Optimum Crafting / Provisioning Alt Character Division

carljokl

I have created some Alt characters that I am training specifically for crafting.

As I go on I wonder about the optimum spit of skills by characters.

There is a motivation to keep the Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing together because any style motifs (and style materials) are common amongst all of these.

For Provisioning, Alchemy and Enchanting are self contained skills independent of anything else. For these skills they could be
1) Kept on the same character as the (Blacksmith/Woodworker/Clothier).
2) Kept grouped on a provisioning character.
3) Split among individual specialist, a Provisioner, an Enchanter and an Alchemist.

I am starting to favour the third option. I weight up pros and cons:

Pros:

* More total storage space, I can split the food, runes and potion ingredients between 3 characters giving me about 3 times more capacity to store them.
* Less skill points are needed to be diverted into the provisioning skill lines so more are available to make the characters tougher to complete quests.
* Can more closely tailor the character to support the one crafting ability.

Cons:

* More time and overhead managing moving between accounts.
* I have to level up multiple accounts therefore potentially tripling how long it takes to level characters.
* Uses up finite number of character slots that I might wish to use for something else.

I also wondered about specific races and classes that are most suited to given types of characters.

Orismer are regarded to be the best blacksmiths though I have not yet seen the specific traits that actually support this in practice.
As for Provisioning / Alchemy and Enchanting I have no idea if any race is better than any other.
As regards classes, some combat class is generally helpful leveling up and surviving random attacks while farming materials. A theif can help with stealing recipes, motifs and crafting materials.

What combination has worked best for you?

Khenarthi

My very first character is my all-in-one crafter and once you complete most content, skill points are abundant enough (I have over 320...).

I like this strategy because she's also my main character and I can get anything crafted as soon as I need it. Before the ESO+ crafting bags, inventory management was annoying (I never kept materials below my level because of it) but now it's all good. I can create my armour, enchant it, get some extra food and potions without having to hop between characters.

It also releases other character slots... I started out with a dedicated provisioner and a dedicated alchemist but felt sorry about the crafting XP/effort wasted when I deleted them to make new characters (altoholic here). With a character that supplies all crafted goods to my other ones, the issue is solved (also, I may not want to do all content for skill points on the alts).

BenevolentBowd

I started off with all separate characters with separate professions when I started because of the limited storage at the time.

When ZOS added upgradeable storage I found there was less need to separate the crafts. Then the crafting bags came along and as a result I now have multiple master crafters (one main and several helper one, for daily writs).

I would recommend leveling all characters with provisioning and alchemy because it will unlock longer durations for consumed food, drink, and potions.

I recently wrote a crafting guide that included the topic of one vs many and included some great feedback from other crafters on the forums. You might find it useful.

http://benevolentbowd.ca/esotu/esotu-the-making-of-a-master-crafter/

disintegr8

My first character is a complete master crafter and is currently researching the 9th trait on everything. He was parked at level 49 for a long time as he was a rubbish build and I did not know what I was doing when I started the game. I then used him for crafting of all my needs for new characters as I rolled them out, which worked well for me.

All other characters I have levelled up (5) now have level 50 in all crafting/provisioning skill lines and one is even researching the eighth trait on all crafting stations - not because I need to but because I can.

I am currently making an effort to turn my first toon into a viable character but have to go out and get skill points for him. I can free some up by assigning enchanting and alchemy to other characters but there are a lot of points I can still go and chase. It is harder to push provisioning off to a new character because of all of the recipes learned.

The biggest issue with having different characters learning different skills is that you still need to take them through the game to get the skill points you need. For them to survive you have to put some points into other skill lines as well as the crafting lines, so either way there are pros and cons.

carljokl

I am thinking that from the comments and my own thinking it would make more sense to have my original main character be a crafter and have other characters as more specialised fighters.

This considering my main character already has learned a number of style manuals and researched a lot of traits. My new crafter is becoming somewhat a victim of the specialisation. The blacksmithing writ he just completed was for delivery in Rivenspire but the character is only level 9. I might struggle even riding through to the Rivenspire refugee camp even at speed without some wandering enemy killing me at that low level. This means those writs are derailed until leveling up the character to survive there. That is two level zones ahead of my character's ability, so could take a long time. I am getting impatient to level up but it is not necessarily particularly faster doing it the second (or more) time through.

Vangy

6 toons.
all crafts maxed.
One toon that has all the motifs etc. The rest use crafting just for dailies.
Tons of gold.
Craft bag was awesome and saves me 1hr a day.
GG

carljokl

I suspect the expectation is that a character will have a target to keep their crafting abilities less than or equal to the materials in the current playing zone. Probably not expected that a character can create gear too high level for them to use. Still it gets better rewards on the Writs and allows creating gear for others at higher level.

Perhaps it would have been better to wait until I progress to a given zone before raising my crafting ability to that zone even if I have the upgrade available. It is most convenient to have the raw materials and writ delivery locations all together.

With this it would have made sense to also wait to increase all the crafting abilities (Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing) at the same time. In that way it would be a clean move from crafting in one zone to another. I will endeavour to do this in the future.

I recently upgraded to plus and the crafting bag is a big convenience (a friend mentioned finding it very useful too). It get to a point where I ask how much I value my time. The convenience of how much time I save and how much less hassle it is not having to run out of space for ingredients and trawl through my inventories looking for things to get rid of seems worth the fee.