Jewelry crafting question.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

Tonight i thought I'd finally buckle down and farm enough materials to improve a piece of jewelry. My goal was to improve a blue piece of jewelry to purple. I went out and harvested 500 platinum dust from seams. From all those dust I got a handful of the green grains, I think one of the blue grains, and one of the zircon grains. So in all the time it took me to harvest the 500 dust, which was not insignificant, I got 1/40th of the way to upgrading a blue piece of jewelry to purple. At this point I'm wondering if it's even worth bothering with jewelry crafting, I mean if the materials are really that rare is it worth putting skill points into? The only other way I can think of to farm the grains would be to farm purple jewelry drops in dungeons, but that would be VERY time intensive as well... Maybe I'm missing something obvious though, has anyone else found a reliable way of obtaining the mats?

TheCyberDruid · August 2018

If you only got one zircon grain from 500 raw dust I'll just assume your extraction skill isn't maxed. I'm not saying it's a piece of cake to get four zircon platings with it maxed out, but it's certainly a lot easier.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

Jewelry crafting passives are all maxed, could have just been luck I guess but I thought 500 was a good sample size.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

just to rule out the possibility that the sample size was to low I'll go harvest another 500, that will be 1000 dust which should be plenty for the SS. Let's see what happens.

TheCyberDruid · August 2018

That's really bad luck then. You should have at least two chronium grains from that amount. Anyway, jewelry crafting is not worth it as it's (in most cases) more time efficient to just farm for the epic version of the jewelry instead of harvesting huge amounts of dust to get the upgrade mats.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

TheCyberDruid · August 2018

There is a reason why they will reduce the upgrade mat requirements with the next major patch. It will still not be 'worth' it, but at least it will be 'better'. The current state of jewelry crafting is as bad as you think. You aren't missing anything.

BigBragg · August 2018

The work to even think about upgrading something in comparison to other professions is asinine. They didn't even add in a hireling for the line. Just seems like ZOS didn't actually want to implement jewelry, but the community wanted it from the beginning, so they made it as arduous as possible.

Integral1900 · August 2018

Since summerset launched I’ve run dailies for all the crafting writs on four alts, all told I’ve got 13 chromium grains... this is going to be a long road........

As to whether it’s worth it, well, no it’s not

Kel · August 2018

It's also impacted the price of grains and platings.
Saw a ton of players remark how they are going to wait for the price to drop on a guild trader before they upgrade. But the way it works, it's not. Prices will remain high because of how many grains it takes (10) to make a plating, then in turn to need a number of platings to upgrade the jewelry. Although they are reducing the number of platings needed I doubt that's going to affect the market price much. Maybe in a year or two.

Armatesz · August 2018

Integral1900 wrote: »

Since summerset launched I’ve run dailies for all the crafting writs on four alts, all told I’ve got 13 chromium grains... this is going to be a long road........

As to whether it’s worth it, well, no it’s not

I run 8 characters and do the crafting dailies every single day... I've gotten 26 chromium grains. They need to fix this bad.

Stinkyremy · August 2018

Just to add to this. I have refined hundreds of thousand jewellery mats for a friend who is a trader but at the time didn't have summerset.
On average, we were getting 20 chromium grains from 4000 mats. Didn't matter if it was pewter or platinum. In fact I found we got more from pewter than platinum, but I guess that was rng.
I was refining in 4000 stacks. the most chromium grains we got from 4k mats was 34, the least was 11.
I didn't count the zircon grains, but it goes without saying we got more than chromium.

witchdoctor · August 2018

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

Honestly, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but:

Jewellery crafting cannot be too easy, lest the Golden vendor and vet trials become pointless.

Really, the *best* thing out of JC is the ability to transmute. The ability to ultimately improve a piece of jewellery without having to farm a vet trial or AP is just a bonus.

I think JC makes sense if you keep those 2 points in mind.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

Okay gathered another 500 dust and had slightly better results, 3 zircon grains. So out of a total of 1000 dust, which was about 4 hours of farming, I received 4 zircon grains. That's 4/40 needed to upgrade one piece of blue jewelry to purple. Doing the math that would mean a total of 40 hours of farming to improve one piece of jewelry from blue to purple. To say that's a little excessive would be a vast understatement. Even when they reduce the number of plating to 3 .. the amount of farming would still not justify the reward in any stretch of the imagination.

The system is broken, and needs more fixing then reducing the required plating, that seems obvious. The fact that the only effort zos has made to fix the issue is reducing the amount of plating is further discouragement that just leads me to the belief that this skill will never be worth the time and effort, not to mention the 18 skill points to fully upgrade the craft, to make it worthwhile.

Very disappointed in zos right now, if this was them dropping the ball that's a horrid example of incompetence. If this was intentional I don't know if that's worse or better, it's a definite example of them being unrealistic with their time sinks to keep us playing the game. Almost no one is going to invest 40 hours of farming to upgrade one piece of jewelry, even if they committed to that there is no way they wouldn't come out of it feeling bitter.

Fix this properly ZOS.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

witchdoctor wrote: »

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

Honestly, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but:

Jewellery crafting cannot be too easy, lest the Golden vendor and vet trials become pointless.

Really, the *best* thing out of JC is the ability to transmute. The ability to ultimately improve a piece of jewellery without having to farm a vet trial or AP is just a bonus.

I think JC makes sense if you keep those 2 points in mind.

I don't mind them making gold jewelry difficult to craft, that's fine. Making upgrading a blue piece of jewelry to purple require 40 hours of farming, that is what I consider excessive. Changing the time required to upgrade white through purple would be an excellent start to fixing the trade skill. Keep gold jewelry Mats rare, but make the others much more obtainable and then POOF, fixed... how hard was that?

Cr4p0w3 · August 2018

witchdoctor wrote: »

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

Honestly, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but:

Jewellery crafting cannot be too easy, lest the Golden vendor and vet trials become pointless.

Really, the *best* thing out of JC is the ability to transmute. The ability to ultimately improve a piece of jewellery without having to farm a vet trial or AP is just a bonus.

I think JC makes sense if you keep those 2 points in mind.

In my opinion they should get rid of grains.
In other crafts you get the improvement material just by refining the raw ingredient. Why is JC different?

They can keep the drop rate of gold mats low to help keep the vendor and vet trials relevant, but the thing is, I wanted to uses crafted set jewelry because droped gear is way easier to get.
I hardly do vet trials, and PvP just to unlock the skill line, I have much latency so I can't animation cancel properly and don't reach the DPS needed 4 vet trials and Cyrondil gets to laggy for me on huge fights.

Ratzkifal · August 2018

The most reliable way is doing dolmens and deconstructing all the jewelry you get.

phaneub17_ESO · August 2018

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

Personally I just learn the traits and Transmute an existing item into the trait I want, screw trying to up craft and upgrade Jewelry.

Cpt_Teemo · August 2018

Integral1900 wrote: »

Since summerset launched I’ve run dailies for all the crafting writs on four alts, all told I’ve got 13 chromium grains... this is going to be a long road........

As to whether it’s worth it, well, no it’s not

Then you must be hogging all the servers luck, I've done writs on 15 max tiered JC characters on my account and have only received 4 chromium grains since day 1, even though it took a week to get max JC on all my chars since launch but have been doing them on every tier since day one on all 15 chars.

Gandrhulf_Harbard · August 2018

Cr4p0w3 wrote: »

In other crafts you get the improvement material just by refining the raw ingredient. Why is JC different?

Because ZoS got lazy and fell into the trap of thinking that "excessive grind" = content.

It doesn't, and it is a great way to incentivise players not to play.

All The Best

Lunerdog · August 2018

The super grind they brought to the game with jewellery crafting makes me less than enthusiastic about any thing they might bring to the game in future.

Grind does not equal content...

Cr4p0w3 · August 2018

They should make it easier to upgrade jewelry and find some other way to compensate hardcore vet trialers.
Give them skins, personalities, polymorfs, mementos. Hell even enhanced bound versions of trials gear.

jmac2727ub17_ESO · August 2018

Good to know I'm not the only one a bit peeved at the approach ZOS took with jewelry crafting.

notyuu · August 2018

Said it before when this was bought up before summerset launched, and I'm going to say it again, the solution to making jewels easy to upgrade without making the gold tier trivial is a simple 3 step process

1: increase the drop rate for the green-purple upgrade mats to be X5 that of other professions/reduce the amount needed per upgrade [cuz right now it takes a lot more for the same result]

2: remove the gold upgrade mat drops from refining

3: put the gold upgrade grains into the master writ vendor at like..idk, 20 vouchers per grain, this would make them accessible without devaluing the golden vendor or vet trials [not that forcing people to do such content for gold tier upgrades would actually...make them do it, after all..since summerset hit the number of vtrails done hasn't exactly...grown]

BigBragg · August 2018

Gandrhulf_Harbard wrote: »

Cr4p0w3 wrote: »

In other crafts you get the improvement material just by refining the raw ingredient. Why is JC different?

Because ZoS got lazy and fell into the trap of thinking that "excessive grind" = content.

It doesn't, and it is a great way to incentivise players not to play.

All The Best

There is a very good reason why i dont play the many Korean MMO's that eventually get brought to NA only to become another flash in the pan. To an extent grind is healthy and part of a game, but it really is getting out of hand. These goals need to feel obtainable.

witchdoctor wrote: »

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Why introduce a skill line that isn't even worth the skill points that you invest into said line? I have a hard time believing that ZoS dropped the ball that badly, I must be missing something.

Honestly, I know this is an unpopular opinion, but:

Jewellery crafting cannot be too easy, lest the Golden vendor and vet trials become pointless.

Really, the *best* thing out of JC is the ability to transmute. The ability to ultimately improve a piece of jewellery without having to farm a vet trial or AP is just a bonus.

I think JC makes sense if you keep those 2 points in mind.

I don't buy into the idea that jewelry needs to be a special snowflake to keep other content relevant. That is a straw man argument. Content will be done because people want to do. Crafters will craft. PvPers will PvP. Raiders will raid. Many of us will do a mix of these things because we want to and that is the content we enjoy, even after the rewards have been claimed.

Pyr0xyrecuprotite · August 2018

As mentioned earlier, the whole point of the new Jewelry Crafting system was that it should still be difficult to get gold jewelry, so as not to devalue vet trials and top-tier end of campaign rewards.

That said, when Wolfhunter comes out, the current changes to jewelry crafting on PTS include:
1. doing crafting writs will give you a better chance of getting chromium grains (only) based on your crafting/writ level, and you will not get lower-level grains.
2. Upgrading jewelry will take about half as many platings as currently required.
3. new Jewelry master writs will give much more vouchers (but old master writs will not be retroactively improved).

Yes, the refining extraction rate for upgrade tempers from raw mats is very low, and that will likely stay unchanged. I get around one chromium grain per 250 platinum dust. (My biggest source of dust is from jewelry mat surveys from doing daily writs on 9 toons).

So, to get more upgrade materials, you have to decon a lot of green, blue, and purple jewelry. Farm them from dolmens or treasure chests (about 16% drop chance from any chest other than dolmens, which are guaranteed).

neverwalk · August 2018

August 13th=update 19, changes to jewelry crafting. it will take only 4 chromium plating to upgrade to gold, not 8 anymore. also purple will only be 3 plating. GOOD NEWS

PlagueSD · August 2018

jmac2727ub17_ESO wrote: »

Tonight i thought I'd finally buckle down and farm enough materials to improve a piece of jewelry. My goal was to improve a blue piece of jewelry to purple. I went out and harvested 500 platinum dust from seams. From all those dust I got a handful of the green grains, I think one of the blue grains, and one of the zircon grains. So in all the time it took me to harvest the 500 dust, which was not insignificant, I got 1/40th of the way to upgrading a blue piece of jewelry to purple. At this point I'm wondering if it's even worth bothering with jewelry crafting, I mean if the materials are really that rare is it worth putting skill points into? The only other way I can think of to farm the grains would be to farm purple jewelry drops in dungeons, but that would be VERY time intensive as well... Maybe I'm missing something obvious though, has anyone else found a reliable way of obtaining the mats?

Just wait until after the DLC goes live. They're adjusting the upgrade cost of jewelry and dropping it by half.

AlnilamE · August 2018

I refined just over 3k Platinum today and got about 14 chromium grains. (I didn't look at the purple improvers)

I don't go gathering, but I try to do writs on as many characters as I can and send my jewelcrafter out to collect surveys. I find that is the easiest way to get raw mats. But as someone pointed out, you can do dolmens and decon if you want the improvers.

I'm waiting till Wolfhunter before I improve anything though.

radiostar · August 2018

They had to keep craft sets bottom tier somehow. Congrats, Z!

DanteYoda · August 2018

I level it up slowly, i get what i get from decon and i deal with it when its done.. Luckily just playing PvE content sometimes has its perks.