Trait research - the worst grind ever ?

vsrs_au · June 2023

I started playing ESO around April 2020, and it was only in December last year that I decided to add crafting to my (so far) only character's repertoire. I'm enjoying it, and have made good progress:
- got to grand master crafter several weeks ago

- am just about to craft my first set of 5 legendary items from a set, for my character to use.
- woodworking and jewelry trait research is done.
- blacksmithing and clothing trait research have no more researches left to start, and 3 each in progress, and will be done in 12 days if I continue to use writ voucher-purchased research scrolls daily.

The only problem is that the trait research will have taken me just over 6 months when it finishes shortly. As I said, I'm preparing to do some major crafting for my character, but it will drop some of my crafting material stocks quite a bit.

Because of this, I was considering creating maybe 2 alts to also do crafting. The main thing discouraging me from this is the trait research. I know I could speed things up considerably if I bought major/grand research scrolls in the Crown Store, but this would be expensive and would be the equivalent of buying several new games.

Why does ZOS make crafting take so long ? Is there some financial reason for it ? I'm assuming it's something to do with money (or perhaps I'm just cynical).

SacredNym · June 2023

So they can sell Instant Research scrolls in the Crown Store.

Nilandia · June 2023

SacredNym wrote: »

So they can sell Instant Research scrolls in the Crown Store.

Trait research has taken that long since the game began, before the crown store even existed.

Brrrofski · June 2023

It's not really a grind. You press a few buttons every few days and then just wait.

Plus, you can buy research scrolls from guild stores for gold or buy them yourself with writ vouchers.

Gnesnig · June 2023

Brrrofski wrote: »

Plus, you can buy research scrolls from guild stores for gold or buy them yourself with writ vouchers.

Those only cut time in half as they have a cooldown. But you get a few each month from Daily Rewards also. Then there's endavours.

Thing is - you don't need to have 18 chars with 9 traits in all skills. I level them on alts (only 8) because it doesn't cost me much in terms of mats or time. Nirnhoned is pricey, not too bad on PC EU, but definitely on NA. And of course it should take time to become a master crafter with all traits in all skills. And that's not even the longest grind. It takes a lot longer to get all recipes for provisioning

What crafting on more alts does for you:
- 5.1k gold per alt per day if you have gilded fingers maxed out and skill levels at max (that's 153k/month per char for 5 mins of work per char per day)
- Access to hirelings which give rares
- Access to surveys, which keep you in materials and the more alts you do writs on the more you'll see that surveys outweigh the cost of having an extra character use materials daily.
- More Sealed Crafting Writs, which not only give vouchers but also a lot of exp

If you do 9 traits on all alts, there's only minor advantages:
- You can do 9-trait / nirnhoned writs on any character without having to transfer the writ and its items
- It can craft it's own 9 trait sets
- It can reconstruct nirnhoned items

So yes, it takes long, but you don't need to do all traits and dare I say, you shouldn't do it on all alts.

Dreaders123 · June 2023

It's not game breaking to not be able to fully craft. Enough people dont have it that they buy stuff, enough people do have it that its not massively expensive to do so, and enough people are in friendly guilds that they just get it made anyway.

I started thinking 'this is a terrible grind!' but actually now I am finally nearing the end of it (circa 4 months), I kinda like it. It's been like a little progression friend that takes little effort, unlocks little things, and hasn't actually stopped me doing anything I need to do.

vsrs_au · June 2023

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

Perhaps I will try creating a few more crafter characters. I doubt I'll be doing master writs on them any time soon, though: even though I'm technically grand master crafter on my 1 character, I still regularly receive master writs I can't do, due to lacking the motif or style materials for them, and others just aren't worth it, because the cost far outweighs the reward. The trait research also limits what master writs you can do. I guess I'll just have to accept that if I want multiple crafter characters, I need to make a long term commitment.

Also, I read that orcs are a good choice for crafters, because they have a passive that adds 10% to inspiration gained. Can anyone confirm this works, and isn't broken e.g. like the so-called bosmer stealh ?

Gnesnig · June 2023

> I still regularly receive master writs I can't do, due to lacking the motif or style materials for them

Motifs, yes. For many motif pages the cost just outweighs the gains of the writ. Even if you get them by farming them, it may be more profitable to sell the motif.
As for style materials: you can use Crown Mimic Stones. You get a few per month from daily rewards.
Secondly, do random DLC dungeons on normal or veteran if you can for better drop rate. But usually this is coupled with the motif: the motifs that are expensive you'll likely not have the syle material for. Try to close that gap, where motifs are reasonably priced but you lack the style material, by looking for it in this page.
Try to sell the remaning writs.There are people that have farmed the motifs and ate them and for them the writs are easy exp and vouchers.

katanagirl1 · June 2023

There’s really no reason to do master writs on more than one crafter. Just do the daily writs on as many as you can to get more master writs and more mats. Pass all those to your main crafter.

Pass enough of the common, easy to get motif pages to your alts to boost their chances of master writs. Then you can concentrate on getting Grand Master Crafter on your main by farming or buying the harder to get motif pages. You can slowly work on trait research for the alts to get them up to 8 traits, it boosts their chances of more master writs too, but there is absolutely no reason to invest in them any more than that.

phaneub17_ESO · June 2023

Before the research scrolls, home storage, and ESO Plus were ever a thing; I split the research on 3 different characters. Main guy did Weapons, Element Staves, and Cloth. My second character did Armor, Resto Staff, Shields, and Leather. Third character to hold onto traits I didn't have room to carry and would recraft later when the space opened up.

It's way easier now that you have more character space, the bonus of reduced research time via subscription, scrolls that shave huge chunks of time away, and a plethora of storage options to hold other traits.

vsrs_au · June 2023

I appreciate the feedback, everyone

.

I have a plan now, I think: I have a week of leave coming up, and I'll try to time it to occur during the next event that has XP and/or crafting related bonuses, not sure what that will be, since this is actually the first year I've been participating in the events.
I'll create maybe 3 alts, get them to level 6, and start crafting on them all.
I have ESO+, so they'll have easy access to the craft bag, so I won't be struggling to do the lower-level daily writs, like I did on my current (and only) character.
When they start getting master writs, I'll pass them to my current character, which (as I mentioned) is grand master crafter, and so knows at least 50 motifs and (soon) all the traits.

I'll use my current character to craft gear for the alts to deconstruct, I just need to work out what level of gear I need to craft for the alts. I've been reading about this, and it's a bit confusing. I'm not sure what level my alts need to be for the main craft skill for each craft, or the extraction skill for each craft, in order to get the maximum benefit from extraction of different levels of gear.

merpins · June 2023

Nilandia wrote: »

SacredNym wrote: »

So they can sell Instant Research scrolls in the Crown Store.

Trait research has taken that long since the game began, before the crown store even existed.

Doesn't mean that it wasn't introduced as a mechanic to future-proof practices such as selling a solution to a manufactured inconvenience in the cash shop. There really isn't a ton around it though; if you could just get it leveled in one day, everyone would be a master crafter devaluing it. But it's still a manufactured problem with a manufactured solution. Like how horse speed/carry isn't account wide.

Imagine if they only allowed your inventory space to go up by 1 at a time, and you could only purchase it once per day per character, had to do it on every character and only once per day, but could purchase it all in the cash shop. That'd be the same.

wenchmore420b14_ESO · June 2023

I started at early launch in March of 2014.
Started research right away, and note we didn't have Crown Scrolls to speed it up.
Took me 1 year and 2 months to complete. Needless to say havent finished all 8 on my alts.

Haenk · June 2023

I'd say: Don't panic. Keep the least important trait for last and just let it run.
If you *really* need a craftable item with that trait, just ask around - there are lots of people knowing all traits.

Dreaders123 · June 2023

The other crafting tip is that when I started I was picking the one that would take the least days. Trouble is that this meant there were zero writs I could do. Instead I started 'finishing' each item, so that at least I could do those writs.

FrancisCrawford · June 2023

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

RodneyRegis · June 2023

Gnesnig wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Plus, you can buy research scrolls from guild stores for gold or buy them yourself with writ vouchers.

Those only cut time in half as they have a cooldown. But you get a few each month from Daily Rewards also. Then there's endavours.

Thing is - you don't need to have 18 chars with 9 traits in all skills. I level them on alts (only 8) because it doesn't cost me much in terms of mats or time. Nirnhoned is pricey, not too bad on PC EU, but definitely on NA. And of course it should take time to become a master crafter with all traits in all skills. And that's not even the longest grind. It takes a lot longer to get all recipes for provisioning

What crafting on more alts does for you:
- 5.1k gold per alt per day if you have gilded fingers maxed out and skill levels at max (that's 153k/month per char for 5 mins of work per char per day)
- Access to hirelings which give rares
- Access to surveys, which keep you in materials and the more alts you do writs on the more you'll see that surveys outweigh the cost of having an extra character use materials daily.
- More Sealed Crafting Writs, which not only give vouchers but also a lot of exp

If you do 9 traits on all alts, there's only minor advantages:
- You can do 9-trait / nirnhoned writs on any character without having to transfer the writ and its items
- It can craft it's own 9 trait sets
- It can reconstruct nirnhoned items

So yes, it takes long, but you don't need to do all traits and dare I say, you shouldn't do it on all alts.

Huh?

You don't need to learn crafting traits for any of those things. You just need to level the skill lines and put skill points into the first passive and the hirelings.

M0ntie · June 2023

Its completely unnecessary to research 9 traits on all characters. I only did it on one character.
It can make it faster if you learn heavy armour traits on one character and the weapons on another. You can also split shields and staffs. Ultimately I prefer to have 1 character that knows 9 traits all. And they learn all the style pages.
Learning traits is something that I just have ticking along on my main crafter. When I login I check if they can start the next trait. I keep the next item with the trait they are going to learn locked on the crafter.

Levelling up all crafting skills is another matter. I level all crafting skill lines to 10 on all characters and use 1 armourer slot for each character as a crafter so that the skill points can be reallocated to be used in the crafting skill lines. This means that I can do top level crafting writs on all characters. These give gold mats as rewards and master writs. All master writs that drop go in the bank for my main crafter to do. You do not need to know traits to do the daily crafting writs.

vsrs_au · June 2023

I'm not in any hurry to research the traits on the alts I plan to create. I'm just going to level them up to max in the crafting lines, then enjoy the extra writ rewards, surveys and hireling mails. That's the main reason I want to create these alt crafters, I'm a bit fed up with running short on some materials on only 1 crafter (especially the jewelry materials, which are so bloody hard to get).

vsrs_au · June 2023

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

Braffin · June 2023

vsrs_au wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

It is, but most people don't do it on more than one char because one character can craft items for all other toons and there isn't much reward in further research (you gain slightly better chances on master writs tho, as far as I know).

tmbrinks · June 2023

Braffin wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

It is, but most people don't do it on more than one char because one character can craft items for all other toons and there isn't much reward in further research (you gain slightly better chances on master writs tho, as far as I know).

1. You get more master writs from daily writs
2. You don't have to swap characters to trait change an item for use
3. You can do more master writs on that character (I use them to level skills quickly if I need a new one)
4. You can reconstruct items with your preferred trait instead of having to swap to a crafter.

There are numerous benefits. They may be able to be solved by swapping characters, but considering research is entirely passive, I feel it's worth the benefit.

Braffin · June 2023

tmbrinks wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

It is, but most people don't do it on more than one char because one character can craft items for all other toons and there isn't much reward in further research (you gain slightly better chances on master writs tho, as far as I know).

1. You get more master writs from daily writs
2. You don't have to swap characters to trait change an item for use
3. You can do more master writs on that character (I use them to level skills quickly if I need a new one)
4. You can reconstruct items with your preferred trait instead of having to swap to a crafter.

There are numerous benefits. They may be able to be solved by swapping characters, but considering research is entirely passive, I feel it's worth the benefit.

I agree completely. Personally I finished research on 4 toons and working slowly on completion on 5 others for the reasons you mentioned.

It's also something which can be done rather quick while doing daily writs in my opinion, but I also know a lot of people which are annoyed by research times and find it tedious to do it on more than one character.

In the end it comes to personal preference if researched traits on several toons are benefical to a player (except master writ drop chances).

Gnesnig · June 2023

RodneyRegis wrote: »

Gnesnig wrote: »

Brrrofski wrote: »

Plus, you can buy research scrolls from guild stores for gold or buy them yourself with writ vouchers.

Those only cut time in half as they have a cooldown. But you get a few each month from Daily Rewards also. Then there's endavours.

Thing is - you don't need to have 18 chars with 9 traits in all skills. I level them on alts (only 8) because it doesn't cost me much in terms of mats or time. Nirnhoned is pricey, not too bad on PC EU, but definitely on NA. And of course it should take time to become a master crafter with all traits in all skills. And that's not even the longest grind. It takes a lot longer to get all recipes for provisioning

What crafting on more alts does for you:
- 5.1k gold per alt per day if you have gilded fingers maxed out and skill levels at max (that's 153k/month per char for 5 mins of work per char per day)
- Access to hirelings which give rares
- Access to surveys, which keep you in materials and the more alts you do writs on the more you'll see that surveys outweigh the cost of having an extra character use materials daily.
- More Sealed Crafting Writs, which not only give vouchers but also a lot of exp

If you do 9 traits on all alts, there's only minor advantages:
- You can do 9-trait / nirnhoned writs on any character without having to transfer the writ and its items
- It can craft it's own 9 trait sets
- It can reconstruct nirnhoned items

So yes, it takes long, but you don't need to do all traits and dare I say, you shouldn't do it on all alts.

Huh?

You don't need to learn crafting traits for any of those things. You just need to level the skill lines and put skill points into the first passive and the hirelings.

I never said that, though I guess it's a bit unclear. The list specificies what an alt that does crafting gives you extra, regardless of trait research. So why you may want to have more alts any way, even if you don't level the traits.

vsrs_au · June 2023

I'm in no hurry to research traits on my new crafting alts. I've done 4 days of 7 daily crafting writs per day on the 8 alts, and I'm already starting to see the benefits, even though their crafting levels are still low. I'll eventually start trait research on them, but it can wait, for now.

As for the main, yesterday, I finally reached this milestone

M0ntie · June 2023

tmbrinks wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

It is, but most people don't do it on more than one char because one character can craft items for all other toons and there isn't much reward in further research (you gain slightly better chances on master writs tho, as far as I know).

1. You get more master writs from daily writs
2. You don't have to swap characters to trait change an item for use
3. You can do more master writs on that character (I use them to level skills quickly if I need a new one)
4. You can reconstruct items with your preferred trait instead of having to swap to a crafter.

There are numerous benefits. They may be able to be solved by swapping characters, but considering research is entirely passive, I feel it's worth the benefit.

You do NOT need 9 traits to do all these things.
1 and 3 you can do if you just fully level all the crafting skill lines, which does not take very long. Well Jewelry takes a little while.
Changing or reconstructing an item with a trait isn't something that you do that often. But even if you did you'd only have to learn the useful traits, not all 9.
The things you need 9 traits for is crafting gear that requires a lot of traits. And doing Master writs. I doubt that you want to learn all the styles on all characters. For Master writs, I learn all the style pages I get on my Main Crafter, and she has 9 traits all.
Of course by all means, if you want to learn 9 traits on all characters its entirely up to you.

tmbrinks · June 2023

M0ntie wrote: »

tmbrinks wrote: »

Braffin wrote: »

vsrs_au wrote: »

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Horse training takes that long on every character. At least trait research only has to be done once.

Sorry, I don't understand. I thought trait research was character wide, not account wide.

It is, but most people don't do it on more than one char because one character can craft items for all other toons and there isn't much reward in further research (you gain slightly better chances on master writs tho, as far as I know).

1. You get more master writs from daily writs
2. You don't have to swap characters to trait change an item for use
3. You can do more master writs on that character (I use them to level skills quickly if I need a new one)
4. You can reconstruct items with your preferred trait instead of having to swap to a crafter.

There are numerous benefits. They may be able to be solved by swapping characters, but considering research is entirely passive, I feel it's worth the benefit.

You do NOT need 9 traits to do all these things.
1 and 3 you can do if you just fully level all the crafting skill lines, which does not take very long. Well Jewelry takes a little while.
Changing or reconstructing an item with a trait isn't something that you do that often. But even if you did you'd only have to learn the useful traits, not all 9.
The things you need 9 traits for is crafting gear that requires a lot of traits. And doing Master writs. I doubt that you want to learn all the styles on all characters. For Master writs, I learn all the style pages I get on my Main Crafter, and she has 9 traits all.
Of course by all means, if you want to learn 9 traits on all characters its entirely up to you.

I never said you "NEEDED" to research all 9 traits, I was just going through the things that trait research benefits.

For #1, I think you missed the word "more"... as in, it increases the drop rate. I'm well aware that leveling the crafting line is a pre-requisite to getting master writs, you can only get them when you do daily writs at maximum level. Researching more traits increases this rate.

For #3, If you are going to do equipment master writs, they require a trait, thus you must research that trait on that character to do that master writ. If you don't research any traits, you can't do any of them... Thus, researching traits increases the number of master writs you could do on that character.
Jewelry doesn't require styles (not that I do jewelry master writs, they're not profitable), and you still get many master writs in the base game racial styles, which sell for <100g each on PC/NA.

I even said in the end "They may be able to be solved by swapping characters, but considering research is entirely passive, I feel it's worth the benefit." with regards to whether you want to make a choice to do the trait research or not.

There is absolutely nothing false about my statements, especially the two you explicitly called out.

Necrotech_Master · June 2023

i did trait research on my main since that toon is also my crafter, but i never bothered with it on any other toon lol

if i need to make something, i get on my main and then transfer it through storage to the toon that needed it

i dont do daily writs pretty much at all anymore unless they are insistent about locking leads behind them, i do not enjoy daily writs as i find them a massive waste of time and resources lol