[Guide] Managing and upgrading inventory space with provisioning

Jessabella

I originally wrote this in late Feb during PTS beta, patch .18 I believe so some info may be slightly different. If I find any major changes I will edit it.


I'm not much of a guide writer, this is my first, but it's just some tricks I picked up on dealing with limited bag/bank space, the cost of upgrades and provisioning. Most of this is copy and pasted from another post I made but some PMs I got from others has convinced me to turn it into it's own "guide". This is just my own play-style really and whats works for me!

Provisioning is fairly easy to lvl, I was 50 in it before my character could even swap weapons. But it uses a lot of ingredients and recipes. The ingredients tend to fill you up fast and have little or no sell value without cooking.

I only collect stuff as I am questing, I never farm ingredients or go out of my way to collect them, the way I might if I am running along and pass a rune node.

The Bank in Daggerfall, (Glenumbra) also is an excellent recipe and ingredient source. It has a lot of drawers where I often find recipes as well as crates and barrels and a cooking fire right inside. It makes managing inventory a lot faster.

There are cooking fires every where, as well as merchants to sell your finished items too, they are way more common then crafting tables, so if I get full I can quickly empty out. You only need 1 free space to cook, unlike extracting, where you need 4, so its easier to deal with limited bag space.

Also, I tend to look through the ones I can make and do the ones that will use up full ingredient stacks. clearing more bag space. For example if I can make 4 Horker Stews and that will use up all my Horker Meat, I will do that before cooking 7 Beef pastries and having 15 beef left over. Remember Cooking does need a spot, even if you have the finished food item in your bag already so by using the full stack of Horker Meat first I made a space for another cooked item.

At first I was not able to do other crafts at all because of space issues, but since I can make 6 items from 1 ingredient, a skill you can unlock, I find provisioning a good source of income. Since a stack of 100 of even the lowbie ones sell for 500, and it increases with lvl, I was able to use cooking to upgrade to 100 bag spaces and 70 bank. With so many crates, barrels, sacks, etc, finding stuff is easy and faster then searching for nodes to harvest and then vendor to an NPC, it's also instant, no waiting like harvesting.

I do not store any ingredients in my bank, just my bag so I can instantly use them at a fire, instead of auto pulling them from the bank when ever I see a fire and ending up with a full bag and 40 free bank slots back in town! I quickly learned how incredibly frustrating that was, especially when you find yourself destroying items or passing up loot in a dungeon only to port to town and see an almost empty bank that was recently full.

As far as other crafts, I use my bank to only keep weapons, gears and non- cooking ingredients since the possibility of running into a crafting table mid dungeon is far lower then running into a cook fire mid dungeon, and those are common.

One last thing, I also have someone in game who does not focus at all on provisioning, instead they focus on a craft that has no benefit to my char, so I send them all the materials I find that they can use and they send me any ingredients they find. Not only does that help me make money, but it's also like a 10 minute warning to me. When I get full I will send them a message (usually 3) attaching all the stuff I have for them, that makes 18 more spots for me before I need to find a bank/vendor/crafting table, and when they mail ingredients to me, I leave them attached to the mail until I am at a fire and can use them right away instead of taking up space.

Another example, you do enchanting and your friend does alchemy. They both use a fair amount of space, so by collecting all those alchemy herbs, you will get full faster but you instantly gain space as soon as you mail the herbs. By doing that I can sometimes get 2 more dungeon runs in before I have to pass up loot. When my friend sends me their unneeded runes, I will leave them in the mail until I get to town and am ready and to use them or throw them in the bank.


@Daenerys and @MIng_ESO, just making sure you ladies see this! I would not have wanted to post it if you did not convince me I should @Fexelea, Thanks for reminding me I needed to get this back up.

Daenerys

great post! do you think you could possibly edit to include all the ingredients and recipes from that PTS post? I have it bookmarked, and it is still my go to guide since we don't have a recipe book

Jessabella

@Daenerys, I can't get to the PTS forums anymore, I am wondering if I was kicked out since I got pretty inactive early March because of morning sickness which of course will kick in if I start thinking about Plump Rodent Toes or Vintage Spew, But Ming still has the recipes up on her Wiki post she made a few threads below this one.

Also do you still want to be my Enchanting buddy? I didn't see you in the guild so I was not sure if you were sticking around for live.

Daenerys

@Jessabella yeah I cannot seem to get that bookmarked post from PTS anymore either, nor can I find Ming's post- forums are jumbled mess of 3 different languages. Doubt you got kicked, think we only get access now when we test things.

But I would love to still be your enchanting buddy! We should maybe make an enchanting guide too if someone hasn't yet. Oh and I'm Arya now in game btw

Jessabella

@Daenerys, here is a link http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/61801/wiki-crafting-including-recipes#latest to the Wiki, I think the original recipes and spread sheet is here, I never did get around to adding in the rest of mine.

I don't think I am brave enough to work on an enchanting guide, but I will be happy to help you research stuff for it. Now that we both know the secret to leveling it, it won't be as much as a pain!

Persephone

Great guide, thank you for reposting it!