Is doing Crafting Surveys/Treasure Maps a pointless, bank clogging and somewhat moronic pursuit?

lucelastic · June 2019

I'm a newbie and been playing most days for three months. I enjoy many aspects of the game, but I think the writ surveys/maps truly suck!! I enjoy crafting except Jewellery, and love just pottering about in delves and dales discovering and gathering craft stuff. Me big time hunter gatherer eh? I made it my business to also get well skilled in lock picking. I have purpose in part of my play. I set myself a target time to farm lock boxes while gathering mats, and I get slightly faster each day. A bit like a mental gym exercise. Those treasure boxes have people burning pointless time running around Tamriel for crummy Blue rewards equal to a Intermediate/Advanced box. I believe my time to loot ratio is far higher than the crummy surveys/treasure boxes. Actually, I could maybe see a point if the loot was rare, but it isn't.. Like broken Jewel crafting these matters need urgent attention or peeps like me will not stay because the game ceases to be fun/rewarding and peeps think ESO are laughing at us. Btw, I belong to two big Guilds and needless to say people agreed with my sentiment. You got any plans for fixing this?

SirAndy · June 2019

Surveys = Free mats, refine, sell gold tempers

Jewelry surveys = Free stuff to refine to get purple and gold grains that you can refine into platings which sells for $$$

Treasure Maps = Combine with the "Treasure Hunter" CP and the quality of the loot will get noticeably better. Plus a guaranteed zone set drop, some of which can fetch a nice price too. Deconstruct every piece of purple jewelry you find (with the appropriate passives for drop chance) and sell the purple/gold platings (Same as Jewelry surveys above)

TL:DR: There's noting broken, in fact it works quite well if you know what sells ...

BrianLovesLisa · June 2019

lucelastic wrote: »

I'm a newbie and been playing most days for three months. I enjoy many aspects of the game, but I think the writ surveys/maps truly suck!! I enjoy crafting except Jewellery, and love just pottering about in delves and dales discovering and gathering craft stuff. Me big time hunter gatherer eh? I made it my business to also get well skilled in lock picking. I have purpose in part of my play. I set myself a target time to farm lock boxes while gathering mats, and I get slightly faster each day. A bit like a mental gym exercise. Those treasure boxes have people burning pointless time running around Tamriel for crummy Blue rewards equal to a Intermediate/Advanced box. I believe my time to loot ratio is far higher than the crummy surveys/treasure boxes. Actually, I could maybe see a point if the loot was rare, but it isn't.. Like broken Jewel crafting these matters need urgent attention or peeps like me will not stay because the game ceases to be fun/rewarding and peeps think ESO are laughing at us. Btw, I belong to two big Guilds and needless to say people agreed with my sentiment. You got any plans for fixing this?

It is your opinion on maps and surveys(which are two different things) not being good, everything is fine the way it is, Maps and surveys are just another way to do things.

Munkfist · June 2019

lucelastic wrote: »

I'm a newbie and been playing most days for three months. I enjoy many aspects of the game, but I think the writ surveys/maps truly suck!! I enjoy crafting except Jewellery, and love just pottering about in delves and dales discovering and gathering craft stuff. Me big time hunter gatherer eh? I made it my business to also get well skilled in lock picking. I have purpose in part of my play. I set myself a target time to farm lock boxes while gathering mats, and I get slightly faster each day. A bit like a mental gym exercise. Those treasure boxes have people burning pointless time running around Tamriel for crummy Blue rewards equal to a Intermediate/Advanced box. I believe my time to loot ratio is far higher than the crummy surveys/treasure boxes. Actually, I could maybe see a point if the loot was rare, but it isn't.. Like broken Jewel crafting these matters need urgent attention or peeps like me will not stay because the game ceases to be fun/rewarding and peeps think ESO are laughing at us. Btw, I belong to two big Guilds and needless to say people agreed with my sentiment. You got any plans for fixing this?

It goes both ways. I absolutely love surveys and *certain* maps. The materials are fantastic, but I also enjoy the farming aspect of the game, and definitely love gold. Surveys and maps are a nice change of pace from constantly flipping product.

Definitely not a broken system or anything that needs a fix, if you don't want to do them, thankfully you don't need to. It's more a matter of opinion.

Kiralyn2000 · June 2019

What's there to "fix" about surveys? They're concentrated piles of crafting materials.

(and they have the chance of rare loot - gold tempers when you refine the raw mats.)

edit: and yeah - there's different things in the game to appeal to different people. If you don't like the surveys & maps, don't do them. The people who think they're fine, will continue to use them. (Just like the people who enjoy running dungeons do it, while the ones who don't, don't. /shrug)

(there was a thread on treasure maps a week or two ago, someone saying that they were trash... some people posted to agree, other people posted saying "hey, sell them to us, we'll use them!". So, yeah.)

xaraan · June 2019

Survey's a fine. Gives you a bunch of mats for one trip.

Treasure Maps are a waste of time though. Outside of a couple zones where you might get a chance at certain armor drops, they aren't usually worth bothering with.

Personally I wish they'd make Treasure Maps more worthwhile. Add some interesting stuff to the chest that you can only get from a map. Imperial Furniture pieces, some sort of mats, etc. It would be a good opportunity to be creative and create some unique drop chances easily.

Hallothiel · June 2019

Surveys are worthwhile I think, for the mats. I save them up and do in an hour or do once a week.

Treasure maps? Started selling them as cannot be bothered anymore. Might change my mind but not necessarily worth tracking down for me at present. If I do bother, usually decon jewellery & any purple stuff & sell the rest. So good if short of mats/cash or looking for a specific set.

So agree with wanting to make them better. Furniture plans or even pieces would be a good start.

VaranisArano · June 2019

I stack my crafting surveys up and run them all while there's an ESO+ trial going on.

I only use treasure maps when I'm farming for particular style mats. Then, I buy all I can of a specific map, say Clockwork City II and leave them in my mail.You can run to the location, loot the chest, pull the next map out of my inbox, then run a little ways away and the chest will respawn as long as you have another treasure map.

Jayman1000 · June 2019

Crafting surveys are not, they give a lot of resources. Treasure maps are utter crap though, just delete them (unless you think the action of actually finding the treasure is fun, because then at least you get some fun out of it).

Emma_Overload · June 2019

Can you imagine how exciting Treasure maps would be if they had a {rare} chance of dropping BIS Trial/Arena gear?

Of course the usual forum blowhards would have a conniption, but I think it would be awesome. Maps as they are now are a waste of time and inventory slots, I just delete them on sight.

myskyrim26 · June 2019

Crafting Surveys are your pure income. Collect raw mats and sell in a guildstore.
Treasure maps: not really useful for a new player, but again, you can sell them in a guildstore.

Kingslayer513 · June 2019

Crafting surveys are top tier. I save up piles of them and do them all on a max speed farming character. Takes a while porting around, but the payoff is thousands of raw mats that makes you rich.

idk · June 2019

Surveys are certainly worth it. The treasure maps not so much but that is a personal choice. I do not, or at least rarely do, treasure maps.

lucelastic · June 2019

Hey Guys, you are fantastic! Thank you ever so much for your replies. When reading them the first thing that impressed me most was that nobody came back with any sort of rabid comment.
You gave me everything I wanted to know and I can now make an informed decision which is great. I agree with the majority sentiment expressed that everyone plays the game their way and that should be respected.
So happy pottering in delves and dales to all.

VDoom1 · June 2019

I have found that treasure maps are mostly pointless, unless RNG blesses you with something good. Which seems rare.

I had around 30+ crowding my bank last week so did them all, it took forever. In the end I pretty much just had a lot of blue and green gear. Mostly non set so just deconstructed them.

Surveys on the other hand, they are treasured by every crafter. Free mats, a lot of free mats if you save up a bunch of surveys. I will gladly run around Tamriel a bit to get these really rich deposits of materials.

mague · June 2019

Surveys = good and the droped maps are usually one set item and some gold. Good too.

Tigerseye · June 2019

I don't mind so much, if I have X marking the spot, via an addon.

Problem is, my addons still don't appear to have been updated for Elsweyr.

Plus sales are slow in my guild stores, so I'm just destroying the Elsweyr maps, now.

BrooksP · June 2019

Tigerseye wrote: »

I don't mind so much, if I have X marking the spot, via an addon.

Problem is, my addons still don't appear to have been updated for Elsweyr.

Plus sales are slow in my guild stores, so I'm just destroying the Elsweyr maps, now.

Lost Treasure addon works with Elsweyr maps. If not you could send the surveys my way(not treasure tho, id trash them too}.

KyraCROgnon · June 2019

treasure map = more or lessa free advanced chest. So if it's in a zone where you loot any chest you find, then use them. if it's in an area where you don't bother looting chests, then trash the map

Vildebill · June 2019

A treasure map in a good overland zone can be worth a lot since it often drops weapons. Like Mothers Sorrow inferno staff, or Briarheart daggers.

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Is doing Crafting Surveys/Treasure Maps a pointless, bank clogging and somewhat moronic pursuit?

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