Crafting use a mule or use main character?

Clarebear

What are the benefits and disadvantages of having one character be a crafter that you don't play except for crafting.

Kwik1

Not having to worry about spending skill points on crafting on other toons.

Not having to worry about researching traits on other toons.

Not having to worry about which toon can make what items.

I have 1 character who is max crafting and it makes life simple for me

SydneyGrey

Whatever character you use as your main crafter is going to need a lot of skill points.
There are plenty of skill points available in the game, though, especially if you have all the DLCs.

The only issue I've found is that it would be difficult (but not impossible) to have your master crafter be a werewolf/vampire as well, just because all of those require a LOT of skill points to max out. If you want to be a werewolf or vampire, then I suggest using an alt for your master crafter, unless you plan on doing a lot of dungeons and PvP, and gather every skyshard in the game to have as many skill points as possible.

davey1107

If someone wants to be a crafter in the game...assuming this means all six of the craft skills...there are three approaches that I tend to recommend, each with pros and cons.

Main does it all:

the convenience here is that your main can just learn all the recipes and motifs and do all crafting themselves...no account shuffling when you need stuff. The con is the massive number of skill points this consumes. I just counted on one of my crafters, and a fully fledged crafter in all six lines with research running will use about 100 skill points.

This means being utterly dedicated to skill point farming. Is it possible to be a maxed out fighter and crafter? Yes...there are over 375 skill points in the game right now, with maybe 300 being “easy” to obtain. So you can attribute 100 to crafting and have 200 left for fighting...that’s plenty. But it means farming the points. There are about 400 sky shards in the game...so you need to grab most of these (including dlc zones and Cyrodiil) to put toward crafting.


Use an alt crafter:

you don’t necessarily reduce the amount of work by putting the 100 skill points into an alt...but it means you can select which skill points to go after. If you take this approach, I recommend creating a character you might use in the future. If your main is a magplar and you’ve been thinking about trying magsorc someday, create a decent mag sorc character. You’ll do a lot of leveling to get all those points, and who knows...maybe they become a fighter some day. If you ever decide to use them that way, it’s helpful of they aren’t a fat bald Nord sorc named crafty mcdikpunch, lol.


Use a blend:

For those who might want to minimize skill point hunting, you can divide crafting onto multiple characters. This is also VERY helpful for those trying to manage crafting without the eso plus craft bag, where characters are being used to hold a lot of stuff.

You can pretty easily divide the craft lines between characters. The equipment lines should all be on one, since they share motif knowledge and other stuff. Then you can put the consumables on another character. You could use your main for equipment and an alt for consumables, or two alts. You can also divide up the consumables amongst many alts...this really cuts down skill point farming.

I recommend this for players without a craft bag. Back when I started playing, my main was my equipment crafter. Then Alt 1 held all equipment materials. Alt 2 did enchanting and held all runes. Alt 3 did alchemy and provision and held those.


Regardless

For those who like the crafting game and are getting started I always offer a few tips. We don’t know what features Zos will tie to crafting in the future. Consider the master writs, which when introduced offered massively valuable rewards to master crafting characters. If you’re taking the time to develop an alt, I always recommend working up all six of their craft lines...just rotate through who you have deconstructing items, and move through your alts leveling them one at a time. And consider running trait research on all of them. It only take a minute to have a main crafter construct junk items for research, and if we get some feature tied to it they’ll be ready for it.

zaria

You want one main crafter because of motifs, you could do consumable on second character but this is still an downside because of furniture crafting.

However you will need plenty of skill points you will probably reach level 50 getting them, also you main is likely to be the one who explore everywhere getting all the skyshards also making him main crafter is not an issue, you can still have multiple builds on him if you get most of the skyshards.
Hint do all the normal dungeons, do TG and DB but reset skillpoints afterward.

DoctorESO

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Kraynic

I handle this slightly different than some others here. I have all crafting maxed on one, however I only have the main perk (recipe improvement, solvent proficiency, and potency improvement) and anything else useful outside of crafting maxed out on the consumable skills. This is so that I this character can do equipment and furniture. Then I have an alt (or 2 if you want) max out the consumable skills with all the perks for effective decon/crafting.

This still requires a lot of skill points for your main character as pointed out earlier though. It does cut out a little skill point farming though.

Apache_Kid

My reasoning for having my main as my crafter is that the acheivments for crafting and knowing all the styles are ones that I want for my main as I actively hunt for in-game acheivments.

Gulkrim-mur

Clarebear wrote: »

What are the benefits and disadvantages of having one character be a crafter that you don't play except for crafting.

Well they do all your crafting it costs a lot of points so dedicating them to crafting is a huge start but still not enough for everything. You could mule them but if you lack ESO plus you can start a guild restrict access to yourself and run around inviting people. You only need 10 for guild bank that's like 500 slots.

Jim_Pipp

Your main will eventually have enough skill points to be your crafter.
1) gear crafting is all about getting to the right crafting station, so your crafter will need some combat skills that your main will have. A house with all crafting stations overcomes this.
2) you collect motifs, furnishing plans and recipes through gameplay and it is much more convenient to be able to learn them straight away without clogging up your bank to check if your crafter knows them. Add-on's partially overcome this.
3) if you care about achievements your main is going to miss 1000's of points earned through crafting and learning motifs. Some motifs are aquired through stealing and daily repeatable quests so I personally recomend a night blade for a crafter/main because the invisibility spell will save a lot of time in the long run.

The downside. If you don't have esoplus or a well-stocked craft bag then managing inventory will be a character-swapping-hassle, especially if your main is also your crafter.

vanwilder

My main is my crafter, pve and pvp. Just silly i still have skill points avaiable. 50 skill points from pvp that help alot