lolo_01b16_ESO wrote: »

1. You don't need to level your character just for the crafting, as long as you don't care about not being able to do the crafting writs in Craglorn.
2. It's based on your crafting skill and the number of skill points you've spent on the hireling.
3. I level alchemy and provisioning on all of my characters since they have usefull passives. The alchemy passive allows you to have potions that last longer than their cooldown and the provisioning passive will save you some money since your buff food / drinks will last longer.

Thanks for the reply. What is special about the crafting writs in Craglorn?

I was sent to Coldharbour with Crafting Writs V3 or lower and just updated my Skills to V4-6 Materials, now i must go to Craglorn to finish my Crafting Jobs. I think the special thing for Craglorn is that you can find nirncrux there.

Edit: Corrected some mistakes.

Danielzxzx wrote: »

So I'm fairly new to the game and I have read that players create new characters dedicated to just crafting. However there are still a few questions I haven't found the answer to yet.

I have him set for Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking and the reason for this is because of something I read about set bonuses from special crafting stations and those require you to venture out a lot in order to reach them all. This leads me to my first question.
Actually most of the crafting stations you are able to reach with minimal risk - I've discovered most on my level 6 crafters - except for those unlocked by completing the guild questlines and any found in places you actually can't travel to at lower levels (you can look up what they do and determine whether you'd actually use any of those or not). If you stick to the roads in most places you won't run into high level enemies, and you can usually find a safe rout to sneak around to get into the crafting station when they do have enemies nearby. If you're part of any guilds or have friends with higher level characters you can make discovery of the stations easier by having them go to the nearest wayshrine and then traveling to them to get your low level character into the higher zone without having to walk all the way there via roads. There is usually a relatively close wayshrine for each crafting station. So you don't necessarily need to worry about getting to them with a character you're not actively leveling.

You Will need your main character to gather the materials needed to craft the higher level items, as that will involve venturing away from the roads and usually fighting some beasts that prowl near the spawn points for materials. Especially if you're doing medium armor which requires killing things for the hides.

1. I will have 3 crafting characters. One for provisioning, one for alchemy, and one for enchanting. This way I don't need to be a high level for each one in order to max the crafting. For these 3 trades however, is there a reason to venture out in the same way as how the others have special crafting stations for set bonuses. If I kept my crafting at the starting point of the game and with the trade maxed out, will I have access to everything in those trades?
Provisioners can usually get all the food ingredients in low level dungeons crates and barrels and baskets, but they will have to rely on an higher level character to bring them recipes looted from higher areas - or buy them from guild stores.

Enchanters will have to rely on higher level characters to bring them potency runes only found in higher zones, but they can farm the essence and aspect runes in the starter zones for themselves. They will definitely need higher level characters to bring them glyphs to deconstruct, as the trifling glyphs dropped by low enemies will do almost nothing for leveling the craft.

Alchemists will be able to farm most of the reagents, but there are a few mushrooms that don't show up till the second main zone (Glenumbra, Deshaan, Grahtwood), and the solvents will need to be collected from higher level zones as well.

If you are doing the crafting writ quests, then these characters will have to deliver their items to the main city of the zone corresponding to the highest level item they are able to craft, thus to provide your main character with level appropriate items they will have to unlock those passives and will have to travel to those zones for the writs - but the main cities are usually safe enough (although there are some cases where part of the city may be under attack until a quest is completed, which can be problematic - Malabal Tor has this problem for instance) But there is always the possibility of sneaking to the delivery points, so have them do lots of chest opening and build up the 'ledgermain' as well as medium armor skill for sneaking. This will also come in handy for venturing out to grab more skyshards to unlock your passives without leveling up. However this does become a problem at veteran rank when you actually can't get into the areas that you would turn items in at.


2. For hireling, the quality and level of the materials you get, are they based off the level you are in the trade or the level of your character?
The raw materials your hireling sends is based on the level of passives you have unlocked for that craft - so even if you were level 50 in the craft but hadn't unlocked the passives for creating higher tier items you'd still be getting the level 1-15 materials because you wouldn't be able to actually use anything higher. Then there are also 3 levels of hireling (though the last seems to just make them send things more often, though I've read some of the really high level stuff only shows up with level 3). The second level makes you more likely to get higher improvement materials and such which will be important. You will need to do a little leveling or skyshard hunting in order to get the skill points to unlock all those passives.

With the 'consumable' crafts you can make some easy gold by having all your characters certified to fulfill crafting writs, then just have your main provisioner and alchemist put the required items (carrot soup, sip of ravage stamina, wormwood, etc.) in the bank for the other characters to take out and turn in to the delivery site. And if you just want the use related passives from provisioning and alchemy on other characters, you can forgo the crafting level passives and still reach level 50 in both those crafts fairly quickly just making level 15 recipes and level 10 potions. Then later on when you reach veteran ranks and have more skill points to 'waste' you can unlock the higher tiers of those crafts and get the writs that are delivered in craglorn etc.

Enchanting seems to be the slowest to level in my opinion, so that's the one I'd most reccommend doing on your main character as you may not find it easy to get enough glyphs to level it very quickly on more than one character, whereas alchemy and provisioning it's totally doable.

Ugh.. where to start...

For starters, some say you can do all crafts on one char.. and it is correct, but taxing on your skill point pool. Now:

Danielzxzx wrote: »

So I'm fairly new to the game and I have read that players create new characters dedicated to just crafting. However there are still a few questions I haven't found the answer to yet.

So since right now I'm very busy, I will probably only have time for 1 main character and because of this my crafting characters will have to be able to stay in the beginning areas at a low level. My main character however does do some crafting. I have him set for Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking and the reason for this is because of something I read about set bonuses from special crafting stations and those require you to venture out a lot in order to reach them all.

Not.. exactly. The reason you tie all those together is because they all use the same racial motifs to create racial styles. Otherwise, you have to find a motif for EACH character to be able to craft that racial. And, yeah, the special crafting stations do require you to RESEARCH so many traits before you can make the (Cloth/Smith/Wood) item. This is on a per item basis. Learning Sharpened on a bow, will not give you sharpened on a resto staff in wood. And, yes, they are out in the world.. some of them only accessible when research eight traits AND you complete the main story into Coldharbor, some when you complete Mages and FIghters Guild quest lines and some only when you get to VR level.

Danielzxzx wrote: »

This leads me to my first question.

1. I will have 3 crafting characters. One for provisioning, one for alchemy, and one for enchanting. This way I don't need to be a high level for each one in order to max the crafting. For these 3 trades however, is there a reason to venture out in the same way as how the others have special crafting stations for set bonuses. If I kept my crafting at the starting point of the game and with the trade maxed out, will I have access to everything in those trades?

Umm.. wrong. you still will have to venture out into the world. Why? Not to get to special crafting stations. Those only apply to cloth/smith/wood. To access higher recipes, and higher level alch/ench ingredients, you need skill points. To get skill points, you need to level, do quests, get skyshards. To be powerful enough to do that, you need to invest skill points into battle skills before crafting skills. You CANNOT max out your trade just sitting in the starter areas and doing combines. You cant unlock the higher level crafts without skill points from doing something beside crafting.

Danielzxzx wrote: »

2. For hireling, the quality and level of the materials you get, are they based off the level you are in the trade or the level of your character?

Crafting level.. up to a point. You cant get stuff available only in areas you cannot access due to not doing main story or leveling. Does not matter as much for Provisioning. And, frankly, give your main tier 1 Keen Eye for every profession and your low levels will be swimming in mats they cant use yet because they dont have the skill points. Frankly, my Provisioning Hireling is only useful because he sends me the purple food mats once in a while.

Danielzxzx wrote: »

3. Is there a better way of dealing with what I'm trying to do?

Frankly, no, but it will be WAY more work than you think it will.

I have a Provisioning alt with 120 stacks of provisioning mats, about 90 different kinds. She is level 19, can make VR15 recipes, has 36 skill points, but still needs more than the 10 skill points in Provisioning to really be effective at making food/drink. and one point into a hireling. She probably needs 12 more. She hit level 50 provisioning in May 2014, but her crafting writs only take her to level 40, so higher level recipes have to be bought from guild stores or found by my VR16.

My Ench/Alch alt is level 28, has 55 skill points and still needs more. She has 16 skill points in Ench, just enough to make and extract goodies, but not enough have ONE hireling since the IC reset. She has 10 skill points in Alch, still needs 8 more to make better combines and no hirelings since the reset. She normally has 110 Ench/Alch items in her bags, with some also on a bank alt. She hit level 50 in Alch in Aug 2014, and 50 in Ench back in July 2015. Her crafting writs take her up to level 40 also.

Both of these have no chance at good stuff like crafting mat maps in Craglorn, XP pot pages or the other cool stuff from Crag or IC releases.

Sorry for taking a long time to respond, as I started this post, then realized I needed info I could only get when the server was up.

It all comes down to how many characters and how many mules your going to have. You need 20 to 22 Skill points to max out skills like Enchanting or Alchemy or Provisioning, with Alchemy taking the least. This also includes Keen Eye for those that have the skill, so you can subtract up to 3 points for that if they are not going to farm.

You can get 17 to 22 Skill points on a character pretty easily. In the first 3 zones you can walk to the overland skyshards and get 8 per zone, so that is 8 skill points. Add in the starter island shards and that is 2 more points. If you run the exploration trait you can easily gain 10 to 12 levels just collecting the skyshards and this is with no combat. Then do the first main quest of the Main Quests which needs no combat and you have the points you need to max a consumable crafting skill on a mule/crafter. Note, while gathering the skyshards, your going to be putting points into combat and defense skills so you can survive some of the encounters, then respec them back out when you park the alt.

Equipment Crafting is the tricky one. For a variety of reasons it is better to have all the crafts on one alt (less motifs, only research once, you need to make different types of armors and weapons and the same time). For that, I would say, get a character up to VR Ranks, the spec them into a dedicated crafter. On this one, they will need some combat skills to get to some of the Special Crafting Stations. So, for that I would make them a Templar as that can be effective in combat with the least amount of skill points used, not proficient, but effective enough. Along the way, decon like mad to level the crafting skills (fastest way) and do not ignore the research. Getting to 3/4 Traits does not take all that long to do. Its when you get to the 5th trait that the time starts adding up.