Crafting f2p, non-sub

friimynd · August 2020

after deleting all my characters and restarting fresh i found it is basically automatic to craft, esp with the addons
.
1. deconstruct found gear (or sell for gold, might as well decon and boost crafting, sell mats on guild stores)
2. wait for level 10 in crafting rank to do the writ certification quests, you just click through and finish
3. at level 8 in gear crafting you can research 2 items at once for each different craft
4. use the 'auto-research' and 'lazy crafting' addons to do writs and research at the same time
5. with the 'awesome guild store' addon you can filter for only unresearched traits to purchase, gear
6. have alts do provision writs at each different rank to obtain all possible recipes
7. enchanting and alchemy (and jewelry) are kind of pointless, waste of effort, gold, high cost resources
8. one alt can hold enchanting mats, another alchemy mats, if you don't subscribe for the mat bag
9. only gather during 2x gathering events, all other times simply buy mats
10. just a game, sometimes just clicking on daily login reward and horsey bonus is enough

I bought a 2nd account on steam as there was a sale, i think $10.
So far I haven't cheated yet, sending stuff to it from my main account.
Can rob the bank in Vukhel Guard to get money for horsey click.
There is $100,000 reward for daily login this month, so that won't be a problem anymore.
Can then purchase research and crafting deconstruction items to boost crafting to 10 for writ quest completion.
Was kind of surprised to not be able to do jewelry, as no Summerset. But at least there's Vvardenfel. Vivec City.
Saving videos for possible youtube channel, maybe not. So far is pure f2p (-$10 for the base game).

For my main account I've got 8 (the 9th race is the one on the other account)
One is the main crafter, all recipes, etc.
One other is enchanting holder, make glyphs for main to decon, level crafting up.
Another is jewelry holder, same thing, make junk for main to decon (and vice versa).
Enchanting is behind the gear crafting, which is almost 10 on the 3 gears. Only the enchanting holder is doing the enchanting writs.
Jewelry is behind enchanting, takes a lot of decon to level it up, and much less available on market.
Provisioning, main at max, another at max, one each at each level of crafting, last isn't crafting yet at all.
Alchemy, started leveling main, at 4, not bothering with writs. Maybe look into prices but really, meh.
. It's been a load of gold to boost storage and inventories to be able to even hold the provisioning materials, some of which overlap so it is easier to just craft daily rather than holding stacks of crafting.
Not going to bother gathering for alchemy outside of double gathering events, same for enchanting.
At some point i'll have an alchemy holder similar to the enchanting holder, who can do the writs.
Eventually level up all the other characters and pre-craft the items to turn in for each one, which they can each hold in inventory. It has to say 'crafted by ... character name'

well, that's it for now, sometimes i even do a random dungeon, nearly at 160 cp
i might even do pvp again, once i get re-geared up

i do the crafting/research only every few days now, depending on what 'craft store' addon shows me about my alts, if they need to do research or not

honestly, i think the game would be better without the crafting; it's basically farmville without the farm

TLDR: Crafting, so what, lol; but you can do it non-sub, if you don't mind a bit of headache.

friimynd · August 2020

why is there no 'edit'?
anyway

decided to try pre-crafting provisioning writs, enchanting, alchemy, the consumable writs
you can carry stacks of 100 or 200 i guess, then just skip the daily crafting and go straight to the drop off

it will take more inventory space but free up bank space, so... anyway; it saves time i guess is the main thing

honestly, i'm procrastinating even logging in to click my daily horsey bonus [snip]

[Edited to remove Bashing]

Daemons_Bane · August 2020

Edit is the little gear icon in the top right side of your post

lozq · August 2020

If it’s too much hassle crafting without ESO+ than maybe just don’t do it? Or just do alchemy and provisioning, as they’re the only two directly useful to your character in combat (food/drink buff durations and potion coolodown passives).

I’m maxed out on my main and tbh crafting isn’t all that useful, it only really comes into play if you want to do master writs and I think that would be a nightmare without the craftbag. You also need oodles of motifs which means it’s more of an endgame activity anyway.

If I started again and didn’t sub I’d probably just research things casually, do minimum level writs and decon intricate pieces. Too much inventory management otherwise, and there’s so many good overland and dungeon sets that not being able to craft my own wouldn’t feel like a barrier to progression. If you ever desperately want a crafted set it’s easy enough to find someone via a guild or on zone who will knock one up for you.

In short; if you enjoy it and don’t find the inventory management an issue, go for it. If it’s a hassle, you can safely ignore it for the most part and you won’t be gimping yourself.

friimynd · August 2020

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

Edit is the little gear icon in the top right side of your post

it is not there

friimynd · August 2020

oh, got it, right of the 'title'

that was tactful of you to only remove the one line, zos

what i had said was i felt the 'feature' of the daily click to improve 'horse' was *****, in so many words, such and such a manner, more flippant, offhand, lol

i would say it could have been 'smurfy', irrelevant

friimynd · August 2020

it isn't about 'enjoying it', there's nothing to enjoy, running from station to station, blah blah whatever

you sell the rewards, the gold and purple stuff, for gold on your clan markets, guilds

the more you research the more likely you are to get gold stuff to sell

what i was trying to say in the post was that i started with the idea of not crafting but it just sort of happened

first you have a bunch of extra gear you don't want so you decon it, you get stuff that is worth something on the market
next thing you know your crafting levels go up and you can research 2 things at once
you get the addons to do it automatically, and figure might as well do the writs, it goes pretty quickly (till you have 8 or 9 alts)

at some point you just login to do the crafting and the research and sell stuff and sort of forget about playing the game
so
bottom line, i think the crafting is not good, it's a bad idea; the game would be better without it

Sanctum74 · August 2020

Game would be terrible without crafting. Imagine half the sets in the game being removed, you cant upgrade sets, change traits, change enchants, have to use npc food and potions, etc. Not to mention its the best way to make gold in the game with writs. Luckily this will never happen.

Daemons_Bane · August 2020

Is there a tldr version of what he is trying to say.?

Tandor · August 2020

Daemons_Bane wrote: »

Is there a tldr version of what he is trying to say.?

He doesn't like crafting and therefore believes it should be removed from the game.

lillybit · August 2020

Most of your points are good sense but there's a few I'd disagree with:

You can do crafting certification at character level 6. You don't have to wait for the craft to be at 10, you can do them at any level as soon as you're certified.

Only gathering during 2x events actually isn't very worthwhile - there's so many other people doing it too that unless you get really lucky you'll find less than half the nodes you would anywhere else. You're much better off going somewhere less populated - especially when everyone else is in the 2x zone!

Alchemy, enchanting and jewellery writs are definitely NOT a waste of time.
Jewellery is very cost effective at min level and max gives a guarenteed improvement grain with a good chance of it being purple or gold. Even with just one character doing writs you get enough purple/gold grains to be worthwhile - with many characters doing them it's a no brainer.
Alchemy and enchanting have the highest drop rate for master writs which are hands down the best way to level new characters and/or skills. Also, they sell for much more per voucher than equipment ones (at least on PS4).
Even without that, they give a good supply of surveys which are a far better way of getting mats than waiting for a 2x event.

Research doesn't give a better chance at gold mats, just master writs. Even for those it has less effect than motif knowledge. I have lots of crafting characters at various levels of research done and motifs known and the only one that has a noticably better drop rate than the others is my main with 100% research and motifs. Even then there's a noticable drop every time a new batch of motifs are released and my knowledge goes under 100% again.

Enchanting works well but I've found making jewellery for another character to level up is a very bad way of doing it. It's much more cost effective to farm dolmens or buy trash jewellery from traders to decon. You usually get enouh grains back to offset the cost quite a bit. It will cost you way more in mats for the same results.

I have to agree it's a massive time drain tho, even with only actually crafting anything every 9 days. I regularly have breaks from doing writs on all my characters but miss the gold too much to keep it up for long. So for me it's worth it to fund my shopping habit!

friimynd · August 2020

lillybit wrote: »

You can do crafting certification at character level 6. You don't have to wait for the craft to be at 10, you can do them at any level as soon as you're certified.

I mean you don't have to DO the quests if your crafting is level 10, you just click through and finish without doing anything else.

lillybit wrote: »

Only gathering during 2x events actually isn't very worthwhile - there's so many other people doing it too that unless you get really lucky you'll find less than half the nodes you would anywhere else. You're much better off going somewhere less populated - especially when everyone else is in the 2x zone!

I don't want to gather at all. I just buy the mats other people have gathered, usually quite cheap. Even with many people there are still plenty of nodes. With "Harvest Map" addon it will show only the spawned nodes if you like. There are out of the way areas to be found if things are too busy. I'm simply NOT going to gather at all except for a 2x event. The exception would possibly be treasure chests. Giant bags.

lillybit wrote: »

Alchemy, enchanting and jewellery writs are definitely NOT a waste of time.
Jewellery is very cost effective at min level and max gives a guarenteed improvement grain with a good chance of it being purple or gold. Even with just one character doing writs you get enough purple/gold grains to be worthwhile - with many characters doing them it's a no brainer.
Alchemy and enchanting have the highest drop rate for master writs which are hands down the best way to level new characters and/or skills. Also, they sell for much more per voucher than equipment ones (at least on PS4).
Even without that, they give a good supply of surveys which are a far better way of getting mats than waiting for a 2x event.

I mean that it is not worth leveling. As a writ it is fine to do as you never run out of pewter. Not going to try to farm for jewelry items to decon. Not fun. Making rings is easy and cheap, at least at lower levels. At higher levels I will farm the mats and keep doing the same. But basically I gave up trying to even level it up. I can just buy rings or pay someone to craft something maybe. Or better yet just farm them, some set i mean, not like farming for decon. I think i have a set of 'agility' jewelry already purchased, at 160cp.

lillybit wrote: »

Research doesn't give a better chance at gold mats, just master writs. Even for those it has less effect than motif knowledge. I have lots of crafting characters at various levels of research done and motifs known and the only one that has a noticably better drop rate than the others is my main with 100% research and motifs. Even then there's a noticable drop every time a new batch of motifs are released and my knowledge goes under 100% again.

I'm taking my information from the thread by the fellow who records the stats of his crafting, writs, etc. I think he has like 28 characters he does it on and a spreadsheet of the results. Apparently there IS a bonus to things like 'grains' and 'gold' items dropping if you have more research completed. Also if you have more purple and gold recipes and such learned, and styles (motifs?), and idk what else. Maybe the difference is only a few %, idk. Basically I just do it anyway because it is something to do and easy and as you say it gives a steady income from selling stuff like gold grains. The research is automatic mostly, because of the addon 'auto-research', and the writ crafting is easy because of 'lazy crafter' addon. The research happens when you do the writ crafting.

lillybit wrote: »

Enchanting works well but I've found making jewellery for another character to level up is a very bad way of doing it. It's much more cost effective to farm dolmens or buy trash jewellery from traders to decon. You usually get enouh grains back to offset the cost quite a bit. It will cost you way more in mats for the same results.

I mentioned about doing the jewelry this way instead of farming for it or buying it off the market. I just don't care. The crafting is a pain really and it is just something to do instead of watching tv or sleeping or whatever. Or pvp. It is like solitaire. Nobody really wants to play solitaire, it is just something to do instead of nothing. You login, you click the horse guy, the login thing first, then you check your research, maybe do the writ crafting, autoresearch. out, quit, bye. Or maybe do a random. maybe pvp. If i really want to play I'll do my main and then probably try to trick out an alt with some more skill points and better gear. anyway... it's that i don't really want to play, mostly. But sometimes.

Either you do the daily minimum of at least horse click and research check, or you don't play at all. If you do the research check and see you need it, then you wind up doing writs because it's so easy with the addons. Then maybe just run through the alts. Put junk up for sale.

lillybit wrote: »

I have to agree it's a massive time drain tho, even with only actually crafting anything every 9 days. I regularly have breaks from doing writs on all my characters but miss the gold too much to keep it up for long. So for me it's worth it to fund my shopping habit!

so, TLDR: i tried it without crafting and decided might as well craft as it's virtually automatic, can practically just one click and move to next. And making training trait gear is good. Do daily randoms. Do events. Maybe some pvp.

BUT: it's a collossal joke. I mean... it's fun running around a toon and whacking ppl in pvp or mobs in pve. But banging a hammer on an anvil? CMON!

NOT FUN

all the benefits of crafting could be done some other way, like you could get upgrade tokens from boss mobs and go to some NPC guru who blesses your sword or whatever. It doesn't have to be 'crafting'.
It only exists because stupid games have done it for decades. It is 'expected' from a game, esp a MMO.

So, if you get an extra bonus item maybe sometimes from a boss fight, you don't have to waste time running around picking BLeepinG flowers, etc.

It's lame.

But anyway.... it can be done without subbing. Kind of a pain though.
I've got another account with one character that I'm going to try to NOT craft with.
But that's a story for another time.

friimynd · August 2020

TLDR: Crafting, so what, lol; but you can do it non-sub, if you don't mind a bit of headache.

The real deal is Why Leveling? Just put us in there at cp 160 or 810 or 2000
really
oh, but you can make money selling leveling tokens, or exp boosters, and so on...
it's all a psychological ploy to encourage spending money
perfectly understandable, gotta drink beer, beer costs money

but imagine if you could make all your money on optional stuff? like no leveling, so no exp boosters for sale, no mount training for sale, no instacrafting for sale

but you still have all the cosmetic things for sale, and so on
maybe in 10 years ppl will think differently, maybe not

lozq · August 2020

friimynd wrote: »

it isn't about 'enjoying it', there's nothing to enjoy, running from station to station, blah blah whatever...

...at some point you just login to do the crafting and the research and sell stuff and sort of forget about playing the game
so
bottom line, i think the crafting is not good, it's a bad idea; the game would be better without it

If you find that some aspect of the game is not enjoyable, you are not required to participate in it. It certainly doesn't mean you should (for some reason) login every day to exclusively do just that, because that would make absolutely no sense.

I dislike battlegrounds. So when I login I don't immediately queue for a random daily battleground, although the option is right there. Simple.

friimynd wrote: »

The real deal is Why Leveling? Just put us in there at cp 160 or 810 or 2000

oh, but you can make money selling leveling tokens, or exp boosters, and so on...it's all a psychological ploy to encourage spending money

There are games without levelling, but this is not one of them. You could just as easily say 'Why do I have to grind for gear and items, why can't I just have whatever I want, whenever I want?'. There's games that work like that. This one does not.

No-one likes the crown store, it's a cash grab. But it's also entirely optional and tbh offers no real advantage if you're a regular player. Having a slow horse or not having every trait researched does not meaningfully impede you in anything. The only stuff exclusive to the crown store is cosmetic. If people want to pay $50 IRL for a house to decorate online then that's on them, people spend way more money on 'fun stuff' all the time. And businesses like making money. So yeah.

If you dislike so many core aspects of the game, why are you playing it?

Guyle · August 2020

I would only reserve wishing extensive crafting in ESO without a sub on the most heinous, vile, worstest of the worst of my enemies. As of yet, I have not had anyone elevated to that status, so I can firmly say I would not wish it on any of my enemies.

Kalik_Gold · August 2020

I just use 2 of the 5 guild slots for personal use. One is my “craft bag” it does take planning to keep certain ingredients in my main bank, and pull from guild bank when resources run low. Can also keep potions and food in main bank. I’m on console with no addons and can do writs. The other guild bank I store motifs, BoE items, master writs etc.

Everything takes planning and setting up, but I am used to it now. Also when a free ESO+ week comes around I can fill the real craft bag up.

friimynd · August 2020

not required to participate in it... how 'thrilling'
hey, here's a mud pie, you are not required to eat it
lol
.
:smh:

i can do whatever i like and complain about it, too

friimynd · August 2020

Kalik_Gold wrote: »

I just use 2 of the 5 guild slots for personal use. One is my “craft bag” it does take planning to keep certain ingredients in my main bank, and pull from guild bank when resources run low. Can also keep potions and food in main bank. I’m on console with no addons and can do writs. The other guild bank I store motifs, BoE items, master writs etc.

Everything takes planning and setting up, but I am used to it now. Also when a free ESO+ week comes around I can fill the real craft bag up.

so, i thought you need like 10 ppl in a guild to activate bank, idk; what's the minimum?

free ESO week, yeah, i did that with my last bunch of characters, wound up deleting it all, just out of spite really, lol

i kind of doubt they will do it again, but maybe around xmas or new year?

friimynd · August 2020

i'd rather have that guild spot for selling junk, rather than keeping it in inventory
.
it's like the grocery store; you buy just what you need for a week or two
the store will still be there
or like the library, it's YOUR library

you can sell stuff, and buy the same thing when you need or want it

but anyway...

gotta go pick some berries for the green reindeer (i've got a green aura to show off when riding it, should be neat)

idk · August 2020

friimynd wrote: »

why is there no 'edit'?

When you are the OP there is a cog next to the title. You probably have to refresh the page first if you are still on it as that has been a bug for a long time that Zos seems to be reluctant to have the contractors fix.

friimynd · August 2020

thanks, i found that one
and just yesterday i found the other one
when you click on the number of your post the * will appear
isn't that stealthy?
lol
...
oh, maybe you just have to hover then? lol
.
no, i remember not seeing the * and then click the number and it reloads and you see the star when your mouse is in the area
but now that i've done that all my posts have the star, or gear thingie i suppose, like a settings button