RE: Furnishing, you must have all the skills on one toon. I highly recommend just deconning everything you find and leveling all the skills on at least one toon (I personally prefer to level every crafting skill on every toon for crafting writs).

I have a main character for PVP\PVE\Quests (so he gets achievements for achievement furniture) and have a trader\crafter\furnisher as secondary char which does everything else. I find them both very useful, and didn't find any inconveniences in splitting the roles and not doing everything on one character. Plus, it saved me some time collecting skyshards, since my main got all the points he needs from dungeon quests and leveling.

I would suggest continue developing your old chars as crafters while progressing with your new characters.

Concerning furniture, many recipes require mastery in multiple crafting branches, so you won't be able to split roles when trying to craft furniture.

All my other chars are just plain thieves, except one, who got himself into reading. And that's all he does, can't get his nose up from the book. Damn the lot, I didn't raise them to be useless miscreants and public embarassment. Not a drop of heroic blood in them, but anyway I like them all the same.

The point about reaching the set crafting locations is a good one. You really have two choices there, and it could make a big difference to your decision. If you're in a guild that has attuned crafting stations collected in one location that you can easily reach, then the crafting character really doesn't have to venture into the wilderness. If you're not a member, you'd have to visit the original locations, which might be in Cyrodiil, or the Imperial City.

So if you're using cloned attuned stations, alt crafters are a lot more viable. If you're playing without guild support, craft on your mains.

Motifs can be collected by one player, and passed to another, so they shouldn't affect your choice. If you're intending to make furnishings, the combinations of skills needed by some plans mean that one character needs to know all the crafts.

---

I belong to a guild. All my characters craft at the highest level they can in all trades, but combat skills get advanced in preference to crafting ones when there's conflict. They do well enough by only taking combat skills they'll use (i.e. ignore weapons they don't use, armour they don't wear, etc.) This brings in a decent rate of master writs.

There's a hierarchy of hand-me-downs for duplicate motifs, recipes, etc. It doesn't hurt if more than one character knows a motif, or a recipe, indeed there are benefits from that, but the main character gets to complete their portfolio first. Complete styles give a better chance of getting those master writs. That one also does the master writs, even if another character received it, and I keep a storage chest for passing them.

Only one character makes furnishings, and any plans get passed across. If they're duplicate, they get sold. There are just too many different furnishing plans to spread it out, and try to track who makes what.

Currently I have 4 characters in total. I leveled character #1 to 50 in all crafting lines and gave her all style/ motif pages. All research is done for her first. Now that she is maxed, character #2 gets all things to be deconstructed and all duplicate motif pages. Only after #1 has researched a trait on an item does #2 get to research that trait on that item. And so it goes down the line for characters #3 and #4. I use a couple of android apps to keep track of who has what styles/ motifs and who has done what research. It takes a lot of attention to managing bank inventory and daily logging in of all 4 characters. #3 will get to deconstruct everything after #2 is leveled up. They all do daily crafting writs at their current levels but all surveys go to #1 so I collect max level materials from surveys. Each character makes potions, poisons, and glyphs for the one behind her because only #1 has the ability to craft those things at her own level. That way they all have supplies equivalent to their play level, not their crafting level (if that makes sense).

The reason I do it this way is because I would eventually like to have master crafters in all of my characters, but that won't happen for any of them if I just randomly distribute styles/ motifs and don't make sure that before #2 researches something she isn't taking a research piece away from #1, and so forth.

My opinion is that it isn't good to split crafting between two characters, especially over two different accounts. I like to be able to make whatever I need to make without having to switch characters. If you're making furnishings that will ask for skills from different skill lines, you always run the risk of the thing you want to make not having the right skill line leveled up on your current character. And master writs require that the character turning in the writ be the same character that made the item. If you don't want to each level up your own crafter, I would suggest investing your motifs, research, and deconstructing in the one that is the farthest advanced in all the crafting lines combined.

My SO and I also like to partner up as much as we can for quests and such, but each of us keeps our own skill lines up. He hasn't paid nearly as much attention to crafting as I have and as a result I make him a lot of armor and weapons. If we had split up our resources neither of us would be where I am now.

SpAEkus wrote: »

LadySinflower wrote: »

Only after #1 has researched a trait on an item does #2 get to research that trait on that item

So you didn't finish traits on #1 yet?

If you had you could just give every alt the trait(s) and get them all done together.

But even with not finished, there shouldn't be a reason to not start all alts on traits at the same time. The timers are all going to run at the same time, just at different endings if you start now (#2 may have already used the shortest but #3 and #4 will start on shortest).

You can still get them fairly caught up if you use a sequence that gets the same trait on all pieces before going to second trait on any piece, especially if the other alts haven't used their shortest timers yet.

You can at least get them started on the traits #1 already knows and even go farther with just some cheap white items from guild stores that have all the same trait(s).



Trait knowledge is just one craft knowledge that increases Master Writ chances, but it is skill point free (until you desire to speed up with timer passives) and just runs while you play. You can still get Master Writs on non-motif crafters, it just won't be as high a chance w/o the other craft achievements like motifs and recipes. Alchemy and Enchant are easy enough after a while to complete as well.

Hi! I didn't explain very well that character #1 was around for several months before any of the others were created. I've been researching traits on her from day 1 and even have nirnhoned learned on most of the pieces. But she hasn't yet finished researching everything yet; she hasn't had time. So there are lots of traits that #1 has learned that are available for the other three to learn. At this point I am almost done researching with #1 and only have about a dozen traits left to learn. I specifically went out and asked guildies to craft level 1 pieces for my #1 to research so I can get her complete. I don't want to take any of those specific pieces and give them to another character because I'd just have to ask somebody to make them for me again.

Also, only #1 is leveled up enough to have the passives for multiple research slots and shorter timers. While #1 can do up to 3 pieces per category at a time, the other three can only do one. I only heavily run the extra three characters during events to get extra reward boxes. I'm still a fairly new player to the game overall so haven't quite learned how to set a toon up as a tank, healer, or other specific purpose. Eventually that will happen when I'm a better player. Crafting is the only thing I feel like I've actually gotten a handle on.

Everybody is always researching something but I stagger the traits in favor of the higher leveled toons. Nobody is sitting around idle waiting for another character to finish a block of traits. I like your chart. Thanks very much for the advice.

It would take too much tracking for me to pay attention to which alt is learning what. I just learn whatever is available and I have a lot of.

I am now getting tight on Woodcrafting, but I just swap around, make a piece with the needed trait, and continue. My main gets most patterns first and then I randomly give them to whoever else. I figure I will eventually get them everyplace, even if it takes a while. I don't have to track much here.

I am only getting some of the dailies, since I am still leveling characters and everything sucks time.

I don't have any nirnhoned, triune or swift yet, but that will hopefully come at some point.