What's the rush? Do a few when you have time, you don't need to go out and collect the lot, even if your planning to sell the raw mats, they are not going anywhere, they will sell quickly regardless of how much you decide to go out and collect.

More often than not I just wait until I have 10 or more in one location now and just do those 10 and get back to playing the game.

If you want to avoid zone hopping, just pick all the surveys in a specific zone do those, while gathering nodes on the way.

If your lacking inventory space to store them, then its time to sort out what your hoarding, buy the house storage chests with writ vouchers and store excess gear to free up bank space.

Or be lazy like me and just buy the refined mats you need from the guild stores of the guilds your in.

redlink1979 wrote: »

Rittings wrote: »

I have over 700 surveys built up - because I simply don't have time to do them

I agree with what was stated above: you chose not to do them.
Your main problem is that you allow the stacks to get huge, of course you will die bored if you pick up 700 surveys in one time.
Chose between collecting the surveys or destroying them and when you need mats get them by buying from traders/other sources.

It would be nice if they could be sold in guild stores, though. I'd buy a crapload.

@Rake There are things that aren't comparable.

pdblake wrote: »

I tend to look in the bank whenever I'm going to a zone and take the surveys for that zone with me, then grab them while I'm there. Why keep them so long?

Honestly, I feel like I can give some insight to the bolded question. I don't sub, so this is how I manage bulk materials.

• I'll hold onto surveys of materials I have abundance of and use surveys I only have the lowest area amount in.
• Holding onto them also allows me to both make leveling gear for new characters IF I don't have that level of materials and make them post-leveling crafted gear while I acquire some sets that are closer to BiS of that class.
• I'll also wait for Craglorn Metal/Wood/Cloth surveys to get to at least 10 before I go after them for the nirncrux/upgrade grind for extra gold.
• Also helps me gear out friends.

Though just simply holding onto them, eeeh. It's like I said above, I wish you could sell them in guild stores cause I'd be 100% poor all of the time.

Okay... I should have started by pointing out that I'm a crafter, that's my favorite thing to do. I have 18 characters doing all the writs... I get approximately 25 surveys every day... And there are currently 138 different surveys (that do not stack with each other)... It gets out of hand very fast. Even just missing a day of surveys means 50+ surveys on my survey character...

Zoning to do 25 in a day takes over an hour... well over an hour actually.... even longer right now because of the load screens and freezing.

I just did a Coldharbour survey and from wayshrine to survey I hit 14 load screens. Yup... fourteen... ONE-FOUR... lol.

Making them tradeable would help... that way I could trade half of them with my wife and so we could each correlate the minimum amount of time needed by only having to do 50% of the different zones.

Writs are profitable without doing the surveys.

If you choose to not do the surveys, that's your choice.

I, for one, am okay with doing them. They make me a bunch more gold from my doing writs. They give me materials that I can refine.

Rittings wrote: »

I do so many writs that I really have to do the surveys otherwise it costs a lot of gold to buy silk etc to continue doing them. I'm mainly doing them to help out my guild to get master writs to get all the attunables.. there really must be a better way. And its crazy that there are 3 of each type of survey in Craglorn and Wrothgar... that makes it even more of a chore!

Yeah, same. Max level writs on 36 characters gets expensive.

Do what others suggested, wait until you have a dozen or so at one location, collect them all at once, saves the loading screens.

The 3 different ones in Crag and Wrothgar are from when those were the only places that they dropped, before they stacked, so you were pretty much forced to do them daily.

The real problem with Crafting Surveys (IMO) is not the number of different locations but the time it takes for a vast number of them to re-spawn. One should not have to 'ride out' for miles and back again, or re-zone to find the next batch waiting to be gathered.

Most of the J-C Surveys work fine, with Shadowfen's being a nightmare at the other end of the scale.

ZOS fixed some of the re'spawn times a while back - eg Glenumbra's Enchanting spot - but there are so many others that remain broken.

- Rivenspire's Enchanting
- Shadowfen's Clothing
- Craglorn's Alchemy 1
- Craglorn's Blacksmith 1

The above are just a few out of a long list that need to be fixed.

I like to collect my Surveys, from one location, in batches of 7 to 10 ish. If there is another Survey Resource or Treasure Chest near by, even better.

The reason being is that RNG goes hand-in-hand with the laws of Probability. If one rides out with a single Alchemy Survey, the chance of getting say mostly Cornflower is pretty small but if there are several Surveys at that location, the chances of getting something better increases.The same applies to finding Nirncrux (and other mat) drops as well as increasing the chance of harvesting those 30+ and 40+ nodes, as opposed to only the 18s and 20s.

It works for me, so that is how I do it and no one will convince me otherwise.

Tai-Chi wrote: »

The real problem with Crafting Surveys (IMO) is...the time it takes for a vast number of them to re-spawn. One should not have to 'ride out' for miles and back again, or re-zone to find the next batch waiting to be gathered.

You don't need to travel that far so the nodes to respawn again. Walk away a bit in a straight line (if possible). I collect surveys quickly, without addons help.
Big issue here is that some players just let the survey stack take huge proportions and the more it grows the more discouraging it becomes. I collect them once the stack is around 5-10.

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

You are really slow at surveys... I have about 1500 in the bank at the moment. Did about 200 JC surveys a week ago, took less than 2 hours.

That said, surveys should be tradeable. I have a map with a location marked on it, you are telling me i cant sell a map because its magically bound to me in some way? Come on...

14 load screens... read that one... so yup, I'm slow at surveys lol.

My toon can complete a heist in 62 seconds... swift jewelry, jailbreaker, night's silence - I'm rapid... but sadly... the lag is a major hinderance.

Tai-Chi wrote: »

The real problem with Crafting Surveys (IMO) is not the number of different locations but the time it takes for a vast number of them to re-spawn. One should not have to 'ride out' for miles and back again, or re-zone to find the next batch waiting to be gathered.

Basically, you have to move to the next cell for the Survey to respawn. That is not that far away. Rule of Thumb, ride far enough that you can't see the survey location anymore, then turn back. Heck, there is one one in Wrothgar, where you only have to circle around the Wayshrine that is right next to the Survey location for it to respawn. If you find yourself riding a greater distance, try going in a different direction. The cell barrier to the North might be closer than the one to the South or East for instance.