What increases the master writ drop rate?

agegarton

My understanding is that learning more purple recipes and motifs should improve the drop rate of Master Writs. I think weapon and armour trait research is also a factor, but I don't remember for sure.

So..... I was wondering, is there a definitive list of what has an effect on the Master Writ drop rate? For example I'm unsure - even after all this time! - whether research in alchemy and/or enchanting has any bearing. And is there anything else?

I'm asking because I craft a lot, but the number and size of the Master Writs that I get seems to have decreased over time. I want to be sure that I'm not missing anything. Thanks forum peeps!

helediron

There has not been any master writ drop rate nerfs after very first month after homestead update. In fact my drops have been steadily increased, as my crafters have got better over time. But you really can't see it from one single crafter. It's too chaotic.

In a nutshell, do these two things as a minimum and you are good to go to earn vouchers.
- Learn at least 7 traits on all.
- Complete all achievements in crafting section (excluding two furniture achievements for now).
Those wrap up all that is needed. The achievements deal all specialities in different professsions.

Beyond that minimum level you will benefit more from creating a second crafter than improving the first. The downside is that you need more mats. Of course you should keep improving the first - continue learning traits, learn epic/gold recipes etc.

The difference between that minimum level and master crafter is somewhere around 20..30% better drop rates. And this is why making a second crafter is better choice.

f047ys3v3n

There is a thread that you can google. my recollections.

1) provisioning: crafting level + purple and gold recipes learned.
-Don't bother with the recipes. The cost relative to the drop rate increase is a joke. Provisioning writs never drop much, arn't much good, and recipes cost a lot. Just level it and learn the recipes you actually want to make.

2) Alchemy: Crafting level and ingredient properties learned.
- Learn them all. There are guides for how to do it efficiently. Alchemy drop rates are decent and they have low cost craft per voucher.

3) Enchanting: Crafting level and rune properties learned.
- Enchanting drops the most writs and most are good. Learn them all.

4) Equipment writs: Crafting level, traits learned, purple and gold motifs learned crown store only one excepted (and nobody is sure if you get credit for each page or only completed motifs.
- The writ drop rate used to scale exponentially with motifs learned. At morrowind (when the game was generally ruined) the formula was changed and now it dosen't scale so well. You get more with none learned than before and far less with many learned. My main crafter gets around 1/3rd what he got before but any of my unlearned crafters get maybe 3x what they used to. I recommend learning all the traits (or all but nirn) as it is basically free but skipping most motifs. Maybe learn the ones that are less than 1k per page but nothing else. You would never pay off learning all the motifs as that is like 4.5m worth of gold and writs just arn't worth that much.

davey1107

@agegarton

The feedback you got is entirely accurate. Now to put it into perspective with some ROUGH BALLPARK figures. (Why the caps? There are valiant math nerds who record precise data religiously. I’m not one of them...and I think rough estimates are fine for what you need to know to decide how far to level your crafters, and how many. Players like helediron have more detailed posts if you need spreadsheets and data.)

In general, we might break characters down as low, medium and high knowledge crafters. Low would be a toon who doesn’t learn motifs and hasn’t done trait research. Medium...let’s call this 6-8 traits known, and they learn a few cheap motifs. High...your 8-9 trait crafters who know many, many motifs.

Low level crafters still get master writ quests, but very few and they tend to be low quality. Based on several players’ data, a low level crafter who does the equipment writs every day would earn 6-8 master writs a month, or about 3.3 vouchers per day on average.

A medium level crafter will get way more frequent quests. Their drop rate is very close to a high level crafter, but they get far fewer gold master writs. Data over the last year suggests they earn about twice as many quests, and an average of 5.5 vouchers per day.

A high level crafter gets a few more quests than a medium, but way more legendary quests. This increases their gains to about 9.5 vouchers per day.

Writ returns are pretty consistent over the long term, but in the short term they can be wonky enough to cause superstition and bad feelings, lol. You’ll go all week with barely a single master writ, then suddenly every quest returns them for several in a row. You’ll get like fifty epics in a row and feel like the legendary ones are broken, then bam you get 1100 vouchers in one or two days.

As a general rule, my assessment of the data is that

1. Two medium level crafters outperform one master crafter, granted it takes more time to do multiple sets of writs. If in doubt, use more semi-proficient crafters than spend time running all over for motifs.

2. Given the cost and time commitment to collect all the damn motifs, at current RNG I don’t see a reason to invest too much in teaching craft alts the motifs. The common ones that clutter inventory...sure. But I don’t teach my alts the $30k per page motifs.

Turelus

A completed motif book (all pages) for Blacksmithing, Clothing & Woodworking.

Purple (maybe blue) recipes known for provisioning.

I think Alchemy and Enchanting was number of unlocked effects.

SolidusPrime

Nothing, I swear.

I have one crafter with all the achievements, 10-11 completed motifs, lots of purple recipes, etc, and he has only found 4-5... since the system started.

I have a secondary crafter toon, that only has Blacksmithing maxed out, no achievements, no motifs, no recipes, and he gets AT LEAST 1 a week. Just yesterday he got a 96 voucher writ.

The system is broken.

agegarton

f047ys3v3n wrote: »

There is a thread that you can google. my recollections.

1) provisioning: crafting level + purple and gold recipes learned.
-Don't bother with the recipes. The cost relative to the drop rate increase is a joke. Provisioning writs never drop much, arn't much good, and recipes cost a lot. Just level it and learn the recipes you actually want to make.

2) Alchemy: Crafting level and ingredient properties learned.
- Learn them all. There are guides for how to do it efficiently. Alchemy drop rates are decent and they have low cost craft per voucher.

3) Enchanting: Crafting level and rune properties learned.
- Enchanting drops the most writs and most are good. Learn them all.

4) Equipment writs: Crafting level, traits learned, purple and gold motifs learned crown store only one excepted (and nobody is sure if you get credit for each page or only completed motifs.
- The writ drop rate used to scale exponentially with motifs learned. At morrowind (when the game was generally ruined) the formula was changed and now it dosen't scale so well. You get more with none learned than before and far less with many learned. My main crafter gets around 1/3rd what he got before but any of my unlearned crafters get maybe 3x what they used to. I recommend learning all the traits (or all but nirn) as it is basically free but skipping most motifs. Maybe learn the ones that are less than 1k per page but nothing else. You would never pay off learning all the motifs as that is like 4.5m worth of gold and writs just arn't worth that much.

Really helpful and the last bit explains a lot ! I have a crafter who knows just about everything, all traits, recipes, etc. His drop rate seems to have dropped off, while my others, who know maybe half as much, have improved dramatically. Overall, I still feel I’m getting less, and certainly fewer large drops. Oh well....... onwards and upwards.

Jayne_Doe

The main problem with this system is that it relies heavily on RNG. So, basically a "newbie" who just got to level 50 in a craft, but has very few traits learned, motifs learned, or even all the achievements can get high-value writs just like a player who has much more overall "knowledge" of the craft. Sure, the veteran player's chances might be higher, but again, it's only the CHANCE that is higher. Whether a veteran player actually gets more writs than a "newbie" is entirely random.

So, yes, this system that was designed to reward a "master crafter" often doesn't and often rewards those who aren't. I guess the upside is that a "master crafter" will always be able to complete the majority of the writs they do get, whereas a newbie won't really be able to complete many, especially the gear writs, at first.

The system has an extremely low barrier to entry and is based largely on RNG, with our crafting knowledge only slightly factoring into it. It's why many of us, myself included, have resorted to having all their alts doing all the top-tier writs they can, as doing them on just a master crafter nets very little reward.

I had a good couple of weeks a few weeks ago, where I was getting a substantial number of writs across all my characters, and sizable ones, too. I probably got 500 or so vouchers within that couple of weeks. But now? I've gotten one worth 5 vouchers over the last couple of days. Now, that is largely due to the fact that I'm only doing writs with my two level 50 characters. Everyone else is parked until the update on console, as I want to get as many of the level-up rewards as I can, and several of them are close to some of the major milestones.

So, It's definitely a noticeable difference when I'm not doing these on all my characters. One of the two I am doing them on is my master crafter who knows all traits, all motifs, all alchemy/enchanting effects, all but 2 purple recipes and the mythic aetherial ambrosia. She's gotten bupkus over the last couple of days. That one writ I got was on the other toon.

TL:DR - certain crafting knowledge can increase your chances, but it still boils down largely to RNG and how many you actually do in a day. Get your alts up to snuff if you want to get lots of vouchers.

jssriot

Patch notes say X, I do X. Player tells me patch notes later also say Y, I do Y. Nothing helps.

Originally patch notes said it was based on achievements, motifs known, recipes known, etc. I have yet to see my main who knows/has achieved far more than my other top tier crafters, has 9 traits, knows all recipe but the cipher one, etc. etc. Consistently, my main gets far less writs than my others, and almost never gets writs worth more than 17v. It's been like this since master writs were introduced.

A player recently told me that I should put skill points back in the research passives (12 skill points total on my crafting toon for which it costs over 15k to respec skill points if I ever want those back), because he swore in the patch notes it said skill points in crafting passives counted as well as achievements.
Same player told me to get the new outfit achievements as those count too. So I did.

So far I've gotten a 2v alchemy writ and a provisioning writ I trashed because it called for prefect roe. But nothing for ww, cl or bs, which were the crafting professions that required the research passives I so begrudging fed skill points back into in hopes of getting more writs.

But my trial healer who is barely a 6-trait crafter and hardly knows any motifs beyond the easiest ones to get and has not done any of the new outfit achievement got a 84v clothier writ yesterday. If fact, if I get a big writ like that, it's usually on that toon.

uzbachchi

Maybe it's all RNG but my main is a master crafter in all 6, and since I finished researching all traits and learned all motifs, I haven't gotten a writ for more than 5 vouchers in over a month, and they're very rare. This week I've gotten all of three writs for a total number of 11 vouchers. It's pretty ridiculous.

majulook

The RNG for this appears to have gotten much worse over time, I have a master crafter that I keep up with the motifs, but the Master Writ drop rate has become less and less. Have not gotten any drops for Master Writs since Jan 9th 2018, I have done the daily's for them every day missing only 3 days since the last Master Writ drop.

Wreuntzylla

davey1107 wrote: »

@agegarton

The feedback you got is entirely accurate. Now to put it into perspective with some ROUGH BALLPARK figures. (Why the caps? There are valiant math nerds who record precise data religiously. I’m not one of them...and I think rough estimates are fine for what you need to know to decide how far to level your crafters, and how many. Players like helediron have more detailed posts if you need spreadsheets and data.)

In general, we might break characters down as low, medium and high knowledge crafters. Low would be a toon who doesn’t learn motifs and hasn’t done trait research. Medium...let’s call this 6-8 traits known, and they learn a few cheap motifs. High...your 8-9 trait crafters who know many, many motifs.

Low level crafters still get master writ quests, but very few and they tend to be low quality. Based on several players’ data, a low level crafter who does the equipment writs every day would earn 6-8 master writs a month, or about 3.3 vouchers per day on average.

A medium level crafter will get way more frequent quests. Their drop rate is very close to a high level crafter, but they get far fewer gold master writs. Data over the last year suggests they earn about twice as many quests, and an average of 5.5 vouchers per day.

A high level crafter gets a few more quests than a medium, but way more legendary quests. This increases their gains to about 9.5 vouchers per day.

Writ returns are pretty consistent over the long term, but in the short term they can be wonky enough to cause superstition and bad feelings, lol. You’ll go all week with barely a single master writ, then suddenly every quest returns them for several in a row. You’ll get like fifty epics in a row and feel like the legendary ones are broken, then bam you get 1100 vouchers in one or two days.

As a general rule, my assessment of the data is that

1. Two medium level crafters outperform one master crafter, granted it takes more time to do multiple sets of writs. If in doubt, use more semi-proficient crafters than spend time running all over for motifs.

2. Given the cost and time commitment to collect all the damn motifs, at current RNG I don’t see a reason to invest too much in teaching craft alts the motifs. The common ones that clutter inventory...sure. But I don’t teach my alts the $30k per page motifs.

When they had that event that gave you quest boxes with motifs in them, I was able to bump 2-3 alt crafter's motif levels (per account) up quite a bit. I never spent as much time in game other than that time period. Like 6 hours a day.

majulook

Learning Motifs are the supposed to have a slight increase in Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking master writ drop chance.
FYI... They just nerf'd the motif drop rate with the Dragon Bones update.