Taleof2Cities wrote: »

Decon certainly goes quicker ... especially breaking down intricate armor and weapons. Though you don't really have an endless supply. You may be able to find a few CP160 intricate items for sale in the guild stores.

Same with refining raw mats ... it goes quick but you don't have an endless supply.

Writs are only once per day. But, the rewards are decent and you get a fair amount of inspiration towards leveling.

So, the fastest way to level is to do all of them whenever possible.

Just never really knew if the writs gave any substantial inspiration boosts at all or not. Even on my 2 years on Xbox, where I have a crafter that's nearly maxed on everything (I do ps4 now), I didn't really try to do it quickly or anything. But starting from scratch on ps4 I'm a little less patient.

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 levleing 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.

Crafting can eat up 122 Skill Points to fully invest, so this will gimp your combat while leveling.

But crafting does not need but 1/5 of that for pure leveling. Just don't want to scare anyone off to waiting to level until L50 or CP160 on their Combat character.
===========

• For Pure crafting ability in BS/Cloth/WW you only need 48 total for Materials/Research/Tempers (12 Research can be returned when done), and only 9 more for Keen Eye/Hirelings/Decon.
  
• To level you only need 8 each and only if you craft-swap-decon, and do writs. You still get full decon IP if just the craft skill level is within range of the item material level. And only 4 more for max research which doesn't even come until skill level 45.
  
• You get full IP for CP150/CP160 loot starting as soon as WW - L13, Cloth - L18, BS - L19
  CRAFTED WHITE DECON IP PENALTIES By Craft Skill Level (Read: Skill Level for MAX IP per best use Item Level)

============

• For Pure Alchemy only 11 for Waters/3-item Potions/Duration+ and 3 more if you need Keen Eye
  
• To level you only need 4 for water/grease level passives (Purified Water V is the highest base IP given at 20K)

============

• For Pure Enchanting only 11 for Aspect/Potency and then 9 if you need Hireling/Keen Eye/Decon
  
• To level you only need Potency/Aspect points if craft-swap-decon or writs. You get full IP from decon Monumental or Superb Green loot glyphs as soon as Enchanting skill level 10-11.
  Sunshine-Daydream Enchanting Leveling Guide

============

• For Pure Provisioning only 8 for Quality/Improvement and then 9 for Duration+/Production+/Hirelings
  
• To level you only need 4 Recipe Improvement points to craft everything from L1 to L45 green recipes, L45 is the highest at 13500 base IP.

============

So 78 skill points for pure crafting out of 368 Total. (72 to have pure + Decon + Production on all)

And only 24 minimum actual skill points to level them all along the way.

You can grab safe skyshards in your first few hours and have 44 skill points just in the 3 Alliance zones, more in Crag and the DLCs.
***SPOILERS*** - Alliance Zone Safe Walk-Swim-Sneak Skyshard Maps

Wow the wall of text as if he/she is a new player

Deconstruct every intricate item you come across. I have bought intricate items from the guild store and deconstructed them. I have reached level 50 on Woodworking, Blaksmithing and Clothing that way. I just have to go find the skill points now. I am working my way through the skyshards that aren't in dungeons first.

Provisioning is just as easy. Find a relatively easy meal to make with fairly common ingredients. Buy, loot or steal what as much of them as you can and then just sit by the fire hitting the craft button until you are level 50. Of course, the better the recipe the faster you level but it doesn't take too long even for a low level recipe. I had maxed out my provisioning skill right out of the gate. Again, just need to get the skill points now.

Enchanting and Alchemy will work in a similar way. I haven't started really pushing these yet but they are next on my list to work on. With Alchemy, just like Provisioning, find a potion with a lot of common, easy to harvest/acquire ingredients and then make a ton of them. With Enchanting, the same thing, easy to harvest/acquire ingredients and craft away. You can probably just turn around and deconstruct these then for more experience or at least to recoup some materials.

Beneficial Skills
Hirelings - These are useful for acquiring items without doing anything. Even on my non-crafting characters I have these skills because the materials can be used by any character and the skill applies to each character, 6 characters = 6 hirelings with one hireling per skill, Clothing, Blacksmithing, etc.

Extraction - As you gain skill points I would put points into here because it will let you recoup more and better materials from the items you deconstruct. So if you do like I did and buy a bunch of CP150 gear your character has a better chance of removing materials from those items. This can help you build up materials for crafting at higher levels. *Disclaimer, someone may want to check my math on this one since I haven't officially started doing this one but feel like it should work.

Keen Eye - Maybe not on your crafter but on all of your other characters that are travelling the world. Then if you need to go harvesting it is a lot easier than guessing where materials are.

Research
Research useful traits first. Training might be a good start. Again, if you find an item with a trait which you don't have research it. You can also go the purchasing route and get the gear from stores with the traits you need. Remember, research times get longer and longer. I had a trait that took 12 days+ to research but I have almost all the traits researched for that item. Try to balance usefulness with research time.

Writs
Once you hit level 6 or whatever level ESO decides the writs start at (should be level 1 as far as I am concerned) start doing them every day you can. They build experience in general and provide you with materials and items to deconstruct as rewards with a little gold thrown in for good measure. Something else to do is to keep your main skill in each line (the one that goes to 10) at level one for as long as possible. This keeps the writs simple and low level and able for even non-crafters to do. It also let's you put skill points into the other skills I mentioned above. This way you should always have the materials on hand to do the writs and can do them every day you are able. I got into a situation where my crafter was expected to do high level writs but had no materials to do them because none of my characters were that far into exploring where they could find those materials. I ended up buying the materials I needed but after a while I decided just to respec my crafter and set the main skill in each line back to level 1 and it hasn't moved since. That is about to change of course as I am about ready to star applying skill points to it since the rest of the skills have been just about maxed out and my other character is going to soon need some new armor and weapons.

Theivery
If you don't mind being a little naughty, stealing things is a good way to build up materials. I steal everything from the two large ships in Daggerfall's harbor and launder the materials at the fence. The knick-knacks I pick up I sell to the fence which usually more than covers the laundering costs. I always make money on the deal. If you increase the trafficking skill in the Ledgermain skill line you can easily empty both ships in one or two trips depending on your bag size. Additionally, you can do the same thing for any character just like the hirelings. One note however is that you may not get certain materials and those you would need to find in other locations but for starting out it works out pretty well.

Draeconix wrote: »

Beneficial Skills
Hirelings - These are useful for acquiring items without doing anything. Even on my non-crafting characters I have these skills because the materials can be used by any character and the skill applies to each character, 6 characters = 6 hirelings with one hireling per skill, Clothing, Blacksmithing, etc.

Going to have to disagree strongly with this advice -- early on hirelings are a waste of skill points. The mats they bring scale with your crafting passive skill rank so they bring utter junk until much later in the process then when just starting to train the crafts. Also, 3 skill points into each hireling to bring you what could be gathered from one harvest node? Really not worth the skill points until you're drowning in excess skill points down the line -- not on a young/new character!

If you're looking for improvement mats, the refinement skills would be a better choice, but to keep skill points in crafting reasonable until your character is well-developed you really only want the points in Research (research multiple items at once) and the passive skill ASAP. (and save your raw mats other than those you need until you put points into Refinement)

I'll avoid posting my own wall of text here and just point out that my signature includes links to Sunshine Daydream's Guides to Crafting with many, many more tips and more details.

Jonno wrote: »

Wow the wall of text as if he/she is a new player

Right? Don't get me wrong, lots of good stuff. On the Xbox I was at one time completely new, and getting all my crafting maxed out there took the bulk of the two years because I went in blind and didn't do things as efficiently as possible. So any info now helps me speed up at least what I need to catch up and not be booted from groups who think I'm a total noob. The problem I face now is on the ps4 I leveled way faster than my crafting did, so I'm simply unable to craft anything appropriate to my level. Though my clothing skill is nearing max now. Provisioning is up to 44. At some point my character level really pulled away from the crafting levels and I'm just looking to speed things up any way possible.

Dracindo wrote: »

Everything that can give you gold tempers for free is not a waste, but indeed, one shouldn't prioritize hirelings.

You'll get far more gold tempers from putting skill points into refinement than into the hirelings, so I repeat that "early on" hirelings are a waste.

Tevalaur wrote: »

Dracindo wrote: »

Everything that can give you gold tempers for free is not a waste, but indeed, one shouldn't prioritize hirelings.

You'll get far more gold tempers from putting skill points into refinement than into the hirelings, so I repeat that "early on" hirelings are a waste.

On the Xbox I never put points into hirelings. Always put points into extraction on every craft though.

Nestor wrote: »

You did notice that I said "up to 122 points"

Sorry, I read it combined with "so this will gimp your combat while leveling" and that read to me as a statement implying a given negative to do crafting while combat leveling. The two together is the whole thought I took from it. I might not have countered if that was not added.

And I didn't argue whether you need to or not, just strictly that you could and on a Combat Character as even you seem to agree.

SpAEkus wrote: »

Sorry, I read it combined with "so this will gimp your combat while leveling" and that read to me as a statement implying a given negative to do crafting while combat leveling.

I just remember my very first character in the game, trying to do all things with it. And, this was back when you were not going to get a full set of gear from drops as you would out-level it before you completed it. So you kind of had to craft if you wanted anything useful. Even splitting up crafting it was always a long thought process about where I was going to put that new skill point. Hmm, unlock that morph that lets me kill faster or improve my temper chances so I can spend less upgrading gear. Always a struggle.

So, that is where my statement about gimping combat really came from. The new drop set items really frees a person up from having to craft gear while leveling so that saves a lot of points. But, I have yet to find a build where a nice 5 Piece Julianos or Hundings Rage is not a great base to work with.