FYI I am still at early levels ~10-15 as deciding strategies. Thanks.

Equipment Crafting is the most intensive from a Materials, Skill Points and Research Point. It is nice to have all these on one character so you only need to learn the rare motifs once, so there is that. But Motifs are somewhat easy to find, and will drop in price on the consoles at some point so that having one do Black Smithing and one Do Wood/Cloth is OK.

How I split my crafters up is this:

All of them do Provisioning to some Extent

One for Blacksmithing and Provisioning (he knows all the recipes where alts only know some)
One Clothing, Wood Working, Alchemy
One for Enchanting (only need one Enchanter really)

However I do have one at VR14 that has Mastered all the crafts but still has some trait research to do. She has no skill points left to spend, but she is deadly.

As for Alts on other accounts or trading with other players. I don't think there is all the much benift to doing this anymore. It is certainly not for Enchanting, you get the same Inspiration deconning what an Alt on your account made compared to another player, and you get more from Mob Loot. I suspect it is the same with Equipment, but I need further testing to verify this. Add in the friction of being able to send only 6 items at a time, and it costs money for each email, it turns out to be a real pain to trade things back and forth for no real benefit.

You can level your Crafting skills by deconning and never spending any skill points, so that is good. I would spend points in Extraction and Research while leveling if nothing else.

Speaking of Research, here are some tips

1. You only need to know 2 to 3 traits to start making some powerful crafted gear. Most of my VR characters use a 3 Trait set. The amount of time to learn a trait doubles for the second one, doubles again for the third etc. So, learn the two traits on each piece you will want to craft first before learning the third traits. Learn the third before learning the 4th. The best crafted sets in the game only require 6 traits, so don't start chasing the 7th and 8th traits until you know the 6th traits in all the things you want to craft.
2. Unlock the Research Passive (Carpentry I think it is called) to allow for more items to be researched in less time
3. The most useful traits on armor are Infused, Divines and Impenetrable. Nirn is good, but you need 20,000+ gold to even play on that table (to buy the trait stones). For weapons, Precise and Sharpened are the way to go. Training is good for anything. So concentrate on those traits first and foremost before researching the other ones.
4. Get the Addon Research Assistant so you don't deconstruct or sell something you need to research.
5. If you can't get the item you want for research from loot, then buy it in a guild store. Items made to be researched sell between 200 and 500 gold, try to find the cheaper ones. You can even find them less. It does not matter what level the item is, just that it has the traits that you want. Awesome Guild Store addon can help you find specific traited items.
6. If the item does not have a trait you need, or one your going to soon research, deconstruct it. You get crafting experience to level the craft line and you get trait stones and other things to make stuff with.
7. Join a Guild like Lone Wolf Help or similar as we run crafting nights where we make traited items for people to research. Even not on the crafting night, we will make something for a guildmate.

No matter what strategy you use to level your crafting, do not neglect Trait Research, at least up to 6 Traits (for now, we will see if things get better for the 8 and 9 trait sets when IC comes out)

You can have as many accounts as you want, you just have to buy a copy of the game for each account.

Nestor wrote: »

7. Join a Guild like Lone Wolf Help or similar as we run crafting nights where we make traited items for people to research. Even not on the crafting night, we will make something for a guildmate.

No matter what strategy you use to level your crafting, do not neglect Trait Research, at least up to 6 Traits (for now, we will see if things get better for the 8 and 9 trait sets when IC comes out)

Thanks. The splits you recommend I will research.

Thanks for the guild rec -- is there an online app or can you pm me details? I always contribute for trade, etc. -- i.e., not a moocher. Strongly believe its worth building the relationships. May take me a while to get to max levels, but I enjoy the ride.

Nestor wrote: »

Gorilla wrote: »

Thanks for the guild rec -- is there an online app or can you pm me details? I always contribute for trade, etc. -- i.e., not a moocher. Strongly believe its worth building the relationships. May take me a while to get to max levels, but I enjoy the ride.

Currently Lone Wolf Help is PC and PS4 Only for North America. If your on PC, you can reach out to me with an in game email, to @Nestor if your on PS4, reach out to @MissBizz here and she can get you hooked up on that platform.

If you do split your Equipment up do at least try to have both crafters do all the research (or they both research in the stuff they will make and you pick one to learn all the traits) so that if you decide to have one character do all your crafting (there are benefits to this and it's easier to late game) you don't need to learn traits on them.

One way to approach this is to have your character that just learned the trait make something for the Alt to learn.

I did not do this and now I am looking at another 4 or 5 months to finish up trait research on the one I making my all in one crafter. Fortunately she knows 6/7 traits in Blacksmithing so she can make what ever I would want to use.

Thanks for the ping Nestor. I'll actually be away this weekend so contacting me won't help get you into the guild immediately, you can contact PSN: Macadamia9 though if you are on PS4 and looking