Crafting level process

LordPythia · April 2014

Hi,

I'm an avid blacksmith and I craft more than I quest. Has anyone felt burdened by the minimal experienced gained from crafting? I have crafted 4 full sets of heavy armor, as well as countless swords, Research, etc. The thing is, I'm barely halfway to level 4. I see people in my merchant guild claim to have high level black smith. Do you guys mind the slow leveling of crafting or do you wish it was a little shorter, at least during lower levels (1-5).

Also, I feel like the chances for finding honing stones and other improvement material is so low for it to be worth only 20% chance. I can only imagine the difficulty of higher tier improvement.

DJ_Pandatripp · April 2014

The key to leveling blacksmithing is to break down all the gear you get. It's best you go out and explore, kill some mobs and open some chests. If you have a friend who does blacksmithing also, you should trade the items you craft, as you will get more XP from breaking their stuff down than yours.
Hope it helps.

LordPythia · April 2014

Ok, So the item trading is for break down experience. That makes sense, in fact it's an amazing idea. I like that, and as soon as servers are up I plan to take advantage of that. Thank you!

TadPrime · April 2014

From what I have seen you get your best advancement from deconstructing equipment, especially green and up. Creating itself barely moves the bar (in fact, my wood crafting (where I have not created anything beyond maybe one shield around level 6) is the same level as my Blacksmithing where I fill in a lot of my armor gaps at various times).

Also I have heard, although haven't proven for myself, that deconning your own stuff doesn't give as much inspiration.

mehizstego · April 2014

The only bad thing about blacksmithing is that refining ores doesn't give you XP.

Omnii_Evermind · April 2014

I too, am an avid blacksmith and try to spend most of my time smithing

With smithing the, crafting is the lowest xp gain you can get. 1) From my experience, no matter what type of item you craft, it grants the same experience gain. For example, crafting an iron dagger that uses 2 bars gives about 60 experience. Crafting a level 14 iron chestpeice, which uses significantly more bars, also gives the same 60 or so experience. When you get access to higher ores, like oralchum and high iron, they give better experience per craft, but it's still best to craft daggers if you want to craft for experience. Best way to get experience, and cheapest, is to adventure, and deconstruct and research gear that you loot. It gives a great deal of experience compared to making an item. I gave up crafting for experience after level 8 smithing as the "style" materials alone cost me about 3,000 gold to go from level 7 to level 8 smithing. It's just too costly and inefficient to craft to gain levels. It's all about deconstructing.

JD_Douglas · April 2014

Just be sure your not breaking down your own crafted items. As DJ said, quickest way to level crafting skill is to build a supply of mats, craft and trade with a partner, break down, rinse & repeat. Also break down all found green & white items that don't have traits your going to research soon. As I understand it, you get 0 XP from breaking down your own crafted items.

Omnii_Evermind · April 2014

mehizstego wrote: »

The only bad thing about blacksmithing is that refining ores doesn't give you XP.

True. From my experience, you take 10 ores and refine them into bars. With most bars, I just sell them (not worth saving for crafting, and I have thousands of bars). I save only 1 stack of bars, to make myself armor/weapons, as needed, the rest fund my adventures. The *main* reason I refine ore though is to get the tempers, which are very rare. They allow me to make items into green, blue... etc quality. I get most of my tempers from refining

LordPythia · April 2014

Ah that makes a lot of sense. I like that, I just wish it was a little more informing so that people that wanted to really smith, had the info for doing it more efficiently. I appreciate the feedback! What do you guys think about the C.O.D mail system for selling your crafts? I haven't seen it before in any MMO that I've played. Are you guys going to make this your main system of selling or rather use the guild stores?

sflanagan21ub17_ESO · April 2014

What some of the above folks have said on break downs...Break down everything you get from a blacksmithing standpoint and buy all of the cheap blacksmithing related gear off of the guild store.

You will find as you progress there is gear out there with a +% increase to inspiration. I believe this helps in the whole crafting process as well so look for those items.

Omnii_Evermind · April 2014

I haven't sold anything to others yet. As the tempers are sooo rare, I've just been using them to make myself and my brother green/blue weapons and armor, to advance our adventuring. When I get an abundance though, the COD system will come in handy. Just note, there IS a fee for using it. I had a guildy say when he sold a book for 1500 gold, the COD fee was about 300 gold

so maybe factor that into sell price, or at least be aware of it

JD_Douglas · April 2014

COD is nice imo. I've seen in a couple different MMO's in the past and its handy.

michael.fielderrwb17_ESO · April 2014

The fastest way to craft is to pair up with someone, you both make gear, swap, then deconstruct the other persons gear. This even works with an alt - craft, throw in bank, deconstruct, rinse and repeat. Obviously it's going to use much less mats if you pair up with someone else (less mats individually) rather than use an alt.

The best thing about deconstructing loot drops though is green and above you get the materials to upgrade your gear and it's free crafting xp. I'm only level 14 but I'm already level 7 and above in all crafting skills and I haven't crafted a single item yet. I'd rather deconstruct it for the materials than sell it to a vendor for 10-20 gold (except the white items that the trait is they sell more to vendors, these will be 50g+ to sell, greens and above I still deconstruct for the upgrade materials)

Keep an eye out for those traits you want to research though and try to always be researching something. You can have 1 item researching for each of the 3 craft skills (up to 3 when you can spend points into that craft skill)

LordPythia · April 2014

See my guild is selling the fine tempers at 25g a piece because fine isn't great, and its so low on chance, I don't see anything but epic and legendary tempers being more than 100g a peice and I assume those to tempers will be A LOT, in the upper thousands of gold. The books in my opinion arent worth 1500 gold unless its the ancient elves, or other race one. I think the kahjit and other ordinary motifs are worth maybe 400-500 gold at most. Then again, economies of MMO's are crazy in early stages.

Omnii_Evermind · April 2014

0.o Lucky :P My guild... doesn't sell squat. All of the loot the guild gets goes to "designated" crafters. Haven't seen anyone selling tempers in /zone either, else I would snatch those up in a heartbeat at 25 gold each.

LordPythia · April 2014

Yea I wouldn't value them much higher than that because fine isn't a significant upgrade. If you are apart of ebonheart, you're welcome to join my merch guild!

Natai · April 2014

Does it seem to anyone else that the experience gains from deconstructing in Blacksmithing are significantly lower than with Woodworking?

I had both at the same level and deconstructed a few items with each (of roughly equivalent levels) and my Blacksmithing rank barely increased compared to Woodworking...

monden1980b16_ESO · April 2014

Experienced the same... woodworking goes faster, I'm trying to level clothing and it goes quite slow compared to woodworking.

Provisioning goes really fast... got it to 26 "by accident", it's really easy to level, even without spending skill points.

Enchanting seems to ne incredibly hard to level... I deconstructed every single glyph and it barely goes up (enchanting lvl 6 atm, character level 16...)