Having problems understanding crafting in general.

Bubby63071 · April 2014

Are there any guides out there yet? I'm having a lot of problems understanding how to craft better than just white items for my character. Mostly, I'm concentrating on clothing at the moment.

Opioid · April 2014

It's fairly straight-forward once you figure it out. You invest points in the first option in the tree to rank up to new materials to make higher level items. Invest in the rest of the tree to increase extraction, cut researching time and increase the number of things you can research at once, get a hireling that brings you free stuff every day, reduce the improvement materials needed to improve to green, blue, etc.

Then there's traits. You find a piece of gear with a trait that you want, take it to the crafting table and research it. Once you have it researched, you can then add that trait to that item when you craft it, provided you have the necessary trait gem available in your inventory or bank. Each item of that type that you research a trait for then takes roughly twice as long to research the next trait, so lets say you research Reinforced for light armor chest, that takes around 6 hours. The next trait you research will for light armor chest will take around 12 hours, then 24 hours, etc.

Once you craft an item with a trait on it that you want, you can then use the improvement part of the crafting table to improve it to green, blue, etc. provided you have the improvement materials available. Each extra improvement mat you add to the improvement process increases the success of improving the item up to 100%. Investing points in the improvement skill in the skill tree reduces the number of those mats needed to make the improvement.

There are a bunch of guides floating around too, just google "eso clothing crafting guide" or something along those lines and I'm sure you'll find plenty of guides with a lot more detail than my summary here.

Aellaren · April 2014

Adding to what Opioid said, in order to improve an item you need particular crafting items. For clothing its hemming and embroidery etc, to upgrade your items. The only way to get those items is by breaking down items that match their rarity. Meaning if you deconstruct a green belt, you are more likely to receive some Hemming, Blues for Embroidery etc. These will not always give you the item but it's the best way to do it.

LadyInTheWater · April 2014

Opioid wrote: »

Once you craft an item with a trait on it that you want, you can then use the improvement part of the crafting table to improve it to green, blue, etc. provided you have the improvement materials available. Each extra improvement mat you add to the improvement process increases the success of improving the item up to 100%. Investing points in the improvement skill in the skill tree reduces the number of those mats needed to make the improvement.

I'm just going to chime in and let @Bubby63071 know that traits and improvements are not co-dependent (since the original post was about understanding crafting, not necessarily optimizing it).

When it comes to traits/research: Everything Opioid said is completely correct.

When it comes to Improvements, though, you are not restricted to improving items with traits (although, that's optimal). Rather, you can choose to improve even a white-quality, "useless" item. The improvement will increase the damage dealt, even if there's no trait crafted into the item.