how do I use crafting to improve my gear?

Svann

I keep hearing that its critical to get crafted gear early on, but Im having trouble making anything worth using. In all the destruction Ive done Ive never once got a turpin. I guess because I dont have any blues to destroy. Nothing I make thats green (not much yet) is as good as the green quest items Im wearing. So how do I use crafting to replace or improve greens? Where do I get the improvement mats?

Svann

No answers? Right now the only thing I can think of is to buy improvement mats from higher level crafters, cause Im not seeing enough blue items to get improvement mats from deconstruction myself. In fact, Im not sure if Ive ever had even 1 blue item yet.

nerevarine1138

To make green (or higher) gear that will replace a quest reward, you'll need to add an enchantment.

Vikova

You need to research traits in order to put them on gear and level enchanting to...enchant. Early on, just having basic gear at your level helps immensely.

Blo0dstorm

I think I got the same issue than the OP.
If I want to improve my green 'divine touched Aegis' into a blue one at the woodworking station I will need 7 of that 'turpen' (for a 100% chances)
Where am supposed to get turpen from?
NPCs?
Other players?
Deconstructing?
Looting?

Shimond

You get the green/blue whatever mats from both deconstructing and refining. However you need to spend points in one of those skill lines (Metallurgy for smithing) for them to really start showing up. I very rarely got greens and never blues until I put a point in that.

Alyrn_Grey

You need to deconstruct items, though refining resources also gives you items from time to time. Basically if you have the right items you can then choose to improve an item though there is a chance of destroying it instead. You will see what the chance is when you are in the improvement menu.

SadisticSavior

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

I keep hearing that its critical to get crafted gear early on

You're hearing wrong. It's not critical at all. You can level to 50 without ever crafting a single thing.

Crafting will give you more control over what gear you have access to and what you look like. And it can augment combat abilities. It is definitely a bonus but it is not critical. Blue stuff does drop and is perfectly usable.

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

In all the destruction Ive done Ive never once got a turpin. I guess because I dont have any blues to destroy. Nothing I make thats green (not much yet) is as good as the green quest items Im wearing. So how do I use crafting to replace or improve greens?

You use blue tempers. These drop from deconstructing blue items, or from refining raw material. I have gotten blue temper drops from refining newbie materials before. You can also get tempers from hirelings...I have gotten blue tempers from them before.

Blue drops are more rare, but you can augment this with skill points into the profession. It will make them drop more frequently.

Eris

I have gotten a couple of blues, a purple and a gold from my hirelings over the last week. I have 1 character with 4 hirelings in different professions.

I've been saving them because I'm not really sure that it's worth it to use them on low level gear, I'd rather save them till I'm higher level and they will last longer.

SadisticSavior

Blo0dstorm wrote: »

I think I got the same issue than the OP.
If I want to improve my green 'divine touched Aegis' into a blue one at the woodworking station I will need 7 of that 'turpen' (for a 100% chances)
Where am supposed to get turpen from?
NPCs?
Other players?
Deconstructing?
Looting?

Not sure what "turpen" is...I assume he means tempers?

The specific tempers vary by profession. For tailoring the blue temper is called "embroidery". For Armor and metal weapons the blue temper is "Dwarven Oil". I think the temper for Staffs and bows and Shields is "pitch".

Anyway, they do not come as drops from kills, and you cannot buy them at NPC Vendors and they are never found as loot. You can only get them from deconstruction and refining raw materials and from hirelings. And yes, you can buy them from other players if you want, though IMO this is expensive and less reliable (but probably a lot quicker).

It is rare to get tempers from these things. You can make it less rare by putting points into your profession's skill tree.

Shimond

er the greens and blues don't have tiers of their own? i.e. I can break down a ton of level 5 gear to enhance a level 50 item?

MaxBat

SadisticSavior wrote: »

Crafting will give you more control over what gear you have access to and what you look like. And it can augment combat abilities. It is definitely a bonus but it is not critical.

^^ This. I have four characters. One is my "crafter" which I use to basically play with the crafting engines. That's it. The other three are what I play with.

One of them has fully crafted enhanced equipment including enchanted blades and so on. Another, my Khajiit, operates only using what he picks up from drops. Both are fine, although the Khajiit's is looking rather odd because none of his armor matches.

The only difference I can see is that, once you have all the style motifs, you can make any armor you want.

Jeremy

adamrussell52_ESO wrote: »

I keep hearing that its critical to get crafted gear early on, but Im having trouble making anything worth using. In all the destruction Ive done Ive never once got a turpin. I guess because I dont have any blues to destroy. Nothing I make thats green (not much yet) is as good as the green quest items Im wearing. So how do I use crafting to replace or improve greens? Where do I get the improvement mats?

I'm having the same problem.

It's a side-effect of the economy being split up into many different exclusive markets. So that is the real culprit here, not the crafting system itself which is well designed.

If they would consolidate the guild stores you would see this issue vanish because players would then have access to rarer materials. They would likely cost a fair amount of gold, but at least you would have the option to purchase them and could enjoy your crafting more. Because as things are now, they are just too rare to reasonably acquire on your own without the benefit of trade.

This problem is holding the game back in a big way.

kitsinni

Crafting is going to be a lot more powerful and important later. In early levels you find gear so fast crafting might be pointless. From what I have found a green you enchant is about as powerful as a same level blue you loot.

SadisticSavior

Shimond wrote: »

er the greens and blues don't have tiers of their own? i.e. I can break down a ton of level 5 gear to enhance a level 50 item?

Yeah, maybe. I assume it gets progressively rarer to get the drops though, so it may take you a while. Blues are definitely less common for me than greens.

But I was getting blue drops as early as level 10. Maybe earlier (I wasn't paying attention).

At the very least there is obviously some crossover. You do start getting blue drops before hitting level 16.

Jeremy

kitsinni wrote: »

Crafting is going to be a lot more powerful and important later. In early levels you find gear so fast crafting might be pointless. From what I have found a green you enchant is about as powerful as a same level blue you loot.

The only reason that is the case is because the current economy doesn't allow the acquisition of the materials need to make crafting more powerful. If that wasn't the case, you could easily tailor your own set of gear to vastly out-power most of what you would typically find.

The rush to endgame approach before things start to matter would be a tragic mistake for this game to succumb to IMHO. It has such a rich and interesting experience while leveling up, and that could be bolstered significantly if you were able to effectively use your crafting while about it.

InF13RNo

Try with Hirelings. They come with green, blue updrading items.

Jeremy

xloritb16_ESO wrote: »

Try with Hirelings. They come with green, blue updrading items.

It's rare at early levels. Not nearly often enough to rely on for upgrading your gear. Would likely take months to get enough to upgrade a single set doing it that way, unless you use multiple characters with many hirelings or something.

Shimond

SadisticSavior wrote: »

Yeah, maybe. I assume it gets progressively rarer to get the drops though, so it may take you a while. Blues are definitely less common for me than greens.

But I was getting blue drops as early as level 10. Maybe earlier (I wasn't paying attention).

At the very least there is obviously some crossover. You do start getting blue drops before hitting level 16.

I didn't get ANY blue mats until I put a point in Metallurgy. I am kind of assuming if you skill that out completely you'll start to see stuff a lot more often. What I'm curious on though is if the honing stones and dwarven oil are what you use to upgrade post tier 1 (1-14) gear too? If so, it seems a bit odd to me, that you could just use low level ore/gear to power high level improvements.

SadisticSavior

Shimond wrote: »

I didn't get ANY blue mats until I put a point in Metallurgy. I am kind of assuming if you skill that out completely you'll start to see stuff a lot more often. What I'm curious on though is if the honing stones and dwarven oil are what you use to upgrade post tier 1 (1-14) gear too? If so, it seems a bit odd to me, that you could just use low level ore/gear to power high level improvements.

You definitely will always need green tempers. Because you need them to craft anything better (unless you buy or loot it).

And yeah, I think cannibalizing low level gear is what they intended for high level crafting.