Alt crafter, should I upgrade materials skill line?

ImmortalCX · May 2020

I have a lvl 50 character who I have leveled up the skill lines. This was a power level during an event, I didn't quest or collect skyshards. Thus very few skill points.

Currently just doing daily writs. Is there any monetary benefit to upgrading all the skill lines to the highest material? I noticed I am getting surveys, but haven't seen any writs yet. Trying to decide what the cost/benefit of farming skill points to invest in material skill line.

tmbrinks · May 2020

Drop rate of surveys is basically constant at all levels in the skill lines (about 12.5%, or 1 in 8)

Gold improvement material drop rate goes up as you put in more skill points (about 3% at level 1, to 30% at level 10)

Master Writs ONLY drop at max level. You will not get any at lower levels.

It is SUBSTANTIALLY more profitable to do daily writs at maximum level over doing them at lower levels, for the gold improvement materials alone.

Feric51 · May 2020

If you want to maximize the financial benefits of daily writs, then as tmbrinks said, it would be worthwhile to put the skill points into blacksmithing/clothing/woodworking and also enchanting for the gold temper/kuta returns.

Provisioning is actually more profitable (as far as selling recipes) to do somewhere between level 3-5 (out of 6). The return of blue and purple recipes is (anecdotally) higher at those levels than at max-tier, and only the purple CP150 levels sell well because the market is flooded by the greens/blues, whereas I have no problem selling all levels of recipes at the lower tiers.

With alchemy it's important to get past level 1-2 writs because IIRC they call for 3 cornflower in addition to the potion/poison on certain days and that was/is one of the most costly ingredients on the open market. So it's less about maximizing profits as opposed to minimizing losses with this one. The surveys are what gets you gold on this one, as even the master writs are only worth 2 or 5 vouchers 90% of the time with an oddball 40 voucher legendary recipe one thrown in.

I'm not up to tmbrinks' level of writ proficiency, but I'm doing them on 12 characters daily on console, and I have them all doing max-tier on everything except jewelry (just because I haven't leveled those skill lines up yet) and provisioning (to farm for the lower-tier recipes).

tmbrinks · May 2020

I just quickly (so it needs a bit of refining), made a spreadsheet similar to my tab for the costs for max level writs to do the same thing for minimum level writs.

For max level writs, if you sold everything, did the master writs, sold items from the vendor, etc.. you could expect to make about 536,000 gold per character per month.

At minimum level, the expected profit is down to 278,000 gold per month per character.

Nearly a 50% loss AND this still assumes you are picking up your surveys at maximum level.

In short. DO YOUR WRITS AT MAXIMUM LEVEL!!!! (Provisioning optional, for reasons Feric mentioned above)

ImmortalCX · May 2020

tmbrinks wrote: »

I just quickly (so it needs a bit of refining), made a spreadsheet similar to my tab for the costs for max level writs to do the same thing for minimum level writs.

For max level writs, if you sold everything, did the master writs, sold items from the vendor, etc.. you could expect to make about 536,000 gold per character per month.

At minimum level, the expected profit is down to 278,000 gold per month per character.

Nearly a 50% loss AND this still assumes you are picking up your surveys at maximum level.

In short. DO YOUR WRITS AT MAXIMUM LEVEL!!!! (Provisioning optional, for reasons Feric mentioned above)

In a related question, does a character have to be level 50 to get all these benefits?

tmbrinks · May 2020

ImmortalCX wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

I just quickly (so it needs a bit of refining), made a spreadsheet similar to my tab for the costs for max level writs to do the same thing for minimum level writs.

For max level writs, if you sold everything, did the master writs, sold items from the vendor, etc.. you could expect to make about 536,000 gold per character per month.

At minimum level, the expected profit is down to 278,000 gold per month per character.

Nearly a 50% loss AND this still assumes you are picking up your surveys at maximum level.

In short. DO YOUR WRITS AT MAXIMUM LEVEL!!!! (Provisioning optional, for reasons Feric mentioned above)

In a related question, does a character have to be level 50 to get all these benefits?

No (with the exception of the survey drops, since overland materials are half character level and half crafting level)

But you're unlikely to have enough skill points below level 50 to max them all out, it is possible, but you'd have to actively go out of your way to get skyshards and NOT level

kringled_1 · May 2020

The direct gold reward from writs scales with character level, so you'd be operating with somewhat lower return.

driosketch · May 2020

tmbrinks wrote: »

Drop rate of surveys is basically constant at all levels in the skill lines (about 12.5%, or 1 in 8)

Just add to this. Keep your alts at 1 for wood/cloth/blacksmith until you have the 9 skill points to jump them to 10. Transfer any surveys through your bank to your main crafter to build a stockpile of endgame mats. The craft cost per item per writ is higher at max rank, so you need to build a reserve. This also lets you manage 2 tiers of mats, for those without a craftbag, instead of 10.

seecodenotgames · May 2020

I used to do everyone at rank 1 (except my main, which was the only one at rank 10). I have since changed all my cp160+ characters to use rank 10 for everything except Jewelry and enchanting (still leveling), and found a massive increase in returns from gold mats.

My originally reason for not using rank 10 was because I didn't want to use up all my cp160 mats, but since wood and blacksmithing no longer sell well in guild stores I can use the mats I get back from the surveys to keep stocked up. The only downside is now I can no longer sell all my survey mats for clothing and jewelry, since these still sell for a reasonable price.

FlopsyPrince · May 2020

A trick on power leveling Enchanting: Just make the Superb variant, not the Truly Superb one. Both seemed (to me at least) make the same boost and the Superb ingredient you buy is a LOT cheaper from the enchanting vendor.

(You can help power level your own JC and Enchanting by making the things to disenchant on another one of your characters.)

Shadowshire · May 2020

@ImmortalCX

First of all, my own motivation for crafting is to make items primarily for use by my own characters and, sometimes, by friends and fellow Guild members. Selling crafted items in the Guild Stores via Guild Traders is a secondary, although important, consideration. I don't sell crafting materials very often, because I use them, although I do "farm" Alchemy Reagents and Solvents to also sell.

Deconstructing items is ordinarily a major source of crafting materials. So, allocating Skill Points to deconstruct armor and weapons, and extract Runestones from Glyphs, is a high priority. Increasing the number of Skill Points yields more materials and higher-level materials.
Allocating Skill Points to maximize each Hireling passive becomes a worthwhile investment over the long-term.
Allocating Skill Points to Improve armor, weapons, and jewelry also increases the likelihood that deconstructing an item will produce higher-level materials. IIRC, it also increases the likelihood that a higher level of materials will be delivered by Hirelings.

Personally, I always maximize all passives for Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking, Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning, respectively. The only exception is that I might not maximize the Provisioning passive that increases the amount of time that a Beverage provides its buff(s), because I prefer to use Foods instead of Beverages to buff my characters. (Jewelry crafting is a separate matter.)

The Recipes that I sell are ones which my characters already know or do not need to learn. They are most commonly obtained as a Daily Crafting Writ reward, and from looting containers such as bags, barrels, crates, chests, and backpacks. Further, "furnishing recipes" and some other items are can be purchased with vouchers earned by completing Sealed Master Crafting Writs.

Enjoy!