Constantly Low on Cloth

Destai · June 2022

Was just curious if anyone else has this problem. I have several max level crafter toons and I find that I'm always low on Ancestral Silk. My leather, metals, everything else I have ample - thousands of refined materials. Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

joerginger · June 2022

No, you'll always be low on that stuff if you do your writs at max level. The same will happen with Platinum Platimg if you do jewelry crafting.

Destai · June 2022

joerginger wrote: »

No, you'll always be low on that stuff if you do your writs at max level. The same will happen with Platinum Platimg if you do jewelry crafting.

Oh, yeah, that's the other one that I'm low on, but figured it's to expected with rarer mats like platings.

Salix_alba · June 2022

Destai wrote: »

Was just curious if anyone else has this problem. I have several max level crafter toons and I find that I'm always low on Ancestral Silk. My leather, metals, everything else I have ample - thousands of refined materials. Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

no its just that 'not doing surveys' are exactly why you are running out. It can be tedious I do I know I do writs on 18 toons but there are addons that can help you like lost treasure.

Destai · June 2022

Salix_alba wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Was just curious if anyone else has this problem. I have several max level crafter toons and I find that I'm always low on Ancestral Silk. My leather, metals, everything else I have ample - thousands of refined materials. Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

no its just that 'not doing surveys' are exactly why you are running out. It can be tedious I do I know I do writs on 18 toons but there are addons that can help you like lost treasure.

Oh, I wish we had addons on consoles. Guess I'll have to do surveys, just strikes me as weird having this problem only with clothing and jewelry,

Salix_alba · June 2022

sorry forgot about consoles I actually started on console years ago before moving to pc
I had found there are resources online that you can refer to when having difficulty finding a
location on console such as the official and unofficial wikis
https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Survey+Maps
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Survey_Reports
that's about all I can suggest for that

JKorr · June 2022

When you're doing writs, you get, I think, 2 cloth writs for every 1 leather writ through the cycle, so you run through your cloth mats faster.

tmbrinks · June 2022

Destai wrote: »

Salix_alba wrote: »

Destai wrote: »

Was just curious if anyone else has this problem. I have several max level crafter toons and I find that I'm always low on Ancestral Silk. My leather, metals, everything else I have ample - thousands of refined materials. Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

no its just that 'not doing surveys' are exactly why you are running out. It can be tedious I do I know I do writs on 18 toons but there are addons that can help you like lost treasure.

Oh, I wish we had addons on consoles. Guess I'll have to do surveys, just strikes me as weird having this problem only with clothing and jewelry,

Averaged over the 3 day cycle

Woodworking - Used = (36 + 38 + 38)/3 = 36.67 -> Gained = 0.875*15 + 0.125*162 = 33.375 -> Difference = -3.295/day/character
Blacksmithing - Used = (36 + 40 + 40)/3 = 38.67 -> Gained = 0.875*15 + 0.125*162 = 33.375 -> Difference = -5.295/day/character
Cloth - Used = (0 + 39 + 42)/3 = 27.00 -> Gained = (2/3)*0.875*15 + 0.125*108 = 22.25 -> Difference = -4.75/day/character
Leather - Used = (39 + 0 + 0)/3 = 13.00 -> Gained = (1/3)*0.875*15 + 0.125*84 = 14.875 -> Difference = +1.875/day/character
Jewelry - Used = (30 + 25 + 30)/3 = 28.33 -> Gained = 0.875*7 + 0.125*162 = 26.375 -> Difference = -1.955/day/character

There are no hirelings for jewelry, so that exacerbates that craft. Cloth hirelings are split with leather (although I'm not sure on the split on those). Whereas for Woodworking/Blacksmithing, you're only getting the appropriate, high-level, mats.

katanagirl1 · June 2022

JKorr wrote: »

When you're doing writs, you get, I think, 2 cloth writs for every 1 leather writ through the cycle, so you run through your cloth mats faster.

Interesting that with surveys you get 4 nodes silk and 2 nodes leather. Not sure if that helps.

It is a lot easier to farm cloth nodes than kill beasts for leather in general, though.

UntilValhalla13 · June 2022

I only bother to do one character's writs daily and have thousands of silk and platinum. I don't really use the mats for anything else. I couldn't suffer through more characters as a crafting simulator. I might do an odd survey for an endeavor or something once a month, but I don't farm mats.

Casdha · July 2022

I tend to run a lot lower on lower level base mats in general simply because I never play my lower level crafters unless there is some sort of event going on that benefits like the jubilee event. I've got over 30k of everything else.

Everaen · August 2022

I am overflowing with leather, but always short with cloth.

I've never intentionally tracked it, but it almost seems like there's a bias for daily writs to ask for cloth items over leather.

deleted221106-002999 · August 2022

katanagirl1 wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

When you're doing writs, you get, I think, 2 cloth writs for every 1 leather writ through the cycle, so you run through your cloth mats faster.

Interesting that with surveys you get 4 nodes silk and 2 nodes leather. Not sure if that helps.

It is a lot easier to farm cloth nodes than kill beasts for leather in general, though.

Wasn't always that way, cloth surveys used to be 100% cloth. Pre 1-Tamriel, I think.

Then players complained about lack of leather(pre 1-tamriel everything was zone-scaled so getting highest level leather mats was, for some, non-trivial) and surveys were changed to include the leather traps/nodes.

deleted221106-002999 · August 2022

Destai wrote: »

Was just curious if anyone else has this problem. I have several max level crafter toons and I find that I'm always low on Ancestral Silk. My leather, metals, everything else I have ample - thousands of refined materials. Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

Hirelings help, if you have the spare skill points.

ghastley · August 2022

katanagirl1 wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

When you're doing writs, you get, I think, 2 cloth writs for every 1 leather writ through the cycle, so you run through your cloth mats faster.

Interesting that with surveys you get 4 nodes silk and 2 nodes leather. Not sure if that helps.

It is a lot easier to farm cloth nodes than kill beasts for leather in general, though.

The two furrier’s traps give double the quantity that the plants give. So the haul is an even split.

The flip side of having to fight leather nodes is that they seek you out, so they are easier to find.

katanagirl1 · August 2022

ghastley wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

When you're doing writs, you get, I think, 2 cloth writs for every 1 leather writ through the cycle, so you run through your cloth mats faster.

Interesting that with surveys you get 4 nodes silk and 2 nodes leather. Not sure if that helps.

It is a lot easier to farm cloth nodes than kill beasts for leather in general, though.

The two furrier’s traps give double the quantity that the plants give. So the haul is an even split.

The flip side of having to fight leather nodes is that they seek you out, so they are easier to find.

Yes I did notice this some time after posting this. Thanks for the reply, though.

redlink1979 · August 2022

Destai wrote: »

(...) Is there something I'm doing wrong, aside from not doing Surveys?

Doing surveys helps to mitigate the ratio between collected/spent mats. You should collect them.

Zephiran23 · September 2022

Do you have a least one point in the passive? A lot of cloth nodes are in amongst other plants and aren't as easy to spot as ore nodes. So they are much easier to ride past, especially at night.

BloodyStigmata · September 2022

In my experience Ancestor Silk is always the first to go. Writs tend to ask for it more than they do leather-made gear and clothier surveys split their nodes between the two. Since my surveys go towards replenishing my writ supplies and I always collect them when one of the big 5 runs out, it's always what I have the least of.

And then of course there's violet coprinus, mudcrab chitin, nightshade, oko and imp stool that always take turns running out.

HedgeHugger · September 2022

If you have multi characters, it may be useful to leave one at a survey. Assuming you have multiple surveys, that is.
Plonk one at a resource you are lacking, even if you load them once a day and pick the resources there, that is one survey less and more materials in your bag.
I do dailies on 15. One of mine is sitting at a survey. I load her up, gather, go do her dailies, take her back, gather again.
Such an exciting life

It helps hugely though. Plus I don't have the dread of... OMG, 30+ surveys for this, that or the other. It just happens, for an extra 2 minutes to my routine.

Hotdog_23 · September 2022

HedgeHugger wrote: »

If you have multi characters, it may be useful to leave one at a survey. Assuming you have multiple surveys, that is.
Plonk one at a resource you are lacking, even if you load them once a day and pick the resources there, that is one survey less and more materials in your bag.
I do dailies on 15. One of mine is sitting at a survey. I load her up, gather, go do her dailies, take her back, gather again.
Such an exciting life
It helps hugely though. Plus I don't have the dread of... OMG, 30+ surveys for this, that or the other. It just happens, for an extra 2 minutes to my routine.

Good idea, but we have some many different survey locations to pickup and not enough characters, Lol. Really wish we could just get all surveys once for each location and not have to run back and forth a million times.

Stay safe

karthrag_inak · September 2022

Prices for mats have become absurd since Zenithar event. Folks realized there was no downside to pumping prices, exposing fundamental flaw to ESO market model.

Khajiit refuses to do his surveys. He refuses! They are his retirement plan, his 401khajiit plan. When claws get dull (well, duller, they are not so very sharp at present, yes?) he plans on becoming a gardener and miner.

7kSurveys.png?width=1005&height=864

wolfie1.0. · September 2022

karthrag_inak wrote: »

Prices for mats have become absurd since Zenithar event. Folks realized there was no downside to pumping prices, exposing fundamental flaw to ESO market model.

Khajiit refuses to do his surveys. He refuses! They are his retirement plan, his 401khajiit plan. When claws get dull (well, duller, they are not so very sharp at present, yes?) he plans on becoming a gardener and miner.

The irony on your statements is that by hoarding thos surveys you are helping to create more of a supply problem and thus increasing prices.

Especially if you buy mats that you could have gathered by doing those surveys instead.

As far as prices themselves go. Prices will handle what they can handle and support. If players are willing to pay higher prices then prices will go up. The only way to combat something like this is to either flood the market with so much of an item that it lowers the prices to the point that players don't want to pay the higher. Or players run out of gold to spend.

Either way hoarding surveys or even destroying them won't help the issue. So I wouldn't complain about mat prices if you have hundreds of the things unclaimed.

whitecrow · October 2022

I harvested it obsessively in my earlier years so I have a ton saved up. Sometimes I take several stacks out and sell them.

ghastley · October 2022

The issue here is the two-to-one ratio for the daily writs. If each day’s writ had that ratio, instead of being all cloth or all leather, then the three-day cycle could have used five of one and four of the other, closer to even. A four-day cycle, or four items every third day, could have made it completely even.

The surveys did get an adjustment, so there may be room for a change, but don’t hold your breath.

Destai · October 2022

ghastley wrote: »

The issue here is the two-to-one ratio for the daily writs. If each day’s writ had that ratio, instead of being all cloth or all leather, then the three-day cycle could have used five of one and four of the other, closer to even. A four-day cycle, or four items every third day, could have made it completely even.

The surveys did get an adjustment, so there may be room for a change, but don’t hold your breath.

It's definitely an issue with the ratio like you're describing. I did work through my stack of surveys and it was good for a while, just not anywhere near the amount of other resources I have. It seems to be focused on the ancestor silk returns, because leather's fine for me. All my alts have crafting assistants, so I get mats in the mail daily, just doesn't seem to alleviate this deficit.

Zephiran23 wrote: »

Do you have a least one point in the passive? A lot of cloth nodes are in amongst other plants and aren't as easy to spot as ore nodes. So they are much easier to ride past, especially at night.

Oh yeah, my main is Grand Master Crafter with the crafting lines fully pointed. Even my alts have the mail-in points. I do go out of my way to grab cloth when I see it, which is often since I have that passive you're describing.

Stinkyremy · October 2022

It is quite obvious why you would be low, and it is the same for all of us. the tl:dr of it is that you actually need to actively farm cloth mats.

Leather you gain passively just by killing things while playing so you will always be accumulating.
Ore and wood you gain back equal amounts from the mats/surveys you get from doing writs.
You would think the same would be from cloth too but seeing the surveys and mats you recover from writs are always 50/50 or RNG leather or cloth, you will be constantly at a minus loss of cloth.

The leather gain from enemies equals or even plus gain, as too does the ore but cloth you are always slowly dwindling.

Personally what I do is actively farm it (and jewellery nodes) while I am in the overland, grab surveys when I am low, if need be. look in zone chat for active farmers to buy in bulk at a discount.