How to get advanced enough to craft quality weapons

markthegreat56 · February 2020

I have reached champion level, and have been crafting, deconstructing and research. When I go to craft a weapon, it's some kind of low level crap, so I don't bother. what do I have to do to be able to create some powerful weapons?

Freakin_Hytte · February 2020

I don't really understand what you mean, do you want to craft a set or just craft higher level weapons?

If you want to craft higher level weapons you just choose it from the menu where you craft weapons, on ps4 it's right below where you choose what kind of armour or weapon you want to craft, if you want to upgrade a weapon there is the improvement option when you have clicked on the crafting station.

If you want to craft a set you have to either go to that sets crafting location, every craftable set have their own location in a certain zone (for example, the crafted set ashen grip's location is in stonefalls). You can easily Google where these locations are, you can also go to a person house who have attunable crafting stations. They are the same as the ones you find in the world, but can be put in a house so you don't have to travel to the crafting location in the world.

Many guilds have a guild house with some or all of these attunable crafting stations, which makes it easy for the guilds crafter to just go there.

Taleof2Cities · February 2020

If you’re crafting level is 50 in a trade, @markthegreat56, then make sure you’ve invested skill points in your passive crafting skills ... similar to investing skill points in your combat passives.

markthegreat56 · February 2020

I guess I don't seem to be leveling up my crafting skill points, or passives. I have wanted to go to a guild house and tried to find out about it but nobody replied so I don't know how to get there. I just thought by actively doing some crafting, deconstructing and researching, I would be able to level up in the crafts. Really, creating a 900 something level weapon is useless for me. I've been buying them instead.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · February 2020

There are three parts to leveling crafts. There is the level 1 - 50 levels and skill points. You need to go through the 1 - 50 levels to unlock the skills and passives you enable using skill points. Research is used to unlock the traits you apply to gear and will affect which crafted sets you can make.

You advance the 1 - 50 levels by completing crafting writs, making items and deconstruction. Skill points are the same ones you use for your combat skills and are obtained by completing quest lines and finding skyshards. To learn traits you research items with those traits.

There is no such thing as level 900. All gear and content has a maximum CP level of 160 (CP300 for some DLC dungeons I believe). This is the gear level you want after you reach level 50 and CP160. You can craft basic gear such as those for daily writs at any crafting station. If you are looking for a specific set such as Law of Julianos you will need to go to its workstation be it the actually open world crafting station or your guild's attuned stations for that set. Crafted sets is where the knowledge of traits come in. Many require a specific number of traits be known before you can make items in the set.

I'm probably forgetting something as leveling new characters is more or less automatic for me these days but I'm sure somebody will come along to fill in any blanks.

Nestor · February 2020

Crafting Primer

Equipment Crafting

Decon all mob loot other than what you are using to research traits. Research traits, learn two on all items you would use, then learn 3, etc. Focus on Divines, Infused and Training for your first three for Armor, Sharpened, Precise and Training for your Weapons. Then go for the other ones. Nirn is expensive, and a lot of people suggest putting a priority on that, I can't see why. The Trait is all but useless for Armor or Weapons. Best place to find Mob Loot is Public Dungeons, then over land grind spots. Grind on mobs until your bags are full, then go on a decon fest. Remembering to save the ones you need or want to research. Use the Lock Function and or an Inventory Mule to hang on to those. Only invest Skill points while leveling it into the Research and Extraction Passive, the last really only needing one point.

Enchanting

Ignore all the "advice" on the web about using an enchanting partner. First, use Mob Loot decon to raise this up to a point. Later on as you approach end game have some some gold, then start making Green, Blue or Purple Glyphs on one character and decon them on an Alt. You will level Enchanting faster than trading the glyphs with another player, which is tedious by the way. (like pull out your hair and make a doily tedious). Use Green up to about L15 in the Enchanting Skill, Blue up to about L30/35 and Purple up to about L46/47. Then learn the runes you don't know, you should be at or near 50, if not, make/decon some more Purples.

Provisioning and Alchemy

Don't worry about these, you can level these professions in about an 20 minutes, for both. Just collect the Various Solvents and Reagents and Provisioning Ingredients/Recipes as you go along. Once end game, then you can level it. Use Mushrooms to level Alchemy, or Flowers that make potions you won't use. Make sure you grab solvents (waters) as your leveling as they can be rare to find in the guild stores. For Provisioning, make the highest level Green Recipes you can make. Blue or Purples do not give any more inspiration than Greens, so save those for character use.

Yes, use Drop Sets for now, and Yes, level your crafting skills and do the Trait Research. Traits are why you craft as they allow you to make Special Crafted Sets. There are two sets in the game that your going to want to make, Julianos for your Magic Characters, and Hundings Rage for your Stamina Characters. There are no better sets in the game to have 5 pieces of. Period. Well, Twice Born Star is great to, but your a year out from making that. But you need to start learning your traits now.

While it takes 6 traits known to be able to make Hundings or Julianos, 9 Traits for Twice Born Star. You don't need to know learn all of these traits on everything before you craft anything. In fact, there are nice sets that you only need to know 2 or 3 or 4 traits to make. So, learn 2 traits first, then 3 etc. This way you can be making set items in just a few days. So, start learning those traits. Focus on the gear you will use first, then fill in the rest later. This means:

Casters
Heavy Chest/Legs
Light Feet/Hands/Waist
Shoulders and Heads are good to, but there are 2 Piece Monster sets that can take up those slots. So learn the traits on these pieces, but prioritize the ones above.
Staves (all 4 of them)

Stamina
All Medium Armors
Daggers, Swords, Axes, Bow

Tanks
All Heavy Armors, Sword and Shield and maybe Staves (Ice is your tanking stick). Can add in Axes or Maces for the weapons if you want.
For Armors, Sturdy, then Divines, Infused, Reinforced. Same with Shields but Nirn can be nice on a Shield.
For Weapons, Infused, Sharpened, Defending. Charged for the Staff

Learn Training, Divines and Infused on the Armors first, Sharpened, Precise, Infused and Training on the Weapons. Powered is good for the Healing Staff, Defending is good for Sword or other one handed Melee. Then fill in the rest until you have 6 traits on each piece of gear you will use. Eventually you will learn all 9 traits. Some people recommend Nirn as an early trait to learn. Unless they change it, don't listen to them. You might use it on a Shield or a Weapon but that is about it. You need it someday, but it's expensive and you need your gold for other things.

Invest the skill points into the Research Passives. I can't stress enough how much of a time sink Trait Research is. Be able to learn more than one at a time, and reduce the time needed. Get an addon for Trait Research Tracking, I recommend Craft Store. If your on the Consoles, find one of the spreadsheets out there or make one to track this. Have I mentioned you need to learn your traits?

Doing this you will be ready to invest skill points into Crafting when it matters and not have to spend months getting ready. Did I mention Trait Research and how much a time sink it is? The last two traits will take you a month each to learn, on each item you learn them on. Get started now, yesterday would have been better.
Based on testing I did several months ago (so things could have changed a bit):

Mob Loot gives the most Exp
Other Player Made and Alt Made give 100% of the Inspiration of Mob Loot.
Deconning stuff made on the same character gives about 10%, but you get a better chance of getting a Temper, Style and Trait back, important for deconning things with Nirn or rare Style Mats

Alt made is better than other player made as you don't have to deal with the friction of being able to send only 6 items at a time. You can just deposit a batch in the bank and decon them out of the bank. However:

I still think farming a public dungeon or overland grind spot is better as you gain character experience/champ points, skills, gold, set items on occasion, and have a net gain in Mats. Making and deconning items will burn up 70% of your mats on average. OK I guess if you have a ton of mats but I would rather use my Ruby stuff for making gear for my characters. I farm the mobs, sell the white items to pay for repairs, then decon what is left. This is how I leveled all my characters to 50 in Eq Crafting.

The only exception is with Glyphs, since most looted Glyphs are White and Improved Glyphs give so much more Inspiration, it is better to make Improved Glyphs on one character and decon on an Alt. Use Green up to about L10, Blue up to about L35, then Purple up to 46 or so. Then, learn all the runes you don't know, and that should get you close to L50. No need to make the CP160's unless you have a bunch of Potencies, CP150 or even CP90/140 Glyphs are fine for this process if you have more of those potencies.

Raisin · February 2020

Here's some visuals:

This is the Woodworking skill line. The bar at the top tells you what level it's at -- 50 is the highest. As this level goes up, you unlock the passives below. To make use of the passives, you need to invest skillpoints. The first skill, simply called "Woodworking", is what determines what kind of wood you're allowed to use. The more skillpoints invested into that skill (1-10), the 'higher quality' type of wood you're allowed to use. The type of wood used will then determine the item level (Ruby Ash being the highest, to make items level CP150 or CP160).

This here is what it looks like when you're crafting. The 'Material' tab is where you can choose which type you're using. As you scroll right through the list, you will see the higher materials to be used. Each of those materials spans a certain range of levels. With the + and - buttons under it you can add and substract of the material to hone in on the exact level you want to craft. (I got this image from google cause I just wanted the UI, but it appears to be from this video!)

If by power you meant the level itself, this should be your answer. If you wanted to craft items with set bonuses, you will need to craft the items at specific crafting stations scattered throughout the world. And giving your items a trait of course makes it more powerful too... but you mentioned researching, so I think you get the trait system.

markthegreat56 · February 2020

Wow, Thanks for all the info everyone. I wish it was possible to figure this all out in the game. I guess that's why we have forums so we can help each other.