SeaGtGruff wrote: »

What everyone else said, but IMHO in the order (1) save, (2) research, (3) deconstruct, and (4) sell or trade.

Also, start taking riding lessons now if you haven't already, working on carrying capacity first. You won't get the benefit of the extra carrying capacity until you actually get a horse and set a default mount, and it's only 1 extra slot per day-- or really every 20 hours-- but you can get up to 60 extra slots, so it definitely helps. And do the riding lessons on all of your characters if you haven't already, so they can all maximize their carrying capacity.

Getting back to gear, save anything that has a trait you haven't learned yet; you'll see a magnifying glass icon on it to let you know that you don't know that trait yet. However, check carefully to see if you have multiple items of the same type that have the same trait, because you don't need to save all of them for research unless you want to-- for example, maybe you want to save the extra ones for some of your other characters to research, or maybe to sell. Note that "items of the same type" refers to the type of armor or weapon, such as light hand versus medium hand versus heavy hand, one-handed sword versus two-handed sword, fire staff versus ice staff, and so on. For instance, if you're already saving a one-handed sword with the Precise trait so you can research it, you don't need to save additional one-handed swords with the Precise unless it's for some other reason. I mentioned saving extra ones for your other characters to research, but keep in mind that once one character learns that trait on that item, he or she can always craft ones for your other characters to research-- but one reason you might want to hang onto an item could be because it will take 15 more days for the one character to finish researching that trait, and one of your other characters will be ready to start researching it before then. But really, you don't need more than one character who's a crafter, so there's really no reason to have multiple characters researching stuff, although you might want to at least get all of your characters certified for crafting so they can make money doing the daily crafting writs.

As far as researching traits, each additional trait that you learn on a particular type of item will take longer to learn, so if I've finished researching a trait and have got multiple other items I could start researching, I always pick the one that will take the shortest amount of time, or if they will all take the same amount of time then I choose based on which trait and type of item I'm more interested in. And as far as saving items so you can research them, keep in mind that you can always buy an item that has a particular trait you want to research, so if you're hard up for space then don't be afraid to deconstruct, sell, or trade items that have traits you haven't researched yet. In fact, if you ask nicely in guild chart or zone chat, you might be able to find another player who will be happy to craft you an item for research either for free or for a pittance.

Deconstructing items will give you crafting experience plus recovered materials, so I generally deconstruct any items I already know the traits of unless I've got a good reason to save them. And if I have multiple items with the same researchable trait, I'll usually research the one that's in a more common racial style (such as Orc) and deconstruct the one that's in a less common exotic style (such as Primal) so I can hopefully recover the style material for the more exotic style. Crafting merchants sell the style materials for the common racial styles like Orc and Argonian and Breton, so there's no reason to even hang onto the trait materials for those styles unless you have plenty of space for them, since you can always just buy those style materials for 15 gold apiece. But you can't buy the style materials for most of the exotic styles, so you'll probably want to start saving them for later, because you might need them for doing master crafting writs.

Once you've reached level 50 in a particular crafting line, there's no reason to deconstruct items of that crafting line unless it's for reclaiming materials, since you can't gain any additional inspiration by deconstructing them. That's when it becomes more sensible to just sell the items to NPC merchants, or sell them in chat or in a guild store if they're worth much, or maybe trade them to other players for items with traits you still need to research.