Is it possible to enjoy ESO without crafting?

Lucejin · September 2018

I'm a relatively new, inexperienced player. I've got ESO a few months ago and I remember I really enjoyed it at the beginning. I loved the story, setting, combat, amazing graphics and physics, everything. Until crafting started.

Don't get me wrong, crafting is usually one of my favorite part of MMOs - running around, gathering ores and stuff, but here materials fill up my bag at a stunning rate. I've tried to use them up to craft low level items, but all I got was a bunch of useless gear and potions I had to vend anyway. The other thing is that I get tons of high quality items I cannot (a) use myself, because I'm too low level or (b) sell at the auction house, because there is none. Because I hate wasting useful items in games I ended up hoarding them in my bank and in a chest in my house. I've spend all the gold I got to expand my storing space as much as I could. But the personal bag was still too small for me to have fun questing - I kept running back and forward to towns, disassembling equipment at different NPCs, researching traits and finally sorting crafting materials between the bank and the chest at my house. When I noticed that running between NPCs takes more time than actual questing I rage-quit the game from sheer frustration. For like three times during few months I own the game, the last one being just moments ago.

Today I finally snapped and sold everything to an NPC. Getting rid of all that clutter I used to gather and store felt so liberating, I finally got a nearly empty bag and could quest again. When I was done I just kept the gear that was better than equipped and vended everything else into oblivion at a single NPC, without wasting my time to run around the city between different manufacturers, bank and house chest. And it felt good.

Now, that I've told you the story of a most intense frustration I've ever felt in any game, comes my question. Can ESO be played casually without crafting, or will I eventually hit an invisible wall if I do so? I'm just interested in questing, no pvp, no competitive stuff. For me at this point it's either quit crafting and keep playing (as long as the game is playable this way) or quit the whole thing altogether. I'd appreciate any advice

P.S.
I know ESO plus gives unlimited material bag space, but I'm a casual player and I dislike wasting RL money on a subscription I will rarely use even more than vending crafting mats

GreenhaloX · September 2018

Sure you can, only if you think you can do without the crafted armor and weapon sets.

leeux · September 2018

Mules was the old answer to the crafting problem, before the crafting bags. I used to have crafting materias spread across several mules, one holding runes, one holding alch mats, etc. And only kept stuff I actively used in my bank.

You can make it work with some effort, and preparation... but you need to know what to keep and what to let go... as you can't pick everything.

Tempers, hold. Alchemy mats for potions, and writs, keep. Ores, leather and wood keep just what you can use atm. Provisioning, keep the stuff you need t craft the foods/drinks you are using atm and get/search/find/buy high level recipes that are useful to you and only keep the mats for those ones.

That was before the era of furniture crafting and such, though. And since I dont care at all about housing myself, it could still probably work for me unchanged, but if you like housing and intend to be able to craft for them... ahem, I don't see how'd you do it without a crafting bag, sadly

EDIT: As for your actual question

I do think its possible, I knew multiple people that played this game over the years and didn't craft at all... they relied on us, guild mates, or friends, to make stuff for them, though. And they often had to wait until a crafter was available before they could try that new shiny set they wanted

So I'd say it'd all depend on if you have ties with other people and/or are member of some guilds and you're not afraid to ask: "hey, can some of you make X items with Y traits in Z style?" As long as you are not too pushy and know what you're asking for, you're not gonna have problems finding people wanting to help you.

Taleof2Cities · September 2018

I think you can still keep playing the game ... as long as you're willing to admit a few things about your playstyle and make some minor changes:

1. ESO is not any different than most games where you start out with a limited and finite amount of bank and bag space. The first few bank and bag space upgrades are really easy ... so take advantage of those when you can. Some of the last upgrades can take awhile to build up gold to pay for them. However, there's no pressure or timeline to complete bag or bank upgrades (which is a plus for casual players). Remember on new characters that there is one free bag and one free bank space upgrade (for each new character) in the leveling rewards. In addition, you get up to eight (8) free character slots for alt characters which can hold items too.

2. If you're willing, joining a casual trading guild will help with selling those more valuable items that (right now) you are just vendoring. Sure, there are a lot of worthless items that can just be vendored. But, being in a casual trading guild helps bring in a little extra passive income ... even when you're offline not playing the game! A little extra gold means you can start paying for things that you personally want to have. Fellow guildies can certainly help you price things so that they are appropriate for sale. Plus, you really only need to replenish the guild store once a week or whenever you have time.

3. Crafting can be rewarding in ESO ... provided a player has spent the time and skill points up front to master it. Crafting is certainly not required in ESO, however. Even though I thoroughly enjoy it, it's not everyone's cup of tea. Most players who don't craft can get by with help from their friends, guildies, or even requests in zone chat to have items crafted for them. It always helps to have the materials ready for the crafter beforehand. And, be prepared to give a little bit of a tip for their trouble. One additional advantage of not crafting is that you don't have to spend skill points in those areas ... which makes finding skill points less imperative.

BretonMage · September 2018

When I started crafting, I only focused on levelling the skills in the gear I needed. So clothing, enchanting and woodworking, primarily. It was tedious, yes, but much easier than if one had to also deal with the dozens of ingredients in alchemy and provisioning.

But yes, asking people to craft for you is commonplace, so it's definitely viable.

AcadianPaladin · September 2018

I believe you can forego crafting and mostly focus on questing. Since questing is profitable, you should be able to build up plenty of gold (takes no storage space), then pay friends, guildmates to craft/improve anything you need and buy other things from the guild stores. Improving bound items may be a challenge since you can't send them to anyone for improving (though with a bit of foresight you can do it with bind on equip items before you equip them).

Don't underestimate the cost of this though. Paying folks for consumable like quality potions and food on an ongoing basis is likely to be a notable drain though.

idk · September 2018

Yes. However there are some basic aspects of crafting that are helpful.

1. knowing the good traits (research) for each piece so you can change traits.
2. Being able to upgrade the quality of items easily which requires the crafting to be about lvl 50 and 3 points into a specific passive for each of the armor and weapon lines plus jewelry (but jewelry upgrading is very expensive).

Limited work needed but good benefits long term. Not required unless you plan to be serious but nice to have.

JKorr · September 2018

You didn't mention any player guilds. If you join a guild that has enough members to open the store, you could decon all the stuff you don't want to keep and sell the mats and tempers in the guild store. There are some trading guilds that don't require dues or minimum sales and have a guild trader, so you can sell stuff outside your guild.

Player guilds could also offer you access to crafters who could make whatever sets you want as well.

Donny_Vito · September 2018

ESO Plus makes crafting a whole different ballgame. The crafting bag is by far the most convenient accessory in this game.

ghastley · September 2018

You'll need crafting, but you don't have to do it. Guilds, whether you join one or just trade with them, provide the alternative path for acquiring crafted items.

xan4silkb14_ESO · September 2018

Taleof2Cities wrote: »

...snip. Remember on new characters that there is one free bag and one free bank space upgrade (for each new character) in the leveling rewards. ....snip

Minor clarification, you only get the free bank space upgrade once as that is per account.

Otherwise I agree with most of what you had to say.

Nestor · September 2018

If you have enough gold, and patience, you can buy all your crafted items.

Just remember, time is money. So, if you find someone to craft, PAY THEM. It can take 30 to 40 minutes to craft a set of gear. And, mats are not cheap, so be the good guy and buy the mats for gear and alchemy .

AcadianPaladin · September 2018

I've been thinking about this a little more. Paying for your durables (armor, glyphs, jewelry, weapons) is pretty manageable since you don't use these up and have to replace them once leveled except for occasional changes to different sets perhaps. I'd think the real cost is top quality potions and food since you constantly have to replenish these. Without the craftibag, I'd actually pursue provisioning and alchemy. Decide on your primary food and potion, then stockpile only those specific half dozen or so ingredients and turn them into your food / potions before your ingredient stacks get too big. I'd think that would be very gentle on your bank, yet save a lot of gold.

eso_nya · September 2018

If u r okay with talking to other ppl and depending on them, not-crafting is far more profitable in the long run.
u will need a social guild with ppl who like to craft for other ppl and a trading guild.
theres alot of ppl who will craft for u in exchange for the mats needed. everything else crafting related u gather up during your journeys, just sell in the trading guild.

u will prolly not get as rich as if u had a "factory" powered by 10 to 30 master crafter alts, but u will have a lot more time to actively play the game.

i would not try to be a crafter w/o craftbag+ benefits.

Saturnana · September 2018

As far as weapons and armor go, some of the most useful sets are overland or dungeon sets and can't be crafted at all.

And the more popular and commonly used food, drinks, glyphs and potions can be bought at the bigger guild trader hubs (Belkarth, Rawl'Kha, Mournhold, Elden Root, Wayrest, Daggerfall, Vivec City) or can be crafted fairly quickly for you by guildmates, as they don't require a specific location to craft in (gear sets do). I know a good amount of people who play this way and it's not that hard.

Now, if you decide to dive into housing (and furnishing), not being able to craft your own furnishings and having to buy everything - on top of the already expensive non-craftables you'd probably want to get - is going to cost you a pretty penny.

To make sure that you're at least somewhat prepared if and when you do decide to get into crafting somewhere down the line, I'd advise you to at least research some traits for Clothing, Blacksmithing and Woodworking whenever you can. It's a real time-sink to research everything and a lot of the overland drops you're currently selling or deconstructing (which can be profitable if you sell the materials you get from it!) are researchable.

Sevn · September 2018

It can, but it's not the same for me. If you are into crafting that sort of elevates you up from being a casual player as crafting takes a bit of commitment, learning traits, gathering materials, etc.

If you don't see the value in the craftbag( love it and as a master crafter couldn't play without it) then what you will need to do is make a ton of mules and accept that you will be spending quite a bit of time micromanaging your inventory, every single time you play, if you want to craft.

You definitely should look into some casual trading guilds so you can turn that excessive loot into profits. You shouldn't worry about keeping any low level gear either, just decon and sell/keep high level mats until you are cp160. They can also make gear for you if you decide not to bother with crafting. Tips are welcome as time is money! I could be running a dungeon instead of crafting this set for you lol!

The inventory micromanagement game is what lead me to ragequit as you did long ago, but damnit ESO is just too damn special to completely walk away from for me, at least currently.

Lucejin · September 2018

Thank you everyone for the insight on how the game works later on. I actually tried to google the situation earlier, but you guys gave me a much clearer picture.

I just want to make it clear, that I actually really enjoy crafting, I do it a lot in all other MMOs I play or played (I invested a lot time in most of currently available titles, searching for something worth playing). And I don't mean that it's the crafting system in ESO that bums me out. I just feel that the logistic of material storage, especially for a new, non-subscribing player is... traumatizing! (and I mean it literally) Before I got the feel what's valuable and what's trash, before I got the hang on how guild trading works (that I still don't know, actually), all my fully upgraded storage space (bought by all the money I got from questing) started overflowing and I found myself pressed against the wall, not knowing what to do next.

But thanks to you guys I've got some idea on how to act next

Doing mules and micromanaging everything is out of the question for me, I could never take such an insult, agreeing for a game to rob me from my time in such a tedious way (not wanting to offend anybody who is doing that, this statement loosely translates to: I'm just too lazy and spoiled by the latest games to bear with it). Unfortunately I'm also a very stubborn guy and I just hate asking people for help, especially since crafting gear sets is something very time-consuming, as many of you pointed out above. I would never ask anybody for something like this - tips or not. Joining a casual trading guild eventually seems like a good way to go, I just need to do research on how the guild trading system actually works (all hail youtube tutorials) xD

I think the best idea for me would be taking AcadianPaladin's advice and concentrate on alchemy and provisioning, since it would be much easier to focus on just two selected professions. I'll try this out and see how things work out for me in the longer run. I must agree with what Sevn said - this game seems too good to quit it so soon. The world is beautiful and complex, combat feels nice and impactful but the most important and hard to find quality of an MMO is a helpful community

So yeah, thanks again everyone, I'll take another shot at it.

P.S.
I would never get any doubts about playing ESO if there was some small crafting bag available for non-subscribers (or some set space that can be bought permanently at the cash-store) and the unlimited one for ESO plus membership wouldn't be the only option to craft comfortably. I understand that it's a great way to keep a constant cash inflow for game development, but from a point of view of a starting player it seems a bit unfair as it has a huge impact on gameplay very early in the game. I don't mean to whine about it, I just wanted to point out that it's something that really sticks out from what otherwise seems like a very unique and polished game.

Partomax · September 2018

Crafting is completely optional

You should level all the crafting trees to max so you can upgrade items yourself without wasting materials, so you can get the most out of deconstructing items (you should deconstruct purple items that are not valuable on it's own as the materials you get are usually more valuable) and to get the hireling which is pretty useful as it gives you valuable things (can be a bit obnoxious if you don't have ESO+ as it will fill up your bank and inventory)

As for actually researching traits it's really not necessary and you wont ever need to get them all as there is always away around it by asking a friend to help you out (I recommend you ask a friend who will only charge you the actual price of the mats or even the mats themselves rather than charging absurd amounts of money, your friend might even do it for free.). I repeat you will never **need** it but sometimes it's good to be self sufficient and to not be dependent on the generosity (and time) of your friends or guildmembers every time you want to try something out. Either way late game META gear for PVE is usually mostly farmed and not crafted there are rare occasions where you will need crafted gear save for PVP or temp gear on a new character while you farm the gear you actually need.

As for your inventory problem I had the same problem have for my first 3000 hours I just neglected researching traits because I couldn't deal with it and I didn't care but I finished my last trait about a week or so ago and I recommend the following, create a separate character just for crafting, throw all the items you can research with it in the bank and have that character in a location near both guild stores and crafting stations (so you can quickly buy an item if you didn't naturally get it to fill your research slots) this what you will get all traits on one character without wasting inventory space or skillpoints, and you can just use that character anytime you want to craft something.

Thank you, hope it's useful!

Lucejin · September 2018

Partomax, thank you for the advice, it looks really useful ^^

I'm starting to work on my crafter char and see how it goes.

Iselin · September 2018

As long as you run dungeons or target a specific zone for chests/dolmens/drops you can gear up pretty darn well without any crafting.

However, focusing on just one craft, provisioning, will make your game play ever so much easier since you will always have a need for crafted blue food (health + whatever your other stat is.) Just learn recipes you find and target the blue recipes you need and buy them from guild vendors. The ingredients for provisioning stack well and if you're going to be using food and not drinks like most of us, it's easy to manage by banking what you use and dumping the rest.

Being able to craft anything does open up more possibilities but it's entirely optional.

Davor · September 2018

Yes you can enjoy ESO without crafting. Thing is what do YOU want to do? For me I PvE. So it can be different for PvP. But it seems as was said you know people that can craft the stuff for you, then you don't need crafting. If you don't know anyone or got scammed and don't want to do it, then I can't really say since I only PvE.

After 4 years I am finally enjoying crafting. Why? I stopped listening to people how to play ESO. I wanted to be a crafter but it sucked being a crafter since the stuff you find is better than what you make.

So the advice I was given is crafting doesn't really start until after max level. That is when we start making the best equipment. So I basically stopped crafting and can play ESO perfectly fine. Thing is I wanted to be a crafter like how I wanted when I first started, I rely on my own self. So I made a new character and only use the stuff I make. Makes the game a bit tuffer, but I am enjoying it so much more now because I can be the crafter I always wanted and not worry "how the game should be played". So this can be different if you want to power game or make it as easy as possible. Thing is that is not my play style and I wasn't having fun.

I guess only way I can be a crafter is having the ESO+. I can't play ESO without my craft bag. So for 50 cents a day, I find this a great bargain. Plus I get all the DLC I don't have to buy now.

So if you want to be a crafter, I really suggest ESO+. If you can't afford it, or just don't want it, then you can have to 7 mules in your account that you can transfer to the bank and then your mules can take it out of the bank and hold it.

If you don't want to be a crafter it's perfectly viable as well. You will not be able to make the gear you want and will need to rely on others and or just buy it in the guild stores.

Hope this helps from a different point of view.