Decon now scales to character level, not crafting level...

SpAEkus · September 2014

deconstructing materials, even when you are at a level where it returns materials, does not return enough materials to make this work.

That has been my experience as well, anything I actually got back was extra to the harvesting (Continuous since Live release) and buying materials (only more recent as I actually started having funds from crafting and provisioning sales).

The XP from higher level decons is the only ROI that seems profitable and not the mat returns.

All my Alt-leveling has been explicitly math based, using the minimum amount of materials and stones to reach each known IP level but that is still requiring 100s of mats across 7 alt-crafters.

Even now with 7 hirelings, the most I can expect across several levels of different mats is 10-20 of raw anything in maybe 2 days of receipts, so even Hirelings is probably not viable for power-leveling.

starkerealm · September 2014

MasterSpatula wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

@starkerealm understands how this makes it more difficult to power level.

So @MasterSpatula do you have anything else to say that's going to make it obvious that you haven't thought any of this through?

No, I'm going to yet again do just the opposite. Perhaps this time I won't have to deal with even more misinformation presented with a self-congratulatory tone.

As I stated in my previous post which you quoted, deconstructing materials, even when you are at a level where it returns materials, does not return enough materials to make this work. An item that required 5 bars of whatever might return 2 bars, 1 bar, or even none. If you use 100 ingots, you might get 40 back if you're exceptionally lucky. If your luck holds, that's 16 back on the next pass. Let's be generous and say you get 4 back on the next pass.

It's not a perpetual motion machine. You will always need new materials.

Let's run with those numbers for a second, though.

If a level 50 gets back 40% of their dagger ingots. Out of 100 daggers, they get 80, which is enough to make 40 more, which grants 32 ingots, which is enough for 16 daggers, which grant 12 (technically 12.8) ingots, which smiths into 6 daggers, and decons those into 4 ingots, a final two daggers and we're done.

That's 164 daggers from 200 ingots.

If we assume the return rate for someone at level 10 is 5%, then they're going to get the 100 daggers, 10 ingots back, 5 more daggers, and then maybe 1 ingot out of that (with a 50/50 chance.)

Meaning you have to pick between 164 decons from 200 ingots or 105 decons from 200 ingots. That's a non-trivial difference. It's not perpetual, that would be ridiculous, but in the second case it's not even recursive, you get your 100 daggers and enough materials for a few more, instead of being able to make a bunch of daggers and pass the materials back, decon them, and repeat.

Again, this might not sound huge, but remember, this is a game where a 1% change can have huge implications.

SpAEkus · September 2014

If a level 50 gets back 40% of their dagger ingots. Out of 100 daggers, they get 80, which is enough to make 40 more, which grants 32 ingots, which is enough for 16 daggers, which grant 12 (technically 12.8) ingots, which smiths into 6 daggers, and decons those into 4 ingots, a final two daggers and we're done.

That's 164 daggers from 200 ingots.

If we assume the return rate for someone at level 10 is 5%, then they're going to get the 100 daggers, 10 ingots back, 5 more daggers, and then maybe 1 ingot out of that (with a 50/50 chance.)

I don't understand this math, not the % you are hoping to get in return ingots, but what that return actually provides in crafting for more IP.

Although as I read it a Level 10 Character will likely never get any ingots back from a Level 50 (Ebony) dagger. Is your L50 character passing down Level 50 (Ebony) daggers?

---

Level 40 in any hard craft requires 1,962,135 IP. An Ebony dagger decon returns 2,388 IP. That will require ~822 L50 Ebony daggers. That requires 6,568 Ebony ingots (8 Ingot per).

80 Ebony ingots in return decon only makes 10 new Ebony daggers, 8 Ingots per req.

The only thing that you can make 40 daggers from 80 Ingots is Level 1 Iron Daggers which give a whopping total of 103 IP per decon. So sure you can decon ~19,049 Iron Daggers to reach L40 in BS.

So,

Assuming your level 50 Character is starting from level 1 in BS. Assuming your L50 character is farming L50 NPC and critter or is given 100 Ebony daggers. I am staying at L50 Ebony daggers as the process is the same no matter what level you start with only the IP returns change.

If your Level 50 character decons 100 Ebony L50 daggers from drops or given they will still only receive 238,800 IP. That will only get them to just about level 14 in BS. They still can't make any Ebony daggers (requires level 20 in BS). Process stops until they get more.

Even if the rules were changed and the L50 character could make Ebony daggers, they could only make 10 new Ebony dagger (8 ingot req). And then they still would get little to no IP for deconning their own craft.

Or

If you give your level 10 Character 100 Ebony Daggers to decon they will also only receive 238,800 IP. That will only get them to just about level 14 in BS. If that's all you did you would have to give them the same ~900 daggers to reach level 40.

Even if that level 10 character actually gets 10 ingots back of Ebony, the level 50 crafter still can't make any Ebony and even if he could he will only make 1 new dagger (L50 Ebony dagger requires 8 ingots). If that one dagger is given back again, are they even likely to get 1 ingot back very often? The process stops until you get 100 more Ebony daggers to give to your level 10.

If you are saying the L50 gave Iron daggers then the math grows as stated above.

I still don't see how you can power level on only decon ingot returns. You either have to harvest/buy ~900 Ebony daggers or harvest/buy ~6,568 Ebony ingots. Or 19,049/38,098 for Iron.

I will gladly edit any faults in my data if you find a different source than these:

IP Requirements Per Craft Level

IP Per Material

starkerealm · September 2014

SpAEkus wrote: »

I don't understand this math, not the % you are hoping to get in return ingots, but what that return actually provides in crafting for more IP.

Let's try it this way: the additional ingots would result in a roughly 60%-65% greater return in decon XP from the same number of original materials. Now, I'm using estimate numbers here, not hard data from in game, but the basic idea is still sound.

If you're deconning an item, passing the debris back to another player, who's forging it, passing them back to you, and deconning them again. The level 50 will get substantially more millage from the same amount of material than the level 10.

If the return rate is 40% (which sounds roughly right to me), then that amounts to 60%-65% more daggers. Which in turn results in 60%-65% more crafting XP.

Even if the return rate is lower, it allows for vastly more production, decon, and recursion than when you're working with a low level character.

EDIT: I should say, this governs the amount of experience that can be gained from a set amount of resources. I'm not saying this is an easy path to mastery, but it does indicate that ZoS probably doesn't want to see the cycle of knives continue.

EDIT 2: Sorry, I hammered that out between things. One major thing is, the cycle of knives requires a partner. You take a massive XP hit for deconning your own stuff. So you have to pass your ebony back to a higher level smith to recraft. You can never do this as a self-sustaining cycle.

Also, I was thinking of iron daggers with 2 ingots. Sorry. The basic math should scale with the resources, though.

SpAEkus · September 2014

Well I needed to clean out some hoarding last night so I decided to work on a few of my alts to get some real patch 1.4.3 data.

1st Alt - Character level 7 - BS Skill 12 - Extraction Skill 1/3 - Level 6 Iron Daggers

100 Iron Daggers (400 Iron Ingots) - Returned 96 Iron Ingot and 49 Racial Stone

Full 272 IP returned from all decons.

2nd Alt - Character level 8 - BS Skill 7 - Extraction Skill 1/3 - Level 36 Ebony Dagger

50 Ebony Dagger (300 Ebony Ingots) - Returned ZERO Ebony Ingot and 17 Racial Stone

Full 2040 IP returned from all Decons

3rd Alt - Character level 9 - BS Skill 4 - Extraction Skill 1/3 - Level 36 Ebony Dagger

50 Ebony Dagger (300 Ebony Ingot) - Returned ZERO Ingot and 19 Racial Stone

Full 2040 IP returned from all decons

4th Alt - Character level 8 - BS Skill 3 - Extraction Skill 0/3 - Level 36 Ebony Dagger then VR7 Quicksilver Dagger

50 Ebony Dagger (300 Ebony Ingot) - Returned ZERO Ingot and a few Racial Stones

There was also an IP PENALTY for this Character below Enchanting Level 6:
Level 3-4 1208 IP
Level 4-5 1304 IP
Level 5-6 2040 IP (Full Amount)

15 QuickSilver Daggers (135 QuickSilver Ingot) - Returned ZERO Ingot and I lost track of any Racial Stones

There was also another IP PENALTY for this Character below Enchanting Level 11:
Level 10-11 3096 IP
Level 11-12 3408 IP (Full Amount)

As it stands there is no ingot return from Character Levels lower than the Material level.

There are also IP penalties for BS Level lower than the material with different penalty amounts between BS level and different materials.

The Ingot return for just Iron with proper character level was only 24%. The 96 ingots only providing another 24 L6 Daggers for 6,528 IP and then only another ~5 ingots after that.

If the ingot return was even close to this prior to patch 1.4.3 on higher level mats I still don't believe the returns would provide enough to be considered "power leveling" amounts.

The racial stone return on the 4th Alt was minimal and he did not have any Extraction Skill. I would guess that that skill is now critical if you intend to decon with any of your Mains or Alts.

Note also that I and several others have also found the same types of IP penalties in Enchanting. I expect that they are present in Wood and Cloth as well but I haven't run any of those since the 1.4.3 patch.

If you want to power level your Alts keep feeding them higher mats. They simply will not return ingots until character-material level matched. I think hireling returns still justify power leveling crafting skills of any alts for that purpose.

And if you decide to keep any Alts at lower craft-material levels you can customize the level of hireling material returns. I don't care to go back to starter zones just to keep some lower level mats in stock.

Gillysan · September 2014

I'll admit, I have not read every post as this isn't a big deal in my opinion. Anyways, in case this has not been stated:

Once you hit VR1 any VR item can be fully deconstructed. You do not have to be VR14.

twev · September 2014

SpAEkus wrote: »

Well I needed to clean out some hoarding last night so I decided to work on a few of my alts to get some real patch 1.4.3 data.

[snip]

If you want to power level your Alts keep feeding them higher mats. They simply will not return ingots until character-material level matched. I think hireling returns still justify power leveling crafting skills of any alts for that purpose.

And if you decide to keep any Alts at lower craft-material levels you can customize the level of hireling material returns. I don't care to go back to starter zones just to keep some lower level mats in stock.

I have to admit that the only things I really care about while trying to lvl crafting on alt crafters is IP and upgrade mats.
I hate wasting either of them.

d.crosgrove_ESO · September 2014

OK, The Devs said they were going to fix this. Any idea when?

Gillysan · September 2014

d.crosgrove_ESO wrote: »

OK, The Devs said they were going to fix this. Any idea when?

No they didn't, not anything I see regarding this. Please provide a link.

Iorail · September 2014

d.crosgrove_ESO wrote: »

OK, The Devs said they were going to fix this. Any idea when?

?? They didn't say anything because it has been like this since day one, and nothing has change except for the new message on the screen, I don't know why all of the sudden people are surprise by this, unless something was broken with it that allow people to get materials back even with low level characters and was fixed quietly on the last patch. Once I get home, I'll link here the original post about this on Head Start and on Beta, as I have it bookmark because people were complaining then also.

SpAEkus · September 2014

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hey, all. As Jason mentioned in his post, we have seen your feedback and will be changing the system to reflect that feedback in a future patch. While your character level currently takes priority, we will be adjusting the system to look at both your character level and your crafting/passives levels. If your crafting level and passives exceed your character level, you'll have an increased chance of extracting materials.

Gillysan · September 2014

Well done, an actual link instead of heresy. Although this other part to the quote is also relevant:

ZOS_JasonLeavey admin
September 18 Staff Post
Hey there, everyone. We wanted to provide some clarity on the deconstructing issue described in this thread. Previously, if your character’s level was not as high as the item you were deconstructing, you would receive an increasing penalty, which would potentially reduce the amount of material you’d get from deconstructing the item – this would depend on how far below your character level was compared to the item itself. However, there was no clear indication that this was the case.

In Update 4, we added an error message that now appears providing that information -- no change was actually made to the mechanic itself. However, based on your feedback, our team is going to change this in a future update so that we’ll check your passive skill rank level in addition to your character level, using whichever is higher to help give you the full deconstruct credit easier. As always, thanks so much for your feedback on this issue, and for helping us to improve the game.

Nightreaver · September 2014

As it stands there is no ingot return from Character Levels lower than the Material level.

Seems kind of odd that I have the skill to craft a higher level item but lack the skill to recover mats when taking that same item apart I just created.

Zorgon_The_Revenged · September 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

I'll admit, I have not read every post as this isn't a big deal in my opinion. Anyways, in case this has not been stated:

Once you hit VR1 any VR item can be fully deconstructed. You do not have to be VR14.

If this is true that's all I needed to know.

Thanks Gillysan.

twev · September 2014

Gillysan wrote: »

Well done, an actual link instead of heresy. Although this other part to the quote is also relevant:

ZOS_JasonLeavey admin
September 18 Staff Post
Hey there, everyone. We wanted to provide some clarity on the deconstructing issue described in this thread. Previously, if your character’s level was not as high as the item you were deconstructing, you would receive an increasing penalty, which would potentially reduce the amount of material you’d get from deconstructing the item – this would depend on how far below your character level was compared to the item itself. However, there was no clear indication that this was the case.

In Update 4, we added an error message that now appears providing that information -- no change was actually made to the mechanic itself. However, based on your feedback, our team is going to change this in a future update so that we’ll check your passive skill rank level in addition to your character level, using whichever is higher to help give you the full deconstruct credit easier. As always, thanks so much for your feedback on this issue, and for helping us to improve the game.

Being told you're getting boned while you're getting boned just makes it more immediate. Up til then a lot of us assumed it was working according to the crafting level, else why the emphasis on crafting with no mention of character?

Yeah, we ought check EVERYTHING, but some of use were already playing the ESO Database Game in the bank as it was.

Rune_Relic · September 2014

AlexDougherty wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

AlexDougherty wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

wwusterbarthub17_ESO wrote: »

Rune_Relic wrote: »

I assume its because your skill level should never exceed your character level.
So how would a level 30 character be able to craft level >30 gear ? Or find an area capable of dropping gear greater than their character level ? Normally you travel through levelled zones for exactly this reason. You pick up materials appropriate for you character level.

The idea is they cant....unless you use alts to bypass this. In effect its a kind of exploit that ZOS has closed the door on IMHO.

So the question becomes.....is sending high level gear to low level characters (to rapidly and artificially level their skills) an exploit ?

Uh -- Guild Store Brah. Go to store buy whatever I want.

This change is total BS. My crafters aren't even Character level 20 and honestly not even crafting above a 25-30 with the exception of my provisioner and alchemist(2 diff toons). In the past if I was on my WW and deconned a blue or purple WW item I would get the upgrade material some of the time, but I would almost always get the type of wood and style gem. Now can't even decon stuff I made at higher level to get materials back.

If t his change is permenant, I would like everything I have researched on my crafters gifted to my main. Since I have him as a main not to do crafting (he is my alchemist though - at least for now)

When you as a level 20 try to wear level 21 gear you cant...its highlighted red. Beyond your level and ability to use.

Should they just let you wear level 50 gear when you are level 20 ? Everyone on here appears to say yes. I think not.

For the same reason you simply don't have the knowledge or expertise to deconstruct stuff beyond you level. Seems to work in exactly the same way to me. [Granted it should block you from deconstructing or warn you]

Imagine me vs an electrician. We both pull apart a TV. The electrician will keep almost everything and have a use for it. I might find some place mats and a couple of potential ear rings or something His vastly superior experience has enabled him to pull lots of useful stuff he specialises in.

The only thing I see is lots of people throwing dummys out the pram because there character now has to work to get reward and not rely on hand outs for power leveling gear with massive XP..which is what you are all doing. [People without alts don't have this luxury]

At least grinding combat you actually have to use your own character and not one of your alts /facepalm.

Slight mismatch in you're analogy, it's not that you don't have the same expertise as the electrician, it's that under the new system the electrician has to have spent as much time in front of the TV as you or he has to leave certain components alone.

In gaming terms it like demanding a blacksmith has to have trained as a knight in order to make armour an swords that the knights can use, or that a tailor is trained as a ranger to make leather armour for said rangers.

You're missing the point....if you had deconstructed items of your appropriate level (in you levelled area) you would never have a craft level higher than your character level. This only occurred because you fed them overpowered gear that seriously over inflated your XP gains in that craft...and hence out levelled yourself.

With the exception of provisioning, none of my crafting skills are higher than my character level, I never bought or deconstructed higher level items, because I was too busy enjoying the game.

My crafting skills were and still are high enough to craft myself the gear I require (apart from enchanting which is still weak as anything but getting better now).

But I take your point.

Now my point was that the crafting always had a disconnect with what level you were, allowing people to have crafting alts, which the levelled up to equip their main. Now they are changing it, and it's like demanding that your plumber trains as a scubadiver before you let him fix the kitchen sink (it's a bad analogy but accept it).

Now personally I'm alright, because my three main characters are also my crafters. But you can see why some people are a bit miffed about it, can't you?

yes i can see why those leveling alts are miffed. But i dont think the shortcut (bypass all effort) option should be available. If you want a crafting alt....go and gather the materials and items.