Why is this game so stingee with my own materials, transmutes, etc.

ellmarie · December 2022

I'm getting tired of having to use materials and not get them back after deconstruction, especially transmutes. Look, I don't do alot of dungeons, so earning transmutes for me takes for-EVER. So when I want to craft something I've learned, I will go to town and fill that sticker book. But I just realized that you don't get ANY of those transmutes back of a reconstruction trait that takes 50!!!

(Yes, I did this on a few items when I first started playing because I didn't know any better to just reconstruct.)

I mean, not even the 25 like you do for reconstruction? Whyeeeee!? They were my transmutes that I earned. Crafting equipment you've already learned and achieved shouldn't be so difficult. I'm starting to get irritated by the cons of this game. It's an old game. I've been playing for awhile. I don't pay to play. I achieve. I just feel like I'm not getting any of it back. I just want to make a set for a character, and I feel like I have to run 10 million dungeons to earn transmutes. I don't like the card game. I can't even look at it. It's like studying for math for me. So that's out to earn them that way. Am I the only one on this? Or am I just not understanding how things work?

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · December 2022

After 1 to 2 years of playing, you'll have enough transmutes that you never have to worry about them again. But for new players, yes it can be a chore. I never reconstruct gear unless I've collected enough set pieces to lower the transmute cost < 30, preferably the minimum of 25. Never pay 50, ever. Too much.

Recommend running the daily dungeon and battleground. That helps speed up the process. Don't forget to desconstruct old reconstructed gear you no longer need. Agreed about Tales of Tribute. I won't touch it.

To give you a point of reference, I've been playing for 2 years and at any point in time I have somewhere between 2000 and 3000 transmute crystals stored in my bank as reconstructed Kjalnar's Guise (~100 items @ 25 transmutes each)

It gets easier. Stick with it.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · December 2022

Oh and be careful with reconstructing Mythic items because you don't get 25 crystals back. They can't be deconstructed.

mocap · December 2022

I wonder what you would have written a couple of years ago, when the game did not have a stickerbook. Eso is super casual this days. [snip]

[edited for baiting]

Dagoth_Rac · December 2022

Transmute crystals mostly come from group activities. The "multiplayer" part of MMO. ZOS are not overly concerned with you running out of transmutes because the way to get them back is via group activities. This means there are more players doing random dungeons, more players doing pledges, more players doing Cyrodiil campaigns, more players doing Battlegrounds, etc. That content does not exist in isolation. You literally need other players choosing to participate. So providing incentive to get players to run group content is needed and transmute crystals are one of those incentives.

Snamyap · December 2022

If dungeons and pvp are not your thing you can also get a decent amount of transmute crystals by running the tales of tribute dailies. That gives 5 crystals regulary. But you should always get back 25 crystals when deconstructing a reconstructed item. If you're sure you didn't it's a bug.

HedgeHugger · December 2022

If you change the trait and deconstruct, that's 50 transmutes in the bin too.

Freelancer_ESO · December 2022

The easy way to get lots of transmutes is doing stuff in Cyrodiil if you have many alts.

Each character that earns 25,000 AP in their home campaign gets 50 transmutes every 30 days.

The easy way to do it is log in near the peak time and find a blob and follow it and generally you'll get your 25k in well under an hour. (Avoid standing too close to other players if your hp is low because the enemy can use your death to kill the players around you)

tmbrinks · December 2022

deconstructing reconstructed gear will give you 25 transmutes back, regardless of the cost to make them.

I have 60 maelstrom inferno staves in a housing storage chest that I use as additional transmute storage. Cost me 25 to make, will get 25 back when I decon.

jaws343 · December 2022

Are you talking about Transmutation?

Transmutation does not reward transmutes back after doing it. Transmutation came first, it has always been this way for Transmuting traits of an item.

Reconstruction rewards 25 back, no matter the cost.

If you have an item learned in the stickerbook, there is almost no reason to Transmute it instead of Reconstruct it. Never Transmute unless you don't have the upgrade materials you want to use.

tmbrinks · December 2022

jaws343 wrote: »

Are you talking about Transmutation?

Transmutation does not reward transmutes back after doing it. Transmutation came first, it has always been this way for Transmuting traits of an item.

Reconstruction rewards 25 back, no matter the cost.

If you have an item learned in the stickerbook, there is almost no reason to Transmute it instead of Reconstruct it. Never Transmute unless you don't have the upgrade materials you want to use.

IMO, the only time to transmute instead of reconstruct is if you have gold quality jewelry that would be reconstructed at blue or purple quality (such as vCR perfected jewelry), to save yourself the 1.5m needed in chromium platings.

Billium813 · December 2022

There are a couple things to note about using the Transmutation Station:

The Transmutation Station has two abilities: Transmute & Reconstruct

Transmute: This is the ability to change the trait on an item. The item is STILL marked as transmuted, but the enchantment isn't altered. The only thing that changes is the trait! This service costs a flat 50 Transmute Crystals no matter what! Deconstructing an item that has been transmuted returns 0 Transmutation Crystals.

Reconstruction: This is the ability to re-create a set item that you have collected already in the game. This uses the "sticker book" to determine what items are available for you to reconstruct. This service costs a varying cost based on how many items you have collected from the set you want to reconstruct. The highest reconstructed item cost is 75 Transmute Crystals (if you only have 1 item from the set) and the lowest item cost is 25 (if you have collected all items from the set). Deconstructing an item that has been reconstructed ALWAYS returns 25 Transmutation Crystals.

What does this all mean?

Never Transmute a collectable item. It's almost always a waste of crystals (unless you have like 1 or 2 of an item set). Reconstruction will almost always be the correct thing to do simply because deconstructing at least gives back 25 Transmutation Crystals. Transmuting is a service for non-collectable items, like Trainee items.
If you have a fully completed set, the cost to reconstruct is 25 Transmutation Crystals and deconstructing ALWAYS returns 25 Transmutation Crystals. This means that Transmutation Crystals are bankable! Simply reconstruct any item at 25 Transmutation Crystals, then either bank that item or store in a Storage Furnishing box or give to an alterative character to store in their inventory. If you need Transmutation Crystals in the future, simply deconstruct the item and get the original 25 Transmutation Crystals back.

Jaimeh · December 2022

The main PvP campaign ends in 5 days, even if you don't PvP, you can do things like scouting missions from the mission boards at the base, capture resources like farms and lumbermills, and repair keeps with repair kits that you can buy with gold, in order to gain AP. When you reach 25k AP (it sounds like a lot, but it's honestly easy to get), that's called a tier 1 reward for the campaign, and when the campaign ends you'll receive 50 crystals in the mail. You can do this for every character you have (provided the campaign is their home campaign), and thus earn 50 crystals per character.

ellmarie · December 2022

HedgeHugger wrote: »

If you change the trait and deconstruct, that's 50 transmutes in the bin too.

Yes, I didn't know this way back when I first started.

[snip]

[edited for baiting]

FeedbackOnly · December 2022

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

After 1 to 2 years of playing, you'll have enough transmutes that you never have to worry about them again. But for new players, yes it can be a chore. I never reconstruct gear unless I've collected enough set pieces to lower the transmute cost < 30, preferably the minimum of 25. Never pay 50, ever. Too much.

Recommend running the daily dungeon and battleground. That helps speed up the process. Don't forget to desconstruct old reconstructed gear you no longer need. Agreed about Tales of Tribute. I won't touch it.

To give you a point of reference, I've been playing for 2 years and at any point in time I have somewhere between 2000 and 3000 transmute crystals stored in my bank as reconstructed Kjalnar's Guise (~100 items @ 25 transmutes each)

It gets easier. Stick with it.

7 years, later I always need more

DMuehlhausen · December 2022

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

After 1 to 2 years of playing, you'll have enough transmutes that you never have to worry about them again. But for new players, yes it can be a chore. I never reconstruct gear unless I've collected enough set pieces to lower the transmute cost < 30, preferably the minimum of 25. Never pay 50, ever. Too much.

Recommend running the daily dungeon and battleground. That helps speed up the process. Don't forget to desconstruct old reconstructed gear you no longer need. Agreed about Tales of Tribute. I won't touch it.

To give you a point of reference, I've been playing for 2 years and at any point in time I have somewhere between 2000 and 3000 transmute crystals stored in my bank as reconstructed Kjalnar's Guise (~100 items @ 25 transmutes each)

It gets easier. Stick with it.

I mean that's just wrong. I've been playing since launch and I just had to update BiS for all my characters. That takes over 1000 transmutes. So it's not some magical amount to where you never have to worry. Now some crafting mats I'll admit this is probably right. I have over 30k Rubedo Leather...I don't think I'll ever use that much.

daemondamian · December 2022

FeedbackOnly wrote: »

SkaraMinoc wrote: »

After 1 to 2 years of playing, you'll have enough transmutes that you never have to worry about them again. But for new players, yes it can be a chore. I never reconstruct gear unless I've collected enough set pieces to lower the transmute cost < 30, preferably the minimum of 25. Never pay 50, ever. Too much.

Recommend running the daily dungeon and battleground. That helps speed up the process. Don't forget to desconstruct old reconstructed gear you no longer need. Agreed about Tales of Tribute. I won't touch it.

To give you a point of reference, I've been playing for 2 years and at any point in time I have somewhere between 2000 and 3000 transmute crystals stored in my bank as reconstructed Kjalnar's Guise (~100 items @ 25 transmutes each)

It gets easier. Stick with it.

7 years, later I always need more

I have 13 characters that I do daily crafting writs with & pvp in Cyrodiil (to get transmute gems & collect items for my stickerbook) & in battlegrounds (trying to collect all the style motifs from & it can be fun too) as well as occasionally running pugs as healers or healing or dps in normal trials with my guilds.

If there are new major game changing sets or mythics that are BIS (like Mara's Balm) and that necessitate the need for gems, I end up running out of them quickly even though I do Cyro & am barely being able to keep up with (if at all) the new latest best thing.

Trying to keep all of them equipped with the best sets & gear is hard which is why I try to use overland or craftable sets if possible.

It can cost a lot of gold though to get some things in the preferred trait too.

I envy people that have an excess of gems or only 1 or a few characters

Kiralyn2000 · December 2022

..why would you expect to get anything 'spent', back? That's the point of collecting & spending currencies & resources. They're spent and gone.

Eh, maybe I'm just used to that because it's how basically every other game I've ever played has worked. Both single player & multi.

Tenthirty2 · December 2022

ellmarie wrote: »

... Am I the only one on this? Or am I just not understanding how things work?

You're not alone, I agree. But I've also accepted that it's just the "MMO Design Formula" at work.
Everything, literally everything in ESO is designed around keeping ppl in-game as long as possible. Grind is the goal.
There are ways to shortcut some things sure, but overall it is and will always be, designed to be a huge time-sink.

The more you keep this in mind the more you will start to notice the formula at work in everything you do.
Slim RNG chances, multiple pieces to simple quests, having to run out of our ways for things that logically could be designed closer\better. The list goes on and on.

Only way I've kept my sanity AND kept playing is learning to not care as much, not stress.
I no longer worry about trying to do writs on EVERY character I have, nor try to get every daily weekly endevour done, or any of the other many things that make it feel more like a job and less like a game.

If I have the time to get to it, great. If not, nbd, I just try to focus on what I find fun.

dmnqwk · December 2022

I've only been going for a year since starting up again (previously just a stint in 2017 and some beta action) and when it comes to Transmute crystals, I second the 'never enough'.

I've got 9 chars and still need maybe 5k crystals to finish gearing them up for their multiple roles. I am close to the end after 1 year, so the person who commented '1 to 2 years' has a point, but to require 1 whole year to actually catch up on a currency to craft gear is rather excessive for a game.

Dungeons and Dragons Online did something similar at one point where you'd realistically need to spend 2-4 years TRing to catch up on past lives to be able to hit a DC in some elite content and it was not a good look.

Major_Soulless · December 2022

If you decide to play trials of tribute or whatever it’s called the card game you’ll never worry about transmutes again

Necrotech_Master · December 2022

im almost constantly sitting at the transmute cap because i dont redo my characters all the time lol

really think that eso+ shouldnt even have a transmute cap, it would be a better incentive to have eso+ than just doubling the low cap lol

Everest_Lionheart · December 2022

The only thing I find hard to keep up with after 3 years of playing are jewelry crafting mats due to the constantly shifting meta. I have more sets of useless gold jewelry than I can count which has a chance to give me back a grain even though it’s costs 40 grains to improve to gold quality.

This is an awful trade, only a return on investment of 2.5%. If I’m breaking down the whole set of jewelry that is a full 120 grains invested and only 3 returned. Those grains take weeks if not months of farming depending on your playing/trading habits.

Everything else is easy and cheap enough to source. With 9 alts is can easily farm 90 transmutes per day. Say my cost to reconstruct is 30 or less than that is 3 pieces I can reconstruct daily. I can fully equip myself in about 4 days of just running the normal daily dungeons.

For all other non jewelry mats you can get enough to remake purple quality easily by breaking down all trash items and completing the surveys you will get over the course of a week and refining those in Cloudrest. (Still get better ratio of refined mats here than my own tables or guild tables.) And definitely do NOT refine mats at crafting tables in any of the cities or towns, you will get the least return every single time.

Final note make sure you’ve got the proper CP slotted when completing surveys or hunting for mats. And be sure to change it when refining mats. Also do be careful to confirm your changes. You would be surprised how often people forget this. If they would fix the green tree to set it and forget it as they should and eliminate slotted stars all together that would be best, but I don’t think that will even be on the table. So many QOL improvements on that tree should be passive. Instead you either pay 3K to change or waste time switching between slotables instead of playing the game.

TLDR; buff the jewelry drop rates, fix the green tree. Those are the two biggest non combat issues with ESO.

Billium813 · December 2022

I think the issue really is that ESO underestimates how often some players swap around sets and just how many Transmutation Crystals it takes to reconstruct an entire set.

Consider that, even if you have everything collected (25 Transmutation Crystals per item), it will cost upwards of 300 Transmutation Crystals to reconstruct 12 items (2 five piece sets & a monster set). This doesn't even include having to reconstruct with different traits or changing to try a new 5 piece set as you are messing around or only having some pieces collected making it cost > 25 Crystals

Now consider that per day, I think the average player can be expected to do these:

11 Crystals - (1x Undaunted Pledges Normal) - (2x Undaunted Pledges Veteran Hardmode)
4-25 Crystals - Rewards for the Worthy
10 Crystals - Random Daily Activity

There's only so many hours in the day and many players aren't doing leaderboards or even Arenas, which are other ways of getting Transmutation Crystals.

I think on average, players get ~30 Crystals per day. But this requires daily play commitment and PvP. If a player only does Normal dungeons and skips PvP, you would only get 13 Crystals per day! And many players only play a couple days a week. It'll take a player months to save up enough to complete 1 set and you better know what you want when you make it!

IMO, I think there are a couple things they could do to improve:

Increase the payouts of Transmutation Crystals for pledges. How does a RND pay out 10 Crystals, but a Veteran HM DLC pledge only pays out 5?
An ESO+ bonus that you get double the Transmutation Crystal drops
Provide a full Crystal refund if deconstructed within a specific time
Add the ability for players to "test" a build for a limited time. I know that some players use PTS for that testing, but console doesnt have that and it isn't often a good 1:1 comparison. I think it'd be cool if the Armory Assistant had a "Training Ground" instance that players could teleport to. They could be given a "Armor, Jewelry, and Weapons" container, just like PTS. Have all the items be coded with a special "test" identifier so that they can be taken away when the player leaves the instance.

SeaGtGruff · December 2022

A comment and a question:

Comment -- In addition to the other ways you can earn Transmute crystals, don't forget that you can also earn them by playing Tales of Tribute.

Question -- If I change an item's default trait while Reconstructing it, such as changing a dagger's default trait to Nirnhoned, does deconstructing the item later have a chance to give me the trait material? And if so, what about the style material?

Necrotech_Master · December 2022

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

A comment and a question:

Comment -- In addition to the other ways you can earn Transmute crystals, don't forget that you can also earn them by playing Tales of Tribute.

Question -- If I change an item's default trait while Reconstructing it, such as changing a dagger's default trait to Nirnhoned, does deconstructing the item later have a chance to give me the trait material? And if so, what about the style material?

when you deconstruct a reconstructed item, you get back 25 transmute and then a part of the mats you consumed

so if you recreated a green quality item but included tempers to push it to purple, you could get the blue and purple temper out of it

but if you recreated an item say a gold jewelry from a perfected trial set, you are not including any materials so you can only get the transmutes back

so to clarify your question, no you cannot get trait materials (or style materials) back from reconstruction because you arent using the materials to reconstruct it (they are "included" with the reconstruct)

Hamish999 · December 2022

Set a 30 day campaign to your home campaign, stick the set up below on and go repair doors/walls to tier 1.
It doesn't take long and will net you 50 transmutes at the end of the campaign.
I do this on my 14 toons when I need extra transmutes for when things change or I want to try something different.

This set up will give you a boost of 39% to healing done (repairing walls and doors in Cyrodiil count as healing). So this gives you an additional 39% AP per "heal". Great way to gain tier 1 rewards on non PVP toons if all you want is the transmutes.

You can substitute Sentinal/Earthgore for another monster set like Troll King, the important thing is the +4% healing done on the one piece.

SeaGtGruff · December 2022

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

no you cannot get trait materials (or style materials) back from reconstruction because you arent using the materials to reconstruct it

Okay, that's what I thought/was afraid of. So if I want to "farm" Potent Nirncrux from Transmute Crystals, I need to spend 50 of them to transmute the trait of a weapon and deconstruct that, hoping I get a Potent Nirncrux from it.

Hotdog_23 · December 2022

Hamish999 wrote: »

Set a 30 day campaign to your home campaign, stick the set up below on and go repair doors/walls to tier 1.
It doesn't take long and will net you 50 transmutes at the end of the campaign.
I do this on my 14 toons when I need extra transmutes for when things change or I want to try something different.

This set up will give you a boost of 39% to healing done (repairing walls and doors in Cyrodiil count as healing). So this gives you an additional 39% AP per "heal". Great way to gain tier 1 rewards on non PVP toons if all you want is the transmutes.

You can substitute Sentinal/Earthgore for another monster set like Troll King, the important thing is the +4% healing done on the one piece.

Nice tip, thanks.

Cadbury · December 2022

Hamish999 wrote: »

Set a 30 day campaign to your home campaign, stick the set up below on and go repair doors/walls to tier 1.
It doesn't take long and will net you 50 transmutes at the end of the campaign.
I do this on my 14 toons when I need extra transmutes for when things change or I want to try something different.

This set up will give you a boost of 39% to healing done (repairing walls and doors in Cyrodiil count as healing). So this gives you an additional 39% AP per "heal". Great way to gain tier 1 rewards on non PVP toons if all you want is the transmutes.

You can substitute Sentinal/Earthgore for another monster set like Troll King, the important thing is the +4% healing done on the one piece.

Thank you for this. I actually didn't know that about Healing Done. That's awesome and very helpful!

Diebesgut · December 2022

@ellmarie

... same to me.
I dont like these hectic Dungeons, Raids, i hate PvP and the card game is a boring time killer to me.
In 4 years eso i collected 327 transmutes by festival rewards. Finished the undaunted skill line by doing the daily quests from Bolgrul in maybe 1 year but he dont give transmutes...

So my CraftingCat decides a long time ago to ignore this part of the game cause its no fun at all to get those transmutes.