Enchanting is not fun

Faulgor

Enchanting has always been my favourite profession in TES. Sadly, in my humble opinion, it has several problems compared to the other crafting professions in ESO.

1. Gathering runes is too random. You cannot look for what you need like you can with other professions (except provisioning perhaps, but gathering provisioning materials is super fast).

2. Anything but white aspect runes are too rare to use while leveling. This means, effectively, you will not make better glyphs than dropped (or bought!) ones before endgame. On the contrary, the other professions provide something valuable that is only dropped rarely or not at all (such as special potions, set items and styles).

3. There is little incentive to use anything but legendary (possibly epic if you are cheap) glyphs for your equipment at said endgame, which makes all other aspect runes obsolete. The equipment-professions require you to upgrade from white to green to blue (…) successively, which makes each ingredient valuable.

4. It levels far, far too slow compared to other professions in relation to its appeal. And the one aspect of the mechanic that received the most love, combining different runes into a 'sentence' to create a glyph, is the least rewarding in terms of experience gain.

5. After learning all essence runes, the exploration aspect of enchanting stops. This basically eliminates every sense of progression from enchanting after roughly level 5-10. While this is also true for alchemy, alchemy still progresses by offering interesting passives, like more potions per craft and combining more ingredients together. Which leads to ..

6. No interesting skills. Enchanting only gets the bare minium with unlockable aspect and potency runes that simply increase the magnitude, a hireling like every other profession and one skill for a slightly increased chance to extract aspect runes. Of course, as only white quality glyphs are dropped, this mainly results in a few more Ta runes.

7. It has absolutely nothing in common with TES. Clothing, woodworking and smithing use materials from previous TES games, and alchemy is almost a direct copy. Even provisioning references known ingredients and dishes from Elder Scrolls lore. Enchanting as it is right now could be placed in any random fantasy universe.

And a minor complaint: Using a glyph on an item is incredibly underwhelming. Not even a soundeffect AFAIR.

To make it short, enchanting is just not fun. It's tedious and boring for very minimal reward, and you don't really benefit before your reach endgame level.
While I realize that a lot of work went into this system, I think the best way to deal with these issues is to redesign enchanting from the ground up. If you don't want to do that – as is understandable – , I would still like to see these issues adressed somehow. Nevertheless, here is my idea. You can skip this section if you are not interested in such things.

Traditionally, enchanting in TES requires a filled soul gem, as well as the knowledge of a spell or a specific enchantment to apply to the item. I realize you introduced glyphs so everyone could apply enchantments themselves and doesn't have to give their item to an enchanter, which is reasonable, and should probably be kept. However, the 'ingredients' required to create a glyph should be changed: To a filled soul gem and a learned enchantment.

Currently, there are 34 possible enchantments in the game (3 armor, 13 weapon, 18 jewelry), However, these are based on only 17 'effects', e.g., 'stamina' can be applied to armor or weapons. Similar to clothing, woodworking and smithing, these could be learned by researching – either a glyph or an enchanted item. While I would prefer to be able to research enchanted items, there are also good reasons to keep the involved items in the process to a minimum. Now, either all 34 possible enchantments could be researched (possibly divided by the applicable item), or only the underlying 17 effects. The time needed for a completed research should be adjusted depending on this.

Soul gems already exist in the game in several levels, which could replace potency runes adequately. We also have soul trap in the game, which provides the means to trap any creature's soul. But how should we replace aspect runes? Simple, by using the different boss types.
Regular mobs would only provide souls of white quality (as would all store-bought filled soul gems). Mobs with one boss-pin next to their name, such as bull netches and trolls, would provide green souls, mobs with two pins blue souls, and mobs with three pins purple souls. Legendary souls would be acquired from (end)bosses in group dungeons that show a huge health bar on top. This would also be a great incentive to re-run old dungeons, which is currently somewhat lacking. If you think this would yield too little valuable souls to use, I'd like to remind you of the soul trap morph Soul Splitting Trap, which fills two soul gems. If you think this will result in too many high quality soul gems, I could think of an aditional system that drains more soul gems from the economy: Weapons can only be recharged with a soul of adequate quality. I.e., a sword enchanted with a legendary soul will only charge with other legendary souls, but regardless of level.
Now, this new system should be accompanied by adequate new skills.

Soul Mastery
- Allows the use of white/green/blue/purple/golden souls
Gem Mastery
- Allows the use of petty/minor/lesser/common/greater/grand soul gems
Hireling
- Delivers filled and unfilled soul gems every day
Unbinding
- Improves the chance of extracting (filled) soul gems from glyphs/equipment
Soul Study
- Reduces research time and allows research of 2/3 enchantments at once
Arcane Stability
- Enchantments placed on pauldrons/gloves/shoes/belts have 75/100% magnitude
Domination
- Increases chance to trap higher level souls (Possibly, trapping boss souls could fail, just like equipment upgrades have a lower success rate with higher grade.)
Rank 0: 100/80/60/40/20%
Rank 1: 100/100/80/60/40%
Rank 2: 100/100/100/80/60%

Now, this system should adress most of the 7 points mentioned earlier

1. You know exactly where and how you can gather ingredients for enchanting, just like for other professions, but a random element remains in finding the glyphs/gear required for research.

2. Enchantments of every quality are available to you throughout the leveling process (if you decide to collect souls for them), while the better ones are still rare and hard to obtain.

3. Because of this, every enchantment grade becomes useful.

4. This one needs to be adressed separately regardless of mechanics.

5. Researching all possible enchantments will take considerably longer than before, keeping a sense of progression.

6. Being able to add maximum power enchantments on otherwise inferior armor pieces should add a new bonus for being a master of a difficult craft, but is not too overpowered.. Increasing your chance to successfully trap boss souls will also add a new sense of progression.

7. It is very close to the enchanment system of previous Elder Scrolls games.

„But, Faulgor! Now there are no materials to gather in the wild. All you need is a soul gem to fill, which you can buy from an NPC merchant. Is that really enough?“

For one, crafting medium armor also only requires you to kill mobs, as hides and leathers can't be gathered, and that seems to work fine. But of course, should this become a problem, there are some solutions to this. For one, this system might require new types of soul gems which have to be mined like ore (think of geodes in Blackreach in Skyrim). Or, existing soul gems could be made mineable and removed from NPC merchants. Not the nicest thing to do if you want to be able to revive cheaply, but it is an option that might encourage trading. Further, another catalyst could be added besides soul gems that is needed to 'transcribe' the soul from the gem to a glyph, or modify the enchantment effect like potency runes do now (additive/subtractive).
Another alternative that makes bigger changes to the suggested system would be to have to mine soul gem shards, and refine them like ore and other raw materials. Then you'd have a chance to get a white/green/blue/purple/golden soul gem. So the quality of the filled soul gem would be determined by the soul gem itself, not the soul it contains (much more boring IMO, but still an option and would work well with current systems).

Well, this is just an idea. But as provisioning will receive a similar overhaul, it might not be too far fetched.

If any of you have better ideas on how to improve enchanting, I'd love to hear them!

PlagueMonk

Would also be nice as an enchanter to be able to recover mats from a glyph applied to a piece of gear. Sucks to know that that legendary glyph you just stuck on your chest piece has zero chance of being recovered.

GFBStarWars

Solution: completely change enchanting.

New enchanting that work like the skyrim enchanting: to learn a enchantment a weapon or armour with an enchant is needed and will deconstruct the armour learning the research.

To apply an enchantment on a piece of armour or weapon the amor is needed to be taken to the enchantment table and then apply the enchantment.

The npc that sell enchant will be taken out of the game so that only enchanter will be able to enchant a piece of armour, like the blacksmith that can create set and so on.

Enchantment will need a soulgems to be created, this will make the strength of the enchant with a slider that can add more charged or more effect.
The runestone will then be needed for the effect that has been learned (as trait stone), aspect will be taken out of the game, and potency also (soulgems will replace those).

P.s.: If you don't understand this look at the skyrim enchanting, its close to it.

Faulgor

PlagueMonk wrote: »

Would also be nice as an enchanter to be able to recover mats from a glyph applied to a piece of gear. Sucks to know that that legendary glyph you just stuck on your chest piece has zero chance of being recovered.

Absolutely. That's why I added "increase chance to get a filled soul gem from deconstructing enchanted gear" to one of my proposed skills, but failed to mention this was new.

GFBStarWars wrote: »

Solution: completely change enchanting.

New enchanting that work like the skyrim enchanting: to learn a enchantment a weapon or armour with an enchant is needed and will deconstruct the armour learning the research.

To apply an enchantment on a piece of armour or weapon the amor is needed to be taken to the enchantment table and then apply the enchantment.

The npc that sell enchant will be taken out of the game so that only enchanter will be able to enchant a piece of armour, like the blacksmith that can create set and so on.

Enchantment will need a soulgems to be created, this will make the strength of the enchant with a slider that can add more charged or more effect.
The runestone will then be needed for the effect that has been learned (as trait stone), aspect will be taken out of the game, and potency also (soulgems will replace those).

P.s.: If you don't understand this look at the skyrim enchanting, its close to it.

While I liked Skyrim's enchanting overall, I think this would be a problem in a multiplayer-setting. Having to give your gear to someone else for enchanting will cause too much drama - so although I would like to see it happening so we can get rid of glyphs, and I have seen similar systems work in other MMOs, I don't see ZOS making this change.
But what's absolutely lacking right now is the ability for enchanters to create something only available through crafting. Clothing/smithing/woodworking have sets and legendary items, alchemy has special potions, provisioning has more and special food. Enchanting only has glyph quality to show for, and that's not enough.

Food4Thought

People have been complaining about enchanting since BETA. But the Devs seem to have little incentive to change it. In my opinion they probably thought that enchanting brought to much of a wild card to skill stats and they deliberately made it difficult to level the skill to prevent a massive number of players from gaining these potentially OP options.

But if that was indeed their plan, it didn't work.

All it did was create a hell of a strong market for the power levelers who got in early while leaving everybody else picking up crumbs. I swear if I loot one more TA from a node I am going to take it on the game world. TA are worthless unless you are just starting out. Picking up TA in VET or near VET level maps just makes you want to stab your eyes out.

monden1980b16_ESO

Only thing I want to mention is that the enchanting system in ESO is too flat... you enchant your gear with magicka and/or stamina glyphs (to get near or above softcap, depending on your playstyle) and then you have 3 slots (jewelery) left to individualize your equipment. That's it.

Would have been really nice if they went with a more challenging and complex system (DAoC has a nice spellcrafting system, where you really have to think and figure out how to make the best out of your equip)... but I think it's too late for big changes.

GFBStarWars

i agree that changing the enchanting to make it exactly look like the skyrim model could be hard but the discovery system that skyrim had was very interesting.
Still i hope that after the provisioning revamp and maybe when spell crafting will be a reality, a dramatic change to enchanting will be in consideration for devs.

stanly1300_ESO

New enchanting that work like the skyrim enchanting: to learn a enchantment a weapon or armour with an enchant is needed and will deconstruct the armour learning the research.

SteveCampsOut

Faulgor wrote: »

2. Anything but white aspect runes are too rare to use while leveling. This means, effectively, you will not make better glyphs than dropped (or bought!) ones before endgame. On the contrary, the other professions provide something valuable that is only dropped rarely or not at all (such as special potions, set items and styles).

3. There is little incentive to use anything but legendary (possibly epic if you are cheap) glyphs for your equipment at said endgame, which makes all other aspect runes obsolete. The equipment-professions require you to upgrade from white to green to blue (…) successively, which makes each ingredient valuable.

Green, Blue & Purple Aspects are not useless while leveling! They give more XP when crafting as well as Deconstructing! Find an enchanting partner and exchange glyphs made with these and watch how much faster your enchanting skill levels! Sheesh!

Jade1986

I agree whole heartedly, there needs to be WAY more rune nodes, we need to be able to deconstruct items we enchanted, and enchantments we put on items should be stronger than items that are picked up from drops.

ZheinLevin

Ta shouldn't even exist as a potential drop in harvesting nodes. Place it as a random barrel drop or something like those useless random white gear.

redspecter23

I agree with some of the issues pointed out here. In particular, the system is very bland and boring. 7 or our gear slots are enchanted with stat boosts only. At least weapons have a few non damage options to explore, though not many. The only interesting slots are jewelry. There are some tough choices there but some interesting effects get drowned out because of more useful enchants for those 3 slots.

In addition, Ta is a joke. The drop rate is huge, it's the only aspect rune you will ever extract from dropped glyphs and the xp is exponentially worse than deconstructing a glyph with Jejota.

As for how to fix it, I'd recommend adding some variety to the enchantment system. Give us some more options for armor and weapon glyphs. This can be done by simply adding more essence runes as time goes on. A new enchantment every update could keep things fresh.

Also, I'd remove essence nodes entirely and just add them into the potency and aspect nodes (kinda like the tag along worms or crawlers in clothing nodes). That way, every node will either be potency or aspect and those two nodes both have a chance to award an essence rune as well.

In addition, I'd add green quality and higher glyphs to mob drops and chest loot tables at about the same rate as aspect rune drops of the same color. You're not likely to be tripping over legendary glyphs, but you will see them every once in a while. You could probably have a decent number of green/blue/purple dropped glyphs to deconstruct, speeding up the leveling process as well as providing an additional way to get aspect runes higher than Ta through decon.

deathmasterl_ESO

Maybe we don't need more Rune Nodes, but maybe each Node could drop multiple Runes? Basically instead of getting 1 Rune for every Node you could get 1-5 Runes, each one could be different or the same. This would make getting Runes much easier I would think and in return more Runes would mean that Enchanters could level up Enchanting easier.

That would be my fix for it, but OP's re-haul the system option would work too, but it would be much more work.

Saltypretzels

Your argument is lacking given that you contradict yourself twice.

1. Anything other than white runes are too rare to use while leveling; however, it is only worth it to use gold (kuta) runes at end game. The solution here then would be to use those green, blues, and purples while leveling to get your skills up, since gold is the only thing worth it at end game.

2. Enchanting has always been your favorite profession in TES; but you also say that it has nothing in common with TES. Which one is it?

GnatB

SteveCampsOut wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

2. Anything but white aspect runes are too rare to use while leveling. This means, effectively, you will not make better glyphs than dropped (or bought!) ones before endgame. On the contrary, the other professions provide something valuable that is only dropped rarely or not at all (such as special potions, set items and styles).

3. There is little incentive to use anything but legendary (possibly epic if you are cheap) glyphs for your equipment at said endgame, which makes all other aspect runes obsolete. The equipment-professions require you to upgrade from white to green to blue (…) successively, which makes each ingredient valuable.

Green, Blue & Purple Aspects are not useless while leveling! They give more XP when crafting as well as Deconstructing! Find an enchanting partner and exchange glyphs made with these and watch how much faster your enchanting skill levels! Sheesh!

Pretty sure he means while leveling the character, not while leveling the skill. As you said, arguably the only use for them is for the crafting exp from deconning somebody elses glyph. Which is sort of silly. (personally, I find it extremely silly that deconning other peoples work is the best way to gain skill. IMO crafting in the same profession should be competitive, not cooperative.)

Personally though, I usually upgrade and use green or better enchants on my weapons. (leave the armor white though) However I'm running 6 characters more or less in parallel, (one specializing in each weapon type) So I'm hopeful I will be able to "naturally" level up enchanting, without needing to use my better aspects for decon trading.

Padraig

Give us a way to combine a number of lower aspect runes to get a higher one.
So we could, for instance, combine a number of white Ta (10?) to get a green Jejota rune.
This would at least make them worth something.

Natjur

I wish you could 'transmute' items (10,000 Ta to get 1000 Jejota to get 100 Denata to get 10 Rekuta to get 1 Kuta)
Does anyone even keep Ta or do they destroy them by the stack?

Anyone found some good groups of mobs that drop glyphs often for farming to level up enchanting? I am at L43 and want to get to L50 for the silly colour as I am CDO (same as OCD but the letters are in the right order)

gresiac

why ppl always want easymode ? work for something ...

alkoriak

Natjur wrote: »

I wish you could 'transmute' items (10,000 Ta to get 1000 Jejota to get 100 Denata to get 10 Rekuta to get 1 Kuta)
Does anyone even keep Ta or do they destroy them by the stack?

Anyone found some good groups of mobs that drop glyphs often for farming to level up enchanting? I am at L43 and want to get to L50 for the silly colour as I am CDO (same as OCD but the letters are in the right order)

No need of transmute spell, I exchange you 1 kuta for 10 rekuta or 10.000 ta anytime

Tarukmockto

Natjur wrote: »

Snip . . Anyone found some good groups of mobs that drop glyphs often for farming to level up enchanting? . . /Snip

Most Public Dungeons (not solo or group) give up quite a few glyphs. I usually end up with 6 to 10 after a run. Now if only they would drop something better than white ones!

Darkonflare15

They do not need to change enchanting completely. They just need to provide a way to get aspect runes better. I was getting kuta from the beginning of the game. By the time I was able to use kuta, I have had 20 kuta. The progression may seem slower but the leveling is 10 times better than it was before. I get plenty of runes from my hireling like you suppose to. Every once and awhile I would get different aspect runes from nodes. The progression of the different aspect runes is not by that much so your missing out on much. I rather use tas on glyphs that I going to destroy latter than use a rarer rune.

Gokmak

I don't get all the whining. Boo frikken hoo.

Sure, it levels slower than the others. It still levels well enough. Go farm enchanting mats (some zones have lots of nodes), and send your mats to a high level enchanter (join a guild and make a friend). I levelled enchanting as my character levelled. No big deal.

As to all the op's points, again, boo frikken hoo.

I get plenty of enchanting mats just from running around the zone farming stuff. Max out the hireling... I got so many Kuda's I give them to guildies. On my lower level alts, I'll use the blue and purple chants on rings/necklaces.

My best money maker is selling enchanting mats. They are easy to get, you only need ONE per item to enchant (as opposed to 4 purples or 5 yellow's per item), they sell good.

Enchanting is fine. Doesn't take too much bag space either, I keep all my enchanting mats in my regular bank, along with crafting mats. Don't even need an alt to store.

Moonscythe

Well, this was not a lot of help. I can't raise my enchant by creating glyphs because I can't find even TA very often. I have a pile of runes cluttering my enchanter's inventory but I can only make 3 or 4 glyphs at a time before I run out of aspect runes. I have a hireling who rarely gives me an aspect rune.

A question then…or maybe a couple of questions. Do you use your main as your enchanter? Part of my problem is that I have an alt just for enchanting and alchemy. Those skills are going up but she's really low level and squishy so is not much good at foraging and, of course, she's not leveling much so doesn't have skill points to spend.

I was told that I should deconstruct someone else's glyphs for leveling purposes. I assume that includes any I buy? Is buying glyphs for deconstruction a viable route to higher levels.

I, too, would rather a different approach to enchanting in ESO. I understand the randomness of enchanting making the devs a bit leery but magic and enchanting are an integral part of Tamriel. Maybe they could refer back to Morrowind when you had to go to an NPC for most of your enchanting needs because it was so iffy when the player did it.

I think, perhaps, part of the problem with enchanting in ESO is that the soul gems have been removed from the process completely and the runes that replaced them are too sparse in the landscape. I make some foraging runs and comeback with a good variety of mats and some days I see nothing at all.

Darkonflare15

Moonscythe wrote: »

Well, this was not a lot of help. I can't raise my enchant by creating glyphs because I can't find even TA very often. I have a pile of runes cluttering my enchanter's inventory but I can only make 3 or 4 glyphs at a time before I run out of aspect runes. I have a hireling who rarely gives me an aspect rune.

A question then…or maybe a couple of questions. Do you use your main as your enchanter? Part of my problem is that I have an alt just for enchanting and alchemy. Those skills are going up but she's really low level and squishy so is not much good at foraging and, of course, she's not leveling much so doesn't have skill points to spend.

I was told that I should deconstruct someone else's glyphs for leveling purposes. I assume that includes any I buy? Is buying glyphs for deconstruction a viable route to higher levels.

I, too, would rather a different approach to enchanting in ESO. I understand the randomness of enchanting making the devs a bit leery but magic and enchanting are an integral part of Tamriel. Maybe they could refer back to Morrowind when you had to go to an NPC for most of your enchanting needs because it was so iffy when the player did it.

I think, perhaps, part of the problem with enchanting in ESO is that the soul gems have been removed from the process completely and the runes that replaced them are too sparse in the landscape. I make some foraging runs and comeback with a good variety of mats and some days I see nothing at all.

Yeah the fastest way is to deconstruct somebody else glyph the higher the level the better. You can do it that way only if you find enough runes to make glyphs or you need to find a buddy who has enough glyphs to trade with you. That can take awhile or you can do it the solo way which is the way I went. I had my main chacter have enchanting because I rather have for control over it than leave for low rank alt to deal with. Every other skill like woodworking, blacksmithing, and clothing have items you get from loot. These items raises you bar faster if you deconstruct the items at the same you are getting materials use to make more items. You just do the same for enchanting. There is plenty of glyphs you can from treasure chests and enemies. All you have to do is deconstruct these glphs. These give more xp for enchanting then a making and deconstruct you own but they have less xp from a buddy. The higher rank the glyph the more xp. This is a better option than trading because you will find more glyphs out there than you we be able to make and trade with a buddy. So just get and farm glyph like all other loot.

BrassRazoo

But the guys voice sounds cool.

Surliman

I agree, it's not fun. Very discouraging to gather mats for hours at a time, to have dozens of combos to create, only to discover that all that effort hardly moves the xp bar at all. I'd like to level enchanting but I think it won't happen. It will only *** me off spending all that time for no gain.

alkoriak

Buy other player's glyphs, deconstruct, make some of your own and sell them at similar prices you bought them (depending on glyphs of course). You level the most by deconstructing, you level a bit by mading new glyphs and it doesn't cost you too much if you buy/sell at fair prices. That is only if you don't have any friend that can craft your own runes for you to deconstruct.

Darkonflare15

alkoriak wrote: »

Buy other player's glyphs, deconstruct, make some of your own and sell them at similar prices you bought them (depending on glyphs of course). You level the most by deconstructing, you level a bit by mading new glyphs and it doesn't cost you too much if you buy/sell at fair prices. That is only if you don't have any friend that can craft your own runes for you to deconstruct.

Yeah but the glyphs you find as loot gives you most for deconstruct when you do not want to buy glyphs or trade with people it is the best solo way without using money and it is the fastest because all you have to do is farm glyphs.

alkoriak

Well it depends on your level. If you are VR then loot is ok but otherwise it's preferable to buy high level glyphs that give more inspiration than the ones you find adventuring. Also you can buy better quality glyphs (aspects jenata and above) that are impossible to find in loot and give much better inspiration. With the new kiosks around the world you can buy in large quantities. Remember it's an investment, you can sell your own to compensate and recover money. Just not be greedy .

Darkonflare15

alkoriak wrote: »

Well it depends on your level. If you are VR then loot is ok but otherwise it's preferable to buy high level glyphs that give more inspiration than the ones you find adventuring. Also you can buy better quality glyphs (aspects jenata and above) that are impossible to find in loot and give much better inspiration. With the new kiosks around the world you can buy in large quantities. Remember it's an investment, you can sell your own to compensate and recover money. Just not be greedy .

Yeah, you can but I did it the cheap way never bought any glyphs played through the game and level my enchanting without any problems. You do not even need to level enchanting that fast because I change my gear fast when I was leveling 1 to 50 so I did not need to use my rare aspect runes. I just use ta which was more than enough. I always had to appropriate level for my enchanting while i level so I never needed to rush. If you play the game without thinking about grinding it is actually rewarding if you do stuff while your playing the game instead of just leveling. Enchanting is fun when you play the game

Siluen

I do not think enchanting levels slow in particular. The only reason it takes a lot of time compared to the other professions is the huge difference in drops you get when playing through the game, after a while you swim in white, green, blue an even a bit of epic gear to disenchant for your other professions, where you are lucky to get a handful of white glyphs to level your enchanting.

Once you get yourself an enchanting leveling-buddy, you'll notice that the inspiration you get from deconstructing green and blue glyphs, is actually pretty good! A lot more than deconstructing a sword of the same quality would grant your blacksmithing. It is just the obtaining of mats that is awful, and I have to admit that enchanting and provisioning are the only professions I spent some money on to get me enough mats.

Tldr: Get a buddy, get some gold and it'll fly by! I can especially recommend picking up some Jejota and Denata when you see them for sale in zone chat, they have the best inspiration for their value.