Meryyl wrote: »

Time to level the alts, I guess.

This is because Crafting Partners are no longer the most efficient way to level crafting. It was, a long time ago, but now you can level yourself and your alts faster than working with a partner. See this, it is my generic spiel about leveling crafting:

For the most part not worth the time and effort and cost to trade items or make items and decon them for gear crafting leveling. Mob Loot is better in so many ways, you get gold, character experience, skill upgrades and free loot. Sell what you need to cover repairs (white unimproved) , decon the rest). You don't really need to repair gear while leveling, just wear mob loot.

Here is the thing about Crafting, you don't need it until End Game (post CP160) but you can level it in preparation with few to no skill points invested. Crafting can eat up 122 Skill Points to fully invest, so this will gimp your combat while leveling. Best to invest as few points as possible while leveling your character and crafting.

Equipment Crafting

Decon all mob loot other than what you are using to research traits. Research traits, learn two on all items you would use, then learn 3, etc. Focus on Divines, Infused and Training for your first three for Armor, Sharpened, Precise and Training for your Weapons. Then go for the other ones. Nirn is expensive, and a lot of people suggest putting a priority on that, I can't see why. The Trait is all but useless for Armor or Weapons. Best place to find Mob Loot is Public Dungeons, then over land grind spots. Grind on mobs until your bags are full, then go on a decon fest. Remembering to save the ones you need or want to research. Use the Lock Function and or an Inventory Mule to hang on to those. Only invest Skill points while leveling it into the Research and Extraction Passive, the last really only needing one point.

Enchanting

Ignore all the "advice" on the web about using an enchanting partner. First, use Mob Loot decon to raise this up to a point. Later on as you approach end game have some some gold, then start making Green, Blue or Purple Glyphs on one character and decon them on an Alt. You will level Enchanting faster than trading the glyphs with another player, which is tedious by the way. (like pull out your hair and make a doily tedious). Use Green up to about L15 in the Enchanting Skill, Blue up to about L30/35 and Purple up to about L46/47. Then learn the runes you don't know, you should be at or near 50, if not, make/decon some more Purples.

Provisioning and Alchemy

Don't worry about these, you can level these professions in about an 20 minutes, for both. Just collect the Various Solvents and Reagents and Provisioning Ingredients/Recipes as you go along. Once end game, then you can level it. Use Mushrooms to level Alchemy, or Flowers that make potions you won't use. Make sure you grab solvents (waters) as your leveling as they can be rare to find in the guild stores. For Provisioning, make the highest level Green Recipes you can make. Blue or Purples do not give any more inspiration than Greens, so save those for character use.

I'm also new to ESO, but started crafting RIGHT AWAY. Nestor gives great advice, and really, if your serious about leveling a master crafter, de-conning is the way to go. Having said this, no matter how dedicated you are to this practice, it's not going to get your gear crafting levels to 50 BEFORE you get hit charcter level 50, at least not by itself. Unless you play at a snails pace, that is

I'm level 49 cloth/wood/metal on my main crafting, level 42 NB toon. My enchanting skill is only 32, but I admit I haven't been pushing that as hard. My other (also level 42) toon is level 50 provisioning and alchemy, which was very easy because I pick up EVERYTHING and had appropriate mats to level those 2 skills without decimating my inventory. And I have spent gold to help level the gear crafting skills.

The BEST additional way to level the gear craft skills is to buy cloth/wood/metal items that are level 50/cp 160 with the Instrinsic trait from Guild Traders. They give tons of inspiration (which is what levels crafting skills), and they are not horribly $$$. I check about 15 guild traders 3 times a week, and buy this gear when it's less then 200 gold. I've probably spent about 30k gold doing this total, but I had gold to spare, and it wasn't getting used.

Now I'm actually leveling 2 toons at the same time (a personal choice based on my goals for the game 6 months in), so gold wasn't a problem for me. You probably won't have as much gold your first few months of playing. Quests and stealing are the best gold makers until you can start selling popular items to other players.

It's tough starting to play ESO with NOTHING, but with a little bit of dedication, crafters can succeed earlier then a lot of players think. It's hard, but doable.

One last bit of advice. There is a lot of talk about Master Craft Writs in the forums right now. I've found that dealing with even basic Writs when being new is next to impossible, because they suck up your mats like crazy. I decided to not deal with Writs until a bit later on. By then you should have extra mats (or can buy them), at which point dealting with Writs won't drain your inventory so badly.

Getting Purple and Gold Master Craft writs requires putting a lot of skill points into your crafting skills, and when your new, that's going to be detrimental to building your class skills to proper levels.

For some reason my last post was cut short. What I wanted to add is that I appreciate your perspective. I have struggled with the daily writs, but my biggest headache (by far) is inventory. You guys have convinced me to concentrate on the three "hard" crafts and (pretty much) ignore the others for now. I'm going to take a more relaxed approach. A little questing......a few dungeons....a little crafting.

Thanks

Meryyl wrote: »

I have a lvl 22 NB and just decided to start crafting. Looks like the most efficient thing would be to find someone at about the same level willing to swap crafted items for deconstruction. All my crafts are < lvl 10.

Others have given some great advice, but as one who returned to the game recently, the changes of One Tamriel have made crafting much easier in solo play.

From my experience, it's because items now level with you. Previously, each zone was "leveled" in increments of 10, so by the time you hit the 5th zone, you'll be close to 50. Makes sense.

That's gone now. Items dropped will be around your level. No more "level 40" when you're at level 48. Most drops will be at or around your level, which makes deconstruction a primary source for leveling. Since items are now at your level, you'll get the decon exp on that, which is fast.

I was pretty shocked to see how fast I leveled up, which is great, because I can now put the others on hold. As you know, space is extremely limited on early characters (unless you sub and get the craft bag), so visits to the workshops are frequent.

The other benefit to this change is you no longer need to craft your own stuff. Since items level, you can easily "keep up" with the zone levels.

The change to 1T has been very positive, especially since Enchanting got an overdue updgrade (my goodness, the old system was horrid).

I put off Alchemy early, but now am starting to work on getting it up because some housing items require a specific level. To show how fast this goes: I hit 10 levels in less than 5 minutes just by crafting mundane potions.

Oh, and one more thing to note! Your materials will only level when you unlock the mat level. So, until you unlock Level 2 blacksmith, for example, you will only see iron ore. When you unlock it, you'll get both iron ore and high iron. This 50/50 split will then remain throughout the game, so you will see two types of mats as you progress (current and next level).

Before, mats were restricted to the zone. This 50/50 split occurs throughout the entire game. This becomes important because if you're doing writs, you could easily "wipe out" lesser level mats before you complete them. So be sure to level up only after your current writs are completed.

Hope this helps!