Stealing items for deconstruct. Worth it?

Sillyfish · August 2015

So I saw a 3 minute video of someone running around a city, picking up every piece of armor and weapon he could find (no idea how he avoided the guards. I tried it just now in the Aldmeri Dominion starting town and instantly got arrested) before going to the forge and deconstructing it all for materials and Blacksmithing experience.

After a couple of other attempts I managed to actually deconstruct several of these stolen items, but I got zero materials in return.

Am I picking up the wrong stuff, or is this method no longer viable to getting materials to craft with?

AJ_1988 · August 2015

Stolen items increase that skill line a lot quicker. Have the points in the extraction passive for the chosen skill and you will get a lot of materials in no time.

CGPsaint · August 2015

This may be a silly question, however were you sneaking and NOT detected whilst attempting to steal? I will roll through every building in the near vicinity of the crafting stations and steal anything that is not locked down. I deconstruct everything that I can, unless it is something that I can use. If you get spotted, immediately head to the crafting stations and deconstruct everything, and then go visit the guards and pay your bounty to reset your notoriety to upstanding. There is no sense in allowing the guards to take back what you have already stolen!

Winterpsy · August 2015

When I first joined I noticed how the equipment crafting skills lagging behind in development compared to consumable crafting ones.
I so really wanted to do blacksmithing I started stealing stuff from vendors and found a bsmithing buddy too, and was draining myself in the tedious levelling of the craft.

Only to realize that in your starter region you wont need a maxed out bsmithing. You have tons of time to get the craft higher up, to be able to craft equipment to your level. I've had lvl 50 bsmithing since like level 40.

I honestly believe if you break down stuff you get from drops, without a crafting buddy, you will get your skill levelling in pair with your character. It's well balanced, dont be fooled by the swift increase in the consumable crafting skills compared to bsmithing for example.

You just need enough skill to be able to craft the best for your level. Material quality jumps a tier at about 2-2,5 regions.

KingDuncanVII · August 2015

"Stealing items for deconstruct. Worth it?"

It depends on what you want to do. Do you want to be a master crafter? Because hitting level 50 quickly on your crafting skill trees not only allows you to create the best armor (despite not being able to use them yourself, you may be able to craft higher level armor for higher level players and receive a good amount of gold in exchange for your talents), but it also unlocks very beneficial perks like: (1) being able to receive more improvement items from refining raw materials, (2) being able to research more items at once within a shorter amount of time, (3) being able to use less improvement material to improve your weapons or armor, etc.

Also, keep in mind that if you find or buy a rare style motif (Daedric, Ancient Elf, Primal, Dwemer, etc) you have to have a certain crafting ability in order to actually learn the motif itself. For me, I have Ancient Elf and I believe I had to have 8 out of 9 points in one of my crafting trees (Woodworking, Blacksmithing, or Clothing) to be able to even read the motif book to learn the skill. So this is something to keep in mind.

If these are things you'd like to be able to do, then maybe you would want to level them quickly.

However, if you want to be more of the consumer versus the producer, then I'd say you don't need to worry too much about maxing it out as fast as possible.

BenevolentBowd · August 2015

As an aside, even though you can max out your crafting skill lines to 50 while being a low character, there will be a few sets you can't craft until you have completed your faction quest line to unlock Coldharbour and obtained veteran rank (to unlock Craglorn).

My recommendation, spend skill points to unlocked the higher tier materials and max out the extraction passive. This will enable you to get the most back from the deconstructed material. The pace at which you max out is up to you. If you have some higher level friends to send you white items for deconning, you could level up without a lot of effort. I created a master equipment crafter and he got to 50 in clothier, blacksmithing, and woodworking in roughly two weeks just logging in and deconning the daily mail from my friends.

Foolish_Mortal · August 2015

Always steal everything all the time. Melt the meltable. Sell the rest.

Oh, yeah, extraction passive.

Tankobox101 · August 2015

Take everything that you can deconstruct. If your in a city it wont be a very long walk to a crafting station, and the XP you get from it will justify your time.

Sandshark95 · August 2015

Is it worth it? Yes. Especially if you can find a good grinding spot near a crafting station with lots of stuff to steal and few to no guards to catch you. I hit max rank in Blacksmithing and Clothing (and a few levels away from max in Woodworking) at level 30ish (could've done it even earlier) after several hours of steal-everything-then-decon-and-reset runs at my favorite spot.

Have you put any skill points in the 'Extraction' passives in your crafting trees? If not, that might be the reason you're not getting a lot of materials from deconstruction. The 'Extraction' passives increase the odds of receiving materials from deconstructed items; putting a few points here should help with your decon material returns. With these passives active during my grind to max crafting level, I would collect so many mats that I had to frequently sell stacks of 200 ingots/cloth/wood to the NPC merchant for 800 gold per stack just to free up inventory space.

Sillyfish · August 2015

Thank you all very much.

I have now discovered the art of sneaking, and I'm on my way to glorious crafting.

Cheers!

Elder_Knight29 · August 2015

Though to add on to their master craftsman things. If you're trying to max it, also research everything you don't need. It'll help it the long run when you want the craftable set pieces. So I highly recommend researching early on.

Toomdad · August 2015

I'll second that highly recommend researching if you want to be able to create set items. The times go up dramatically as you start getting into traits 6-9 to a point where you're spending 30 days getting that last trait. When you can only deconstruct a max of 3 different items at a time per crafting line you might want to grab a spreadsheeet for traits (on console, add on for pc) to manage the known traits.

Psych32 · September 2015

Not anymore you no longer get exp from decon stolen items

Blood_Oracle · September 2015

Psych32 wrote: »

Not anymore you no longer get exp from decon stolen items

I read somewhere that you have to launder the stolen item, and then you can decon the item for exp/mats.

Broc · September 2015

Blood_Oracle wrote: »

Psych32 wrote: »

Not anymore you no longer get exp from decon stolen items

I read somewhere that you have to launder the stolen item, and then you can decon the item for exp/mats.

You get some inspiration for deconstructing items unlaundered, but it is miniscule now. Totally logical decision

"Hello good fellow! Please make this clean and pristine, so I can break it into bits!" Appears you still get the materials though, which was the main reason I was doing it...

ianshere82b14_ESO · September 2015

I maxed all my crafts (the possible ones) this way - steal & decon to 50!

The other reason it is useful - if you want something crafted at your level - steal, get mats, mail mats to crafter!

Only problem is, you can not steal V15 or V16 items, and the V16 items take 10x the required mats AND ontop of that you get 1 material for each decon on a V15 or V16. So this means you have to be in a V15+ dungeon OR in Imperial City, and loot 150 items just to craft one.

matcumb · September 2015

CGPsaint wrote: »

T I will roll through every building in the near vicinity of the crafting stations and steal anything that is not locked down.

I steal stuff lying near guild traders too, you'd be surprised how many weapons and armour pieces you can find