Pre-crafting strategy ?

vsrs_au · July 2023

I just got into crafting in a big way: my main (and up to now, only) character is a grand master crafter, but I recently created 7 crafting alts. Now I'm faced with the problem of how to reduce my daily crafting writs time. I'm currently taking about 35 minutes for 8 characters doing all 7 daily writs, but I think I can reduce it to 30, but I'm not sure I can go lower than that, unless I change my approach to pre-crafting, somehow.

I've pre-crafted the provisioning writs for every character ***, which was easy enough, as they stack, and I won't have to craft provisioning writs for another 8 months. Unfortunately, nothing else stacks, and so the weapons, armor and glyphs for writs take up way too much space in my characters' inventory and bank inventory.

So my question to the more learned and experienced crafters is: how do you optimise your daily writs by pre-crafting, and where do you store the pre-crafted items ?

*** I got all the alts to level 50 provisioning easily enough, I just went on a cooking spree.

phaneub17_ESO · July 2023

Alchemy is another option, takes up 8 slots or 7 extra if you use health pots already.

vsrs_au · July 2023

phaneub17_ESO wrote: »

Alchemy is another option, takes up 8 slots or 7 extra if you use health pots already.

Yes, I'll pre-craft the potions, except the 3 I've disabled in the Lazy Writ Crafter settings, so that will take only 5 extra slots from each crafter's inventory. I won't be doing this for the alts until they're up to level 50 in alchemy, though, because until then the required potions/poisons keep changing.

For the provisioning writs, I skip the writ that uses jazbay grapes because they're a bit inconvenient to farm, which means pre-crafting for these writs takes only 4 extra slots from each crafter's inventory.

I wish the weapons and armor stacked, though, it would make these writs so much easier.

SeaGtGruff · July 2023

I don't that anymore, but when I tried it for a while I had to play around with how many days in advance I could craft things. Maybe craft just 2 of each piece of gear if you don't already have it, and only when it shows up on the rotation. Then, if you have enough extra space in their inventory, increase it to 3 pieces each time you need to craft something, then 4, etc., until you figure out how far ahead you can craft without running out of space.

TBH, after they updated the crafting UI to allow us to select quests only or whatever it says, I found it pretty quick to just run through the full crafting process on each alt, but that also depends on which city you're crafting in, as well as anything else you're doing when you're cycling through your alts, such as grabbing their crafting assistants' mails and doing any post-writ processing (opening coffers, deconning, selling, banking).

phaneub17_ESO · July 2023

I think the most important question is how are you farming or replenishing your stocks? Are you doing it with a single character, multiple characters, are you cycling between farming and crafting? As I posted in your other thread, I alternate between long crafting sessions usually 45 days at a time then while playing the game normally I farm at the same time.

I'll pick up the Fighters guild, Mages guild, and Undaunted dailies on every character which give me paths to farm. Such as the Stormhaven Delve between the wayshrine has a lot of mudcrabs which I hit up every single time going to and from the delve back to the wayshrine; I'll get 6-10 per character that runs it. Of course I have HarvestMap addon, but I also keep a lookout for Fungus herbs as they spawn under trees, water herbs along rivers and bodies of water, then the rest are land herbs which are low priority as surveys only give land herbs anyway.

I only do either 1/10 or 10/10 of crafts, nothing in between as I don't want to keep farming those mid-range stuff, waste of time. The 1/10 crafts generally give more mats back than you spend on them mostly to collect surveys on my main who is permanently 10/10 to restock my high end mats. Once those numbers are stable to where I won't run out on the next crafting cycle, I'll swap those alts back to 10/10.

The only two professions that are slow to level are Jewelrycrafting and Enchanting. Alchemy and Provisioning can hit 1 to 50 in 30 seconds, just mass bulk craft 500 level 10 potion/poison and 1500 level 1 cooking recipe; having excessive mats helps of course. Everything I collect from the Fighters guild, Mages guild, and Undaunted daily loot and bags that aren't Ornate get banked for Deconstruction, that's how I level most of my professions on new alts.

tincanman · July 2023

@vsrs_au it seems you're doing as much as you can speed wise.

The only other thing is efficiency with the multiple character log-ins: I'd suggest ensuring all crafting (and even non-crafting characters) are maxed out on hirelings so logging in provides additional mats. The provisioning hireling will take care of that jazbay grapes (and most other provisoning mats) issue in a few weeks/months depending on number of characters and number of skill points allocated to hirelings, as well as providing purple provisioning mats.

vsrs_au · July 2023

tincanman wrote: »

@vsrs_au it seems you're doing as much as you can speed wise.

The only other thing is efficiency with the multiple character log-ins: I'd suggest ensuring all crafting (and even non-crafting characters) are maxed out on hirelings so logging in provides additional mats. The provisioning hireling will take care of that jazbay grapes (and most other provisoning mats) issue in a few weeks/months depending on number of characters and number of skill points allocated to hirelings, as well as providing purple provisioning mats.

They're already maxed for the hireling skill. Alchemy and provisioning are maxed, with brewer and chef skills maxed for the latter. For those with extraction skills, they're all at 2/3 currently. When the main and extraction skills are maxed for all crafts, I'll start putting points into the keen eye skills.

I have no plan to make the 7 alts grand master crafters, as my main is already that, and I only need one, so I don't care about the other skills (plus it would take a long time to get the 165 skill points needed to maximise all craft skills).

Also, yesterday's writs on all 8 characters took me *exactly* 30 minutes, so I'm quite happy with that. That includes a horse stables visit for the 7 alts, and excludes pre-crafting on the 5 crafts other than alchemy and provisioning, so I think in the future I'll get even shorter times. I could reduce the times even more by basing all the alts in one of the fast crafting areas like Vivec City, but I find that a bit boring: I like the idea of having my alts (all different races) based in their "home" regions, e.g. the orc crafts in Orsinium, the breton in Gonfalon Bay, etc.

tincanman · July 2023

I must confess when I can be bothered crafting on all my alts these days it takes ages because I get distracted by other stuff.

Impressed at the times: 8 alts at ~4mins per should be >30mins and, with added times for non-optimal locations, it should be higher still. Good luck on getting the times down even further.

wolfie1.0. · July 2023

Make sure to get max hirelings on all of your characters.

Typically what I do is max all of the characters to 50 it gives the best roi to do max writs.

As far as replenishing mats. Assuming you do surveys and a bit of farming you should at least break even on equipment mats.

For enchanting, the oko, deni, and mako runes are what I run out of I tend to just pull vendor glyphs for decon or go shopping in guild stores with profits from crafting writs.

For provisioning and alchemy. I pre- craft in bulk all of the pots, poisons, and foods I need and store in bank.

To replenish hirelings and farming and buying. Chitin is the most painful of the mats to farm up. To the point that I consider skipping the quest when it comes in rotation.

vsrs_au · July 2023

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Make sure to get max hirelings on all of your characters.

Typically what I do is max all of the characters to 50 it gives the best roi to do max writs.

As far as replenishing mats. Assuming you do surveys and a bit of farming you should at least break even on equipment mats.

For enchanting, the oko, deni, and mako runes are what I run out of I tend to just pull vendor glyphs for decon or go shopping in guild stores with profits from crafting writs.

For provisioning and alchemy. I pre- craft in bulk all of the pots, poisons, and foods I need and store in bank.

To replenish hirelings and farming and buying. Chitin is the most painful of the mats to farm up. To the point that I consider skipping the quest when it comes in rotation.

I've already maxed hireling skills, and also configured LWC addon to auto-abandon alchemy writs including mudcrab chitin, nirnroot and whatever the third one is (I forget). I've pre-crafted all the remaining alchemy writs and the provisioning ones also.

HedgeHugger · July 2023

Having 215 spaces on each character can help.
It gets messy if you are loading them up with things you sell as well.

You do just have to suck it up and have days where you must make stuff. There just isn't enough inventory space to make a month's in advance.

One of the slowest tables is enchanting. I used to make mine in 5's. Would make them in 10's if I had the space. That would be a once a month visit

lillybit · August 2023

I used to pre-craft 7 or 8 days at a time, then when you got the option to quick-craft quests I stopped bothering (because crafting days took soooo looong on console!) and just ran through them daily. Now I use a kind of hybrid of the two, bulk crafting a third at a time using the quest-only option. Works out to some crafting every 5 days which I can live with. It was a bit tricky to work out how to set it up, because of things used in more than one days writs, but now it's going I much prefer it to either of my previous methods.

Including opening boxes, selling and banking, it takes about 2 minutes per character on non-craft days and an extra minute each to craft.

This is on a PS5 so almost never get a long load screen and in Vivec, which seems quickest to me tho I've never done tests to find out for sure. Also have all the speed-buff CP's set, maxed horse training and all characters have a Wild Hunt Ring - this last is a must imo, I don't even regret all the transmutes it cost that I can't get back.

I could save more time if I really tried, by doing things like only opening boxes every few days and crafting bigger batches, but they all do double duty as storage too and if I don't open boxes daily I can't keep up with the master writs!

Nestor · August 2023

I use the Banker and Merchant Assistants to Grab Provisioning and Alchemy. Then do the Crafts and drop off. Spawn the Merchant, sell Ornates and Trash, spawn the Banker and deposit whatever I am going to sell on the Trader or Surveys to give my Farmer and Master Writs for my Main Crafter.

If you are on PC, then Lazy Writ Crafter is Essential to Speedy Writs. With a junk handler addon, I can do Summerset or Rawkla in about 2 minutes.