How do I craft better weapons?

ntellect_ESO

Hi All,

I'm new to ESO level 24. I've been crafting my own weapons and has been great so far. But now it seems I have hit a wall. When crafting a new Axe I can't get it past 1060 damage no matter how much material I use. Even using the max material I have the level of the weapon goes up but it's damage doesn't pass 1060. What do I need to do to increase the weapons power?

I have the different crafting things (so I can craft orc, redguard, etc). I put 3 points in the blacksmithing tree where now I can use up to three different materials. Even in this case I can't get above 1060

Help

Nestor

There are two things at play here. Level Scaling is the big one. Gear stats come in large part from the Level Buffing your getting.

Also, it does no good to make a piece of gear higher than your level, as you can't wear it. If that is the case, the scaling is probably why your seeing a limit on the damage of the weapon, different characters at different levels will see gear stats differently.

Now, how to increase the damage. Assuming your making a weapon appropriate to the level of your character, have you tried Improving the item to Green or Blue? Note, Purple would be overkill for a leveling weapon and Gold would be a complete waste of precious tempers.

ntellect_ESO

Ahhh that makes sense.

What was happening was I was finding green and blue weapons with damage like 1240 and was like why can't I make a (white) weapon of 1300. I deconstruct all weapons I don't use so I need to start using the improvement. I have a lot for greens but maybe enough for one blue.

Sad thing is I deconstructed my blue 2 handed axe thinking I could craft something better. I have a decent mace, it just that I've come to love my 2 handed axes!

Saturnana

Are you on the EU server by any chance?
If so, let me know if you'd like me to craft you something to help you level.

Nestor

At level 24, your either going to be using a ton of Tempers to improve things, or your going to be using a lot of skill points to reduce the amount of Tempers needed to improve things.

Personally, I would just use World Drop Set items and not worry about crafting them your self until your CP160. Now, you should still level crafting by deconning loot, and more importantly, researching traits.See this for how to level crafting for end game purposes:

Here is the thing about Crafting, you don't need it until End Game (post CP160) but you can level it in preparation with few to no skill points invested. Crafting can eat up 122 Skill Points to fully invest, so this will gimp your combat while leveling. Best to invest as few points as possible while leveling your character and crafting.

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.

Trait Research

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.

Leveling Equipment Crafting is easy, just decon the mob loot you are not either selling to cover repairs or using to research traits. No skill points needed while leveling it, other than maybe a point or two into the Extraction Passives.

Back to the Crafted Sets, 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 these traits on everything, but you do need to know them on the items you will use. 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, Bow and Shield

Learn Training, Divines and Infused on the Armors first, Sharpened, Precise 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 or eventually 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.

ntellect_ESO

Thank you so much for this write up. I'll use this as I level, since I don't like using the Internet to get the best builds and tend to play organically.

As I level and learn more that may change. I have been doing trait research but very casually. After I come back to town from a long haul. I research anything I can. Devonn the rest. I need to ads points in faster research and multiple research at the same time.

There is just so much around builds it's overwhelming, but hope to try out PvP for the first time at some point.

To the other responder, I'm on the US megaserver.

Nestor

ntellect_ESO wrote: »

Thank you so much for this write up. I'll use this as I level, since I don't like using the Internet to get the best builds and tend to play organically.

I avoid the Meta Builds myself.

The write up I did above is based on the pain I had leveling a main who was also my crafter at the same time in the first year of the game. The game has changed and now we don't need to craft while leveling to CP160, where before, it was kind of necessary. Reason, you were never going to get a dropped set completed before you out leveled it. Now, each zone drops it's own sets, and they level with you. Plus, the drops were all RNG before, now they are guaranteed, so you can farm a set. Maybe not in optimal traits, but you don't need optimal traits pre CP160, so its all good.

davey1107

Nestors posts are always 100% spot on and he covers most of what you need to know based on your question. One thing I'd clarify:

When he mentions level scaling, the world changed with One Tamriel. In the old days the game would keep you in zone one by giving you weapons that had 150 weapon damage and making monsters in higher zones too hard to kill. When they opened the world to you, they solved this by giving you damage and armor handicaps based on your level, so you can go anywhere and be able to survive/play. Now the game plays so that as you go up in level, your damage and armor goes up...but handicaps come off.

This answers you query -it's why your weapon's damage is weird. But it also introduces a very important concept: if you out-level your gear, you are going to SUCK. Lol. If you were a level 40 character wearing level 20 armor in olden days, you'd be weaker simply because you weren't enjoying the benefits of higher level gear. In the game today, you miss those benefits plus that gear gets weaker from having handicaps yanked. It's a double way that can DESTROY you. Try to keep gear within about five levels of your player level, and if you hit a wall look at your gear and see if it needs updating.

And be advised, no matter what, player levels 45-49 are now the hardest, in my opinion. It's a trade off with One Tam...there's a sort of dip in power at these levels that causes challenges for a lot of newbies. If you get to your 40s and start to struggle, don't freak out. Back off to some easier content and keep leveling. You'll hit vet and quickly get twice as powerful.

Based on your level, some add'l tips:

- Around level 30 you might move to green gear, minimum. Blue is ok if you have the skills/money. At level 40 I like to upgrade to blue. I'd recommend saving purple for vet, then probably running all purple from CP1-160. Four purple mats cost like $2000 in guild stores...you don't need to waste the gold by running purple all the time, but if you want purple gear it isn't that expensive to get mats.

- invest in hirelings when you can, and consider doing crafting writs when you can. Hirelings will deliver a lot of mats...they're good for purple down, and very occasionally bring a gold. Writs are the best/cheapest source of gold mats for gear. If you do writs, be aware that what you're being asked to make and where you drop it is entirely a function of how many skill points you've spent in the first passive. Read up on how writs work, then learn how to level things together so you can make what is needed without it being a massive pain in the butt. Why start writs now? A gold armor set requires 56 gold mats, which can be bought at guild traders for the oh-so-reasonable price of $450,000 gold. Or get them for free doing writs for a couple of months. Writs are faster.

- very important for you right now is learning how gear sets work. You have 7 armor slots, 3 jewelry and 1-2 weapon (depending on what type weapon you run). That's 11 or 12 slots. Success in ESO, especially as a vet, is about configuring these. Sets add powerful buffs and come in 5, 3 and 2 piece sets. Most add buffs for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th piece worn...but some also add a buff for one piece. I won't spoil anything or force you into a meta build, but my stamblade wears two 5-piece sets and a 2-piece set. This gives him what we might call seven "moderate buffs" (i.e., increase max stamina by 933) and three "major buffs". These buffs combined are far, far, far, FAR more powerful than what he gets from armor quality or most anything else.

- the damage you do upon hitting an enemy follows a formula with factors something like this: (weapon damage of equipped weapon) + (character total weapon or spell damage, depending on resource used for hit) + (max character capacity of resource used, i.e. Character has 34,000 max stamina for a stamina hit) + (if hit crits or not) + (any permanent passive that might affect that particular hit) + (any gear buffs) + (any temporary buffs from abilities or potions)

Yes, that's confusing. The point is that your weapon's damage value is just a piece of the dps calculation. Learning how to hit harder means learning the various systems at play and employing them strategically. For example, you're almost at a level where you can employ temporary buffs that increase your power by 20% (major brutality for stam, major sorcery for magic). Playing well above, say, level 40 means keeping your damage buffs up - "buy five get one free" is very powerful in hard fights.

Start reading tool tips and learning what your different abilities do. Turn on combat text and watch how different combos affect your hits. Look at your weapon or spell damage on your character sheet. Cast major brutality or sorcery and look again (quickly, before it wears off, lol). If you switch out a gear set, what is the difference in damage for your favorite ability? If you switch jewelry from items that add max health to items that add max stam/magic, how much harder do you hit? You don't need to cram all this in at once, lol, but start experimenting and learning how changes affect you, especially if you don't want to copy builds from online. (And your way is going to make you three times as good a player, guaranteed)

- you're good to start pvp-ing. You'll die a lot. I die a lot as a CP600 wearing like $2 million in gold gear, lol. Run with a group...a text chat saying LFG will almost always get an invite. Groups with mics are good for learning...you'll learn a lot from their blabber, ha. You might play a non-Champion Point campaign...this will reeeeeally help reduce your handicap. Go to keeps under attack and jump into the crazy. Turn combat text on and watch your incoming/outgoing damage - you'll perform way differently against humans, who are geared for it. Or stay away from busy areas and wander Cyrodiil...I love it, it's massive, there's great pve scattered in there and they did a great job designing it.

As with Nestor, those tips are catered to what I had to learn around your level. Hope they help.

Katahdin

Imo, you don't need purple or higher quality armor until you get to max level.

Green is good to level 40-50 and blue is fine until you get to cp160

Kozai

Katahdin wrote: »

Imo, you don't need purple or higher quality armor until you get to max level.
Green is good to level 40-50 and blue is fine until you get to cp160

An additional nuance, gear color matters more for weapons than for armor. Having blue armor instead of green is a fairly small difference in protection, having blue weapons instead of green is more noticeable for your speed killing things (which also helps you survive). If you can join a fairly active PvE guild, there is probably someone in it who will make you green armor and blue weapons in a nice Training trait (helps you level faster) for free, if you can provide the metal and cloth raw materials from harvesting nodes. It is actually kind of a pain for a max level character to get low and mid level materials, much easier for you to harvest them as you run around. A serious crafter will have tons of green and blue tempers, so won't need those.