Have Master Writ drops been nerfed, are they broken, or am I doing it wrong?

agn231

I'm seeing occasional 2 voucher alchemy, enchant and provisioning writs but the equipment writs have dried up to rare 5 writ vouchers for epic pieces (which should be worth more vouchers imo). Anyone seeing 3 digit writs anymore? I accumulated over a thousand vouchers when this launched but things have slowed down dramatically. Xbox NA

Giraffon

I get a lot of 2-5 voucher jobs. They aren't really worth the trouble for the vouchers, but the XP and gold is OK given it only takes a few moments to put them together if you have the resources.

About once every 2 weeks I'll get one that's 20-80 vouchers, but the rest of the time it's 2-5. I'm trying to put set gear crafting stations in the guild hall and at 250 vouchers a pop it's a pretty slow process. I've given some thought to just buying up writs from guild traders, but I don't want to spend all that gold and then turn around and burn through legendary mats on top of it.

Lumsdenml

Giraffon wrote: »

I get a lot of 2-5 voucher jobs. They aren't really worth the trouble for the vouchers, but the XP and gold is OK given it only takes a few moments to put them together if you have the resources.

About once every 2 weeks I'll get one that's 20-80 vouchers, but the rest of the time it's 2-5. I'm trying to put set gear crafting stations in the guild hall and at 250 vouchers a pop it's a pretty slow process. I've given some thought to just buying up writs from guild traders, but I don't want to spend all that gold and then turn around and burn through legendary mats on top of it.

Hold on.... there are some writs that give 20-80 vouchers????

Nestor

Lumsdenml wrote: »

Hold on.... there are some writs that give 20-80 vouchers????

There are some that give 100's of Vouchers. I think the highest I saw was a 257. Rare though. 95% of what I got was 3 to 5 Vouchers. I am sitting on a 93 Voucher one as I don't want to use up my Gold Tempers.

agn231

I had a 315 voucher writ during the first month of "Master" writs, it was for a legendary Trice Born piece with nirn trait. At the new drop rate, I hope to have a complete attunable crafting station done sometime before construction of the new Foreign Quarter in Vivec is complete...

RaddlemanNumber7

I do daily writs on 2 "got it all" crafters. My last three weeks' results for all types of master writ have been:

39 WV from small writs, and one legendary writ for 78 WV. Of these master writs 4 were for equipment.

42 WV from small writs, and one legendary writ for 46 WV. Of these master writs 5 were for equipment.

76 WV from small writs, one legendary for 51 WV and one legendary + nirnhoned for 144 WV. Of these master writs 11 were for equipment.

Prior to that I had a 4 week dry spell with no legendary master writs.

It just looks like RNG to me. The chances of getting a legendary master writ in a daily writ reward is extremely small, and each throw of the RNG dice is independent. Strange looking distributions are inevitable.

Xander3Zero

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe in the patch notes somewhere it is mentioned that Master Writ drop chances are impacted by YOUR knowledge in that craft, defined by the amount of motif research you have completed. For consumable crafting the Master Writ drop chance is dependent on how many recipes you have discovered or how many runes you have discovered.

I believe that only impacts your chances of receiving a Master Writ, and has NO EFFECT on the quality of Master Writ you receive (i.e. a Writ for 7 vouchers vs. one for 115 vouchers).

Thrasher91604

So every time they add new motifs, your chance goes down, including store motifs, until you get them? That is what it seems like.

Tevalaur

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

So every time they add new motifs, your chance goes down, including store motifs, until you get them? That is what it seems like.

That would be a likely assumption as to what's actually happening, but they claimed that our chances would only ever improve not lessen as we learned more and more motifs...

davey1107

I have long believed that ESO uses a traffic control system to prevent the market from being flooded. If 100 people do a quest in a day, perhaps the system hands out 1 desirable item, a 1% drop rate. Then the weekend comes and 10,000 people do the quest. The system doesn't want to devalue the desirable item, so it gives out 50. More people get them, but the drop rate is down to 0.5%.

Thrasher91604

I agree. During early access the motifs were dropping regularly for Vardenfell dailies. Once live the drop rates have become abysmal.

Giraffon

And for those of you that are waiting for those big drops doing consumable writs...don't. It's not gonna happen. You want the big ones, you gotta do the armor and weapons.

Tevalaur

Giraffon wrote: »

And for those of you that are waiting for those big drops doing consumable writs...don't. It's not gonna happen. You want the big ones, you gotta do the armor and weapons.

Yes, alchemy writs are either 2 vouchers (for 20 poisons) or 5 vouchers (for 20 potions).

Provisioning writs are mostly for 2 vouchers with an occasional writ around 10 vouchers if the recipe uses perfect roe, so it'll cost you 2 perfect roe to complete (with max investment of skill points to make 4 food/drink at a time as the master writ will require 8 items).

Enchanting writs are usually 2 vouchers. 13 vouchers if it requires a Hakeijo for an epic quality rune (usually considered not worth it) or 40 vouchers if it requires a Hakeijo and a Kuta for a legendary rune.

Meanwhile equipment writs are for 5-6 vouchers if it's an epic item that doesn't require a nirncrux and a bit more if it requires a nirncrux. Bump the voucher total up again if it's for a legendary item. A lot more again if it is a legendary item and if it also requires a nirncrux; this'll be one of the few cases with a very large total of writ vouchers. Blacksmithing master writs pay slightly better in terms of vouchers than clothing or woodworking, but will require a greater gold cost to complete as metal improvement materials are more expensive.

EDIT:
TLDR: if it pays more vouchers, it'll use more expensive materials to complete.

Ashtaris

Despite what ZOS says, I don't feel there is any significant difference from those who know all the motif's compared to those who don't in acquiring MCW's. Or if there is, it's so miniscule of a percentage to make any impact. So I stopped worrying about collecting the motif pages. Before Morrowind one of my characters had every motif in the game (along with all traits) and still had a crappy MCW drop rate

POps75p

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

So every time they add new motifs, your chance goes down, including store motifs, until you get them? That is what it seems like.

that is NOT correct, I was missing well over 100 motifs, and I was getting great writs 157 and 91 etc on a regular basis, so I though just as you did. so I went out all picked up all of the motifs that I needed, once that happened, I started to get crap and still do. so do spend much time or money trying to collect motifs, it will not help master writ drops and you will start getting a bunch of 2 and 3

POps75p

Ashtaris wrote: »

Despite what ZOS says, I don't feel there is any significant difference from those who know all the motif's compared to those who don't in acquiring MCW's. Or if there is, it's so miniscule of a percentage to make any impact. So I stopped worrying about collecting the motif pages. Before Morrowind one of my characters had every motif in the game (along with all traits) and still had a crappy MCW drop rate

dido

Stopnaggin

Thrasher91604 wrote: »

So every time they add new motifs, your chance goes down, including store motifs, until you get them? That is what it seems like.

Store motifs aren't in the mix. Only 2 to date so far. Knowledge does affect your chance. I also haven't been getting master writs as much. Oddly enough my lower tier crafters get higher writs then my master crafter. She hasn't seen a writ above 10 vouchers in 2 weeks.

bongtokin420insd16

lol I have received exactly one master writ in a month and it was provisioning. I'd kill for another, no matter how small.

SoLooney

Best I have gotten was 257, it was easy to craft too, I just sold it cause I have no interest in housing, I got my ebony motif, im perfectly satisfied.

Most I ever seen was 345, was insane.

But yea, I noticed I been getting less Master Writs and the ones I do get are worth 2-6 vouchers for the most part. Ill get the occasional 50-200 writ, but master writs are worth butt now, not as much profit anymore.

I also do it on 3 characters

Katahdin

They are nerfed hard. Not getting as many nor the quality I got a couple of months ago. Even so the best I ever got was 120. Getting to the point where they aren't worth doing any more.

This game is becoming very unrewarding for the time spent.

agn231

I like to think they look at our comments occasionally so hopefully the feedback from this post is helpful. I'm pleased that changes have been made to revitalize the crafting part of the game (maybe crafted armor will get an overhaul someday!) but have been a little disappointed with the lack of writs and their low value. A lot of the writs are in the guildstores now for less than 1K per voucher but who wants to throw away 8 gold temps for 7 - 15 point writs.

Thrasher91604

Yeah, perhaps it's time to stop doing anything but the alchemy and provisioning and enchanting ones.