For what it's worth my solution is pretty much just being realistic about what I want to keep and having a place to keep it.

Importantly you don't need space for every single crafting material, only ones you've picked up since the last time you were subscribed (or the last time there was a free trial) and want to keep. Being in a social guild that usually has a trader but doesn't have sales requirements helps, it means I can put materials I don't need on my guild store, but you can also sell them to NPCs or even just delete them if selling isn't worth the hassle.

The others I split between my crafter's inventory, the bank and 1 housing chest. (blacksmithing, tailoring, woodworking and jewellery in his inventory, alchemy, enchanting and provisioning, furnishing mats and racial styles in the bank, other styles and trait items in a storage chest because I don't need those as often). Even materials I use I have a limit for, usually 1 stack, and if it gets above that I sell the excess.

Setting it up might take a bit of time, but it doesn't take long to sort it out because all my other characters just dump all their materials into the bank and then my crafter withdraws the ones he uses or ones for selling, which I do at the same time as sorting out other stuff.

When there's an ESO+ free trial everything gets pulled into the craft bag (and stays there until it's used or removed) which helps, if I feel like I'm struggling to keep up in between trials I'll consider buying one month of ESO+ but I usually try to time it for when I want something else from it as well. (I buy the DLC I want to play, so that's usually either one of the crown store offers, dying costumes or adding extra furnishings to a house.)

That might be the best solution for you: it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other, you could buy ESO+ only when you feel like you're struggling to keep up with all the crafting materials, and then let it run out and play without it until you feel like you need it again.

ESO needs players to subscribe, otherwise, players who don't are not contributing to the continued development of the game. So they incentivize players to subscribe to help with continued development.

dosco wrote: »

Sub in this game doesn't feel like it's giving benefits to players who sub, it feels like it's penalizing players who don't.
There are threads here with a number of very good suggestions on how to change that, for example giving a furnishing bag and/or siege bag to eso+ instead of the craft bag, amongst other things.

I bought eso+ for a month when I returned to the game, but ended up cancelling my sub again when I saw how they further reduced server capacity for cyrodiil even during the pvp event. I know I won't play without the craft bag, I know it is *possible* to do so, but I don't have fun with a game where at the very least 50% of my gaming time is spent doing chores to deal with zos-made problems. I'll simply play another game.

You said it better than me.