I want to get more motifs, but I don't know what is worth farming or what is better off just buying.

naturebased · February 2020

I went to the outfit station today and even in my 1200 hours of play noticed I had a lot more missing motifs than earned. Right now with the event im making good progress farming deadwater and elder argonian, and I plan on buying honor guard at the end of the event since prices will probably be cheapest then. Are there any motifs that are way better off buying than trying to earn? I dont play pvp outside of midyear mayhem, so should I go ahead and buy all my missing alliance styles since the prices probably aren't bad right now since that event ended only a couple weeks ago? Any input is appreciated, thanks.

Freakin_Hytte · February 2020

If you can wait for the anniversary event you'll be able to both farm them through dailies and buy the ones you haven't found very cheap, while selling or trading motifs you already have. That is how I got my grandmaster crafter title. I bought/farmed 20 motifs when I did it and I only did crafting writs everyday on my toons, so I didn't even have to put in a lot of time to get it.

Taleof2Cities · February 2020

The post above me is correct, @naturebased ... you can obtain quite a few random motif pages by just farming the Anniversary Event dailies.

Most motifs, however, are difficult to just farm in-game.

Many are tied to group dungeon vet clears ... with only a guaranteed drop on veteran hard mode.

The most difficult are the ones related to Trials: Dro-m'Athra, Sunspire, and Refabricated are good examples. And, of course, the infamous Welkynar ... which requires ten (10) motif fragments to even make one of the 14 pages at random.

You're correct about the PvP motifs, though. They should be at good prices right now just after the Mid-Year Mayhem (depending on your platform of course). So, shop carefully.

Don't forget the motifs you can buy with writ vouchers at the writ vendor Rolis Hlaalu. Those can be bought pretty quick depending on the rate of master writs you're doing ...

naturebased · February 2020

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

The post above me is correct, @naturebased ... you can obtain quite a few random motif pages by just farming the Anniversary Event dailies.

Most motifs, however, are difficult to just farm in-game.

Many are tied to group dungeon vet clears ... with only a guaranteed drop on veteran hard mode.

The most difficult are the ones related to Trials: Dro-m'Athra, Sunspire, and Refabricated are good examples. And, of course, the infamous Welkynar ... which requires ten (10) motif fragments to even make one of the 14 pages at random.

You're correct about the PvP motifs, though. They should be at good prices right now just after the Mid-Year Mayhem (depending on your platform of course). So, shop carefully.

Don't forget the motifs you can buy with writ vouchers at the writ vendor Rolis Hlaalu. Those can be bought pretty quick depending on the rate of master writs you're doing ...

I think i may try to snatch up some alliance motifs now and hold off for others until the anniversary

Septimus_Magna · February 2020

I think the best way is to farm new motifs and sell them to buy old motifs.
New motifs are generally more expensive so you'll be able to buy a couple pages for each page you farm.

If you want to find cheap motif pages I can highly recommend going to Tamriel Trade Center to find the guild stores with the best prices.

Alienoutlaw · February 2020

most guilds have a ton of motifs sitting in the bank doing nothing as alot of them are not worth the listing cost, buying the harder to get ones can be very costly as the more desirable one can go for upwards of 100k each, maybe worth asking around in your guilds if anyone has spares

Ri_Khan · February 2020

Drop rates are so low on most motifs that it's often a better use of your time to just farm gold in whatever manner you can enjoy and buy them from guild traders. I spent 3 months last year trying to farm the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild motifs before giving up out of frustration and buying the missing pages from traders. It was easily the most unrewarding experience I've ever had playing a video game. It was also an eye-opener into the fact that the in-game economy is seen as way more important than players' time invested into making any kind of progress.

TheRealCherokeee3 · February 2020

I'd say make it a tier based decision based off what content you do and if you have consistent reliable guildies to run with.
Anything daily drop related I'd just say grind it out each day! Those pretty much drop at a good rate and you could "top off" whatever few are left that don't seem to drop, via a trader purchase. If you have a reliable guild group for trials and dungeons, then those too could be farmed and topped off via a trader. If you have ESO plus, keep a surplus of Crowns that are supplied to you on reserve for whenever a motif book pops up you don't want to grind for. I have every motif in the game except Worm Cult and most everything was achieved by this tiered approach. Even having reliable trial and dungeon groups can be a bit dismal on those drops however. I'd say I got about 60% at best on some of those and other pages just never seemed to drop. If you don't PvP often other than events like Midyear...then you probably don't spent AP much either? If so then I'd so go ahead and get those motifs at their vendors and that'll effectively save you gold and crowns for other more expensive motifs you may decide to buy. Lastly if your an Xbox NA person feel free to message me anytime! I'd be happy to send you over anything I have to help out. (Cherokeee3)

Zulera301 · February 2020

Some motifs aren't that hard to farm or find. A lot of them are tied to daily quests though, so if you want to truly "farm" them you usually have to have an alt or few.

pick a number between 1 and 81. I can tell you the motif name, where it's found, and the approximate value it currently holds (PC-NA)

ghastley · February 2020

If you do decide on farming, do the ones associated with each event, such as the dailies for Murkmire right now, as the double drops make it twice as easy (or half as hard). The Murkmire ones, use materials that only come from deconstruction and those same drops, so it's an extra reason to do it now.

silvermistktralasub17_ESO · February 2020

It should also be mentioned that some guilds, like one that I serve as 'repository' for, will gather excess motifs dropped in an event, hand them to one person to hand out to other members who need them, a sort of trade, but it's used to help fill in guild-mates' holes. At this point, since I'm up to 100% motifs again on my main crafter, anything I get goes into that pot, and I let all members of that guild, and one that has an overlap of members in it, poke me if they're needing a few chapters here and there, and know that it's not to sell to others, but only to fill in their own holes.