Crafting and hierlings

LilCaesar · April 2017

Hello guys, started playing couple days ago, some questions about craft and so
1. i want to make alts for hierlings, so the question is which crafts are more usefull to lvl on them to get mats?
2. should i make my main cha a crafter or its better level crafting on alts?

Jayne_Doe · April 2017

Since you're just starting out, I think the most useful hireling would be the Provisioner hireling, since there is a wide array of provisioning ingredients and they're not as easy to farm. You can go to dungeons that have a lot of provisioning containers, but the hireling helps to build up all those mats. Plus, you have a chance at the purple mats.

Plus, provisioning is one of the easier crafts to level, though you do need to find recipes first. When you hit level 5 (or 6? can't remember what level), go to the capital of the first zone (Davon's Watch for Ebonheart Pact, e.g.) and pick up the quest for the provisioning writ certification. Once completed, you will receive all the recipes to complete the writs for Tier 1. You can purchase the writ recipes from brewer and chef NPC vendors for the higher tier writs, and many green recipes can be purchased from other players at the guild traders. Plus you can loot some recipes from containers but these are usually owned containers, so you'll be stealing them. But enemies will occasionally drop recipes as well.

I don't think the other hirelings are quite as useful as a sources of mats. They are a decent supplement, but to get the most value, you need to spend all three points, and skill points are often at a premium on alts unless you level them and find skyshards for them.

LilCaesar · April 2017

Jayne_Doe wrote: »

Since you're just starting out, I think the most useful hireling would be the Provisioner hireling, since there is a wide array of provisioning ingredients and they're not as easy to farm. You can go to dungeons that have a lot of provisioning containers, but the hireling helps to build up all those mats. Plus, you have a chance at the purple mats.

Plus, provisioning is one of the easier crafts to level, though you do need to find recipes first. When you hit level 5 (or 6? can't remember what level), go to the capital of the first zone (Davon's Watch for Ebonheart Pact, e.g.) and pick up the quest for the provisioning writ certification. Once completed, you will receive all the recipes to complete the writs for Tier 1. You can purchase the writ recipes from brewer and chef NPC vendors for the higher tier writs, and many green recipes can be purchased from other players at the guild traders. Plus you can loot some recipes from containers but these are usually owned containers, so you'll be stealing them. But enemies will occasionally drop recipes as well.

I don't think the other hirelings are quite as useful as a sources of mats. They are a decent supplement, but to get the most value, you need to spend all three points, and skill points are often at a premium on alts unless you level them and find skyshards for them.

thanx for the answer,
1. what about main crafter, is it good to max craftskills on main char or ppl level alts for crafting?
2. and second, mats quality u get from hierlings depend on your main chars level?

Jayne_Doe · April 2017

My main character is my main crafter, so it's doable, but difficult early on when skill points are at a premium. She ended up being my main crafter since she is the only one that advanced to CP levels and had skill points to spare to add the remaining crafts she didn't know.

I think it may be a good idea to have a crafter that isn't your main, but you'll still have to level them and get skill points for them, which is why I ended up using my main - at end game, there are plenty of points to go around.

You can split the crafts up on various alts, but that's not a good idea for the equipment crafts. It's good to have all of those on one toon because of all of the rare motifs that are split up into 14 chapters. That would become rather expensive if you have to learn them on more than one toon.

The quality of mats you get from the hirelings depends on the points you spend in the hireling - with 3 points invested, you have the best chance at rare tempers, e.g. However, the level of the basic mats you receive from the equipment hirelings (ore/wood/cloth) and the enchanting hireling (potency rune) are dependent on the proficiency level of the skill, i.e. the points you have spent to be able to make higher level potions, gear, etc.

Tevalaur · April 2017

From Sunshine Daydream's Guide to Crafting:
"Motifs can be expensive! You'll only want to acquire one copy of these, so keep blacksmithing, clothing, and woodworking on the same character for shared knowledge of style motifs. Some folks prefer to split off the consumables crafting (provisioning, alchemy, enchanting) to lower the percentage of skill points dedicated to crafting, but my main character is also my crafter (in all schools) and I like it that way.

If your playing characters know provisioning & alchemy you can always make food, drink, & potions when needed during your gameplay and without an interruption to change characters. Plus, unlocking the crafting level necessary for useful skills will be easily done while leveling the crafts anyhow.

Remember that while your main character(s) will eventually have plenty of skill points, it can be difficult to gather sufficient levels & skill points on a character designed solely around crafting."

Also, I mostly agree with Jayne, but should point out some things have changed regarding certification for writs. You can now do that at any level (used to be level 6), just click on a writ board to start the certification process. And the provisioning certification now gives you 2 of the writ recipes not all of them, but you can buy the others from the chef/brewer or often more cheaply in guild stores.

If you're just getting started in crafting, I suggest taking a look at my crafting guides (they are fairly well-respected and always up-to-date).

davey1107 · April 2017

I disagree slightly with the advice you got. I have ten characters...they all craft and do writs to some degree. My advice on your specific questions:

Crafting on your main: you can do this now with One Tamriel since you can reach all the sky shards whenever you need. If you don't mind hunting shards, your main is a good option. A second strategy is using a main for smith, wood and cloth and moving the consumables to an alt. Then your main learns motifs, and the alt holds all the junk for enchanting, provisioning and alchemy. There's not a lot of long term commitment in the consumables...no motifs, and no research. So you can pretty easily transfer these from a main to an alt or back any time you need to. If you start on your main and then feel,pressed for skill points, roll and alt and spend a few thousand gold,to recast your points.

Hirelings: it's very helpful to have a craft bag if you're going to use a lot of hirelings. If not, devise a storage system because the mats will ADD UP, lol. My system before the craft bag came along was to store items with an alt for raw mats, one for refined and style stones, one for enchanting, and one for alchemy and provision. I'd open the appropriate emails with the appropriate alt, and there you go. It's a bit of a pain, but once you get used to it the process isn't so bad.

The hirelings do pay off. Provisioning hirelings will bring you purple mats, which are quite valuable to sell. Enchanting is very helpful because runes are a pain to farm. And the craft skill hireling deliver a lot of purples...plus you'll get golds from refining all the raw mats they bring. So it's up to you. For me, skill points are cheap, and if it's a character I log into every day and I don't mind the inventory management...why not get free stuff?

Writs: daily writs are far more valuable than hirelings, and you control the influx of junk, lol. Once you're level 4-5ish in each of the trade lines, you can get certified by a specialist in the fighter and mage guild,in your starter city. Then once per day you can pick up a quest for that trade from a board in any major city. The writs ask you to make some junk and drop it off at a specific location. Some tips on writs:

- read a guide first, knowing the basics will save time and frustration.
- What you're asked to make and where you drop it is determined by the number of points spent in the first passive of that skill. If you keep these all leveled together, your writs will drop in the same place and be easier.
- Writs reward you "inspiration" (xp to level that line), quite a bit of gold (300-650 per writ), items to deconstruct for leveling, plus special rare rewards like gold mats, recipes, and surveys to special mega-nodes.
- writs eat up a lot of mats, but they pay a lot of gold. If you do them, you might need to invest some of your profits on mats in guild stores so you don't spend all your time farming.

Other random tips:

- during the birthday event daily writs reward a gold box with some really valuable stuff...rare mats, motifs, etc. Now is a great time to start! If you get addicted to the gold boxes, and if you're level ten and can get into Cyrodiil, the PVE dailies in the five towns also reward these and you can earn dozens a day. Just FYI.

- don't stress too much about crafting. If you want to learn it, go ahead. If you hate aspect of it, no worries. There's nothing imperative in the craft system and you can have a ton of fun playing it endlessly, or skipping it entirely.

- if you decide to be a crafter and want to make crafted armor sets, one of the longest grinds in the game is researching traits. It takes a year of real time to do it all. So start as soon as you figure the system out!

- when learning all the crafting crap i totally relied on an iOS / android app called ESO workbench. It's pretty simple...it tracks and times your research, has a potions/poison building section, and has a glyph building section. And a recipe list. It's main use is for that trait research...very helpful.

LilCaesar · April 2017

davey1107 wrote: »

I disagree slightly with the advice you got. I have ten characters...they all craft and do writs to some degree. My advice on your specific questions:

Crafting on your main: you can do this now with One Tamriel since you can reach all the sky shards whenever you need. If you don't mind hunting shards, your main is a good option. A second strategy is using a main for smith, wood and cloth and moving the consumables to an alt. Then your main learns motifs, and the alt holds all the junk for enchanting, provisioning and alchemy. There's not a lot of long term commitment in the consumables...no motifs, and no research. So you can pretty easily transfer these from a main to an alt or back any time you need to. If you start on your main and then feel,pressed for skill points, roll and alt and spend a few thousand gold,to recast your points.

Hirelings: it's very helpful to have a craft bag if you're going to use a lot of hirelings. If not, devise a storage system because the mats will ADD UP, lol. My system before the craft bag came along was to store items with an alt for raw mats, one for refined and style stones, one for enchanting, and one for alchemy and provision. I'd open the appropriate emails with the appropriate alt, and there you go. It's a bit of a pain, but once you get used to it the process isn't so bad.

The hirelings do pay off. Provisioning hirelings will bring you purple mats, which are quite valuable to sell. Enchanting is very helpful because runes are a pain to farm. And the craft skill hireling deliver a lot of purples...plus you'll get golds from refining all the raw mats they bring. So it's up to you. For me, skill points are cheap, and if it's a character I log into every day and I don't mind the inventory management...why not get free stuff?

Writs: daily writs are far more valuable than hirelings, and you control the influx of junk, lol. Once you're level 4-5ish in each of the trade lines, you can get certified by a specialist in the fighter and mage guild,in your starter city. Then once per day you can pick up a quest for that trade from a board in any major city. The writs ask you to make some junk and drop it off at a specific location. Some tips on writs:

- read a guide first, knowing the basics will save time and frustration.
- What you're asked to make and where you drop it is determined by the number of points spent in the first passive of that skill. If you keep these all leveled together, your writs will drop in the same place and be easier.
- Writs reward you "inspiration" (xp to level that line), quite a bit of gold (300-650 per writ), items to deconstruct for leveling, plus special rare rewards like gold mats, recipes, and surveys to special mega-nodes.
- writs eat up a lot of mats, but they pay a lot of gold. If you do them, you might need to invest some of your profits on mats in guild stores so you don't spend all your time farming.

Other random tips:

- during the birthday event daily writs reward a gold box with some really valuable stuff...rare mats, motifs, etc. Now is a great time to start! If you get addicted to the gold boxes, and if you're level ten and can get into Cyrodiil, the PVE dailies in the five towns also reward these and you can earn dozens a day. Just FYI.

- don't stress too much about crafting. If you want to learn it, go ahead. If you hate aspect of it, no worries. There's nothing imperative in the craft system and you can have a ton of fun playing it endlessly, or skipping it entirely.

- if you decide to be a crafter and want to make crafted armor sets, one of the longest grinds in the game is researching traits. It takes a year of real time to do it all. So start as soon as you figure the system out!

- when learning all the crafting crap i totally relied on an iOS / android app called ESO workbench. It's pretty simple...it tracks and times your research, has a potions/poison building section, and has a glyph building section. And a recipe list. It's main use is for that trait research...very helpful.

well that was informative post, thanx for that.
generally i decided to stress on pve and getting my char ready for pvp and leave crafting for further future.
hierlings in my thoughts could be just an additional way of income.
now thinking on how to get money to level hierlings on alts as i need to invest gold in them.

Wreuntzylla · April 2017

My opinion falls closer to @davey1107

If you are in this game for the long haul, make as many alts as you are comfortable making up front and start researching on all of them. Funnel all your intricate traited gear to one toon at a time, switch to another when that one is capped.

The thing to realize is that it's tough to start but eventually you reach a tipping point where your crafting becomes a business that doesn't require much maintenance. Each max crafter, if running 6 writs per day, will bring in between 4k and 5k gold, up to 3 intricate traited items, repair kits, empty soul gems, mats, etc. So the more maxed crafters you have the more of everything that comes in. I started with two accounts to have one for PvP and one for PvE, but the resource river just gets bigger and bigger, and I just kept banking the intricate gear and spending a few minutes deconstructing on one toon. By the time you get to your 15th+ alt, you are sending it so much intricate gear every day that it will level super fast without you doing anything but writs. I know it seems counter intuitive at first, but the more crafters you have the easier things get until your crafting just expands on its own without much effort.

So how is this a low maintenance business? As it turns out, you can make writ product before getting a writ. Using alchemy as the example,you craft 100 stam pots, 100 magicka pots, 100 health pots and 100 ravage health pots for each maxed crafter. For a provisioner, trhere are 12 food/drink items used, make a stack of each of those. Get Dolgubon's add-on for the rest. I can run 12-15 writs in an hour and the time it takes to run through your premade pots and foods is, well, close to a year.

The time sink you do face is with keeping enough materials on hand for blacksmithing, tailoring and woodworking, but you can make the choice, as I did, to spend a portion of your earnings on mats and only harvest surveys. My only continuing issue is with nirnroot and ancestor silk, both of which are outrageously expensive on the guild traders and difficult to farm. (Alchemy requires 3 nirnroot and 1 pot per writ.) Wood and rubedo are almost free if you visit the right guild traders (use tamrieltradecentre.com) and rubedite just a bit more expensive, I'll typically go buy enough of those three once every couple of months, usually stocking up to 6k of each.

I save up the surveys and only run a survey when I have a few of the same one. When you have multiples of the same survey, you get multiple loads of mats. Once you harvest once, you walk away a sight distance and then come back. It repops, you harvest again, walk away, come back... So you make one trip to kill off several surveys in only slightly more time than it typically takes to farm one survey. When I am in PvP addiction mode, I'll only go get the surveys that are close to the wayshrines (use Lost Treasure addon) and let the distant ones pile up higher. I typically spend an hour or so a weekend on surveys.

Take the time to build one crafter per account for speed. I use jailbreaker and Fiords. My orc sprints faster than the average player using rapids on a maxed horse. It is unbelievable how much time you waste traveling and you really don't get a feel for it until you go collect survey materials or harvest something on a toon built for speed. It cuts the time sink by more than half.

You should run all your crafting alts through the Cyrodiil starter quest for the two skill points and invest one in rapids for speed at level 10. Even if you like quests and whatnot, its a godsend.

Now, if you followed me this far you'll realize that your bringing in alot of gold or sellable items every day for about an hours investment, much more than you need to buy mats (except nirnroot and ancestor silk). I use what I don't spend on mats to buy motifs the rest of the week (and frankly whatever else I want or need). So, again, once you reach the tipping point, your craft business fuels itself. I spend about 10 hours a week on the craft business including 1 hour a day for writs, but only now due to the anniversary event (I get 10-20 motifs a day from writs and another 10 or so from Cyrodiil dailies). I usually spend half that time during non-anniversary event time, and just run the capped crafters (capped = maxed skill + motifs + purple recipes + etc.)

Master writs are a far greater time sink and I don't even want to do the low writ value ones anymore, the value just isn't there for the time spent and mats you use.

One more note. While leveling up your crafters, if you run writs, keep the skill levels across all crafts equal. otherwise you have to go to multiple locations to turn in the writs. I have a couple I am bringing up now that I started running writs for the anniversary boxes, and going to more than one place soaks up way more time than I am willing to sink into non-PvP activity.

The only other real trick to this whole thing is farming skill points, I'll

LilCaesar · April 2017

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

My opinion falls closer to @davey1107

If you are in this game for the long haul, make as many alts as you are comfortable making up front and start researching on all of them. Funnel all your intricate traited gear to one toon at a time, switch to another when that one is capped.

The thing to realize is that it's tough to start but eventually you reach a tipping point where your crafting becomes a business that doesn't require much maintenance. Each max crafter, if running 6 writs per day, will bring in between 4k and 5k gold, up to 3 intricate traited items, repair kits, empty soul gems, mats, etc. So the more maxed crafters you have the more of everything that comes in. I started with two accounts to have one for PvP and one for PvE, but the resource river just gets bigger and bigger, and I just kept banking the intricate gear and spending a few minutes deconstructing on one toon. By the time you get to your 15th+ alt, you are sending it so much intricate gear every day that it will level super fast without you doing anything but writs. I know it seems counter intuitive at first, but the more crafters you have the easier things get until your crafting just expands on its own without much effort.

So how is this a low maintenance business? As it turns out, you can make writ product before getting a writ. Using alchemy as the example,you craft 100 stam pots, 100 magicka pots, 100 health pots and 100 ravage health pots for each maxed crafter. For a provisioner, trhere are 12 food/drink items used, make a stack of each of those. Get Dolgubon's add-on for the rest. I can run 12-15 writs in an hour and the time it takes to run through your premade pots and foods is, well, close to a year.

The time sink you do face is with keeping enough materials on hand for blacksmithing, tailoring and woodworking, but you can make the choice, as I did, to spend a portion of your earnings on mats and only harvest surveys. My only continuing issue is with nirnroot and ancestor silk, both of which are outrageously expensive on the guild traders and difficult to farm. (Alchemy requires 3 nirnroot and 1 pot per writ.) Wood and rubedo are almost free if you visit the right guild traders (use tamrieltradecentre.com) and rubedite just a bit more expensive, I'll typically go buy enough of those three once every couple of months, usually stocking up to 6k of each.

I save up the surveys and only run a survey when I have a few of the same one. When you have multiples of the same survey, you get multiple loads of mats. Once you harvest once, you walk away a sight distance and then come back. It repops, you harvest again, walk away, come back... So you make one trip to kill off several surveys in only slightly more time than it typically takes to farm one survey. When I am in PvP addiction mode, I'll only go get the surveys that are close to the wayshrines (use Lost Treasure addon) and let the distant ones pile up higher. I typically spend an hour or so a weekend on surveys.

Take the time to build one crafter per account for speed. I use jailbreaker and Fiords. My orc sprints faster than the average player using rapids on a maxed horse. It is unbelievable how much time you waste traveling and you really don't get a feel for it until you go collect survey materials or harvest something on a toon built for speed. It cuts the time sink by more than half.

You should run all your crafting alts through the Cyrodiil starter quest for the two skill points and invest one in rapids for speed at level 10. Even if you like quests and whatnot, its a godsend.

Now, if you followed me this far you'll realize that your bringing in alot of gold or sellable items every day for about an hours investment, much more than you need to buy mats (except nirnroot and ancestor silk). I use what I don't spend on mats to buy motifs the rest of the week (and frankly whatever else I want or need). So, again, once you reach the tipping point, your craft business fuels itself. I spend about 10 hours a week on the craft business including 1 hour a day for writs, but only now due to the anniversary event (I get 10-20 motifs a day from writs and another 10 or so from Cyrodiil dailies). I usually spend half that time during non-anniversary event time, and just run the capped crafters (capped = maxed skill + motifs + purple recipes + etc.)

Master writs are a far greater time sink and I don't even want to do the low writ value ones anymore, the value just isn't there for the time spent and mats you use.

One more note. While leveling up your crafters, if you run writs, keep the skill levels across all crafts equal. otherwise you have to go to multiple locations to turn in the writs. I have a couple I am bringing up now that I started running writs for the anniversary boxes, and going to more than one place soaks up way more time than I am willing to sink into non-PvP activity.

The only other real trick to this whole thing is farming skill points, I'll

i sure need time to figure and anylize all info, but thanks a lot for your help.
so another question, i want lvl provisioning on may first alt.
which recipes u reccomend for that and where do i take mats for them?
i roled as a mag sork as my main char, so do i have make mana potions or smth like that by my alt?

davey1107 · April 2017

Leveling provisioning

Good news - this is one of the fastest grinds in the game. You can get to 50 making like 200ish food items. Bad news - you have to find the ingredients, and there's no place to go just bulk buy them from an npc for cheap.

Don't go too fast!

Before you level the recipe improvement passive to make higher level recipes, consider this - daily writs are your best source of blue and purple recipes. Your fighters should play while buffed by blue or purple food. At the least, a toon should eat max health + max stam/mag blue food...it makes you about 20% stronger.

The level of recipes that drop for you in writs and containers is based on your RECIPE IMPROVEMENT passive. Therefore, you might spend some time doing writs and hunting containers to get a sampling of recipes before you increase this passive. Most recipes in the game are the top level ones because most players are doing top level writs. Therefore, it can be very hard to find good low-level blue and purple recipes. If you blow past these levels, you might not have food for your characters when they're levels 30-50 and c10-c50...there's a huge shortage of these in the game.

When you're ready to level

Have some skill points for the recipe improvement passive. The higher the recipe level, the more provision xp you get, so make the best you can. Don't make blue/purple food for this, it doesn't provide more xp and is a waste of resources.

Tip: don't grind way underlevel food. It's boring and pointless. What I mean is that a level 15 recipe is great xp to go from provision 1 to 10, but it slows down as you level. Don't try to go through your 40-something levels making a level 15 recipe. A level 45 recipe is 10 times the xp.

Obtain some green recipes. More is better, but I recommend 2-3 in rank 1, 2, 3 and if you can find them, 4. Green recipes are dirt cheap in guild stores, and the rank is listed on the recipe tool tips. If you're doing writs, Chefs and Brewers sell the recipes for your current writ level...they're a bit spendy.

Once you've learned some recipes, here's the hard part...getting ingredients. The thing is that these are virtually worthless. Vet players have a ton from hirelings...I have 2000+ of every ingredient. But that makes it hard for newbies because people don't list these in guild stores much.

Your best bet is to ask politely in guild or zone chat. Look at the recipe you want to grind and make a note of the ingredients. It takes seaweed and barley? Put out a chat: "newbie player trying to provision. Can anyone help me out, I need 50 seaweed and 50 barley." Keep it simple...just ask for 50 ingredients for one recipe. If someone contacts you, they might offer more. Be ready with a list if they do. If you can get enough to make 50 each of a rank 1, 2, 3 and 4 recipe, that will probably get you to provision 50.

Alternatives to asking players for ingredients

You can look in guild stores, but it's a pain to match a recipe and ingredients. Farming ingredients is horrible. It can be done...but it takes forever. Some items are better than others. There are 20 flour and millet sacks in cropsford in Cyrodiil. There's 50 wedges of cheese in the start of the Vile Manse. But for the most part it takes a long time to find specific items.

A better approach is to take it slow. Get your crafter set up and doing writs, then invest in the hirelings. They bring 15/30/60 items per day based on points spent here. Open the emails and store the ingredients with a provision mule. In a few weeks you'll have a big stockpile and never need to farm this stuff again.