The secret to Hirelings is to have a lot of them on a bunch of characters and not expect much from them. Having them on one character is an exercise in frustration. These style stones do have use now, if not for you, they sell to folks who want to make furniture for their houses.
As for the Gold Tempers, you get less on the lower end writs. You want more, you have to invest the material passives. Even then the secret is to run writs on multiple characters to get a decent supply. However there is no method in the game that is going to give you steady supply of them. They are supposed to be Rare and hard to get.
And, not sure what level Alchemy your doing, but in my experience the lower level ones don't ask for Nirnroot, at least all the time, only the Top End. Have not done an intermediate level Alchemy writ so don't know on those. There are a few farming areas where you can hit 8 to 12 Nirn nodes in a small area that can help. But the top end writs only ask for Nirnroot if there want a reagent.
I will say that I have stopped doing writs for the most part when they nerfed the survey drop rate, and only do them at L1 Materials as those have a hope of keeping me in the mats I need to do the writs.
Why are these so awful?
If you're going to make me invest 3 skill points then give me something worthwhile in return because I sure have no use for 5 rough oak for lvl 16- 24 (!!!) and 2 argonian style stones. Besides sometimes a worthless green / blue temper thrown in that's how they all look like. Not once have I gotten a legendary temper but not just that, the amount of mats is so insignificant it's basically just spam in my mail folder. They're not free either, that's 9 skill points (provisioning hireling is decent and haven't tried enchanting) I could use elsewhere and skillpoint resets are anything but free.
Then the alchemy writ: what's the point of rewarding us 2x 3 ingredients when nearly every time I have to include 3 nirnroot which if I continue just depletes all the nirnroot I have? It's poorly implemented and there is nearly no reason to do them unless you have the habit of running along rivers all day like so many others try.
disintegr8 wrote: »I am happy to have my hirelings on all my characters. Sure they don't send a lot of high end stuff back but retrieving the stuff out of my mail once a day is not really a big deal - I always check my mail for guild sales proceeds any way.
While leveling, getting skill points might feel like hard work, but now that you can go anywhere in Tamriel, it is easier than ever to go and at least grab the skyshards for easy points. Back in the good old days we had to wait to unlock each area, so were always running out of skill points.
As for writs, one issue I have is the time it takes now that I do them on 8 characters. I am happy with the rewards I get and make a lot of money from the writs and selling the rewards I get, so I think the time is well spent for me.
My main issue with writs is the surveys now sending you everywhere. I save them up and then devote a whole game session to going around and harvesting them, but that can be a couple of hours or more depending on how many I have.
They are all parts of the game that you do not have to participate in, so if they don't appeal to you just ignore them and do whatever you find fun.
scorpiodog wrote: »
I just see hirelings as free gold whenever I want it. 10 Characters with hirelings really stacks up the mats quickly. Need 20k gold? I do Writs on all my alts for a day. Need 100K Gold? I do writs on all my alts for 5 days.