You get upgrade materials from refining raw materials and deconstructing items - generally you get upgrade materials for the level of the item you deconstruct.

you shouldn't be making gear every two levels, especially if you are improving it every time. The gear works fine for more levels than that, and I wouldn't improve it even then past green.

It's wasteful to make it any more than say every 10 levels, and my alts go more than that before I regear them and with the set bonuses they have they do fine. Personally I used crappy quest gear until vr10.

Ok so constructing armour weapons is useless, just deconstruct and use dropped loot armour/weapons. This will be enough to level up crafting skills?

I do enjoy the crafting side and using my own armour but possibly I am trying to keep up the levelled/upgraded armour too much for too little benefit.
Thankyou

Green upgrades...craft every 5-6 levels you can push that further.

Level vet1+ .... remake at vet 1....vet 8...then make legend vet 12

The only thing hard to find will be deadra hearts...but not too hard at vet levels.youll have more then enough.

Start working on trait unlocks...you need at least 6 unlocks for the better sets....8 trait isn't that great.

On my first character i was pretty much trying to do the same thing you do . I was trying to always upgrade my gear every 2 levels and i always wanted to at least upgrade that gear to green quality and sometimes blue .

Let me tell you right now , this is NOT NECESSARY.

On my second character , i only update my gear every 10 levels and i'm still soloing everything without any trouble . The difference between lvl 10 gear and lvl 12 gear for example is not big enough to actually make a difference in battle.

So updating my gear every 10 levels is more than enough to keep soloing and by doing that , i'm not constantly spending all the mats i find so when i finally hit lvl 50, i'll have enough upgrade mats to craft myself an entire set of blue gear and use it untill i'm finally vet 12 and once again craft myself one final set of all blue gear with some purple and maybe even 1 or 2 purple or legendary in the mix because i sure as hell will not waste any of my purple and legendary mats on low lvl gear.

Using upgrade mats on gear that you will trash in a few lvls is a waste and nothing else. In some cases you'll get some of them back by deconstructing but not always .

Anyways , i hope this was somewhat helpful

Draxuul

The lower my level (new toon), the more frequently I make new armor.

Level 1-10, I make a new set of whites every 2 levels
Level 10-20, every 2-4 or levels

Then I make new armor at level 26, 30, 36, 40, 46, 50. This is based on new enchants (for rings/necklace/armor/weapon) at levels 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50.

Veteran, if you take your time, upgrade every level. If you do the grind, then no need.

As for improvements, whites are fine under 50, green if you have them to spare, and max'd upgrade option (2 greens for 100% chance).

Instead of just questing, I'll wander around each zone, collecting mats. Killing mobs for hides doesn't really take very long, 15 minutes or so, for enough to make 7 pieces of medium armor. And since I farm alot, I have plenty of greens, blues and purples to improve armor, weapon and shield. I also max'd hirelings, that brings in nice improvement mats too.

Lastly, join an active guild, and make some friends. My guild members share mats with each other all the time. There are usually stacks of green improvement mats in the guild bank. I'm always making a guildie some custom armor, weapon or shield, or enchants. Guilds are great for this.

Real Dark Knights wear heavy armor.

But you shouldn't try to upgrade your armor every 2 levels. Go every 10 levels or so like Tabby said and be done with it. Its not that big of a deal at low levels.

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

smeeprocketnub19_ESO wrote: »

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

I craft every 10 levels and upgrade directly to superior(blue), but I started in Early Access and used the 24 hireling mails to build up my stock. Using the 24 hireling mail works just less effectively since the change, you can still get rare and epic mats from the alt mail. I currently have around 250+ of each Turpen, Embroidery, and Dwarven Oil; it takes 3 per piece of equipment to upgrade.

I craft one new set of gear at 4, 14, 24, 34, 44, V1, V4, V7, V10, V12. I try to make it universal since I'm an altaholic and they become hand me downs from one char to the next lowest so I'm not making a new set for every alt.

the gear is kind of useless if you aren't using it to make set pieces, the only gear that can be handed down is the worst gear to upgrade.

I have two crafter chars with 8/8 in every trait for Light, Medium, Heavy armor, all Weapons, and Wood Crafts. I can make any set :P Sets bind on equip/account, so you can still hand them down after crafting by putting them into the bank and withdrawing on the alt.

oooh so they do. Didn't even think about that.

Holy hell, how did you get all the traits researched so fast?

Gillysan wrote: »

People who leveled fast from Early Access, you get the skill to research 3 traits + reduced time. I was in early access but I tend to smell the roses too much and didn't level super fast. There were also some loopholes in the quests and some people hit 50 on the first day. I have my opinions on all that but not going to bother getting into that.

To stay on topic - However, they now added those zero value weapons & armor around the crates & barrels. Has anyone tried to use this as a source of basic materials?

That "junk" armor and weapons you find gives very little inspiration and rarely yields useful materials. It's not even worth picking them up. Hopefully that will change with the Justice System.

1. Farming mats is generally pretty easy, though I've heard there are "gaps" in leather where you need to kill much harder creatures to get the right level leather.
2. I'll admit I'm not as high level as some of the other posters, but I find that simply crafting a new set (and yes, use sets) of armor whenever the old armor is too badly in need of repairs is cheaper than simply repairing the armor. And, of course, it'll tend to be more level appropriate.
3. I only bother upgrading the armor past white if I have a surplus of upgrade mats.
4. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be overleveled for quests, as such most drops are inferior to the white stuff I'm making.

I've yet to have a shortage of any materials because I deconstruct everything I get that's green quality or above.

OP is right. There is a huge 'imbalance' in the medium armor. The mobs that drop it are always AFTER you have cleared a zone (normal questing no grind - I dont grind ever).

Cloth weeds and Ores never an issue.

Simple fix is to tweak the leather to the zone not the level, and bump the amount dropped by two I would say, if not 3.