Who crafts

How many skills you pile on one character depends on how much you like shard hunting. My main does it all...but that's a lot of shards. There are a couple of alternative systems that work well:

A. Your main fights, alt #1 crafts
B. Your main crafts equipment, alt 1 does consumables
C. Main fights, alt 1 equips, alt 2 consumables
D. Further divide things out someone does equipment, alt 1 does enchant, alt 2 does alchemy/provision

For someone without a craft bag, you might spread things out. Before the bag, my main did equipment but I used a mule to hold equipment mats. I had an alt who did enchanting and held enchanting mats. Then another alt did alchemy and provision and held those mats. It worked well...about once a week everyone took their appropriate stuff from the bank and because it was divided up under a system I could usually find it easily. It took over a year for enough stuff to accumulate to make the system cumbersome.


Who levels what

My practice is to level everyone's six trade skills to 50. This isn't as horrible as it sounds...it'll be someone's turn to level and they'll decon everything from the bank until they get the craft to 50' then someone else will take over decon duty. I don't grind them anymore...way boring.

The reason I level them all is because it gives flexibility. If I need someone to take over crafting something, they can. And of zos ever releases something (like, ahem, master craft writs) I'm set to cash in without a lot of annoying grinding leading up to the event. I have ten characters who can do all six writs. I don't run them all...but then when thengold,box event came along I did, and probably made $2 million off that. But outside of events, I have characters who can do writs when I want to earn gold mats for legendary gear. When I need a new set, I start doing more writs.


Keep or toss

Without a craft bag, inventory management can be tough. You can use alts to help out, but you still don't want junk piling up. Here's a list of my opinion on the various mats:

Alchemy, all items: very valuable, save. Of note, you want to save your solvents for leveling future characters. If you sell off all your waters it can be annoying to level others. If reagents pile up, more or less all of them are really valuable to sell off.

Bait: some of these are valuable in guild stores, but this is a 50/50 to keep or ditch. I kept them w my provisioner and fishers paid a lot for them.

Equipment raw mats: VERY valuable. Save and extract with a crafter w max points in extraction, or sell for a fortune.

Equip refined mats: most low level mats aren't that valuable, and if you ever need them it's not hard to buy most mats.

Tempering items: very valuable. When you're a vet you might upgrade a lot of armor, so save these. If you need cash, they're also a quick sale.

Runes: generally these are good to save. An enchanting alt w 120-180 slots can easily hold these. The potency runes are now less important since npcs sell them for cheap, so feel free to ditch most of these if you need space.

Style mats: varies. Some are near worthless and others are spendy. I saved mine with an alt...but there are so many now that you can pick and choose. Maybe look them up before disposing...something like tainted blood sells for $8kish each, you don't want to toss something like this.

Provision: ugh. The thing here is that the items aren't valuable, but they're also not easy to farm when you need a specific item. It's really annoying if you discover you need 20 bananas and don't have them. I had an alt with 180 slots...she was able to save up and hold 200-600 of everything. Without a craft bag, you might consider using hirelings until you have a decent stock, then turn them off...food from hirelings will overrun you. I'm currently looking at my inventory to write this and I have 6.7k cheese...just from hirelings over time.

Trait gems: these are a mixed bag. Nirn is an outlier that's very valuable. Somewhat valuable are armor infused, training, impenetrable, sharpened, precise, and divines.

Motifs: some are valuable, other are junk. Generally you should have your crafter learn them, then immediately sell off extras. If I pick up junk purple motifs (worth less than $1000 in guild,stores) sometimes I just let alts learn them. Motif knowledge helps them have a higher chance at a master writ if they ever do top level writs.

Armor sets: all the millions of drop sets pose a challenge. You might need an armorer alt or two to hold stuff now that you're picking up c160 gear. My personal strategy is to save only the traits people want. My armorer is holding spriggans stuff for me, but only in divines and impen. I've found that holding other traits creates too much junk.