To Craft or not to Craft...That is the question!

marzatplay · January 2021

Returning player...I first played in the BETA but the game didn't hook me in back then so I left. I'm glad to be back because the game has changed A LOT! In other MMO's I never liked crafting, it's something I ignored because I found it took too much time away from my actual gaming time.

You see, I'm now married with 2 kids and my play time is limited to late evenings after my other responsibilities have been looked after (family). I'd hate to spend the 1 - 2 hours that I do have doing crafting instead of doing things I actually enjoy like questing, PvP or Dungeons. Hence my dilemma...

Do I need to craft in this game? Won't I find similar or better gear/weapons/potions/food while questing or doing dungeons? I even hate that I'm stopping to gather or find materials in the game. I'd rather just keep running past to my objective instead. I have ESO+ but I don't care for the craft bag if I don't have to do crafting.

So please help me settle this once and for all...do I need to craft, won't I find better items questing/dungeons instead? If not explain why I should craft given my circumstance mentioned above so I can make the best informative decision for my available play time.

Thank you everyone in advance, and if there are any Guilds that accept new members and help craft gear for them, please let me know which those are so I can maybe try to find them.

Cheers!

tmbrinks · January 2021

The "best" gear in this game tends to do be from overland drops/dungeons/trials. So you don't "need" to craft.

Anything you need to upgrade you can purchase from the guild stores, although they will be expensive.

The only "crafting" that actually affects your gameplay is some passives in alchemy that extend how long your potions last, and a passive in provisioning that extends how long your food/drink lasts. You would probably at least also want to research the "best" traits, so that you can take advantage of the transmutation system.

Everything else can be purchased.

Now, in my opinion, it is easier (and cheaper) if you do some crafting, for example to make your own potions, make your own food, making your own glyphs, and being able to upgrade and transmute your gear. But it is by no means required.

VaranisArano · January 2021

Probably the most practical reasons to craft are the reduced cost for improving gear quality, researching the best traits for transmutation, and the longer lasting potions.

Now, once you've got some playtime and gold under your belt, it becomes a lot easier to powerlevel your crafting through deconstructing intricates or mass producing food and potions. But I would definitely recommend starting on traits research right away because that's a big time sjnk.

UntilValhalla13 · January 2021

If you ever plan on doing anything serious or endgame, you'll need a crafter. You'll need to transmute traits and whatnot. Not crafting will also deprive you of certain passives that make potions and food more effective.

katanagirl1 · January 2021

Great advice here. I second what has been said.

When I started out I found crafting a little overwhelming while trying to level up and work on my build. I started all the crafts but then put it on hold for a while until I figured everything else out.

I would suggest getting provisioning leveled up because food is essential for many activities and it has to be a huge cost saver to make rather than buy.

I would also recommend starting trait research for metal, wood, and cloth for things you pick up and deconning everything else to level up the skill at the minimum. You don’t have to do crafting daily quests or craft anything for yourself at this point if you don’t want to. This will take only a few minutes out of your time each day while playing but will position you well to pick up crafting later when you have more time.

All that groundwork will pay off if you keep up with the game, because as others have said being able to craft has many benefits.

Anotherone773 · January 2021

marzatplay wrote: »

Returning player...I first played in the BETA but the game didn't hook me in back then so I left. I'm glad to be back because the game has changed A LOT! In other MMO's I never liked crafting, it's something I ignored because I found it took too much time away from my actual gaming time.

You see, I'm now married with 2 kids and my play time is limited to late evenings after my other responsibilities have been looked after (family). I'd hate to spend the 1 - 2 hours that I do have doing crafting instead of doing things I actually enjoy like questing, PvP or Dungeons. Hence my dilemma...

Do I need to craft in this game? Won't I find similar or better gear/weapons/potions/food while questing or doing dungeons? I even hate that I'm stopping to gather or find materials in the game. I'd rather just keep running past to my objective instead. I have ESO+ but I don't care for the craft bag if I don't have to do crafting.

So please help me settle this once and for all...do I need to craft, won't I find better items questing/dungeons instead? If not explain why I should craft given my circumstance mentioned above so I can make the best informative decision for my available play time.

Thank you everyone in advance, and if there are any Guilds that accept new members and help craft gear for them, please let me know which those are so I can maybe try to find them.

Cheers!

1. Crafted gear is actually pretty good in this game. In most games, the crafted sets tend to be trash but here they are competitive, BUT there are many other sets that work just as well especially for a casual player. Also all crafted sets can be bought on guild traders
2. Crafted food and potions are better than anything you will find from the crown store or dropped in game. The more popular foods and potions can be found on guild traders as well.
3. If you join some decent guilds( you can be in 5 players guilds that are account wide)you can also get people to make stuff for you. Sometimes for a fee, sometimes for their cost in materials, sometimes for free. This is the second best option with crafting stuff yourself being the best choice.
4. if you want to find decent guilds you will want to head over to the guilds section of the forums. There is also a reddit dedicated to guilds,iirc.

Conclusion: Crafted stuff is very useful and in some cases better. But the game is designed in a way that you still have access to crafted items without actually doing any of the gathering, leveling skills, or crafting yourself if you don't want too.

Brrrofski · January 2021

Well crafting doesn't really take much effort.

Just deconstruct items you pick up, and research some. You can do all that after a day of questing to be honest.

Only bit off effort is getting the skill points to put into the lines. Again though, you'll probably pick these up while questing and just walking around the world.

tmbrinks · January 2021

Anotherone773 wrote: »

marzatplay wrote: »

Returning player...I first played in the BETA but the game didn't hook me in back then so I left. I'm glad to be back because the game has changed A LOT! In other MMO's I never liked crafting, it's something I ignored because I found it took too much time away from my actual gaming time.

You see, I'm now married with 2 kids and my play time is limited to late evenings after my other responsibilities have been looked after (family). I'd hate to spend the 1 - 2 hours that I do have doing crafting instead of doing things I actually enjoy like questing, PvP or Dungeons. Hence my dilemma...

Do I need to craft in this game? Won't I find similar or better gear/weapons/potions/food while questing or doing dungeons? I even hate that I'm stopping to gather or find materials in the game. I'd rather just keep running past to my objective instead. I have ESO+ but I don't care for the craft bag if I don't have to do crafting.

So please help me settle this once and for all...do I need to craft, won't I find better items questing/dungeons instead? If not explain why I should craft given my circumstance mentioned above so I can make the best informative decision for my available play time.

Thank you everyone in advance, and if there are any Guilds that accept new members and help craft gear for them, please let me know which those are so I can maybe try to find them.

Cheers!

1. Crafted gear is actually pretty good in this game. In most games, the crafted sets tend to be trash but here they are competitive, BUT there are many other sets that work just as well especially for a casual player. Also all crafted sets can be bought on guild traders
2. Crafted food and potions are better than anything you will find from the crown store or dropped in game. The more popular foods and potions can be found on guild traders as well.
3. If you join some decent guilds( you can be in 5 players guilds that are account wide)you can also get people to make stuff for you. Sometimes for a fee, sometimes for their cost in materials, sometimes for free. This is the second best option with crafting stuff yourself being the best choice.
4. if you want to find decent guilds you will want to head over to the guilds section of the forums. There is also a reddit dedicated to guilds,iirc.

Conclusion: Crafted stuff is very useful and in some cases better. But the game is designed in a way that you still have access to crafted items without actually doing any of the gathering, leveling skills, or crafting yourself if you don't want too.

The potions part of this used to be true, but changes made in (update 26 or 27 I think?) made the alliance potions the same as spell power and weapon power potions that mag/stam would use.... and the tri-potion pots you get from daily rewards are the exact same as crafted tri-pots. There are a whole bunch more combinations you can make for yourself though.

(There may be a 0.3s difference in the duration if I remember correctly, but the length of both are beyond the potion cooldown if you have the passives)

everything else you said though, agree with!

marzatplay · January 2021

Great advice everyone. Thank you for the feedback. I'll continue to passively deconstruct items and work on levelling crafting without actually crafting...but I don't understand how do I find materials/items to research? Sometimes I can research, sometimes I can't and don't understand why.

VaranisArano · January 2021

marzatplay wrote: »

Great advice everyone. Thank you for the feedback. I'll continue to passively deconstruct items and work on levelling crafting without actually crafting...but I don't understand how do I find materials/items to research? Sometimes I can research, sometimes I can't and don't understand why.

Research is done by acquiring weapons, jewelry, and gear with different traits, then researching them at their respective crafting table. The amount of skill points you have in the research crafting passive will determine how many items you can research at a time and how long that research takes. The time increases for each successive trait learned for an item, starting at 6 hours and capping at a month if you have the full passives unlocked.

Frequent reasons why you can't research an item:
1. You are already researching one or more traits for that craft at the limit of what your passives will allow.
2. You already are researching a trait on that item. Only one "dagger" trait can be learned at a time.

JKorr · January 2021

marzatplay wrote: »

Great advice everyone. Thank you for the feedback. I'll continue to passively deconstruct items and work on levelling crafting without actually crafting...but I don't understand how do I find materials/items to research? Sometimes I can research, sometimes I can't and don't understand why.

Find a good guild. There are a lot of them out there. Most good guilds have crafters, who will make trait items for research for guildies for free [except for nirnhoned and the "rare" jewelry traits; most will do the crafting free, but ask for nirncrux and trait stones] Best thing is you can ask for the traits you want when you're ready to research them. So you could, for example, ask a crafter to make you a full set of armor in the weight you want to use, and weapons you want, in Training trait. Or Infused, Reinforced, whatever.

marzatplay · January 2021

Awesome! Cheers everyone. Much appreciated.

SpaPooP · January 2021

marzatplay wrote: »

Great advice everyone. Thank you for the feedback. I'll continue to passively deconstruct items and work on levelling crafting without actually crafting...but I don't understand how do I find materials/items to research? Sometimes I can research, sometimes I can't and don't understand why.

I will offer that there is also a focused way to research that will make the most use of the shortest Research Timers and reach 2/3 Trait full sets early if you want to craft them before CP160. It also allows you to get by w/o having to store items for later research. Once the timers are longer than 12-24 hours you have a lot of time to source the next traited items from guild stores or a guild crafter.

* Choose char/class/build. Very few common traits used on most builds. Check a few build sites for your class/role/content.
* For Armor - PVE - Divines - Infused - Sturdy (Tanks) - Training
* For Armor - PVP - Impenetrable - Sturdy (Heal Tanks)
* For Weapons - Sharpened - Precise - Nirnhoned - Infused - Powered for Restoration Staffs - Training
* For Jewelry - Depends on Build
* Use 6H/12H/1day for most needed traits first.
* First extra skill points in research passives.
* Craft skill Level 8 for first passive and 2 items at once per craft.
* Craft Skill Level 28 for Passive III and 3 items at once per craft.
* Jewelry is only ever one item at a time.
* **Get same trait on full set of gear before 2nd trait on any piece.**

ITEM | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | W1 | W2 |

TRAIT 1 | 6 | 6 | 6 | | | | | | |
TRAIT 1 | | | | 6 | 6 | 6 | | | |
TRAIT 1 | | | | | | | 6 | 6 | 6 |
TRAIT 2 |12 |12|12| | | | | | |
TRAIT 2 | | | |12|12|12| | | |
TRAIT 2 | | | | | | |12| 12 | 12 |
TRAIT 3 |24 |24|24| | | | | | |
TRAIT 3 | | | |24|24|24| | | |
TRAIT 3 | | | | | | |24| 24 | 24 |

Girl_Number8 · January 2021

marzatplay wrote: »

Returning player...I first played in the BETA but the game didn't hook me in back then so I left. I'm glad to be back because the game has changed A LOT! In other MMO's I never liked crafting, it's something I ignored because I found it took too much time away from my actual gaming time.

You see, I'm now married with 2 kids and my play time is limited to late evenings after my other responsibilities have been looked after (family). I'd hate to spend the 1 - 2 hours that I do have doing crafting instead of doing things I actually enjoy like questing, PvP or Dungeons. Hence my dilemma...

Do I need to craft in this game? Won't I find similar or better gear/weapons/potions/food while questing or doing dungeons? I even hate that I'm stopping to gather or find materials in the game. I'd rather just keep running past to my objective instead. I have ESO+ but I don't care for the craft bag if I don't have to do crafting.

So please help me settle this once and for all...do I need to craft, won't I find better items questing/dungeons instead? If not explain why I should craft given my circumstance mentioned above so I can make the best informative decision for my available play time.

Thank you everyone in advance, and if there are any Guilds that accept new members and help craft gear for them, please let me know which those are so I can maybe try to find them.

Cheers!

Yes there is and it is as simple as selecting research and accept. It certainly does not take an amazing effort to do.

To learn all the traits for every item will take quite a bit. Though that is because of the research timer but it will not effect your gameplay or take two hours away from you.

If you want people to make gear, you’re going to have to farm mats or items to sell for gold to buy mats for the crafter anyway.

In the long run crafting is cost effective and a time saver. You can also make some unique furnishings, glyphs, pots, food, and a few other things that sell regularly.

Giraffon · January 2021

At bare minimum, keep the research going so you can recreate gear at transmute stations. You never know when you are going to need to change your build.

erliesc · February 2021

Cheers![/quote]

In the long run crafting is cost effective and a time saver. You can also make some unique furnishings, glyphs, pots, food, and a few other things that sell regularly. [/quote]

EXCEPT...now that mat prices are out of control...crafting is an expensive undertaking. You will likely be limited by the stuff you can farm....you will find it hard to sell stuff at the inflated prices.

[snip]

[Edited to remove Baiting]

Athan1 · February 2021

With an addon like lazy writs, daily writs take about 3 min to complete. You can monitor your research times through another addon like traitbuddy. If you just play the game, you'll always have something to research - it takes a few seconds to renew the researched items. Problem solved!