So, I just reached 100 master writ quests received. I have also been discussing my impressions and some data gathered with and by a few other master crafters (thanks Gadget and wife, Akimbro, Raven, Kojou, and Bamanoob). I thought I would post a few thoughts on master writs: How to get them, how worthwhile they are now, and what I expect their worth to be in the long term.

First, if you only have not read the Tamriel foundry page on it you should google it. Worth the read. It goes into what the multipliers are for determing how many vouchers something is worth, etc.

Getting master writs
A long time ago, this was posted by a ZOS person. So far it tracks better with my experiences than any other information I have come across.

Bel_Shezzar wrote: »

Tradeskill mastery (which determines your odds of receiving a master writ from a top tier writ reward box) is meant to imply a long-term dedication to the craft. This varies from tradeskill to tradeskill.

For Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking, this means motif knowledge and overall completion of trait research. This does not include Crown-exclusive motifs or motifs for the 9 base player races. It focuses on motifs that take some effort to learn – like Xivkyn, or Minotaur, or Celestial.
For Provisioning, this is instead your collection of known purple and gold recipes as they are a strong overall representation of dedication to craft.
With Enchanting, we instead look at the total overall rune word translations you’ve completed on that character.
And with Alchemy, we look at how many reagents from which you’ve completely learned all effects.

Over time, the contributing factors for this may expand as the associated tradeskill mechanics do.

The implications of this are important. Not all writs types are equally easy, quick, or inexpensive to reach maximum drop rate on. Nor are the rewards equal. We will now discuss this.

Alchemy and Enchanting.
For a crafter who attains level 50, Alchemy and Enchanting can easily, inexpensively, and quickly be brought to full RNG chances. Make your Haikaju and Kuta learning glyph in one with a Repora and it is quite saleable and making your total cost of leveling very low. Enchanting yields 2, 7, and 6x Haikaju multiplier I have not received) writs that, with abundant kutas, are also cheap to make. Alchemy yields 2 and 5 voucher writs that are inexpensive to make. In short, these two types of writ are easy to get and cheap to do. I get an average of 3 per day doing 8 fully leveled toons which comes out to a max drop rate of 1/5.3. Probably 95% of the master writs I get are Alchemy or Enchanting.

Provisioning
They said they "fixed" the low provisioning writ drop rate. Sure, whatever, perhaps it is the garbage they wanted now instead of the garbage it was before. Who can notice? Provisioning writs are rare and aren't very good. Most are 2 writ vouchers and require some mid level purple recipe that will cost 40k if you don't have it. If you do you will have to search through your mess of recipes to find it as the game now has somewhere around 550 recipes total. What a mess. I have a crafter who has at least 300 recipes and he rarely gets a writ. What is worse, the "better" writs are 10 vouchers but take a gold recipe like psyjic ambrosia or smoked bear haunch. Writs are worth about 1.8k each and perfect roe is about 10k with the writs requiring 2 perfect roe. So, these gold recipes cost more than 20k to make and yield about 18k worth of vouchers. Great, I'll just do that right now. I sell them. Morons buy them. Anyhow, save your money, don't buy recipes to level provisioners to get a better chance at writs. They chances will still be crap and so are the writs you get.

Blacksmithing, Clothier, Woodworking
So, these are where the big dogs are. Equipment master writs start at 5 vouchers for a purple 2 trait set of basic motif and go up to about 328 for gold, nirnhoned, 9 trait set in Celestial, Draugr, Akaviri, Glass, Yokudan, or Order of the Hour. The multipliers are roughly a 6x for nirn, 4x multiplier for gold, ?(small) for style, and ?(very small) for motif rarity. Blacksmiting also seems to be worth a little more than the other two. My biggest writ was 122 for a nirnhoned legendary 2 trait staff in Malacath. My favorite was 47 vouchers for a 9trait nirnhoned epic staff in glass. The nirn multiplier is much more profitable than the gold multiplier as it is bigger and one nirn mat costs much less than 8 gold mats. Now, you may be thinking, I'll just go buy all those rare motifs and then I will get me some great master writs. You should know though that the motif multiplier is enough smaller than the research multiplier that we really don't have much of a guess as to what it is. It is small. Research though.... If you don't have much you just basically won't get writs and if you are all 9 trait, like my crafter, you will get them at almost the rate of alchemy and enchanting. I don't know what to tell you about the 9 months or so it takes to get to 100% in research other than master writ drop rates for equipment are basically determined by research level. I get more master writs at 30 some motifs and full research than a buddy who has all 44 motifs and is about half 8 trait and 9 trait. Lucky for me as I researched all the nirn years ago and less lucky for him as he didn't. I sure wish that I would have brought all my toons to 8 traits years ago but, water under the bridge now.

So, to recap our acquisitions section, if you want to get master writs fully learn all the alchemy and enchanting traits and translations and research all your traits in the equipment crafting professions. Do not bother acquiring recipes as they are expensive, provisioning writs never drop much anyway, and are crap when they do. Do not bother (unless you buy them from me as they have always been a major source of my income) acquiring motifs as they have a very small effect on writ drop rates and cost around 4.5 million to get all of anyway.

Value of master writs
Well, you know master writs aren't worth 10k each any more now. Actually, they are down to about 1.8k last I checked and falling fast. At this point, the worst value writs, gold recipe 10 voucher provisioning ones, are worth less than the cost of mats to make them as they are worth 18k but cost a bit over 20k to make. Wow, that happened fast didn't it. The next writs to reach this negative value level will either be purple Haikeju enchanting ones or blacksmithing gold writs that have no other multiplier. I can't be bothered to calculate which right now. I would sell any of these right now as people are stupid and will buy them for more than they are worth. Anyhow, I am illustrating a trend. In the long run, and even in the short run now, master writs are not a good way to make money except on the best (all traits in equipment) leveled toons. The bottom line is that really the only long term stuff for sale for writs are gambling purple housing recipe boxes and these are seriously undercut by crown store competition for purchase of the goods which the recipe with allow you to craft. For long term viability writ vouchers would need to be able to buy something with long term demand that does not compete with a crown offering. Alchemy ingredients, housing crafting ingredients, gold mats, the long rumored weapon and equipment trait change stones and style changing stones, these are my ideas.

It is clear to me now, from the current trend line, that the market value for master writs and for the stuff purchased with their vouchers, will soon be very low. By this I mean low enough that they will soon be eclipsed as an income/hour activity by simple crafting or thieving. They will not be the long term income generation for master crafters that many hoped they would be unless more stuff is put into the writ vender and some of that stuff is of lasting interest to the serious players who have significant amounts of gold. I have put in a few ideas by way of this.

Anyhow, I got my crafting stations, test dummy, some gold while the gold was good, and a few purple crafting recipes I didn't really want, so my interest is flagging a bit. Hope this all helps those who are in acquisition mode as the information ZOS provided in game was, as usual, clear as mud in your eye, and misleading to boot.