Crafting Characters

WoW_Refugee · February 2019

One of my favorite aspects of MMOs is crafting. In other games that limit the number of craft skills a character can have I've generally created one character to specialize in each craft. In ESO, however, it appears a single character can learn all 6 (or 7, including jewelry) skills. Is there any reason to split up craft skills among characters in ESO or is it most effective just to have one character that crafts everything?

I've read it's a good idea to find a crafting buddy whose crafting skill levels are the same as mine so I can trade items to be deconstructed, but it seems hard to make sure my crafting skills and those of my crafting buddy remain at the same level for an extended period of time, so I was thinking of just having two of my characters be crafters and having them trade crafted items to deconstruct. Is this a good plan?

Watchdog · February 2019

I would advise to make one character your main crafter, preferably an Imperial, because every character knows their racial motif by default. All races included in the base game have an inexpensive blue motif, unlike the Imperials, who have quite an expensive golden one.

I wouldn't worry about deconstruction, you will find enough drops to flood your inventory completely.

For research, that is learning item traits, the level of the item used matters not. You can learn all traits from level 1 items.

Protossyder · February 2019

Intricate CP160 gear will give you the most xp. And I wouldn't recommend splitting up the crafting skills, just do it on your main. There are enough skill points to max out every crafting tree plus everything else you need at the same time.

bongtokin420insd16 · February 2019

damn the imperial idea would be good lol. if i did a race change u think id learn it? lol #4 years later

zvavi · February 2019

Please @ me if you find out if race change gives you the new race's motif, I wanna know too (and I don't think it does)

zaria · February 2019

If you all the quests and exploration on you main character you will end with more skillpoints than you need so its smart to make him crafter to.

JKorr · February 2019

You can max all the crafts on one character. Might not be easy in the beginning because you'll have to decide to use skill points for combat/survival, or crafting. After a while you will have more skill points than you need for your build.

A consideration for NOT splitting up the crafting; you need motifs if you want to craft the more "exotic" styles of gear. Everyone knows their racial motif; if you're a Breton who wants Nord gear, then you need a motif to learn it. Want to learn Akaviri, or Yokudan, or Silken Ring etc? You need the motifs. Motifs can be hard/take time to farm, and/or expensive to buy if you can find them in the guild traders. Motifs to actually make the gear are NOT account wide, so you'd have to duplicate or triplicate? motifs if you wanted a matching set of medium armor [clothing], sword/mace/bladed weapon [blacksmithing], and a shield or staves [woodworking].

The same applies to a lesser extent for provisioning; some of the recipes can cost quite a bit. Not a lot of reasons to have recipes scattered between multiple characters.

Nestor · February 2019

WoW_Refugee wrote: »

Is there any reason to split up craft skills among characters in ESO or is it most effective just to have one character that crafts everything?

I've read it's a good idea to find a crafting buddy whose crafting skill levels are the same as mine so I can trade items to be deconstructed

Inventory management is the only reasonable reason to split crafting. If you have the sub this is not an issue. As mentioned above, you want to do all your gear crafting on one alt so that you only have to learn the motif once. Although the Outfit Station let's any alt make any style outfit if the motif is known on the account.

Now, all alts should know Alchemy and Provisioning for the passives that improve consumable effects. Fortunately, these are easy to level.

As for the Crafting Buddy thing. This is no longer beneficial, and has not been for years. Make the item on one alt and decon on another one. No need to trade with other players. What does fluctuate is mob loot usually has a 10% edge in inspiration over crafted loot. Some updates it's better, some not. I think currently, mob loot is 10% better.

Another thing that changes is the inspiration from stolen, laundered or trash items found in the world. Sometimes some of those give full inspiration, most of the time they don't. This comes and goes with each patch.

The best overall gear crafting leveling comes from farming and deconning mob loot. You get the inspiration from deconning the loot and experience, gold, other loot, skill increases and champ points if applicable from killing the mobs. This applies to enchanting too.

Watchdog · February 2019

bongtokin420insd16 wrote: »

damn the imperial idea would be good lol. if i did a race change u think id learn it? lol #4 years later

I don't think so. As far as I understand it, you keep the original default motif even if you change your race.

ghastley · February 2019

I don't see any real downside to letting all your characters learn to craft. Having one learn all the motifs, and specialize as a crafter doesn't preclude the others from doing the daily writs, researching all the traits (except Nirnhoned). As long as you're only using skill points that are left-overs, that can bring in more gold, let your character equip themselves without the extra loading screens of character swaps etc. There's some experience is doing the crafting, too, so it contributes a small amount to their levelling.

Nirhoned is an exception, because of the cost of learning the trait, but all the others just use up the drops you're not otherwise using, and clean up your inventory.

I pass duplicate motif pages down to an alt, rather than sell them. My judgement is that it brings in more master writs that way, and so benefits the overall team. We have enough gold to buy pages when they're needed, and I'm not playing the game as a trader. Recipes the same way. We use a storage chest to pass them down. Each player in turn takes out any they don't know, and deposits any duplicates. The last one sells off anything the whole team knows.

DaveMoeDee · February 2019

Eventually you want every character to have provisioning and alchemy passives that impact combat, so early on I suggest doing the 3 gear crafts on a single character and offloading provisioning and alchemy. It is advisable that the one doing the 3 gear crafts be an Imperial for the sake of the motif that is otherwise rare and expensive. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of skill points to do the 3 crafts so you will have to do some questing. I suggest sticking to quests that give skill points and not wasting any time on side quests unless you really want to play that character.

Since Imperials are looking weaker by the day, that probably won't be your main gameplay character. I advice using levels 1-6 to run around collecting skyshards in main game zones. Don't kill things or do anything that will give you extra XP. The reason for that is at those levels, you can rez for free if you die. If you do all 3 crafts, that won't be enough skill points.

Another approach would be to create an imperial and then use one of the free race change tokens to switch to the race you want.

Streega · February 2019

One huge argument against splitting the crafts between various characters is furniture crafting. You need to be proficient in 3-4 various crafts to be able to make more advanced furniture, like this for example:

As you can see, you need Metalworking, Alchemy and Provisioning to craft this item.

macsmooth · February 2019

bongtokin420insd16 wrote: »

damn the imperial idea would be good lol. if i did a race change u think id learn it? lol #4 years later

Nope doesn’t work I did a nord to imperial and she didn’t just know imperial style but she can craft up nord style just fine

AcadianPaladin · February 2019

My primary combat character is also my primary crafter. She's fully skilled up for all of it and still still sitting on over 50 unused skill points. As said above, it takes a long time but there are more than enough skill points to 'do it all' on one character.

Advantages of one primary crafter/combat character:
-It takes combat to get lots of skill points and skill points support crafting.
-Furnishings often require multiple craft skills.
-It is simpler if crafting new equipment when one crafter can make a full set of any type of weapons/armor/jewelry and also make the glyphs to enchant everything without having to change characters.

Also as said above, I find it helpful for all 'non-crafting' characters to eventually level up most crafts so they can see harvest nodes easier, make food / potions last longer, get better results when grinding up items.

I also agree with @ghastley that while more than one character learning 8 traits is fine, I only have my primary crafter with all 9 traits due to the cost/time.

WoW_Refugee · February 2019

Thank you all for your answers. This is a very helpful community!

@DaveMoeDee I'm not familiar enough with the game yet to know which zones are the main game zones. In which zones could a level 1-6 realistically collect skyshards?

Also, I've started collecting them in Vvardenfell using a skyshard map I found online. I see about half of them are in Dungeons. I don't yet know anything about ESO Dungeons. Do I have a chance of getting to these skyshards without a group? If not, how big a group would I need, and what level would they have to be?

VaranisArano · February 2019

WoW_Refugee wrote: »

Thank you all for your answers. This is a very helpful community!

DaveMoeDee I'm not familiar enough with the game yet to know which zones are the main game zones. In which zones could a level 1-6 realistically collect skyshards?

Also, I've started collecting them in Vvardenfell using a skyshard map I found online. I see about half of them are in Dungeons. I don't yet know anything about ESO Dungeons. Do I have a chance of getting to these skyshards without a group? If not, how big a group would I need, and what level would they have to be?

The 'dungeons" on the zone map that have skyshards are delves and public dungeons.

Delves are about the same difficulty as most overland quests with at least one mini-boss in the delve. There's often a quest associated with it.

Public dungeons are harder. They each have a quest, larger groups of mobs (about 5 to 6 adds in a pack), more minibosses, and bosses that usually have about 200-400k health.

If you want to try soloing a public dungeon, I recommend having AOE damage skills and self-heals. If you aren't comfortable soling a public dungeon, usually a group of 2-4 players should be sufficient.

Now, at level 10, Group Dungeons will award Skill Points the first time you complete their quest. For those, you can use groupfinder to fill in a group. Just select your role (tank, healer, or damage dealer), select the Group Dungeon you want to do, and the groupfinder will fill in 3 other players to do the Group Dungeon with you. Group Dungeons will unlock progressively as you level so they should be possible to complete as you grow more experienced.

DaveMoeDee · February 2019

Nestor wrote: »

WoW_Refugee wrote: »

Is there any reason to split up craft skills among characters in ESO or is it most effective just to have one character that crafts everything?

I've read it's a good idea to find a crafting buddy whose crafting skill levels are the same as mine so I can trade items to be deconstructed

Inventory management is the only reasonable reason to split crafting. If you have the sub this is not an issue. As mentioned above, you want to do all your gear crafting on one alt so that you only have to learn the motif once. Although the Outfit Station let's any alt make any style outfit if the motif is known on the account.

Now, all alts should know Alchemy and Provisioning for the passives that improve consumable effects. Fortunately, these are easy to level.

As for the Crafting Buddy thing. This is no longer beneficial, and has not been for years. Make the item on one alt and decon on another one. No need to trade with other players. What does fluctuate is mob loot usually has a 10% edge in inspiration over crafted loot. Some updates it's better, some not. I think currently, mob loot is 10% better.

Another thing that changes is the inspiration from stolen, laundered or trash items found in the world. Sometimes some of those give full inspiration, most of the time they don't. This comes and goes with each patch.

The best overall gear crafting leveling comes from farming and deconning mob loot. You get the inspiration from deconning the loot and experience, gold, other loot, skill increases and champ points if applicable from killing the mobs. This applies to enchanting too.

Inventory management is another good reason to split crafts if you don't have ESO+. When I'm not subbed, I have different characters grab hireling emails per craft.

Alinhbo_Tyaka · February 2019

Streega wrote: »

One huge argument against splitting the crafts between various characters is furniture crafting. You need to be proficient in 3-4 various crafts to be able to make more advanced furniture, like this for example:

As you can see, you need Metalworking, Alchemy and Provisioning to craft this item.

You beat me to it.

If you do not have ESO+ leveling more than two or three crafts simultaneously can be hard on your inventory. One technique is during the free ESO+ periods is to load up on materials as they go into the crafting bag. Once the free period ends you can still access everything in the crafting bag but not add anything new to it.

macsmooth · February 2019

Alinhbo_Tyaka wrote: »

Streega wrote: »

One huge argument against splitting the crafts between various characters is furniture crafting. You need to be proficient in 3-4 various crafts to be able to make more advanced furniture, like this for example:

As you can see, you need Metalworking, Alchemy and Provisioning to craft this item.

You beat me to it.

If you do not have ESO+ leveling more than two or three crafts simultaneously can be hard on your inventory. One technique is during the free ESO+ periods is to load up on materials as they go into the crafting bag. Once the free period ends you can still access everything in the crafting bag but not add anything new to it.

Just to add to this, make sure you refine everything just before the trial ends so all that refined items go into the bag

Make sure that you try and get the 8 chest for your home and while the free trial isn’t on you use the chests as your storage area for the materials and when you activate the free trail usually every three months or so and then go open the chests and watch all that materials move to the crafting bag

demendred · February 2019

ESO plus is a must for any crafter. I fell in love with the craft bag. So much space lifted, and no need to take it out to auto sort.

My old main is now my master crafter. All recipes, traits, and everything in between goes to him. You only need one I believe, but you do it how you like to. I wish you the best of luck!

This link will show you all the crafting sets. You’ll need X amount of traits researched to make them.
https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafted+Sets