A serious question for you on relevancy

KrazyKooter · September 2016

I would like to hear from you regarding your thoughts as to the point of crafting and if it is worth the time and effort? I fully expect a lot of "It's up to you and what you like to do" type of answers but I guess I'm looking for some answers that will help me understand crafting relevancy in the game.

History:
I played Skyrim from top to bottom twice over and then some on my XBox360. I understand that ESO is NOT Skyrim but regardless I enjoyed making armor in Skyrim. I have played other MMOs on the PC and enjoyed crafting and the time I spent in the auction house wheeling and dealing.

ESO:
I've now had the game for about 6 weeks (XBox One) and dove straight into Tailoring because "Why not?". Then I discovered the craft-able sets, styles, and traits and thought I would put the time and work into leveling up. I thought "If I can craft some 9 trait killer armor then I'll be Da MAN."

After 6 weeks with the game, I am now CP155 and closing in on CP160, in some different guilds, and I am starting to question "Why did I spend so much time and effort getting Tailoring up to 50 and learning traits?" There doesn't appear to be any real demand for the products of those players with Tailoring skills. Now that I've joined some guilds that range from wacky and social to running serious groups and trials it appears that the only armor that is actually in demand is the armor sets that folks get from big drops like Trials, Cyrodiil, etc. etc.

I do not mean to sound bitter, crazy, or upset. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this game. I'm simply wondering as I approach CP160 if all of that crafting time would have been better spent by joining a trader guild, selling TONS of various quest rewards and other items (that I otherwise had deconstructed), and stockpiled all the money to buy a good CP160 set (or two) to help me run a little easier with the big boys in the larger group challenges and Cyrodiil Campaigns.

So where is the relevancy in hardcore Tailoring?

Is this just my perception? Am I way off on this? Is it just a problem with the scale of economy? Is the XBox One population not large enough to create a sufficient demand for crafted sets? Do the various "skins" and "Appearance" items in the game lower demand?

I am just trying to wrap my head around this so "Thanks!" in advance for any feedback that will help me do so.

wayfarerx · September 2016

First off, there are a lot of crafters. Pretty much everyone is either a master crafter themselves or has a friend / guildmate that is. You probably won't find a lot of "work" crafting stuff for money. There are people out there willing to pay for crafting services, but with how easy it is to level up those skills the only pieces that sell well are 8/9 trait sets and pieces for trait research.

Now as for crafting being useful for your own purposes I would say yes, it absolutely is. A lot of the top gear in this game is bind-on-pickup and when you hit 160 you're going to need something to wear while you farm that top gear. Additionally there are some crafted sets (twice born star, tava's favor, night mother's gaze, etc) that are best-in-slot for some builds. Lastly, even if you have your awesome dropped gear all collected it's likely that you'll still have a couple slots to fill in and crafting gives you a lot of flexibility there.

Even if you don't craft a ton of gear for yourself you can make a pretty penny doing crafting writs and selling the spoils.

Nestor · September 2016

It really comes down to: Do you want to spend all your time farming gold buying items you could make, or do you want spend your time learning how to craft so you can make the things instead of buying them.

It is a much more expensive game to play (in game gold expensive, not real money) if your not a crafter.

Then, with Alchemy and Provisioning, which are super easy to level, you get passives that really benefit your character by extending the effective time of the food/drink/potion.

With Equipment Crafting, even if you don't make stuff, Upgrading what you do find or buy is so much cheaper if your a crafter.

The biggest issue is, leveling your first character and investing skill points into crafting is not easy, and results in a compromised character until you get well into the Champ Ranks. But, you can level crafting with little to no skill points invested while leveling your character. Then, you can invest the points once you have a surplus.

If your going to Craft Equipment, then make sure you start learning Traits now. Knowing Traits is what lets you make the powerful crafted gear for end game. Don't overlook those.

Haxnschwammer · September 2016

If you deconstruct dropped gear to level crafting you can't sell them to make some money. And if you want to get some of the style motifs, that can be really expensive. Standard motif books like Nord, Breton,... go for a few hundred gold. Akaviri (available through Alliance Points from PvP) costs about a million gold. Other motifs are hard to farm like glass. Some parts you find, some you get from quest rewards, some from end game raids.

You can farm them. With luck and time you can get all of them. But it will take alot ot time.
For example I found Imperial motif once in over two years playing.

For buying all motifs (and there are always new coming) you have to spend some millions. Or real cash...Some of the rare motifs can be bought for about 50 dollar in the crown store.
A bad joke if you ask me, but some did buy them.

Waffennacht · September 2016

I go through so many sets that it's very worth it.

One day I like eternal hunt medium, then maybe I wanna try it in heavy.

Then there is how my dude looks. I love making my guy look how i want, sometimes I would rather use crafted over dropped because the dropped sets look ugly.