General crafting question

Neofit

Hi,
I've played at release and am thinking of returning. I barely remember anything. Came back to 6 alts with the highest at level 24.

I have made these alts mostly for crafting, not to sell but to give the most options to my toons. I hear that there are enough points in the game to master all crafts on one toon, but still: is crafting even worth it in 2025, maybe boss or world drops are better so it's now just a time sink? (I'm not a raider)

And is it like in WoW where the first couple of hours in a new expansion cancels all the gear from the previous one?

Thanks

Veinblood1965

It's worth it to make a little gold and to make armor you need for new builds. I just have one master crafter. ZoS has made it easier to do your dailies, as you can chose to show only the recipes that you have a quest for and you can make multiples of the same item instead of one at a time.

Making gold: I do writs on my master crafter daily which takes a few minutes and make quite a bit of gold by selling the master writs and mats that I don't use. Enough to fund other things I do like to do. My guess is I make about 150 to 200k a week or so.

Also if you or someone you know has all the crafting stations and a transmute station you can make your own armor if you know the styles.

Basically a few minutes a day it's worth it to me. And no it's not like Wow in that respect. Most sets stay the same form expansion to expansion, once in a while they get tweaked though.

Danikat

Neofit wrote: »

Hi,
I've played at release and am thinking of returning. I barely remember anything. Came back to 6 alts with the highest at level 24.

I have made these alts mostly for crafting, not to sell but to give the most options to my toons. I hear that there are enough points in the game to master all crafts on one toon, but still: is crafting even worth it in 2025, maybe boss or world drops are better so it's now just a time sink? (I'm not a raider)

And is it like in WoW where the first couple of hours in a new expansion cancels all the gear from the previous one?

Thanks

Answering the easy one first: No, new expansions don't cancel out the gear from previous ones. They stopped doing a direct gear treadmill years ago. New expansions (and DLC) do regularly introduce new gear sets with different bonuses, but they're not guarenteed to be better than what you're already using and definitely not to the point that you have to replace all your gear.

Whether crafting is worthwhile depends on what you're interested in. You don't need it to get good gear because there's a lot of options from drops and a lot of people who will make crafted sets, so you can either buy them from guild traders or ask someone to make you one. But it can be nice to craft your own gear.

Daily crafting writs are a good way to get a regular gold income, and will give you master writs which can be used to get some unique items, mostly furnishing plans which you can either use yourself or sell through a guild store. So if you're interested in housing crafting is definitely worthwhile.

Also yes it's possible for one character to learn all the crafts and have more than enough skill points left over for combat skills. (There's no limit to how many skills you can level up.)

One downside to splitting it between characters is you'll need multiple copies of motifs, if you want to be able to craft any item in any style. (If you just want to do daily writs or don't care about the style then you don't need to worry about it.) But then the downside of changing now is you'll need to re-do any trait research you've already completed on those characters. I think a lot of people will have either 1 crafter or one 'main' crafter who learns everything and then secondary crafters who just know the basics.

I made a character to be a dedicated crafter, and that works well for me. At first it was to save having to buy duplicate motifs (and I made him an Imperial so I didn't need to buy that one) but it also means I can fill his inventory with crafting surveys, master writs and materials (I don't use ESO+) without worrying I'll be mid-dungeon and run out of space. Because he's usually in town he also manages my guild store.

LootAllTheStuff

As the others have said, you can definitely max all the crafting skills on a single character and still have tons of points left over for whatever you want. If you look at build guides for the different classes and activities, there are quite a few craftable sets in the game you can use, so having at least one character who can make them as needed is great.

I've been using the vouchers from daily and master crafting writs to add more organized storage in. my main homes (shared across all characters), as well as acquire materials, style motifs, etc. from the writ vendors. I've also seen quite a few players who have max crafting on multiple characters and do daily writs on all of them to boost their chances of master writs and rewards. I'm not sure I'll do that (although it does increase your chances of getting the higher value master writs) - I'm still exploring all the story content and getting to grips with the different classes - however, if crafting is something you enjoy for its own sake, go for it.

SilverBride

I have maxed all of the crafting skills on 7 characters so I can do the best daily writs on them all every day.

I do have one dedicated crafter though that I researched all the traits on, and learn all motifs and recipes on.

Zodiarkslayer

The best concept is to let every character learn all crafts and spend skill points until they can craft max level gear/consumables. This way you can get higher tier rewards from daily writs, which you can now do on all your characters. The highest tier writs have much higher drop chances for master writs (these only drop on cp150/160) and especially upgrade mats. Consumable master writs give a high exp for completing them, so they are typically in high demand and you'll get 6k+ gold per piece.

This is by far the easiest way to have a high baseline income. Not only the reward gold is good (4200 per character), the reward boxes can include gold mats, master writs and surveys.
Provisioning is a must have for everyone, because you get two stacks of 40 crafting materials. Doesn't sound like much but with a month worth of rewards from my ten characters, I can craft and sell to vendors so much food and drinks, that I easily make 250k+ gold.

Crafting is free gold.

Take it.

ghastley

Crafting is also used for furnishings, and the plans require various levels of skills in multiple "trades" each. Even though you may make a bed at a clothier station, it will want carpentry, and maybe another skill, too. So if you'll be using Housing, have one character do all the crafts.