Sharing items between characters

Cronikull · December 2019

Well, I'm about 40 hours in and still learning. I enjoy the PVE side of the game including crafting. Like everyone else in the beginning phases I'm getting frustrated with the lack of inventory. I've upgraded both my personal and my bank space and I'm still maxing it out no problem.

I discovered the 'sharing between alternate characters' mechanic which seemed like the solution. However, I'm into the whole daily crafting scene and don't want to be constantly logging off, logging on to my alt to deposit an item into the shared bank then logging back onto my current character, etc .... am I missing something here? It seems such an unwieldy way of doing it and definitely kills the fun. Am I doing it wrong or should the alt just be storing items I'm hardly ever going to need? I just wondered how other players took advantage of this game mechanic.

Thanks in advance.

VaranisArano · December 2019

So yes, the inventory system is deliberately frustrating in order to push players towards subscribing to ESO+. The Craft Bag will fix all your crafting inventory needs for the low, low price of a monthly subscription

Or here's what I do because I dislike the idea of subscribing:

My main crafter has a maxed inventory and enough open space to be able to do about 3 to 4 days worth of writs before I have to store mats. Consumables like provisioning and alchemy can be stored in the bank for easy pickup.
Step 1: use the next free ESO+ trial to stuff your Craft Bag with as many mats needed for writs as possible.
Step 2: get as many housing storage containers as you want. I use the 4 60-space ones for mats, writs, and surveys and stuck the chests in a house that's easy to travel to and from.
Step 3: do writs, leaving the rewards in their boxes until my inventory is full enough that I go to my house and empty them into the storage chests.

In that way I was able to do writs and save the rewards until the next free ESO+ trial (roughly every 3-4 months or so), when I refilled my Craft Bag with those stored mats.

(Another way to do it while we are waiting on an ESO+ trial might be to use your bank as a temporary craft bag for the mats you are using to make the writs, while offloading the mats you get into housing storage containers.)

My mule alts get used primarily for stuff I use very rarely - mostly gear I don't want to throw out or event rewards I'm going to hang onto for half a year.

Hope that helps! Whatever you choose to do, you aren't doing it wrong if the system works for you.

Taleof2Cities · December 2019

I have an excel spreadsheet that tells me which gear sets are stored on which characters or stored in the bank.

For example, my Magicka DK has all the Gold Coast and Hew’s Bane 5-piece sets stored in inventory ... such as Morihaus and Syvarra’s Scales.

That way gear sets easier to retrieve and organize.

katanagirl1 · December 2019

The craft bag from ESO Plus will store all your mats that any character can then retrieve, but if you want to pass stuff like motif pages or gear to another character, you still have to use the bank.

daim · December 2019

I take it youre playing on console and have no access to mods.

One more tip to the above is to buy a secondary account (you can wait for discount if you want one for really cheap) and send mats you dont need right away there by using the mail system.

Cronikull · December 2019

Thanks for all the suggestions ... it has given me a few ideas to thnk about.

@daim - I'm on PC ... I have a number of mods installed ... which one were you thinking of?

daim · December 2019

@Cronikull For inventory managing https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info381-PersonalAssistantBankingJunkLootRepair.html is the best available imo.

It will take bit time to set up. I have shared profile for my active chars that i play the game with and 4 mule profiles. 2 mules are for crafting mats (you need around 250-300 inventory slots to store crafting materials effectively), 1 mule for surveys, 1 mule for random stuff like writs, gear etc.

My active chars sit with only essentials in their inventory so 15/200 slots, everything else is transferred to bank or sold (mostly ornate items, auto junked).

Main crafter: this char has all my surveys, all crafting skills are maxed up. NB is nice class for this as its fast (medium armor) and stealthy (cloak) and you can easily pick all the surveys as fast as possible. I dont care that much for achievements so my main char is not my main crafter. You should have level cp160 toon for surveys to get the top tier mats from the surveys (except alchemy plants as those are the same ones for every level).

Deconstructing: Intricate items are always moved to bank. Decon them with your main crafter (or get hirelings to 2/3 with all chars first) to max skills. Items can be decon straight from the bank without moving them. I decon basically everything else too what i dont need as I dont bother selling them. Even on max level cp160 there are only certain items that are worth selling.

1st mule: storing alchemy, enchanting and provisioning items

2nd mule: storing all other crafting items (bs/c/ww/jc, style, trait,furnish)

Once you have 6 full stacks of something on those toons, send to your secondary account. If you dont have a secondary account.. make more mules

Either way, eventually you will run out of space and need to activate crafting bag.

ESO+
Is it worth it? Yes, especially if you like to craft and hoard crafting mats. You can skip all the hassle with the crafting items and you wont run out of inventory space, unless you have only 60 slots and youre running dolmens. If you think the sub cost too much, I like to think is my time worth more to me than 15 eur/month while i'm playing this?

Now, when i'm running out of sub and know i wont be playing as much, then i tend to unsub for a while. Before I ran out of eso+ though I make sure I have enough materials that last for a long while in the crafting bag so I dont need to shuffle my inventory between bank and the mules while doing the daily writs.

If you dont yet have access to a large pool of crafting materials (although most of them can be bought quite cheap from the guilds) I recommend getting ESO+ as theres only so much you can make things easier for yourself with the addons.

Seems this turned out to be almost a guide ;D
Edit:typos

Cronikull · January 2020

@VaranisArano Making use of the ESO+ free trial is pretty shrewd and I'll also look into the housing storage containers, thanks.

@daim Wow ... thanks for the guide ... that you didn't set out to write, lol. Sorry for the delay in replying. You make some good points and suggestions. Some of it is befuddling but that's only because I'm not just new to this game. I'm also new to MMORPG's ... it's the first one I've ever played so the 'basic' game concepts and mechanics that underpin most MMORPG's are pretty foreign to me. Never mind, I'm sure I'll get it eventually.

I'm seriously toying with the idea of the ESO+ as I'm not sure I have the time, let alone the patience, to manage numerous alts in the way everyone suggests.

Am I right in thinking that the unlimited craft bag is separate from the carry bag that you start the game with? As in they don't merge? Also, does the double bank space mean I just wasted a shed load of gold on upgrading my bank capacity? If and when I stop my sub and lose the double bank space will it restore that extra bank capacity I previously bought with gold?

Thanks for helping out a noob ; )

katanagirl1 · January 2020

At least on console, the craft bag is a separate tab over (R1 or L1 to move back and forth) from the regular inventory. When you decon gear, the crafting mats automatically go into the crafting bag so they don’t take up space in your inventory. Also, mats in the bank can only fit a stack (200 items) before they need a new slot, just like in your inventory. The craft bag puts however many items of whatever in a single slot. I resisted for a long time before I started subscribing, but now with the ease of the crafting bag I’ll probably never go back, lol!

When you get the double bank capacity, you do not lose what you bought with gold, it just doubles whatever you currently have I believe. Also if you decide not to subscribe anymore, it will still be there.

Zulera301 · January 2020

managing craft writs without ESO+ is tricky, but possible. you just need to know what mats you need and which ones you can get away without having.
not to toot ZOS's horn, but I 200% recommend craft bag though because it's amazing. but if you don't wish to pursue that route, then it just requires careful inventory management, is all.

DaveMoeDee · January 2020

Inventory management is horrible. I am too invested in the story and TES to bail on the game, but inventory management is bad enough that I take months off at a time. I have addons that make things more tolerable, but not tolerable. I have ESO+ right now, but it feels like a bit of a ripoff when I pay for ESO+ to make playing the $40 expansion feel tolerable.

DBZVelena · January 2020

ESO+ and what you get from it:

1: materials bag, an unlimited bag that stores all your crafting materials. It also stores fishing bait.
2: Access to ALL game DLC. Morrowind/summerset falls under this too.
3: Your allotment of crowns. You get a certain amount of crowns each time your sub renews.
4: crown store discount. You get a monthly free item in the eso+ tab of the crown store and which everything is on discount will be about 200 crowns cheaper.
5: more storage: ESO+ doubles your bank space. So however much bank space you bought (not inventory space btw) will be doubled.

All of this is also true during the free trial, BUT it's a known issue that if you go over your max bank space without eso+ and eso+ runs out. it might eat your items. This is not an issue the materials bag has however.
As long as you have eso+, you can deposit in to the materials bag. and it auto deposits there when you loot things while you have eso+. When eso+ runs out, you can only remove from the materials bag, until its empty. This is also true for the free trial eso+.

I hope this has been informative and helps you decide your course of action.

Cronikull · January 2020

Thanks for all the above comments which led me to take the leap into ESO+.

I know it's not strictly a pay to win game but the developers have designed the inventory management to be just hard enough to make not having the craft bag a b****y nightmare. The craft bag really does take a huge burden off the gameplay. It's a lot more fun to play now.

My rationale for paying for ESO+ is that at the pace I play the game (which is slow .... really slow, lol) I have what feels like an indefinite amount of storylines, questing, crafting and lore to last me years. As long as my funds and interest don't wane then the subscription fee is like paying for a new game every month which I would normally do anyway.

See you all out there .... somewhere ; )

bakthi · January 2020

Honestly, I just try to think of it in terms of how much entertainment value my $15 is getting me. Compared to going out to a movie, it's a pretty spectacular deal. Even compared to quite a few offline games, or renting a movie from Amazon.

I played for about a week when I first started, basically until I knew I liked the game, and then subscribed. Everyone's situation is different re: how much time you have to play, disposable income, etc. But not having to deal with inventory management was very worth it to me. I started a second account when Elsweyr was on sale, and I'm not subbing on that, but I've been taking advantage of free ESO+ because wow, what a difference. Luckily I've managed to get all the DLC skyshards (except IC) and pets, plus the Blade of Woe, so now I'm just seeing how many Southern Elsweyr zone stories I can clear for skill points (and along the way, how much I can cram into the Craft Bag).

Dawnblade · January 2020

I have two accounts and use the second one for materials overflow storage at times when I let my subscription lapse (which is quite a lot these days).

I also have all the storage containers for housing, which helps regardless of subscription status in storing items.

The extra account is a remnant from the old days of the game when inventory was totally crap (versus just crap now), and there wasn't an ESO+ craft bag or extra bank storage or housing storage.

A mail add-on and a little set up can make it functional without too much overhead - though it is enough of a pain to not be something I'd recommend if planning to actively play and engage in any significant crafting.