New Player Question About Earning Gold

Napalm_Death32

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

writs?

Napalm_Death32

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

I agree with you that power leveling is fine, and I think your other post above was also very good. But I'd say even if someone is willing to power level, they should play for a week or two to get a feel for the game. Then power level dolmens from 25 to CP160, if that's what they want, sure. But power leveling right from level 6 by running the dolmen train for 10-20 hours is soul crushing. "as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys" " is the key thing in your post, and a lot of new players don't really understand the hows and whys even if they think they do.

The best way to power level, is to get to level 10 and do your daily dungeon and BG. Do that in parallel on multiple characters, then don't worry about leveling outside of those dailies. You won't be done in a day or two like you could with dolmens, but you'll be up pretty quick, it's more playtime efficient and you get to actually experience a variety of content along the way. If you want to grind out a few extra levels along the way in dolmens or skyreach or w/e knock yourself out, but long term the extra few days it took you to get to 50 isn't a big deal.

As for the crafting thing, I'll add this for the OP who is probably playing without ESO+. Max your bank space, yes it's a lot of gold, I assure you it's worth it. Get at least 4 bag upgrades too. If you're going to do the crafting writ thing, once you get to CP160 it's worth getting your crafts up to max just so you have a smaller variety of mats to juggle. There are ways to do this without buying a bunch of intricates or crafting/deconning for other characters. Deconning the gear you find or steal is a much better value proposition even if it takes a bit more time.

yeah sadly i don't have the money for + being unemployed and studying still, pretty much why i haven't had the luxury to buy the version with greymoor, summerset etc.
Also does the bank space carry over account wide or character only?

Napalm_Death32

might be a dumb question though, haven't played an mmo in the last two years

carolingnight

Bank space is account wide and shared between all characters. Technically server-wide, I think, but I assume you're not playing on two different servers (yet).

Gargath

My recomendations for your low level character:
1. join a guild, may be a trading guild without monthly sales fee.
2. ask someone to craft for you, free of charge, the Adept Rider set to increase the movement speed, will help a lot in gathering mats and questing faster. With this set and all medium armors you will not need a mount to move, therefore no need to train mount speed at the beginning.
3. pay attention to all nodes around and pick them up, there is an addon for minimap and pins which display the available nodes around in short range - very helpful.
4. move oustide the starting zone like Bleakrock and train your horse in stable each day, start with inventory slots to increase.
5. be active in guild chat, you may try to ask for free gold in guild chat, there are plenty of people who don't know what to do with their billions and willingly share gold with other guild mates.
6. while gaining skill points invest them in "keen eyes" on crafting skills. Will help you gathering whatever you find on the ground much easier. Deconstruct any gears you find to increase the rank, do not sell them to vendors untill you get to rank 50.
7. install addons for trading with style, like Master Merchant to verify which items are worthless and can be scrapped, which can give profit. Sell at guild trader in MM average or slightly below, not above, to sell faster. Join more guilds to sell more items.
8. pay attention to what drops to your inventory, and remove trash very often. Play a lot because only then you can have a lot of money, especially if you are non-subscriber.
9. think about starting another characters in different classes and races, mostly to relog to each and train mount skills on a daily basis. It will help you playing those other classes later when you are ready but with already trained mount.

PeacefulAnarchy

Napalm_Death32 wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

writs?

Writs are daily crafting quests. They give some gold and mats as rewards. They are a very time efficient way to earn gold, but only once you're at high level. They're still above break even at low level, so no harm in doing them, but you won't really "get" why everyone raves about them when you're level 10 getting back 5 jute, a decon item and 50 gold for the 7 jute and a style item you put in. In contrast a level 50 character doing a max level writ will spend 40silk to get back 25 plus 600 gold plus a purple or gold mat. Done in bulk over multiple characters and over many days it all adds up for a relatively small time investment. Everything Oreyn_Bearclaw is correct, except that catching up can be done very quickly. Catching up on any aspect of the game is really quick once you know how, which is why I say don't worry too much about things right now.

If you're on PCNA I would take up Oreyn_Bearclaw on their offer. They seem to know what they're talking about and I'm sure they can help you get setup in whichever direction you want to take.

There are a ton of tips and tricks that one can give new players that are much more easily done in response to things that come up than as a big decontextualized list.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

I agree with you that power leveling is fine, and I think your other post above was also very good. But I'd say even if someone is willing to power level, they should play for a week or two to get a feel for the game. Then power level dolmens from 25 to CP160, if that's what they want, sure. But power leveling right from level 6 by running the dolmen train for 10-20 hours is soul crushing. "as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys" " is the key thing in your post, and a lot of new players don't really understand the hows and whys even if they think they do.

The best way to power level, is to get to level 10 and do your daily dungeon and BG. Do that in parallel on multiple characters, then don't worry about leveling outside of those dailies. You won't be done in a day or two like you could with dolmens, but you'll be up pretty quick, it's more playtime efficient and you get to actually experience a variety of content along the way. If you want to grind out a few extra levels along the way in dolmens or skyreach or w/e knock yourself out, but long term the extra few days it took you to get to 50 isn't a big deal.

As for the crafting thing, I'll add this for the OP who is probably playing without ESO+. Max your bank space, yes it's a lot of gold, I assure you it's worth it. Get at least 4 bag upgrades too. If you're going to do the crafting writ thing, once you get to CP160 it's worth getting your crafts up to max just so you have a smaller variety of mats to juggle. There are ways to do this without buying a bunch of intricates or crafting/deconning for other characters. Deconning the gear you find or steal is a much better value proposition even if it takes a bit more time.

First and last paragraphs are spot on. Only pushback is that I think you can beat a dolmen grind, even as a new player with no resources (to buy carries). They are certainly the easiest if you have no idea what you are doing, as you pretty much just have to follow the train and spam a few Light Attacks.

I have power leveled more than half my toons. I usually start by porting around wayshrines to level 4. I then equip level 4 training gear and do the dolmen grind until about level 10-15 depending on class, then I move to a zombie grind once I have enough skills to do it at a reasonable speed solo. Outside an event, you can get to 50 in 5-6 hours without any help, but certainly, if its your first time, it wont be that fast. During an event, its faster. So if looking to power level 4-5 extra toons, waiting to an event makes sense. If you have access to skyreach or BRP, you can go even faster, especially with a friend if you know what you are doing, but that might not be realistic early on.

Getting to 50 is not really required for doing crafting writs per se, but it does give you enough skill points to do max level writs across the board. You can grind to level 50 about as fast as you could grind 60 or so pts of skyshards, which is about what it takes for max level writs.

proprio.meb16_ESO

I think for a first char which is still lvl6 and has yet to abandon starting zone it's a lot to deal with... theres plenty of time to learn the ropes... you wont miss gold after a certain point, and you will struggle a little at start, its part of the mechanics.

Treasure all the above advices but dont forget first of all to enjoy the game itself, grinding for gold from the very stary can become a full time and pretty annoying experience depending on the player

NettleCarrier

So many "all over the place" responses here. Yes, writs are invaluable to making money long term - but what you get out of doing them at your level is pretty small. I'd still make an effort to do them each day for surveys, enchanting and provisioning can be a bit annoying to do without ESO+ but more than possible to manage.

What you really need to do is just harvest. Even low level materials will fetch a great price since they can still be refined by experienced players for gold materials. Additionally things like alchemy nodes are not based on skill and so stuff like cornflower is worth just as much. I can only speak for PC-NA prices but you're looking at 925 gold per cornflower, 300 per dust (any level, with platinum being 350+), etc. Everything you pick up is pretty much worth a minimum of 100 gold per item. End game players, or those with a lot of money are pretty lazy and will buy them from you. You can also join a no-dues trading guild (if on PC-NA let me know if you need help with that). Even a level 6 player can farm 100,000 gold per hour just wandering around places like Bal Foyen and harvesting.

wolfie1.0.

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

I agree with you that power leveling is fine, and I think your other post above was also very good. But I'd say even if someone is willing to power level, they should play for a week or two to get a feel for the game. Then power level dolmens from 25 to CP160, if that's what they want, sure. But power leveling right from level 6 by running the dolmen train for 10-20 hours is soul crushing. "as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys" " is the key thing in your post, and a lot of new players don't really understand the hows and whys even if they think they do.

The best way to power level, is to get to level 10 and do your daily dungeon and BG. Do that in parallel on multiple characters, then don't worry about leveling outside of those dailies. You won't be done in a day or two like you could with dolmens, but you'll be up pretty quick, it's more playtime efficient and you get to actually experience a variety of content along the way. If you want to grind out a few extra levels along the way in dolmens or skyreach or w/e knock yourself out, but long term the extra few days it took you to get to 50 isn't a big deal.

As for the crafting thing, I'll add this for the OP who is probably playing without ESO+. Max your bank space, yes it's a lot of gold, I assure you it's worth it. Get at least 4 bag upgrades too. If you're going to do the crafting writ thing, once you get to CP160 it's worth getting your crafts up to max just so you have a smaller variety of mats to juggle. There are ways to do this without buying a bunch of intricates or crafting/deconning for other characters. Deconning the gear you find or steal is a much better value proposition even if it takes a bit more time.

I will add that doing three dolmen and such activities as well as delves are a great way to get the gear you need to decon as well as adding to your set collections early on. One of the reasons I advocate waiting on getting lots of gold is simply because as a new player you want to focus on content and setting up your account for the best possible execution later on. Trait research and item sets from the overland areas you have access to are good places to start and you can do that early.

Napalm_Death32

NettleCarrier wrote: »

So many "all over the place" responses here. Yes, writs are invaluable to making money long term - but what you get out of doing them at your level is pretty small. I'd still make an effort to do them each day for surveys, enchanting and provisioning can be a bit annoying to do without ESO+ but more than possible to manage.

What you really need to do is just harvest. Even low level materials will fetch a great price since they can still be refined by experienced players for gold materials. Additionally things like alchemy nodes are not based on skill and so stuff like cornflower is worth just as much. I can only speak for PC-NA prices but you're looking at 925 gold per cornflower, 300 per dust (any level, with platinum being 350+), etc. Everything you pick up is pretty much worth a minimum of 100 gold per item. End game players, or those with a lot of money are pretty lazy and will buy them from you. You can also join a no-dues trading guild (if on PC-NA let me know if you need help with that). Even a level 6 player can farm 100,000 gold per hour just wandering around places like Bal Foyen and harvesting.

lol yeah seems i joined your guild

Napalm_Death32

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

I agree with you that power leveling is fine, and I think your other post above was also very good. But I'd say even if someone is willing to power level, they should play for a week or two to get a feel for the game. Then power level dolmens from 25 to CP160, if that's what they want, sure. But power leveling right from level 6 by running the dolmen train for 10-20 hours is soul crushing. "as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys" " is the key thing in your post, and a lot of new players don't really understand the hows and whys even if they think they do.

The best way to power level, is to get to level 10 and do your daily dungeon and BG. Do that in parallel on multiple characters, then don't worry about leveling outside of those dailies. You won't be done in a day or two like you could with dolmens, but you'll be up pretty quick, it's more playtime efficient and you get to actually experience a variety of content along the way. If you want to grind out a few extra levels along the way in dolmens or skyreach or w/e knock yourself out, but long term the extra few days it took you to get to 50 isn't a big deal.

As for the crafting thing, I'll add this for the OP who is probably playing without ESO+. Max your bank space, yes it's a lot of gold, I assure you it's worth it. Get at least 4 bag upgrades too. If you're going to do the crafting writ thing, once you get to CP160 it's worth getting your crafts up to max just so you have a smaller variety of mats to juggle. There are ways to do this without buying a bunch of intricates or crafting/deconning for other characters. Deconning the gear you find or steal is a much better value proposition even if it takes a bit more time.

I will add that doing three dolmen and such activities as well as delves are a great way to get the gear you need to decon as well as adding to your set collections early on. One of the reasons I advocate waiting on getting lots of gold is simply because as a new player you want to focus on content and setting up your account for the best possible execution later on. Trait research and item sets from the overland areas you have access to are good places to start and you can do that early.

i don't mean to sound rude but english please lol

PeacefulAnarchy

Napalm_Death32 wrote: »

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I agree, there are a lot of things new players shouldn't be concerned about. They shouldn't worry about gold, they shouldn't power level, they shouldn't worry about metas, etc. But some of them do and while we can tell them and try to explain to them why they shouldn't worry about that stuff, some of them for a variety of reasons will insist that their reasons are different and that they want to grind gold or power level or get the best gear etc.

Long term, even if you only care about endgame or only care about being an ingame millionaire or getting meta gear you're still better off waiting, anything you try to do in those regards at low level will by very time inefficient. That time is better spent learning and playing the game, whether that be questing or running content, or doing pvp starting at level 10, or even dolmen grinding. But sometimes people want the short term boost and simply telling them they're wrong isn't very nice. I'll tell them their best options and let them choose, while warning them that they shouldn't bother doing things that way.

Ill push back on that a bit. Nothing wrong with power leveling early on just to get the ball rolling on writs for half a dozen toons, as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys". Spend a few weeks doing that early on. Then the beginning of your playtime each day is 20-30 minutes of writs, followed by taking the game at whatever pace you choose from a questing standpoint. That route, while unconventional, will have a lot more in game wealth than just playing one toon for 6 months and not giving that sort of thing a second thought.

So if you really know you are going to be around for the long haul, and you have no aversions to grinding, I think there are smart and effective ways to do it early on that dont ruin the game. Not like you cant go back and do all the quests at CP 160 or CP 1600. Stories dont change and overland difficulty is a joke either way. This philosophy is reasonable both for accumulating wealth, but also if end game content is more your speed. Doing Cadwell's silver and gold is not going to make you better at vet dungeons. Doing vet dungeons is going to make you better at vet dungeons, and cant do that at level 6 (same applies to PVP).

OP: If you are on PC/NA, shoot me a message if you want some good power leveling gear. Happy to make you some for free.

I agree with you that power leveling is fine, and I think your other post above was also very good. But I'd say even if someone is willing to power level, they should play for a week or two to get a feel for the game. Then power level dolmens from 25 to CP160, if that's what they want, sure. But power leveling right from level 6 by running the dolmen train for 10-20 hours is soul crushing. "as long as you understand the "hows" and they "whys" " is the key thing in your post, and a lot of new players don't really understand the hows and whys even if they think they do.

The best way to power level, is to get to level 10 and do your daily dungeon and BG. Do that in parallel on multiple characters, then don't worry about leveling outside of those dailies. You won't be done in a day or two like you could with dolmens, but you'll be up pretty quick, it's more playtime efficient and you get to actually experience a variety of content along the way. If you want to grind out a few extra levels along the way in dolmens or skyreach or w/e knock yourself out, but long term the extra few days it took you to get to 50 isn't a big deal.

As for the crafting thing, I'll add this for the OP who is probably playing without ESO+. Max your bank space, yes it's a lot of gold, I assure you it's worth it. Get at least 4 bag upgrades too. If you're going to do the crafting writ thing, once you get to CP160 it's worth getting your crafts up to max just so you have a smaller variety of mats to juggle. There are ways to do this without buying a bunch of intricates or crafting/deconning for other characters. Deconning the gear you find or steal is a much better value proposition even if it takes a bit more time.

I will add that doing three dolmen and such activities as well as delves are a great way to get the gear you need to decon as well as adding to your set collections early on. One of the reasons I advocate waiting on getting lots of gold is simply because as a new player you want to focus on content and setting up your account for the best possible execution later on. Trait research and item sets from the overland areas you have access to are good places to start and you can do that early.

i don't mean to sound rude but english please lol

What is your endgoal for the game after you earn the gold to trade for the DLC? For a lot of people, the goal is to play mid-high level content, whether it be PvP or PvE. For that content you'll want gear. That gear comes from a variety of places. Overland gear can be bought but dungeon gear needs to be earned by doing dungeons. The game has a collections system that lets you recreate gear once you've found it, so finding gear at low level is useful. If you're going to grind gear eventually, may as well grind it while leveling up.

The second part mentioned there is that gear traits can only be crafted or reconstructed if your character has researched the trait. Research is a big time gate, where you have to learn each trait and gear piece combination, and every gear piece has 9 traits. The first of each piece takes 6 hours, then 12, then 1 day, 2days, etc. You want to start getting research out of the way ASAP because the whole thing takes months (although if you're selective about the order in which you research traits you can get the important ones done in a couple of weeks and leave the less important ones for later).

You don't need to get the research items and overland gear from doing content, but it's the normal way to do it. If you're in a beginner friendly guild someone will probably help you out with trait research gear for everything except nirnhoned for free. Overland gear you can grind or buy on guild traders, I'd say in general it's easier to collect most of it yourself since while it's not rare not many people sell it outside a few sets.

The other big time gate is mount training, Once a day for 180 days you can pay 250 gold to increase your bag space by one, mount speed by 1% or mount stamina, up to 60 increases each. You want to start doing this early and daily.

Also, you'll want to level up not only for the gold rewards and gear, but also to level up your skills. So since you're going to want to level up anyway, may as well do that now since it also makes getting gold easier.


I think in general you get a lot of answers because people have all sorts of experiences with what they did that worked, what they did that didn't and many different motivations for it. Whatever your end goal, you should consider that sometimes doing something that isn't directly profitable now will set you up better in the long run. Eg, if you're going to want to level up anyway and do crafting, yes you could spend hours right now gathering low level mat nodes with a slow character and limited inventory space, or you could level up your character first and then spend that same time getting better mats more quickly later. But maybe there's a reason where you want to start spending time mat gathering now. Same applies to level grinding or crafting, or everything else.

The most overall time efficient thing is not going to reap rewards for a bit, the most immediately rewarding thing is going to be less rewarding short term. Depending on you priorities there will be a different mix of activities that is best for you.

It's also worth noting that because some things in the game are time gated in various ways, what's best for someone with two hours a day for 7 days is not the same as someone who has 14 hours in one day and it's different from someone who has 1 hours every day for two weeks. It may be 14 hours for all of them, but the opportunities are different.

One thing I'll say is there are different ways to grind, don't get stuck on one you don't enjoy. Better to do something a bit less efficient but more enjoyable than something that feels tedious. This also influences the responses you'll get, not only in terms of what types of grind people tolerate, but how much of it.

RisenEclipse

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I'd have to disagree with this. This game is not new player friendly. The new tutorial did help some. Less... constantly telling new players in the newest chapter areas that this is not where your starter city is... But even navigating between what is DLC quests, guild quests, and side quests is awful. Why is this orc screaming that they were looking for me? Why am I in wrothgar now? Why is the fighters guild wanting me to do something with them? Now I'm on a quest with them. Ohhhhh side quests, guild quests, dlc starters all have the same icons.... now where's the MAIN quest...

It can be very overwhelming.

Then they find a guild trader... and see how much everything costs. Even 10K can seem like a Hella lot of gold to a new player. Then the next logical question is how to get gold. Not the gold from quests which they can tell right away is pitiful compared to what the traders are selling items for, but the gold they see that they apparently need to buy things at guild traders. Oh crafting is how you do it? So now there's a crafting system, and there isn't exactly a tutorial on that one, or much explanation on what the hell crafting Writs are and where to go.

Then they pick up their first armor sets. Then promptly go, wtf is this? Then the next question is about sets, and what sets they need, and find out about metas and some sets work better if you play a stam on this class, or a mag on this class.

It's super easy to get caught up in it. Get confused. Go to the forums to seek help... only to be told... I really don't understand this question.

SeaGtGruff

bmnoble wrote: »

Since your on your first character I would say don't worry about making gold at this point,

I would argue that making gold is perhaps a bit more important on your first character, as well as when a character is still at a low level. That's because you'll want to make enough gold to buy all of the bank space upgrades for the account as a whole, plus all of the inventory space upgrades for each character.

Once those are out of the way, there's not as much urgent need for gold unless you're paying to port to distant wayshrines, paying for equipment repair, paying for respeccing your characters, buying the few mounts which can be obtained with gold, buying player housing which can be obtained with gold, using gold to buy from guild traders, and/or trading golds for Crown Store items.

And by the time you've upgraded your space and are ready to start working on those other things, you're usually more savvy about how to go about making enough gold to fill your wants and needs.

bmnoble

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Since your on your first character I would say don't worry about making gold at this point,

I would argue that making gold is perhaps a bit more important on your first character, as well as when a character is still at a low level. That's because you'll want to make enough gold to buy all of the bank space upgrades for the account as a whole, plus all of the inventory space upgrades for each character.

Once those are out of the way, there's not as much urgent need for gold unless you're paying to port to distant wayshrines, paying for equipment repair, paying for respeccing your characters, buying the few mounts which can be obtained with gold, buying player housing which can be obtained with gold, using gold to buy from guild traders, and/or trading golds for Crown Store items.

And by the time you've upgraded your space and are ready to start working on those other things, you're usually more savvy about how to go about making enough gold to fill your wants and needs.

@SeaGtGruff

Maybe you could go back and read my entire response rather than cherry picking a single sentence.

Tandor

For a new player, mount training should be focussed on increasing your inventory, not your speed. By and large the players who complain about mount training and want instant speed and stamina on their characters are PvPers, which you may or may not become. If you're accumulating crafting materials then riding a mount is pointless anyway because you need to dismount/remount every time you harvest a node, and for short distances you can sprint much more effectively. Don't pay for an inventory upgrade until you've received a free upgrade through the levelling rewards or you won't get the free one.

No need to buy bait if you're into fishing, just collect the river bait from every butterfly you pass and use that. The little spiders adjacent to the stable at Davons Watch drop crawlers which are also fishing bait. If you can use the correct bait for the water type then the rewards are more consistent but at low levels using any bait is fine, you'll just get a few failures.

The most important tips anyone can be given as a new player in my view are (a) take your time - levelling up, questing and exploring are by far the most fun part of the game if you can avoid the trap of thinking it's all about rushing to "endgame" as quickly as possible, and (b) don't spend more than a couple of hours or so per day playing, if you spend all your waking time playing you'll burn out and get bored very quickly. If you follow these tips you won't need any DLCs for some months as there's a huge amount of the game available to you without them. In any event, check the details of the version of the game you bought as it may include previous additional content anyway.

Above all, welcome and enjoy!

SeaGtGruff

bmnoble wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

bmnoble wrote: »

Since your on your first character I would say don't worry about making gold at this point,

I would argue that making gold is perhaps a bit more important on your first character, as well as when a character is still at a low level. That's because you'll want to make enough gold to buy all of the bank space upgrades for the account as a whole, plus all of the inventory space upgrades for each character.

Once those are out of the way, there's not as much urgent need for gold unless you're paying to port to distant wayshrines, paying for equipment repair, paying for respeccing your characters, buying the few mounts which can be obtained with gold, buying player housing which can be obtained with gold, using gold to buy from guild traders, and/or trading golds for Crown Store items.

And by the time you've upgraded your space and are ready to start working on those other things, you're usually more savvy about how to go about making enough gold to fill your wants and needs.

@SeaGtGruff

Maybe you could go back and read my entire response rather than cherry picking a single sentence.

I didn't have any disagreements with the rest of your response, but the first part of your opening sentence made an immediate impression that bothered me a bit. Everything after that was solid advice.

OnnuK

Do not SELL crown for gold ;-D I know you are new, it is tempting and need gear, food and drink, and you want to speed up the process. Do not! Crown is more precious and gold is easy to make with daily writs, farming on Deshan (mother's sorrow), Crimson Cove Public dungeon (Malabal Tor) is the best and easy way. As the previous comments there are lots of videos on this subject, so don't Sell crown... ;-D my 2cents

pklemming

Lot of good advice, the most consistent income is doing crafting writs, though, right now, picking flowers, especially Cornflower, Water Hyacinth and Lady Smock will make you a lot of money selling to other players to make spell pots.

As you are on PC, you need to go to https://www.esoui.com/ and get the following addons:

Lazy Writ - https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1346-DolgubonsLazyWritCrafter.html
Daily Alchemy - https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1899-DailyAlchemy.html
Daily Provisioning - https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1901-DailyProvisioning.html

These will make your daily crafting a breeze and turn it in to a couple of minute job per char.

Also a big fan of Craftstore, for simplifying crafting and tracking what you have and need, if you get seriously in to crafting:
https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1590-CraftStoreAscendingTide.html

Remember to get the associated libs with this too. If you are not using minion(an addon to manage addons), just extract these and add the folder to your addon folder making sure you don't have recursive folders. You should just have the addon name as the folder with the addon files inside.

Honestly a game changer, and why I would never play on console.

Oh and find a good beginner guild for live advice. You can have 5 guilds, so you can choose other guilds based on your playstyle and needs.

SammyKhajit

Run through several public dungeons in the “base” areas (Glenumbra, Deeshan, Alikir, Shadowfen, etc) will give you a nice bit of gold and things to sell. Selling trash is actually a good way to earn gold overtime.

Another thing to consider is saving money: try to go to the nearest way shrines instead of fast travel, or use repair kits instead of having merchants to repair your gears.

Tandor

SammyKhajit wrote: »

Run through several public dungeons in the “base” areas (Glenumbra, Deeshan, Alikir, Shadowfen, etc) will give you a nice bit of gold and things to sell. Selling trash is actually a good way to earn gold overtime.

Another thing to consider is saving money: try to go to the nearest way shrines instead of fast travel, or use repair kits instead of having merchants to repair your gears.

Use the free inn room as an initial destination if you're not near a wayshrine, selecting the "outside" option to minimise loading delays and then use the nearby wayshrine for free travel to your final destination.

whitecrow

RisenEclipse wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

PeacefulAnarchy wrote: »

JKorr wrote: »

Yep. Crafting writs.

The higher your crafting skill, the higher the gold reward.

No, the gold is level scaled not skill scaled.

whitecrow wrote: »

Literally everything you can do in the game earns you gold, either directly or by selling items you don't want to merchants. I don't really understand this question.

Gold rewards scale by level. At level 6 the gear you get is worth like 3-5 gold and the quest rewards are like 10-20 gold. A new player will be very confused at how anyone makes 10s of thousands let alone millions when even a few hundred is daunting.

Then there must be a reason the game is designed that way.

A new player shouldn't be concerned about how to make millions. Just like a new player shouldn't be concerned about having "BIS" gear. Despite bugs and things we wish were different, the game is actually well-designed to take care of new players.

Gold accumulates faster than one might realize; if you just play through the story it will come fast enough.

I'd have to disagree with this. This game is not new player friendly. The new tutorial did help some. Less... constantly telling new players in the newest chapter areas that this is not where your starter city is... But even navigating between what is DLC quests, guild quests, and side quests is awful. Why is this orc screaming that they were looking for me? Why am I in wrothgar now? Why is the fighters guild wanting me to do something with them? Now I'm on a quest with them. Ohhhhh side quests, guild quests, dlc starters all have the same icons.... now where's the MAIN quest...

It can be very overwhelming.

Then they find a guild trader... and see how much everything costs. Even 10K can seem like a Hella lot of gold to a new player. Then the next logical question is how to get gold. Not the gold from quests which they can tell right away is pitiful compared to what the traders are selling items for, but the gold they see that they apparently need to buy things at guild traders. Oh crafting is how you do it? So now there's a crafting system, and there isn't exactly a tutorial on that one, or much explanation on what the hell crafting Writs are and where to go.

Then they pick up their first armor sets. Then promptly go, wtf is this? Then the next question is about sets, and what sets they need, and find out about metas and some sets work better if you play a stam on this class, or a mag on this class.

It's super easy to get caught up in it. Get confused. Go to the forums to seek help... only to be told... I really don't understand this question.

Yes, there is a lot in the game to learn but earning gold really isn't one of them. Do a quest. Do another quest. Fight stuff along the way. Gold, gold, gold. Sell the stuff you don't want to a merchant. It really does accumulate rather quickly. New players shouldn't be worried about buying big ticket items in guild stores. They can get by on found items.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

NettleCarrier wrote: »

So many "all over the place" responses here. Yes, writs are invaluable to making money long term - but what you get out of doing them at your level is pretty small. I'd still make an effort to do them each day for surveys, enchanting and provisioning can be a bit annoying to do without ESO+ but more than possible to manage.

What you really need to do is just harvest. Even low level materials will fetch a great price since they can still be refined by experienced players for gold materials. Additionally things like alchemy nodes are not based on skill and so stuff like cornflower is worth just as much. I can only speak for PC-NA prices but you're looking at 925 gold per cornflower, 300 per dust (any level, with platinum being 350+), etc. Everything you pick up is pretty much worth a minimum of 100 gold per item. End game players, or those with a lot of money are pretty lazy and will buy them from you. You can also join a no-dues trading guild (if on PC-NA let me know if you need help with that). Even a level 6 player can farm 100,000 gold per hour just wandering around places like Bal Foyen and harvesting.

Nothing you said is untrue. My pushback is that one is short term, and the other is long term. Lets say you spend 5 hours harvesting and make 500k (that might be a touch high for a level 6 with no speed or harvesting CP, but its not far off). Now lets say you spend 5 hours grinding a toon to 50. The grind and level up rewards will be in the high 5 figures of gold. While you certainly wont get enough mats to max your crafting, you will put a dent in them from all the gear you decon. That player can now start doing decent writs, that will get better every day. So yes, if your goal is a race to 500k, then farm. If your goal is a race to 5 mil, grind and do writs. The writ method overtakes the farm method a lot faster than people think.

The other thing about writs that are so often overlooked are the auxiliary rewards. Obviously you get gold, obviously you get gold mats that can be used or sold. But you also get things like soul gems, recipes, repair kits, etc., things that a lot of us take for granted after a certain level, but can be really nice early on. Probably want to stock pile surveys (until you have a level 50 crafter to harvest them) and most master writs, as you may not be able to do a lot of them, but those have value as well. Alchemy writs especially are great for power leveling characters, because its easy to power level alchemy at low levels.

Again, please dont think I am telling every new player to just start grinding. Most would burn out in a week, and for most people, the best advice is to just play. That said, if you are going to do it, do it right, and do it for the long term.

NettleCarrier

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

NettleCarrier wrote: »

So many "all over the place" responses here. Yes, writs are invaluable to making money long term - but what you get out of doing them at your level is pretty small. I'd still make an effort to do them each day for surveys, enchanting and provisioning can be a bit annoying to do without ESO+ but more than possible to manage.

What you really need to do is just harvest. Even low level materials will fetch a great price since they can still be refined by experienced players for gold materials. Additionally things like alchemy nodes are not based on skill and so stuff like cornflower is worth just as much. I can only speak for PC-NA prices but you're looking at 925 gold per cornflower, 300 per dust (any level, with platinum being 350+), etc. Everything you pick up is pretty much worth a minimum of 100 gold per item. End game players, or those with a lot of money are pretty lazy and will buy them from you. You can also join a no-dues trading guild (if on PC-NA let me know if you need help with that). Even a level 6 player can farm 100,000 gold per hour just wandering around places like Bal Foyen and harvesting.

Nothing you said is untrue. My pushback is that one is short term, and the other is long term. Lets say you spend 5 hours harvesting and make 500k (that might be a touch high for a level 6 with no speed or harvesting CP, but its not far off). Now lets say you spend 5 hours grinding a toon to 50. The grind and level up rewards will be in the high 5 figures. While you certainly wont get enough mats to max your crafting, you will put a dent in them. That player can now start doing decent writs, that will get better ever day. So yes, if your goal is a race to 500k, then farm. If your goal is a race to 5 mil, grind and do writs. The writ method overtakes the farm method a lot faster than people think.

Oh I don't disagree with this at all, my whole playstyle is "long haul". In fact, in the first year I played I leveled a full account (18 chars) to 50 and leveled up their crafting completely. I sustained myself and a sizeable contribution to my own trader bids through doing just writs. I haven't even had to dip into my surveys yet, which sit at about 2000 lol. Nowadays I don't even do them that often, I just "age" things and sell them at the right time.

For this particular post, all I was trying to get at is that it is easier to farm than people think. I get a lot of new players in my guild who are coming up on CP160 or just hit is and are trying to figure out how to afford to gold out their "final" gear and that's just the quick advice I give them. For the immediate needs a few hours of farming is a lot more digestible than saying "go make 5-20k per day doing writs and then go level up more characters even though you just hit CP160". Long term of course it can't be beat :P

SilverBride

The money from writs isn't the gold from turning the writ in. It's from selling the gold crafting mats you get when turning them in.

I do writs on 4 characters every day and make over 100k each day selling these in a trade guild. I make a lot more if I get master writs that I can then sell, too.

To maximize your profit you do need to reach max level in all the crafts, but you can still make gold selling the lesser mats along the way. I also only do these on 4 characters so you don't need to use 18 characters and invest a lot of time. Using Lazy Writ Crafter it only takes me around 15 minutes a day and no time spent farming.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

NettleCarrier wrote: »

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

NettleCarrier wrote: »

So many "all over the place" responses here. Yes, writs are invaluable to making money long term - but what you get out of doing them at your level is pretty small. I'd still make an effort to do them each day for surveys, enchanting and provisioning can be a bit annoying to do without ESO+ but more than possible to manage.

What you really need to do is just harvest. Even low level materials will fetch a great price since they can still be refined by experienced players for gold materials. Additionally things like alchemy nodes are not based on skill and so stuff like cornflower is worth just as much. I can only speak for PC-NA prices but you're looking at 925 gold per cornflower, 300 per dust (any level, with platinum being 350+), etc. Everything you pick up is pretty much worth a minimum of 100 gold per item. End game players, or those with a lot of money are pretty lazy and will buy them from you. You can also join a no-dues trading guild (if on PC-NA let me know if you need help with that). Even a level 6 player can farm 100,000 gold per hour just wandering around places like Bal Foyen and harvesting.

Nothing you said is untrue. My pushback is that one is short term, and the other is long term. Lets say you spend 5 hours harvesting and make 500k (that might be a touch high for a level 6 with no speed or harvesting CP, but its not far off). Now lets say you spend 5 hours grinding a toon to 50. The grind and level up rewards will be in the high 5 figures. While you certainly wont get enough mats to max your crafting, you will put a dent in them. That player can now start doing decent writs, that will get better ever day. So yes, if your goal is a race to 500k, then farm. If your goal is a race to 5 mil, grind and do writs. The writ method overtakes the farm method a lot faster than people think.

Oh I don't disagree with this at all, my whole playstyle is "long haul". In fact, in the first year I played I leveled a full account (18 chars) to 50 and leveled up their crafting completely. I sustained myself and a sizeable contribution to my own trader bids through doing just writs. I haven't even had to dip into my surveys yet, which sit at about 2000 lol. Nowadays I don't even do them that often, I just "age" things and sell them at the right time.

For this particular post, all I was trying to get at is that it is easier to farm than people think. I get a lot of new players in my guild who are coming up on CP160 or just hit is and are trying to figure out how to afford to gold out their "final" gear and that's just the quick advice I give them. For the immediate needs a few hours of farming is a lot more digestible than saying "go make 5-20k per day doing writs and then go level up more characters even though you just hit CP160". Long term of course it can't be beat :P

Totally fair. I was pretty good about doing my surveys for many years. Then I just stopped and they began to pile up. I was at about 2600, and last summer, I did about 1k of them. Man that was a lot of mats, but I gave up again, and they are still piling up. Haha. Maybe Ill do another 1k or so this summer at some point. Even without doing the surveys, writs are insanely efficient in terms of time/profitability. Anytime a new player asks about making money, I feel like this point cant be hammered hard enough. They take some time to get off the ground, but then you basically just print money for very little effort.

SilverBride wrote: »

The money from writs isn't the gold from turning the writ in. It's from selling the gold crafting mats you get when turning them in.

I do writs on 4 characters every day and make over 100k each day selling these in a trade guild. I make a lot more if I get master writs that I can then sell, too.

To maximize your profit you do need to reach max level in all the crafts, but you can still make gold selling the lesser mats along the way. I also only do these on 4 characters so you don't need to use 18 characters and invest a lot of time. Using Lazy Writ Crafter it only takes me around 15 minutes a day and no time spent farming.

This is very true. Funny thing, I have never sold a gold mat in this game (have well over a thousand of each). Gave a bunch to friends, but never sold any (only ever bought them when priced way below market value).

Even though the gold you receive from the quests is a small piece of the pie, its not insignificant. I have well into 8 figures of gold, and my craft bag is into the 9 figures of value, and its pretty much ALL from writs. It gives me enough gold to buy the things I need, and more than enough mats to keep most of my toons in up to date gold gear. I hardly do writs anymore because I just dont need to. I could play for another 8 years and not run out of money or mats. I really don't have to engage in the market unless I want to, and for the most part, prices of things are irrelevant to me. I have the gold to buy what I need.

Even one character is worth doing. When I started it was on 4 or 5, but its easy to snowball. More writs you do, the more intricate pieces of gear you receive, the faster you can level your next crafter. Basically, funnel all your gear drops through your bank and always have the next toon waiting to decon and level. It snowballs very fast. If you are in ESO for the long haul, might as well make one of each class, so that's 6 right there.