After advice on crafting levelling, writs, alts etc

bjsaustrwb17_ESO

I realise a lot of this will be player preference, but just after any thoughts/advice people have.

I'm a returning player. I have a lvl 50 DK from launch that I migrated to PS4 and never played again with craft skills around 30 but not a lot researched. A lvl 28 sorc that I started one other return with craft skills around 30 with most traits researched (except nirnhoned) that is intended to be my main crafter, and a newer 'main' nightblade that just hit 50 and I'm at around 100 CP with craft skills around 30 but not much researched. I like crafting my own stuff, and the idea of crafting writs seem cool, but I'm confused reading around about the cost/reward for maxing crafting on characters to do writs.

Do I need to do full research and get a bunch of styles on all max crafters to make max writs worth it? Or can I just push crafting to 50 and pretty much just have the craft ability skill (along with extraction while levelling) and it still be worth it?

I read somewhere that lvl 1 writs are just as rewarding as max level if you're not after master writs, does that mean that if I don't want to actually craft on a char but would like to get some writ rewards my best option for alts is to just put a single skill point into the crafting skill and then leave it?

When it comes to levelling crafting on alts, is the easiest/best option to get it to max on my main and then send loot and craft max level gear for my alts to dismantle? Or should I be trying to keep them about the same level so the gear they dismantle will be around the equivalent level of their crafting skills?

Much as I love the game, I don't have a heap of time and don't want to burn out by spending too much time and energy on crafting on all my chars, but by the same token I like the idea of getting some easy gold and mats and stuff once they do get there.

VaranisArano

If the goal is to gets writs without having to buy a bunch of motifs, I recommend focusing on provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy. Enchanting and Alchemy are the easiest, since they just require you to learn all the runes and reagents.

When I did daily writs during the anniversary, the character who knew all my motifs got significantly more blacksmithing/clothing/woodworking master writs than the characters that didnt. But other people have different luck with their alts, so your mileage may vary.

For leveling crafting:
I tend to farm a lot of junk gear, jewelry,and enchatments on a max level character, bank it, and deconstruct it on the character Im leveling. Be prepared for it to take a while-as you go up in crafting levels it can take 15-20 gear pieces and jewelry per level. Enchanting is the hardest, needing a bunch of white glyphs. Recently I've been farming Abyssal geysers for the blue glyphs and that helps a lot. Before that, when I hit level 40 Enchanting I would ask a friend to make me a bunch of purple glyphs for deconstruction.

I've also done the route of buying a ton of intricate gear, but since Ive got a chest farming route Ive been sticking to the much cheaper route of deconstructing junk gear instead.

bjsaustrwb17_ESO

That seems like a fairly good plan. I'll give that a shot for writs.

And ok, that's what I was thinking for levelling my gear crafting, just wanted to check I was on the right path. I probably should be feeding items from my main to my alt now to get him up first instead of the other way around, that way hopefully I'll be able to craft my own gear when I hit 160.

davey1107

Issue 1: master writs. The only benefit to having your alts research or learn motifs is that you will get a higher chance at master writs. There are (insane) players who have catalogues thousands of writs on their characters to approximate drop rates. As a really rough estimation, think of a “dumb” crafter with no knowledge as earning about 1.0 wrote vouchers per day. A medium crafter who does up to 8 trait research and knows a few cheap motifs earns like 5 per day, and a master crafter earns like 10 per day.

Issue 2: crafting writs themselves, and rewards. The rewards get a little better as your rank increases. If you do rank 1 smith daily writs, you’ll earn less tempering alloys than if you do rank 10...in my opinion. But writs are rewarding at all levels, and will generally be profitable so long as you aren’t spending more than like 6k per 200 of the mats. (That was always my break even point). In general, I level my crafting alts up to top level writs not just for master writs, but because the mats are cheap and plentiful in guild stores. If I run low on rubedite I can go buy a ton.

Single skill point: I’m not sure what you’re asking. I think you’re asking if it’s okay to do daily writs at the lowest level. Sure. They still reward generally the same stuff, and they’re still profitable. You don’t need to spend ANY points to do them, though. Just deacon crap and get up to level six, then go do certification in a started city guild hall. No points spent offers rank one writs (iron, rawhide, etc). However, I don’t usually stay at rank one because you have to make more items. The cost isn’t more because it takes so much fewer mats per item, but it’s a lot of boring button mashing.

How to level multiple characters: I level one toon at a time. I push all the deacon crap to the bank as I play, then focus on them deconstructing it. Writs will reward either an ornate or intricate item. Sell the oranate, but push the intricate to your leveling toon and it will work them up quickly. Higher level intricate items are worth more xp, so that’s a little incentive to invest points and do the higher writs. However, be aware that the lines level pretty dang fast. Don’t go out of your way to grind, just work one up at a time.

My multi writ strategy: you’re right, writs are immensely profitable. All of my toons can do them. I used to run dailies on 10+, but I’ve scaled down a bit, lol. Regardless, here’s what I do:

- I make sure a writ alt has 100-120 slots for this endeavor. I make stuff for days at a time, which I’ll discuss later.

- one toon makes the provision stuff. Any of your toons can turn them in, so split the stacks and hand them out. I make a ton at once and give everyone 25 per recipe...they’re good for weeks this way. Note: top level provision wrote make you carry 12 recipes, while all other ranks require 6. I have my alts all doing lower ranks. They can’t get master writs, but the thing is that the purple and blue recipes at lower levels are worth WAY more than the top level (since everyone does top level). I make a fortune selling lower level purples for 15-20k each.

- one toon can make all the alchemy. Again, split the eight recipes and hand them out. I advise top level alchemy writs...you get tons of master writs from them and it’s cheap to do the master writs. So I make them stacks of 25 and they’re good for...200 days, I guess, lol.

- enchant: they have to make their own glyphs. Any level is profitable, and if you run low on runes remember the npcs sells them. If you have to spend $150, you’re going to make $600 on the writ so no worries. Work your guys to top level as you can...master writs are profitable on this. I make 12-15 at a time.

- cloth, wood and smith: these go in a rotation of three items each day for three days, or nine items. My characters make 3 or 4 of each item at one time, then each day they pick up, turn in, log out. I don’t open boxes until they hit craft day, then I open, sell, decon, clean. I also stagger them so that I don’t have to craft all this crap on one day, lol. Two on Saturday, two Sunday, one Monday, etc.

- jewelry. Thus far, just keeping everyone at pewter seems best. Four rings and three necklaces gives you three days.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds. Once you have an organized system, you can plow through 6-10 characters doing dailies in a half hour. So yes, they can be a way to earn some serious gold throughout the week when you don’t have time to play much.

Soella

My two cents:
- If you are on PC, get lazy writ crafter addon. It saves tons of time. Doing writs on 12 toons takes 40-45 minutes, most of them is loading screen.
- for clothing/ww/smithing/JC writs you receive random mats which are lower level than you crafter. To minimize time you might want to have 1 top level crafter and few lower (different) level crafters. With this setup surveys will cover you need in mats for top level and writ rewards for all others, so you don't need to buy/farm additional crafting mats. You lost something on probability of gold mats from writs, but I think it is a good bargain as a time saver.

bjsaustrwb17_ESO

Thanks all, really useful feedback. I'm on PS4 so no add-ons, but I'm liking the idea of different levels for writs. Yes, when I said 1 skill point I really meant just lvl 1 in the material skill which you get without spending a point. I figure it's probably easy for a low level to gather a whole bunch of the 1st level mats for writs on alts without needing to spend all of the skillpoints on geting all chars for the max level writs.
That said, I notice the gold reward depends on your character level (my lvl 10 doing a 1st level provisioning writ gets 200g but my lvl 50 doing max level writ gets 600g), so whilst I might not need to level the crafting to get something out of writs, I do need to level my characters up. I don't really want to burn out trying to powerlevel them, so I guess I'll just poke along doing a bit here or there.

strangeradnd

Your consumables skills I would level as you go with your crafters. Your equipment skills I would not level until you hit a skill level of 50, this makes it easier to stock the needed materials because after you hit level 50 most mats become rare due to the short time spent at cp levels up to 160. You don't lose anything by doing this and are more likely not to run out of materials.

EDIT: I should add you can max out provisions and alchemy in under 30 minutes each as long as you have the skill points available.

Sordidfairytale

When starting a new character as a daily writ crafter I'll decon items to advance them enough to level in the craft skill first. This way the dialogue for the writ quest will give me the option to skip to certification, saves me the time of running around crafting and deconning a bunch of items. Except for Jewelry, I collect the pewter powder and mail it to myself.

I agree with most of what has been stated already, however with regard to clothing, blacksmithing, and woodworking, I recommend focusing on them in that order on your characters. You will have a lot more clothing to decon than anything else, this is due to the light armor and medium armor pieces being so plentiful and both being under the same skill. Blacksmithing will increase next due to the fact that Heavy armor and most weapons are in that skill, however some weapons (staves and bows) and shields are in Woodworking which will take the longest to level imo. Once clothing is maxed on one character you can move on to the next character deconning clothing.

The other thing that I would recommend is get that Hireling. You don't need 3 skill points in Hireling unless you know that you can get logged on to get that second mail from them every 12 hours. Otherwise level 2 and 3 Hirelings are the same.

Additionally; Alchemy and provisioning Master Writs can be crafted ahead of time and stacked. This allows you to stand at the Master Writ Vendor and turn in multiple Master Writs. Open your inventory, accept the Master Writ, turn in, open, accept, turn in, rinse and repeat. I believe that you can do the same thing with Enchanting Master Writs, but Glyphs don't stack, so I don't bother.

bjsaustrwb17_ESO

Do you do any kind of farming in particular for the gear you feed your new crafters, or just what you get questing or playing the game normally?

strangeradnd

bjsaustrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Do you do any kind of farming in particular for the gear you feed your new crafters, or just what you get questing or playing the game normally?

The type does not matter as long as they are greens and blues, Depending on your level run whatever will give you the most with the least difficulty. Delves if you are a little lower level, public dungeions if you are high enough to hold your own and tougher content if you are able. If I am running alone I find public dungeons the fastest for just collecting gear as I can run through quickly then just repeat until my inventory is full.

Soella

bjsaustrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Do you do any kind of farming in particular for the gear you feed your new crafters, or just what you get questing or playing the game normally?

Last time I farmed something specifically for decon was when I leveled enchanting on my first crafter. Normal play provide enough green/blues for decon on new characters (I vendor all white armor/gear), leveling takes about 3 weeks and is good enough for me.

Sordidfairytale

bjsaustrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Do you do any kind of farming in particular for the gear you feed your new crafters, or just what you get questing or playing the game normally?

I recently rerolled a couple of characters, so I'm leveling up their crafting skills again. For me, I decon whatever I come across while I'm questing/playing. I send stuff in the mail to my wife with a subject of "Return Decon" and she just kicks it back to me. I also pull loot from mobs when doing Skyreach runs for guildies. A lot of times I mention that they are doing me a favor by helping me get loot to decon for my lowbies and they end up sending me stuff for my lowbies to decon. The bonus is that most everything I pull out of there is purple in quality. I'll do the same thing with random normals for guildies leveling up their alts.

I have one character setup just for that, skyreach and pledges. That character has almost nothing on them, so when they are full, it's 170+ items to decon.

I have another farmer character that has hardly anything on it, aside from Surveys. I try to keep one of each survey (there are 138 now with Jewelry if I've counted correctly) on that character so I know I will always have enough room for the surveys. Then I just do a zone once I have multiples of each of the surveys. The other 50+ slots I use for collecting treasure chests and Psijic nodes while running Surveys and bounce those back to myself in the mail like above.

Once I'm done farming for the afternoon I login on whatever character I am leveling skills on. Aside from Jewelry, I decon everything purple and below on my lowbie I'm leveling for crafting.

bjsaustrwb17_ESO

Thanks all. I've been finishing off coldharbor quests and main quests lately (just finished yesterday on main), so have been feeding what I was getting, but it wasn't a heap. Maybe I'll go back and check out the public dungeons now, I skipped them first time through.

strangeradnd

bjsaustrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Thanks all. I've been finishing off coldharbor quests and main quests lately (just finished yesterday on main), so have been feeding what I was getting, but it wasn't a heap. Maybe I'll go back and check out the public dungeons now, I skipped them first time through.

If you take out all the bosses in a public dungeon plenty of time will have passed for you to start the cycle over and continue getting gear drops. You can fill your inventory pretty quick without ever having to leave.

Sordidfairytale

strangeradnd wrote: »

bjsaustrwb17_ESO wrote: »

Thanks all. I've been finishing off coldharbor quests and main quests lately (just finished yesterday on main), so have been feeding what I was getting, but it wasn't a heap. Maybe I'll go back and check out the public dungeons now, I skipped them first time through.

If you take out all the bosses in a public dungeon plenty of time will have passed for you to start the cycle over and continue getting gear drops. You can fill your inventory pretty quick without ever having to leave.

Another neat trick; while doing delves/public dungeons queue up for a random normal, join the group, and finish the random normal. If the group isn't doing another dungeon then just leave the group. You'll be teleported back inside the dungeon or just outside the dungeon. (depending on if you were in a delve or a public dungeon.)