those extra resources. Not to mention the fact that there are passive that make it less expensive to do such upgrades once you're leveled up and have the points to spend.

So that's all I can think of on this topic, great post @Jessabella‌ . I hope you guys find some of this useful. Happy crafting everyone!

Edit: This post my be a bit off topic covering more in the realm of crafting tips along with inventory management. However they just seemed to naturally flow together.