Beginner crafting questions

dzebas

Hi,

I'm totally new to this game and read in some guide on this forum that it's worth crafting your own gear while levelling up. Currently I'm almost level 15, but still have bits of level 5-7 on my character.

I've unlocked crafting, but one thing I don't understand - how to craft green or blue items? It allows me to select gear level up to 14, but looks like only white is possible to craft?
Also, regarding jute - what is the best way to get it, to me seems like running around the world and picking them could be a hard task?

Thanks in advance.

Beamer_Miasma

Switch to the upgrade tab, it's the fourth from the left, to the right of the decon tab (refine-create-decon-upgrade-...).

You can either harvest jute yourself or buy it from other players, there's no NPC vendor for it. There's a passive in each trade skill that will make the harvest nodes light up when you are within 20/30/40 meter of it, that can help finding them.

dzebas

Awesome, thank you!

So basically you always craft white and then go trough upgrade process?

qbit

Not going to speak to whether it’s worth crafting gear as you level up. Honestly I think you’re better off just accumulating materials assuming you’re an ESO+ subscriber. Rather than wasting mats on crafting. I also think you might want to wait to refine mats until you have passive that give you better yield of rare mats when you refine raw mats But I’m not an expert.

But I WILL say with certainty that you absolutely must level crafting and learn traits as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter too much what traits you learn. It’s the number you know per armor or weapon piece that matters. But best to focus on Devines, the one that increases XP, and the infused traits.

dzebas

Thanks qbit! So far I don't have problems defeating world mobs with the gear from drops and I only die if I don't check my health bar.

So maybe I should not worry about crafting armour for now, just level up crafting in general.

Taleof2Cities

dzebas wrote: »

Thanks qbit! So far I don't have problems defeating world mobs with the gear from drops and I only die if I don't check my health bar.

So maybe I should not worry about crafting armour for now, just level up crafting in general.

You're on the right track, @dzebas.

The XP gain in the game is faster than it used to be ... and you level out of armor pretty quickly.

That said, it is pretty fun crafting gear for a lowbie character even if it's a 2-trait 5-piece set in green.

dzebas

Thank you @Taleof2Cities!

I playing this game slow and don't have any desire to get to level 50 ASAP, would be nice to craft myself some nice gear in the process I guess

Speaking of sets (for low level), how do you craft those?

dan958

dzebas wrote: »

Speaking of sets (for low level), how do you craft those?

Crafting sets is a bit more difficult. You need to go to a certain crafting station (it is different per set) more info on the sets and locations can be found here; https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafted+Sets

Each set also has a trait requirement e.g. to craft a Ashen Grip dagger, you will need to have researched 2 traits for the dagger.

So start researching those traits now, because it takes forever. More info on traits here; https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4015/~/how-do-i-research-a-trait?

Violynne

dzebas wrote: »

Hi,

Hello!

I'm totally new to this game and read in some guide on this forum that it's worth crafting your own gear...

STOP!

Do not craft your own gear until you've hit level CP160! Find, steal, or trade for items the game gives you because you do not want to waste those mats!

Instead, you'll want to do 3 things:
1) Get a note pad and jot down every weapon, armor, and cross table each trait (or you can look up a spreadsheet online). START RESEARCHING IMMEDIATELY! Keep track using what you have and what you need. Get inventory in the bank so you can store items you'll research once a slot is open.

2) BANK EVERY TEMPER. Green. Blue. Purple, and especially Gold. Bank. Do not use! Not yet, anyway!

3) DO YOUR DAILY WRITS! This won't level you up ASAP, but it will help. More importantly, you can gain items which will help, such as decon at 300% items.

As a new player, it's often easy to rush these things, but this game is punishment if you spend everything early. Save. Save. Save!

Then, when you're ready, you will not only be able to craft your own weapons and armor, you can even do so at special crafting sites. If you are in the need of specialized gear, you can always grind Overland Sets, which are limited to areas in the game.

Also, another bit of advice: DO NOT REFINE your mats until you've unlocked all 3 passives in each of the crafting trees. This increases your changes to obtain Legendary tempers.

Hope this helps and welcome to the game!

Beamer_Miasma

My advice would be to ignore the hype and just go ahead and craft your own sets. You will out-damage your team mates by 100% with just a good combination of crafted blue sets (and perhaps sell them some in the process) and there's nothing like 1-shotting a 30K HP mob on a level 10 character. It's fun, simple as that, and if you're not here for that, then why?

As for 'worth it' in terms of money, if you're making a crafter you'll be swimming in green and blue upgrade materials soon anyway, there really is no need to save them up. Just sit on those purple and gold tempers until you're cp 160, but before that it's not going to make you poor to craft yourself a nice blue set every 8-10 levels or so. You can create yourself 10 blue leveling sets for the price of 1 gold nirncrux weapon, so really, nothing you make before cp160 is going to hurt your bottom line later on.

dzebas

I'm level 20 now and my gear is all over - couple of heavy, couple of medium, some light etc. From what I understand for magicka Templar ideal is 5/1/1, but just can't get this from drops.

Can't craft much either as it's very hard to find materials in the wild (I've skill which helps to find unlocked). Can't even do daily writs because amount of materials required to do them is insane.

The guild I'm in doesn't seem to do any trading, should I join another random guild which does?

dan958

dzebas wrote: »

The guild I'm in doesn't seem to do any trading, should I join another random guild which does?

You can join multiple guilds. Most traders will have a normal guild that they are in, and they will also join a couple of trade guilds.

dzebas

Playing trough main quest now and last ~5 quest rewards is some ring and glyph, can't get any armour, so now running without boots and some other piece is totally broken. Played couple of Dark Anchors (?), same thing, only getting rings.

So looks like I will need to start crafting as game doesn't give me armour anymore for some reason.

I'm level 22.

jlb1705

My tip is to not put any skill points into unlocking higher-level mats until you have fully leveled that skill. In other words, until you're at 50 in each, only allow yourself to craft with iron, jute, & maple. This allows you to do sustainable writ crafting: When doing writs at the lowest level, the reward for completing those writs will always be in the same material that you use. If you unlock crafting with higher level mats, it doesn't return what you spend so it's not really worth it until you've maxed that skill
By remaining at the lowest mat level, typically you'll spend about 30 refined mats at that level and get back 25 on each daily writ. If you upgrade to using higher-level mats as you go, you won't necessarily get back the same material, which means your stockpile gets depleted much more quickly, forcing you to skip daily writs, refine more raw mats, spend more time farming, or spending gold at guild traders to buy stacks of refined mats. None of these things are ideal at the early stages of the game.

I did my early crafting that way, and I didn't really have to worry about where to find jute because my net consumption of it was not that great. You'll still spend more crafting than you get back in writ rewards, but the difference is so small that you don't have to go on farming runs - you just harvest what you encounter over the course of normal questing.

The tradeoff is that you can't craft your own gear. If you really want to use crafted gear though, just find somebody to craft it for you with mats you supply. That gives you something to do with all of those mid-level mats that you won't really have a use for as you farm them.

The final thing that I'll mention is if you want to find mats, go to the starter zones for the base game. I started playing the game with Morrowind and did not even leave that zone until I had completed about 90% of the quests. I kept reading about how easy it was to find nodes in the open world and wasn't having that experience there. I remember searching all over Vvardenfell for jute nodes back when I was trying to get a large enough stockpile to be able to do writs every day, and finding little to nothing. I had a much easier time New zones are going to be highly trafficked though and will get picked over. Older zones and places that more experience players don't have a reason to spend time in will have a lot more nodes available.

jlb1705

dzebas wrote: »

Playing trough main quest now and last ~5 quest rewards is some ring and glyph, can't get any armour, so now running without boots and some other piece is totally broken. Played couple of Dark Anchors (?), same thing, only getting rings.

So looks like I will need to start crafting as game doesn't give me armour anymore for some reason.

I'm level 22.

Go do some delves if you're looking for armor. As you noted, Dark Anchors drop jewelery.

dzebas

Thank your for such detailed reply, appreciated! Didn't think about not levelling crafts, but only added one point to clothing, nothing to woodworking and blacksmithing, so hopefully not to bad.

Good idea about delves, didn't knew about this!

dzebas

One more question - are public dungeons doable solo and if so, what level should one be? I play as magplar, but my gear is crap at the moment.

mague

Its is worth to craft sets in white or green. Since the One Tamriel buff it is not required to upgrade every 10 levels. The buff is strong and the set bonuses are what you want below 50.

Crafting is doing writs and , if you have the mats, grinding.

Public dungeons are soloable if you know you class a bit. Magplar should be able to solo them. Usually you are not alone, because people grind armor or achievements and shards. Due to the One Tamriel buff your level is not important.

Another strategy is to craft a set of armor (or ask someone to craft one) with Training trait and then reach 50/160 as fast as possible. Because once you are 50/160 the mobs drop endgame armour. It even happens that an overland spider sometimes drops a set piece. I just did that with a DK and he now has 1.5 of his own zones and Cadwelss silver and gold and all DLC for questing and collecting sets.

dzebas

mague wrote: »

Its is worth to craft sets in white or green. Since the One Tamriel buff it is not required to upgrade every 10 levels. The buff is strong and the set bonuses are what you want below 50.

Sorry, noob question - what is One Tamriel buff and how can I get it?

JKorr

dzebas wrote: »

mague wrote: »

Its is worth to craft sets in white or green. Since the One Tamriel buff it is not required to upgrade every 10 levels. The buff is strong and the set bonuses are what you want below 50.

Sorry, noob question - what is One Tamriel buff and how can I get it?

You have it already.

Before "One Tamriel" the zones were leveled. Following the questlines for you faction was generally a good idea. Your level 10 brand new character could wander into one of the higher leveled zones and get eaten by a level 40 sabercat otherwise. You couldn't go anywhere *but* your faction zones; every other area [except cyrodiil] was locked until you finished the first story and unlocked Cadwell's Silver quests, and then Cadwell's Gold quests allowed you to go anywhere.

People complained about this, so eventually ZOS changed the game to "One Tamriel", and allowed players to go anywhere any time; you are leveled to the game content, and the game content is at the max level. From level 1-50 this means your low level new character gets a large boost. After hitting that, not so much. Gear and build become more important because the automatic buffs from the game are being reduced as you level past 50.

One Tamriel might have helped the longer time players, but imo made things a lot more confusing for new people. Doing bits and pieces of three different faction quests does not a coherent story make.

albesca

Violynne wrote: »

1) Get a note pad and jot down every weapon, armor, and cross table each trait (or you can look up a spreadsheet online). START RESEARCHING IMMEDIATELY! Keep track using what you have and what you need. Get inventory in the bank so you can store items you'll research once a slot is open.

This can't be stressed enough: the research times for the last traits are insane.
Also, you should put points on the passives that open the second slot for research (Metallurgy, Stitching and Carpentry, if memory serves me right) as soon as possible.

JKorr

Another thing you might consider; find a good player guild. A guild usually has crafters who will make items for guildmates at lower cost/free with mats/or free, especially items for research. [exception for nirnhoned items; you normally have to give the crafter the nirncrux trait stones for those] Finding a good guild with helpful crafters also helps you; if you can get items for trait research made when you want/need them, you don't have to use space in your inventory or bank to store them.

Having a crafter make the research items for you will also let you pick the traits you want to use first to get them done, for all the armor/weapons, instead of relying on rng to get traits. Before there were a lot of crafters, rng made for some very strange mixes of traits on sets of gear until all the traits were learned. Since you need a certain number of traits to craft the "named" gear, for an example "Ashen Grip" you need to have learned 2 traits for each piece you want to make. Researching "training" on all the armor pieces, for example, will let you make a full set of training armor. It doesn't matter which traits, as long as you know two. I seem to recall the first time I made that set for myself with my brand new crafter researching with rng, no two pieces ended up with the same trait....

dzebas

Thanks again JKorr for detailed explanations!

Did few delves yesterday and slowly getting my gear back on track now. I'm in a guild, but I'm not 100% sure if I want someone to craft me a good set, would this not spoil excitement of getting good drops while playing?

JKorr

dzebas wrote: »

Thanks again JKorr for detailed explanations!

Did few delves yesterday and slowly getting my gear back on track now. I'm in a guild, but I'm not 100% sure if I want someone to craft me a good set, would this not spoil excitement of getting good drops while playing?

Getting good loot is always fun/exciting. But, at lower than cp160 levels, it can be really hit and miss, sometimes both at the same time. If you aren't using a crafted set, you may be farming for a while before you get a full dropped set collected. Since you tend to level faster at lower levels, and you get drops according to your level, you could end up with no two pieces of your set at the same level. What drops, if anything does, is up to the rng gremlins, and they can be really perverse little gits.
http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Overland_Sets

If you find two sets that you think will work for your playing style, you can have a crafter make them for a trial run before you hit cp160. One of my dks uses Hunding's Rage and Morkuldin's; doesn't die often and I like the ghost sword that shows up. One of my nbs uses Night Mother's Gaze and Eternal Hunt, a sorcerer uses Innate Axiom and Law of Julianos.... With having items crafted for you, or by you, you have the sets you want, the level you need, the style you want, and the enchants you want instead of what the gremlins decide. I usually make new sets about every ten levels, although it isn't really necessary; whatever you decide for the armor, I'd keep the weapons within 5-10 levels of your character.

The dropped items you get can be deconned for the mats and tempers to keep or sell. You will probably be able to use the gold, especially in the beginning. Ornate items can be sold.