Jewelry Crafting: Get ready for the worst grind in ESO's history

code65536

Most players who regularly participate in the PTS or otherwise follow the PTS closely already know what will be in store for them when the Summerset update introduces jewelry crafting, but I suspect that most of the player base are not yet aware of some of the details of the system.

Specifically, the amount of materials needed to upgrade jewelry quality is 10x more than what is needed for the other crafts.

Similar to the other crafts, it takes 2 green plates, 3 blue plates, 4 purple plates, and 8 golden plates to upgrade jewelry if you have maxed the improvement passives. The problem is that whereas you acquire full pieces of upgrade materials for the other crafts, the upgrade materials for jewelry come in the form of grains, which represent 1/10th of a plate. And, most crucially, based on testing that people have done on the PTS, these grains drop at the same rate as the full upgrade materials of the other crafts.

For example, when you deconstruct a purple-quality staff with maxed deconstruction passives, you have a 50% chance of getting a single Mastic from the deconstruction. When you deconstruct a purple-quality ring with the necessary deconstruction passives, you have the same 50% chance of getting a single grain of a purple jewelry upgrade material. Each time you refine raw wood, you have a 7.5% chance to acquire a single Mastic--a full purple upgrade mat. Each time you refine raw jewelry mats, you have the same 7.5% chance to acquire a single grain of a purple jewelry upgrade material.

Effectively, the amount of materials needed to upgrade is 10x more than that of the other crafts, since the upgrade materials are acquired as 1/10th grains from all sources (refinement, deconstruction, and writ rewards; there are no hirelings), at rates that are apparently identical to that of full upgrade mats of other crafts.

What does this mean? It means that to craft a single purple-quality Julianos ring, you will need 20 green grains, 30 blue grains, and 40 purple grains. Purple mats--grains for jewelry and full upgrade mats for the other crafts--drop at a 7.5% rate per refinement. To acquire 40 grains, you will need to refine 533 times; you will need to acquire and refine approximately 5300 raw jewelry mats just to craft a single purple ring.

Let's say purple is too rich for your blood. You just want to craft a simple blue-quality Julianos ring. That's 30 blue grains, which, at a drop rate of 12.5% per refinement, is 240 refinements. You need to acquire and refine 2400 raw jewelry mats to craft a single blue Julianos ring.

What if you're leveling a character, and instead of wearing random dropped jewelry as you do now, you want to craft a matching set of jewelry? Since it's just a character that's being leveled, you're not too picky and will be happy with simple green quality. 20 grains at a 15% drop rate means 133 refinements. You need to acquire and refine 6-7 stacks of raw jewelry mats just to upgrade a single ring to green quality.

Still excited about jewelry crafting?

I have friends who were excited about all the golden jewelry from vet trials that they can decon for mats next patch. Similar to other crafts, with maxed passives, you have only a 50% chance of getting an upgrade mat from decon. Except here, it's just a grain. To acquire the 80 grains needed to upgrade a single purple ring to gold, you'll need an average of 160 gold rings to decon. Think about that for a moment. You need to decon 160 golden jewelry pieces... to upgrade a single jewelry piece. That's 80 runs of vAA HM to get the mats for golding one jewelry piece via decon. I don't know about you, but I'll probably go crazy before the 20th run.

Or, if you're crazy enough to seek golden quality through refinement, you're looking at 1600 refinements: 16K, or 80 full stacks, of raw jewelry mats. For a single jewelry piece.

Oh, and did I mention that there are no hirelings? I did, but let's reiterate that.

How's that excitement for jewelry crafting now?

There is an easy solution, though: increase the drop rate of grains. They currently drop at the same rate as full upgrade mats of other crafts. (50% per decon, 15% green per refinement, 12.5% blue per refinement, 7.5% purple per refinement, and 5% gold per refinement.) If, for example, deconstruction always guaranteed at least 1 grain, with the chance of sometimes getting multiple grains, the drop rate would still be substantially lower than that of the other crafts, but not quite as insane as it currently is on the PTS. As it stands, jewelry crafting isn't fun. It isn't accessible. And I don't see myself seriously using it any time this year.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Tasear

Golden vendor looks so nice now.

Qbiken

Inb4 those people who will say it´s an MMO and grind is a part of the game, and who thinks stuff shouldn´t "be easy to get" to justify the grind with jewellery-crafting....

I find it ridiculous that a major selling-point for Summerset, is so un-appealing. Jewellerycrafting was supposed to be somewhat of a "QoL-change" in my opinion, not a half time job.

Agree with all your points. It´s a game that´s meant to be played for fun and excitement. As it stands now, jewellery-crafting isn´t anywhere near those things.....

Colecovision

After deconing enough to level, getting the needed trait research and getting all passives, will I be able to turn 50 purple junk rings into 1 purple hundings? Assuming rng is average of course.

code65536

Colecovision wrote: »

After deconing enough to level, getting the needed trait research and getting all passives, will I be able to turn 50 purple junk rings into 1 purple hundings? Assuming rng is average of course.

The current drop rate is 50% chance at a single grain when you decon, if you have all of the relevant passives. So to upgrade a single jewelry piece to purple, you'll need to acquire and decon an average of 80 junk purple rings.

Stinkyremy

code65536 wrote: »

For example, when you deconstruct a purple-quality staff with maxed deconstruction passives, you have a 50% chance of getting a single Mastic from the deconstruction. When you deconstruct a purple-quality ring with the necessary deconstruction passives, you have the same 50% chance of getting a single grain of a purple jewelry upgrade material.

Well this seems fine tbh.
While yeah it will take a while, it doesn't straight away lessen the value of the golden and people making money from AP selling the jewellery. It doesn't lessen the reward and prestige of getting Vmol or vhof jewellery (for a while) so that every 200cp has full gold moondancer or war machine set...
On top of that the 1000s of pitch, turpen and 800+ mastic I have from just deconning and refining for a year jewellery mats will be 1/10th of that in a year. Seeing that making gold jewellery for myself and others will be very infrequent as you will only want to use the mats for guaranteed builds using non farmable gold jewellery it seems spot on.
Something to really work towards for a crafter, something to encourage people to work towards at all levels, and finally allow anyone to have the fully best build that they desire.

My only gripes are that the nodes are rare and will be farmed so hard that the mats will be worth a small fortune, meaning we all have to farm for them, and they will be over farmed. A vicious cycle that will allow monopolies by hardcore farmers and the gold hoarders and scammers, driving the price up further.

notyuu

The entire problem with jewelry crafting can be boiled down to a singular thing
you need to refine upgrade mats
which means they drop raw from deconning and refing normal mats
in other words zos wants to take what is already a grind/expensive process [getting equipment to gold] and make it even more of a grind....
simply put, *** like this is what makes me regret pre-ordering summerset

a solution to not making gold jewls easy to get.. without screwing over every other tier would simply be.. make the gold upgrade mats stupidly rare..or tie them to the master writ vendor
@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

ninibini

Very well said, Code. Thank you.

I can understand, that they don't want gold jewelry super easy to come by, but the system like it is now is horrible.

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

Will not be worse than the old VMA weapon grind back when there was no transmutation..

And nearly all weapons were BiS in one way or another.

code65536

Stinkyremy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

For example, when you deconstruct a purple-quality staff with maxed deconstruction passives, you have a 50% chance of getting a single Mastic from the deconstruction. When you deconstruct a purple-quality ring with the necessary deconstruction passives, you have the same 50% chance of getting a single grain of a purple jewelry upgrade material.

Well this seems fine tbh.
While yeah it will take a while, it doesn't straight away lessen the value of the golden and people making money from AP selling the jewellery. It doesn't lessen the reward and prestige of getting Vmol or vhof jewellery (for a while) so that every 200cp has full gold moondancer or war machine set...
On top of that the 1000s of pitch, turpen and 800+ mastic I have from just deconning and refining for a year jewellery mats will be 1/10th of that in a year. Seeing that making gold jewellery for myself and others will be very infrequent as you will only want to use the mats for guaranteed builds using non farmable gold jewellery it seems spot on.
Something to really work towards for a crafter, something to encourage people to work towards at all levels, and finally allow anyone to have the fully best build that they desire.

My only gripes are that the nodes are rare and will be farmed so hard that the mats will be worth a small fortune, meaning we all have to farm for them, and they will be over farmed. A vicious cycle that will allow monopolies by hardcore farmers and the gold hoarders and scammers, driving the price up further.

While I agree that the other crafts are indeed too easy to upgrade, I am also quite convinced that their correction with jewelry crafting has swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. I do not think it would be appropriate for jewelry upgrade materials to be as easily accessible as the others. But there has to be a more balanced middle ground than this.

I was very deliberate in not even mentioning gold upgrades until the end of my post, because I feel very strongly that the current system is inappropriate across the entire spectrum, and that the topic of upgrading to gold is a bit of a red herring. When it takes the refinement of 6-7 stacks of raw mats just to upgrade a single ring to GREEN--the lowest, trashiest quality for set item jewelry--something is just not right.

Tyrobag

Yes, the people saying "oh its fine, mmos are supposed to be grindy" don't seem to understand the sheer magnitude of this grind. ZoS has done some ridiculous things in the past, but this is really up there on the crazy scale. Jewelry crafting should have been the same as all of the other crafts. As is you'll be able to level a Master Angler before you can craft a gold ring.

Kodrac

It's almost as if they never wanted to add jewelry crafting, but gave in to player demand. So in protest they made it as big of a pain in the ass as possible. A virtual F U to the demanding players.

code65536

ninibini wrote: »

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Indeed. Writs like the following make the Roe and Hakeijo writs look extremely generous:

Stinkyremy

code65536 wrote: »

Stinkyremy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

For example, when you deconstruct a purple-quality staff with maxed deconstruction passives, you have a 50% chance of getting a single Mastic from the deconstruction. When you deconstruct a purple-quality ring with the necessary deconstruction passives, you have the same 50% chance of getting a single grain of a purple jewelry upgrade material.

Well this seems fine tbh.
While yeah it will take a while, it doesn't straight away lessen the value of the golden and people making money from AP selling the jewellery. It doesn't lessen the reward and prestige of getting Vmol or vhof jewellery (for a while) so that every 200cp has full gold moondancer or war machine set...
On top of that the 1000s of pitch, turpen and 800+ mastic I have from just deconning and refining for a year jewellery mats will be 1/10th of that in a year. Seeing that making gold jewellery for myself and others will be very infrequent as you will only want to use the mats for guaranteed builds using non farmable gold jewellery it seems spot on.
Something to really work towards for a crafter, something to encourage people to work towards at all levels, and finally allow anyone to have the fully best build that they desire.

My only gripes are that the nodes are rare and will be farmed so hard that the mats will be worth a small fortune, meaning we all have to farm for them, and they will be over farmed. A vicious cycle that will allow monopolies by hardcore farmers and the gold hoarders and scammers, driving the price up further.

While I agree that the other crafts are indeed too easy to upgrade, I am also quite convinced that their correction with jewelry crafting has swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction. I do not think it would be appropriate for jewelry upgrade materials to be as easily accessible as the others. But there has to be a more balanced middle ground than this.

I agree with you, it is a bit too far, but if you can see what I am saying I have like 800+ mastic from deconning wood weps/shields and refining for just over a year. Now on average I get 1 maybe 2 wood weps from dungeons, and on average 3-4 jewellery, so I will be deconning more jewellery than wood weps as well as the easy as dolmen grinding for guaranteed jewellery.
Other than refining amount, because of the scarcity of the nodes, and over farming, the amounts will more and less even itself out within a year.
Decon everything, refine and farm hard, like you would have done when first reaching 160, or max VR.
As i said, nobody is gonna want "level 10 purple training jewellery" like they do with gear and weapons. It will be rare to even craft jewellery for anyone as the mats will be so expensive and scarce that they will only ever need it for guarenteed builds, same with upgrading. Any set you can get purple jewellery for yourself anyway. it's really the purple-gold that is the big issue.

Stinkyremy

code65536 wrote: »

ninibini wrote: »

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Indeed. Writs like the following make the Roe and Hakeijo writs look extremely generous:

Hey what is the deal with writs for jewellery on PTS, not master writs, just writs.
What do they ask for, and how much mats does it take?
Also can we decon the general trash white jewellery we get for mats?

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Concur about the grind; it's kind of funny that they go through the trouble of making the Chapter accessible to new players and then put the LEAST accessible crafting in the same package. I'm seriously considering just grinding dolmens for deconnable rings, and then selling those off to people who want to use the new system; I suspect it will be less frustration for all involved than farming the materials.

Jhalin

Don’t forget the initial 10x mats required to make a white tier ring due trait materials also dropping in 1/10 what’s required for one piece.

jedtb16_ESO

looking forward to it.

starkerealm

Oh, wow... a more extreme grind than collecting vouchers. Or completing Militant Order and Akaviri. Or collecting Nirncrux to complete 9 trait research. Or getting Master Angler. More extreme than getting the three Sewer polymorphs.

The most extreme ever, because collecting all 14 pages of Buoyant Armiger can be comfortably done in a weekend.

starkerealm

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

Will not be worse than the old VMA weapon grind back when there was no transmutation..

And nearly all weapons were BiS in one way or another.

Don't forget, back when weapons weren't even a 100% drop rate. (Or am I thinking of Master weapons?)

VaranisArano

I'm alright with the grind.

What?

Look, my golden jewelry used to be limited to what came up the Golden. There was no crafted golden jewelry at all. Compared to waiting on ZOS' RNG or not being able to craft jewelry at all, I'm alright with the grind.

Seriously?

Yeah, seriously. Lets say I want to gold out my Spriggan's rings for PVP. Before this, I had to wait and wait on the Golden Vendor (I got the gold necklace from her, lucky me). At least this way, I can gold out those rings if I want and it probably won't take me any longer to grind the mats than waiting on the Golden Vendor would.

But its really really grindy!

I've fully golded out 1 set of gear ever. That was a PVP set and the rings fortunately came up in the Golden. Not only is my need very rare as purple suffices for most things, but I can accept a grind if it means not waiting weeks on the Golden's RNG.

Sheezabeast

I'm worried about how fast it levels and how my master crafter is going to have to scrimp her skill points to have enough to fill all the passives....and the grind sounds frustrating...but its a completionist thing with me, I gotta learn it

VaranisArano

Stinkyremy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

ninibini wrote: »

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Indeed. Writs like the following make the Roe and Hakeijo writs look extremely generous:

Also can we decon the general trash white jewellery we get for mats?

Yes, you can. Its possible to level Jewelry crafting entirely from the white platinum rings now bought in the Mages Guild. I got the platinum ounces and the appropriate style mats from doing so.

I don't recommend it personally. Testing it on the PTS, it took 400ish pieces at 1,387 gold ea to get me to level 18 jewelry crafting and it was slow going.

Mannox

What the *** is going on at ZOS? They are going hardcore Korean F2P on us. More gated content. WAY more grind. Less content in DLCs. More gambling and hot sales. Jesus Christ the list goes on! They're ruining their own damned game. I stopped playing for now myself. Refunded the Summerset chapter too. This is such pure *** in my opinion. If they want an empty Tamriel spattered with whales and B2Ps then be my guest.

Stinkyremy

VaranisArano wrote: »

Stinkyremy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

ninibini wrote: »

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Indeed. Writs like the following make the Roe and Hakeijo writs look extremely generous:

Also can we decon the general trash white jewellery we get for mats?

Yes, you can. Its possible to level Jewelry crafting entirely from the white platinum rings now bought in the Mages Guild. I got the platinum ounces and the appropriate style mats from doing so.

I don't recommend it personally. Testing it on the PTS, it took 400ish pieces at 1,387 gold ea to get me to level 18 jewelry crafting and it was slow going.

No but we get so much trash jewellery just from general chests and questing or dungeon running, getting these low level mats shouldn't take that long really, if you decon everything you find and after getting to 50 with all passives.
You get like 3 or 4 (ornate) jewellery from mages and fighters guild dailies...

smacx250

On the other hand, if you don't want to grind it out, you'll get all those mats just from "normal" farming and by deconning junk jewelry instead of vendoring it (new traits aside). This is unlike some of those other things where you must only do that one thing to grind out what you are looking for. Especially since pretty much all players, even those without Summerset, will be getting those mats as part of their normal play. Prices will be high, so there will be incentive to sell. I know this doesn't matter to some, but to others it's really a completely different thing than some of those other grinds. I'm willing to see how it plays out on live before I rip it to shreds.

code65536

Stinkyremy wrote: »

code65536 wrote: »

ninibini wrote: »

Also thinking about the master writs. One of the samples I got on PTS was to craft and epic ring for 9 vouchers. Given the rarity of the upgrade mats, this should be worth at least 10x the vouchers. So, no thank you.

Indeed. Writs like the following make the Roe and Hakeijo writs look extremely generous:

Hey what is the deal with writs for jewellery on PTS, not master writs, just writs.
What do they ask for, and how much mats does it take?
Also can we decon the general trash white jewellery we get for mats?

Yes, the regular non-master writs do seem reasonably accessible, and are probably worth doing as a source of other jewelry mats. They don't require any color upgrades, which is where the biggest grind will be (even upgrading to green will be an undertaking under the system as it currently exists on the PTS).

BuddyAces

Mannox wrote: »

What the *** is going on at ZOS? They are going hardcore Korean F2P on us. More gated content. WAY more grind. Less content in DLCs. More gambling and hot sales. Jesus Christ the list goes on! They're ruining their own damned game. I stopped playing for now myself. Refunded the Summerset chapter too. This is such pure *** in my opinion. If they want an empty Tamriel spattered with whales and B2Ps then be my guest.

It's sad when the appearance they give is of that. Take my agree.

Darlon

They have dropped the ball on this really....

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_RichLambert

Tandor

Do we know how far people have progressed in Jewelry Crafting on the PTS? That will surely give some sort of an answer to how severe the leveling process is, given that Summerset has only been on the PTS for what, three weeks?

Hymzir

Prepare for the grind you say...

No, no I wont. Gonna give it a pass mostly.

I'll level the skill on my main character and learn the traits along the way, but will not waste any of my time on trying to craft anything with it. Not worth the effort or the time. Any mats I'll come across, I will sell or use for furnishing stuff.