Writs on Alts Question

Ostacia

Hello! I only have one character at max level and he's my main and crafter. I hear of people using alts to get master writs and all and I was wondering about an efficient way to do this on my alts. Do I just need to put points in the top "passive" skill for each craft - the one that allows you to use higher level mats? Should I focus on some more than the others?

davey1107

To get a master writ quest you have to be completing max level writs, which means that the character needs to have all points invested in the first passive of that craft line. Lower level writs will never spawn a master writ quest.

The chance of getting a master writ is increased by the character’s “knowledge” in those skill lines. For equipment, this is motifs known and trait research. Enchanting is how many rune traits have been discovered. Alchemy is reagent trait discovery, and provision is purple and gold recipes known. HOWEVER...in my experience doing writs on ten characters, the knowledge thing doesn’t effect the odds much. My alts still get a ton of writs, and I don’t teach them motifs or purple recipes past the really common ones that aren’t worth much.


To level an alt faster

To get your alt(s) leveled up, start pushing all decon tasks to them. If your main does writs, their intricate item rewards will provide super fast leveling. Your main can make some junk blue or purple glyphs to decon (the special will be as much as if another player made them). For provision, just grind recipes. For alchemy, if you have a little bank or reagents, refer to “sunshine daydreams guide to efficient eso alchemy leveling” (google it) for a step by step guide to leveling this with as few mats as possible.

And don’t forget - if you have 90+ champion points, your alts will want to spend 30 in the leftmost green CP tree to get the 20% inspiration boost. That’s your crafting leveling currency, and the buff will be really helpful!


Which lines to focus on

Alchemy is your best bet. Assuming you have a stockpile, you can level this up to fifty in an hour and start master writs right away. The master writ quests are always piddly 2 and 5 vouchers, but the investment is cheap. Make sure your alt learns all reagent traits while leveling, then you’re good to go.

Enchanting is probably the second best line for an alt. It takes forever to level it...when I level an alt, I save up a lot of purples and burn through them. It’s spendy, but doing it one green glyph at a time is boooooring. Top level enchant write produce a lot of 2 and 7 voucher quests.

Provisioning will NOT give you many master writs. I get like 4 vouchers a month with ten characters. If your alt is doing writs they might as well level provision, carry the 12 recipes and do the writs...but it’s for gold and mats, not really the master writs.

The trade skills are probably a secondary focus. It takes a long time to level them. They’re generally worth it, but I never rush grind an alt. Decon everything with them, learn traits on items made by your main (because...why not) then when they level up you can do top writs. They’ll get mostly 5-7 voucher quests, but my alts sometimes pull legendary quests too.


Trade the writ quests

Don’t forget that master writ quests can be sold/purchased. The going rate on my server is about $1k/voucher. If you’re generating a lot of master writs you can’t do...ormwhich are expensive...just sell them and buy better quests. I mention this because people don’t consider this option. I’ve gotten like ten akaviri and militant ordinatior 5 voucher quests this year. That’d be 500k AP just for the stupid style mats. I sell these writ quests, then buy one 50 voucher quest. I lost a little gold, but it saves time and money in the long run.

Ostacia

Thank you so much! This is a treasure trove of a post right here ^ I have done the alchemy research process on most of my alts (it's kind of fun!) and your tips about what to teach/train/learn on alts is so perfect. Just what I was looking for (and more)! Thanks again!

Meryyl

Let me +1 on this.

I’m in almost the same spot as OP. Returning player with one master crafter. I’m going to start on my alts today using these guidelines.

Thanks

Asardes

I've noticed that knowledge of traits and motifs affects mostly the frequency of writs, not the quality. For example my main crafter gets writs every day knowing almost all provisioning recipes (minus the Eidetic Ambrosia one), alchemy traits, having translated all runes, and knowing all traits on every piece of gear with all but 2 motifs completed. But those writs are for the most part of low value, with the occasional big one mixed in. On the other hand one of my other characters who only have 8/9 traits researched gets them a bit less frequency, but still gets a big one from time to time. I'm even getting big ones occasionally on chars with almost no traits researched, albeit the overall drop rate is noticeably smaller. Provisioning is quite rare because only 1/2 of the ordinary writs have a chance to reward it, namely those that require CP150 food & drink; the others that require CP50 food and drink don't. Also recipe knowledge is much harder and more expensive to build up - I've only learned the green recipes, a few blues and occasionally a purple on my other characters. Also Provisioning master writs are quite unprofitable overall, due to the fact two of the possible items require 2 Perfect Roe and only give 10 vouchers. IMO it's a really bad investment to waste them that way since Perfect Roe is 11-12K on guild stores, notwithstanding the price of other ingredients and more advantageous vouchers can be gotten on the same guild stores for under 0.5K gold/voucher. ZoS should buff the number of vouchers for those writs at least 3x to make the worth doing. So I actually don't want to maximize my chance of getting provisioning for now. On the other hand runes and alchemy traits are fast and cheap to discover and on top of that alchemy and enchanting writs are by far the cheapest to craft, bar ones requiring Hakeijo, which suffer from the same undervaluation as the provisioning ones mentioned above. And there are addons that can craft those in bulk, so I actually like having as many as possible.

Ostacia

davey1107 wrote: »

(snip) It’s spendy, but doing it one green glyph at a time is boooooring.

A dash off-topic, but who else read that line in Sheo's voice? I know I did..lol

Flaminir

If you are on PC I recommend the addon 'Writworthy'.

This does two things...

1. Shows you the cost of making the master writ and gives you a gold per voucher cost so you can see if its worth doing or is better to sell.
2. Allows you to select all the master writs in your inventory, and then crafts them all automatically when you go to a crafting station. This means all those 2 or 5 voucher writs which are the most financially efficient ways to get vouchers... but also the most annoying and time consuming... can be done really fast in one hit automatically.

And yes... just to confirm @Asardes ,ZoS did confirm that the various trait/motif knowledge etc only affects the initial drop chance. The writ voucher level of a drop once it happens is entirely RNG.

Ostacia

Thank you, Flaminir, for the tip! I am on PC (well, Mac, but yeah) and just installed Writworthy - wish I would've had this before I accepted (and completed) the Provisioning writ that needed that roe...drats! Better late than never, right?