are writs still worth doing?

imenace · September 2016

title. took a long break and im broke so i want to make some money, searched the forums a bit and found that some people are saying writs arent worth doing anymore, is that true? if so why

disintegr8 · September 2016

There may be better ways to make gold if that is your goal. Returns on having only 1 or 2 characters doing writs wouldn't be that great right now. I think writs delivered to Craglorn are best as you can get nirncrux when collecting the survey maps on top of the gold improvement items you can get from the drop offs.

With the daily XP bonus and completion rewards you get from doing random dungeons, they are a good way to get some gold and items to sell or break down to sell the components. If you did daily undaunted pledges combined with random dungeons, you could be on your way.

Otherwise people still say farming is the best way to collect things to sell but I never done it.

STEVIL · September 2016

Consumable writs seem good. Getting lotsa kuta.alchemy at any level gives useful mats.

Not sure right now abt the equip ones at top.

SHADOW2KK · September 2016

Yes doing writs is a good strategy, excellent way of building up free gold mats, nirn, etc, and a bit of gold/xp, providing you have sufficient mats.

I do writs on 7 chars, and net around 100K + a week, just from writs and a healthy amount of gold mats etc too, plus its good for ranking up training bars if required too.

Shadowshire · September 2016

Use Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter: esoui.com/downloads/info1346-DolgubonsLazyWritCrafter.html

It does the crafting for writs very, very quickly. It is a major time-saver, reliable, tells you how many materials are required and how many you have on hand, and flexible enough to recognize when you haven't completed a writ and want to continue.

Bouldercleave · September 2016

As said already, if you have mats and no cash - writs are a good way to pad the pocketbook and perhaps get some extra gold tempers, rosins, or dreauh wax (worth a boon of gold if sold)

Poor in this game is a total state of mind. If you suck it up and harvest everything / refine everything / do writs / sell everything that you don't need and you can't help but make money.

Synfaer · September 2016

I've been keeping stats on writs since 24 Aug 16, so here are the numbers so you can make up your own mind.

Smith, Clothing, Woodworking and Enchanting Writs;

Writs: 202
Gold Mats: 60 (30% chance)
Surveys: 70 (35% chance)

You can compare the returns from Hirelings (all 3/3)
Smith, Clothing, Woodworking and Enchanting Hirelings;

Posts: 428
Gold Mats: 11 (2% chance)

Also refining raw mats
Ore, Cloth, Leather and Wood Refining;

Raw Material Refined: 9040 (or 904 refines of 10 raw material)
Gold Mats: 34 (4% chance or 1 gold mat for every 250 raw material refined)

.

Essiaga · September 2016

I quit writs because i ran out of mats constantly and wasn't seeing enough return.

It's busy work. I'm tired of busy work. I've got to grind content before BOP comes.

Reorx_Holybeard · September 2016

So I've been tracking the average performance of writs on a Google Spreadsheet as I basically had the same question of whether it was worth my time or not. Short story is, yes they are worth doing in the long term.

Doing all 6 writs on one character yields an average of 11.5k gold per day.
This is the average return so some days you'll lose gold and some days you'll make much more.
Smithing writs are a material loss. You do writs to make some money and turn materials into tempers and other high value items.
If you organize doing multiple writs at a time (pre-make items, collect surveys and do them all on one character) then you basically get the benefits of the surveys plus the benefits of harvesting for that time. In other words, it only takes a little bit of extra time to do writs + surveys in addition to your normal harvesting.
Currently level 9 writs (Craglorn) are a little more profitable due to the chance of getting Nirncrux (as much as 14.5k average per day). However, this will chance in update 12, One Tamriel, as surveys you get will be all over the world and not localized to one zone so I would expect level 10 writs to be the best after the update.

RocDonald · September 2016

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

So I've been tracking the average performance of writs on a Google Spreadsheet as I basically had the same question of whether it was worth my time or not. Short story is, yes they are worth doing in the long term.
Doing all 6 writs on one character yields an average of 11.5k gold per day.

This is the average return so some days you'll lose gold and some days you'll make much more.

Smithing writs are a material loss. You do writs to make some money and turn materials into tempers and other high value items.

If you organize doing multiple writs at a time (pre-make items, collect surveys and do them all on one character) then you basically get the benefits of the surveys plus the benefits of harvesting for that time. In other words, it only takes a little bit of extra time to do writs + surveys in addition to your normal harvesting.

Currently level 9 writs (Craglorn) are a little more profitable due to the chance of getting Nirncrux (as much as 14.5k average per day). However, this will chance in update 12, One Tamriel, as surveys you get will be all over the world and not localized to one zone so I would expect level 10 writs to be the best after the update.

WTF, on ps4 doing all max level writs only yields 4k gold per day. Unless of course you sell all of your items, then maybe. But still worth doing imho. Kinda depends on what you prefer doing when your playing. I myself mostly just do the solo quests in Wrothgar when I get the chance to play and while doing so I farm everything (thank you craft bag ) so that gives me a lot of free mats to work with.

newtinmpls · September 2016

I want to get glass motifs....however have not yet had a single fragment (PC NA) .....

Synfaer · September 2016

newtinmpls wrote: »

I want to get glass motifs....however have not yet had a single fragment (PC NA) .....

I've found Its about a 20% drop rate from Wrothgar writs (36 glass motif pages from 190 writs - Smith/Cloth/Wood)
PC-NA

.

Reorx_Holybeard · September 2016

RocDonald wrote: »

Reorx_Holybeard wrote: »

So I've been tracking the average performance of writs on a Google Spreadsheet as I basically had the same question of whether it was worth my time or not. Short story is, yes they are worth doing in the long term.
Doing all 6 writs on one character yields an average of 11.5k gold per day.

This is the average return so some days you'll lose gold and some days you'll make much more.

Smithing writs are a material loss. You do writs to make some money and turn materials into tempers and other high value items.

If you organize doing multiple writs at a time (pre-make items, collect surveys and do them all on one character) then you basically get the benefits of the surveys plus the benefits of harvesting for that time. In other words, it only takes a little bit of extra time to do writs + surveys in addition to your normal harvesting.

Currently level 9 writs (Craglorn) are a little more profitable due to the chance of getting Nirncrux (as much as 14.5k average per day). However, this will chance in update 12, One Tamriel, as surveys you get will be all over the world and not localized to one zone so I would expect level 10 writs to be the best after the update.

WTF, on ps4 doing all max level writs only yields 4k gold per day. Unless of course you sell all of your items, then maybe. But still worth doing imho. Kinda depends on what you prefer doing when your playing. I myself mostly just do the solo quests in Wrothgar when I get the chance to play and while doing so I farm everything (thank you craft bag ) so that gives me a lot of free mats to work with.

Yes...when I say 11.5k gold that is the average value of all items you get assuming you sold them at market value (either vendor or guild trader depending on the item), minus of course the market value of whatever materials you used to for writ items themselves.

I should also mention that I used market values of items from the PC-NA server. Different servers have different market values which would change (possibly by a lot) the net profitability of the writs.

pcar944 · September 2016

its really only worth doing Alchemy/Provisioning/Enchant because you always make your mats back + chance for gold mat

others you are better off farming Ore and getting gold mats by refining

Geralt_of_Aalst · September 2016

pcar944 wrote: »

its really only worth doing Alchemy/Provisioning/Enchant because you always make your mats back + chance for gold mat

others you are better off farming Ore and getting gold mats by refining

Indeed, there's always a chance to get gold tempers from refining any level mats. But I wonder if there's also a chance to get gold tempers from writs of any level? I've been doing clothier writs on my bank alts for a few days, so writs that require the lowest mats like jute and rawhide, which are pretty cheap (1k per stack of 200), and haven't gotten any gold tempers. It could be bad luck, of course, but I do get one on my leveled chars (char level 50, craft/writ level 32 or 50) about 25% of the time.

So, is it just bad luck or is there something (char level, craft level, craft skill level, ...) that makes a difference?

Synfaer · September 2016

pcar944 wrote: »

its really only worth doing Alchemy/Provisioning/Enchant because you always make your mats back + chance for gold mat

others you are better off farming Ore and getting gold mats by refining

The rate of return on gold mats is very good for writs at about 30% (76 gold mats from 257 writs).
Sure you can farm raw materials and refine all day, but who wants to do that? Based on about 12k of refined raw material the return rate for gold mats is about 4% or 1 gold mat every 250 raw material refined.
Hirelings are even worse, I have received 15 gold mats from 540 hireling deliveries (2% return).

If you gather all the materials from the surveys and gather a bit extra whilst on a survey run, the only craft that has an significant overall loss of material is blacksmithing and that is mainly due to the writ for 2xdaggers/2xshoulders/1xhelm (which i now refuse to complete).

All these numbers are from top tier crafters/refiners 10/10 level & 50/50 skill and hirelings 3/3. Raw Mats are all Ruby.

.

Swainburg · September 2016

imenace wrote: »

title. took a long break and im broke so i want to make some money, searched the forums a bit and found that some people are saying writs arent worth doing anymore, is that true? if so why

High chance for tempering alloys, rosin, etc. Very very valuable. Also, farming locations. Very valuable as well.

Whiphid · September 2016

Sorry to necro this thread (is it dead if it is a week old?)... anyways;

I have seen several topics here discussing the value of writs these days. I've stopped doing the equipment writs in the period when the surveys were bugged with Void cr*p, and am hesistant to pick them up again.

Do the surveys drop enough to make up for the mats you put into the high level writs? Or how much farming would one need to recuperate the losses per week per toon?

I know some people like to see things in a way that it "makes money" because you get tempers that are worth more than the mats you loose, but I'm not selling tempers. The 30% chance to get a temper is much better than the low rate from refining tho, so it seems to be good to pick up writs again.

Vangy · September 2016

Whiphid wrote: »

Sorry to necro this thread (is it dead if it is a week old?)... anyways;

I have seen several topics here discussing the value of writs these days. I've stopped doing the equipment writs in the period when the surveys were bugged with Void cr*p, and am hesistant to pick them up again.

Do the surveys drop enough to make up for the mats you put into the high level writs? Or how much farming would one need to recuperate the losses per week per toon?

I know some people like to see things in a way that it "makes money" because you get tempers that are worth more than the mats you loose, but I'm not selling tempers. The 30% chance to get a temper is much better than the low rate from refining tho, so it seems to be good to pick up writs again.

I do them on 8 toons. For consumable writs, do them. They cost next to nothing and are a quick ez source of income especially for enchanting. They give kutas.

For equipment writs, its more of a complex matter. Take blacksmithing (the worst of the lot due to the writ that requires 2 daggers which costs so much mats....). Each toon of mine spends about an average of 40-50 ingots per writ. I get maybe 1-3 surveys from this and about 1-2 tempers from this. So I lose about 200 ingots a day (after minusing the ore i get back from writs) + 2 tempers and spend about 40 mins in all for all my writs. Not the best way to make money but it still is a steady income. You would need to buy mats to keep up with the cost tho. Cos you will always use more ingots than you get back. Gold-wise its still a marginal profit and if you have the extra time, writs are semi-decent way of a steady gold income. About 100k-200k a week depending on ur RNG with about 40 mins spent each day. Not the best way to make money.. but certainly not the worst either.

I personally think the cost of the mats should be dropped a little and the rewards from the surveys upped a tad little to make writs more appealing.

Bobby_V_Rockit · September 2016

I dont bother, havent had a gold mat in about a month after doing cloth and smithing daily

Moltyr · October 2016

If you are someone who has MULTIPLE accounts and 30 toons or something, then yes writs are worth it.

If you have one toon, or even a few who craft...then no.