Is crafting really that mandatory

katanagirl1 · February 2025

coop500 wrote: »

Fact of the matter is, OP said they're not gonna touch crafting no matter how easy it is. That is their words, not mine, and I can only take them at their word. Which means, yes, no traits either.

Well the hubby doesn’t craft at all, but all he does is the same overland quests on every character, no group dungeons unless I need an extra body for an easy run or a partner in IA. He does fine, I crafted up some sets for him. He doesn’t care to do more than that. So if OP is fine with that then crafting is not necessary. It’s hard for me to understand that but whatever makes him happy.

Carcamongus · February 2025

katanagirl1 wrote: »

A lot of great responses above, but I just would like to add one thing.

Crafting gives you great independence in not having to search out someone to help you do something or have to buy something you need. I can’t imagine how much it would cost just to buy the food I use on my characters. This (the independence part) is invaluable to me. Of course, I don’t mind taking the time to level up crafting. It only takes time to decon everything versus selling gear, and a few moments to start research of traits. Unless you are into decorating houses, you can pretty much get all the materials you need for crafting gear just from taking time to do daily crafting writs. It’s really the only gold income I have now that shortened guild trader listings destroyed my other method of getting coin.

This, so much this. Especially if the player wants to get into housing, crafting plays a major part and it's way cheaper to make your own stuff than to buy from others. Same goes for gear or consumables. Being able to independently craft what you need is just like that old Mastercard commercial, priceless.

To the discussion's OP: it's true crafting isn't mandatory, but the benefits are so great as to make the considerable investment (especially in time and patience) worth it.

Diebesgut · February 2025

... crafting? 🪡🧶🔨🍳🪄

you don't need crafting.
If you need something and have a lot of gold, ask the Khajiit you trust. 💰💰💰

... at your service ... 😼

VoxAdActa · February 2025

But truth of the matter is, if they skip crafting, they're gonna skip a lot like having the right traits on their gear, unless you think OP is gonna farm for hours on end to make sure they get the right one.

That's what we used to do before transmutation was a thing.

We also walked uphill through the snow to get to and from all the dungeons. It was uphill both ways.

reazea · February 2025

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

It's not mandatory, but it's going to be a real problem if you have to ask someone else to craft gear for you every time you want new gear. Much better off to start learning all the crafting knowledge on your main toon so you can do your own crafting when needed. And start immediately. To learn everything will take six to twelve months.

Crafted gear is 100% unnecessary in this game. The best sets come from dungeons and trials.

Overland is easy enough you can just use whatever you find lying around until you get the chance to do dungeons.

The optimal traits take almost no time to learn and there's very few.

The main reason to learn crafting is honestly just it's an easy and lucrative income stream and furnishing writs. There's also some passives in alchemy and provisioning you may want if you're interested in sweaty min-maxing for maximum uptimes in the most difficult content but that's not really an issue to the vast majority of content. So, it depends on what OP wants when it comes to the content they want to run.

Alchemy and Provisioning can be power leveled easily, get it done in a day. So, OP if you change your mind later, don't even sweat it.

The whole year thing is about researching every trait so you can make the best crafted gear for stuff like crafting writs. If that doesn't interest you, then you only need the optimal traits which takes like a day or two passively in the background.

This is patently not true, not even remotely. Wretched Vitality, Mechanical Acuity, Clever Alchemest, just to name a few, are first rate sets used in many, many builds. In fact, WV/MA/Balorgh on any class is one of the best builds out there, and that's using two crafted sets.

spartaxoxo · February 2025

reazea wrote: »

This is patently not true, not even remotely. Wretched Vitality, Mechanical Acuity, Clever Alchemest, just to name a few, are first rate sets used in many, many builds. In fact, WV/MA/Balorgh on any class is one of the best builds out there, and that's using two crafted sets.

I'm speaking from a PvE perspective because that's what OP asked for. It's absolutely true in PvE that most of the best sets are sourced from dungeons and trials. It's not all but it's an awful lot of them.

SpiritofESO · February 2025

Five and a half years ago when I started playing this game, I had the exact same attitude. I didn't feel the need to do crafting. Very shortly I realized the crafting in this game adds a great deal to the game for players. It really fleshes it out and gives you multiple things to do.

Long story short, I became a Grand Master Crafter, and I am glad I did. Also, two and a half years ago I became Empress in Cyrodiil, and I am glad I did! Now I am only one bar away from my fifth star, Grand Overlord. I have more titles than I can count and I also, last year, became Adventurer Across a Decade! I also have all 10 Armory builds which include four stamina builds, five magicka builds, and a stamina tank build. I also became Werewolf for a while and now I use the Vampire for magicka stealth builds.

The more you do, the more fun you have.

I must also add that if you play this game in a well-rounded way, it will be more fun. You will experience all the PVE and all the zones, some PVP in Cyrodiil or battlegrounds, PVE in the overland, in delves, in group dungeons, in public dungeons and in trials... and if you do everything, or nearly everything, that the game offers, you will have much more fun and never be bored. I believe you can take my word for that!

(Strange thing though, once I realized that my main character has done nearly everything and can do nearly everything, I started deleting alts because I no longer felt they were necessary and simply took time away from my main character. I know other people don't feel this way, but I do.)

bmnoble · February 2025

Really depends on what you want to do, if your just going to quest you can largely ignore it, if your planning to do vet group PVE and PVP stuff, it will be harder to avoid, especially if you want to be self sufficient in terms of upgrade materials and gold or if you plan to go down the rabbit hole that is housing and want to make your own furniture.

You can buy crafted sets off of other players, though it won't come cheap if you want it fully upgraded.

You will want alchemy and provisioning levelled on your characters to make potion effects last longer and food/drink buffs last longer.

As for the equipment crafts, blacksmithing/clothing/woodworking/jewellery it is useful to have them maxed to 50 on at least one character so that you can use the passives that let you upgrade your own gears quality with no risk of destroying the gear piece in the process. Those really don't take long to level just deconstruct gear you find that you don't want at the relevant crafting stations.

Research traits at most it is nice to have them all researched on at least one character to be able to make any of the crafted sets yourself and transmute/reconstruct gear on that single character, thought it is a process that can easily take a year on that one character without the aid of research scrolls, as each new trait you learn on a piece of gear causes the next trait to take longer to research going all the way up to over a month by 9th trait.

You can get around the long wait times for research with multiple alts learning just the trait you want to change/reconstruct a piece of gear to, for example say you want to change 5 pieces of gear to divines rather than learning all the divines traits for each piece on the one character, have 5 of your alts each research one piece and you will be done in half a day instead of a few days, then you just move the gear piece you want to change into that character inventory and transmute it either in the clockwork city or a guild house. For reconstruction, think you will also need to have maxed out the equipment crafting skill to be able to make the gear at max level on the alt.

All up to you, I ignored it for my first few months, just made my own white gear with no traits no set pieces or wore whatever gear I found while questing, find out if you truly enjoy the game before you go out of your way to put much time or effort into crafting.

KekwLord3000 · February 2025

If we talking on gold making? probably can skip it, people craft stuff for free if you provide the mats, so making gold in that is pretty much non existent.
Just ask someone to craft you stuff out it will barely cost anything and for newer players most will craft stuff for free.
As for yourself, for endgame it's nice as you will need to transmutes gear for traits (pve or pvp) so do start researching but if you don't want to you don't have to invest in crafting.
It's good to level up the crafting to 50 so you can get more gold mats from the writs, which is a good way to make gold but honestly you can do simple writs as well if you don't wanna invest in crafting.
I'd suggest to put stuff to research even if yo aren't super into crafting, it's a very long grind and might as well start the ball rolling.

coop500 · February 2025

VoxAdActa wrote: »

But truth of the matter is, if they skip crafting, they're gonna skip a lot like having the right traits on their gear, unless you think OP is gonna farm for hours on end to make sure they get the right one.

That's what we used to do before transmutation was a thing.

We also walked uphill through the snow to get to and from all the dungeons. It was uphill both ways.

I know, I was there. But I doubt OP will do that.

BXR_Lonestar · February 2025

Nothing in the game is "mandatory." The reality is, though, that everyone who plays this game wants a master crafter for some reason or other. Are you into housing? Then you need a crafter to make furniture. Do you like theorycrafting different builds? You'll want a master crafter so you have access to all craftable sets. Do you like high-end PVE/PVP? You'll want a crafter to be able to reconstruct various sets AND to upgrade your armor pieces - because without a master crafter, it becomes VERY expensive to gold out your own items. So you either use more gold mats for a lower chance to make an item gold, or you end up having to try to buy it in the store (assuming the item can be bought).

So yes, you should choose one character to be your "main" to do everything on, including crafting, and start working towards being a master crafter. It WILL take a long time. But it is definitely worth it for various reasons.

freespirit · February 2025

propain wrote: »

Just hit level 50 on my first character and was trying to figure out what type of things I should be doing now for progression. I looked at some videos of what to do after 50 and it just seems like they all can't stop talking about doing this or doing that for crafting and do your daily crafting thing etc. On and on about crafting in the game for progression.

Well I don't want to have anything to do with crafting no matter how easy it is. It's not something I enjoy at all in a game. So what are my options for PVE gear progression and just overall character progression? and how far can I take my character in power without crafting because people are making it sound like crafting is super mandatory.

If crafting is truly out of the question then you will need gold, lots of gold and patience to farm dropped sets until you get the right traits.

To buy tradeable sets with the right traits can often be more expensive, upgrading to legendary again not as expensive as it used to be but with no crafting passives would be very costly due to using more gold mats per piece.

You can still progress however you want to but hopefully you aren't averse to trading in games because you are ruling out a whole bundle of gold making opportunities and will need spending power to replace it!

Juju_beans · February 2025

You don't need crafting but you will be doing a lot of farming and storing sets.
And then you'll need to collect transmutes to get the right traits and then buy the right enchants.

freespirit · February 2025

Juju_beans wrote: »

You don't need crafting but you will be doing a lot of farming and storing sets.
And then you'll need to collect transmutes to get the right traits and then buy the right enchants.

@Juju_beans you cannot transmute if you haven't researched the traits!

Nestor · February 2025

propain wrote: »

.

Well I don't want to have anything to do with crafting no matter how easy it is. It's not something I enjoy at all in a game. So what are my options for PVE gear progression and just overall character progression? and how far can I take my character in power without crafting because people are making it sound like crafting is super mandatory.

It has been a while since I posted this Crafting Primer. It is the most efficient way to level crafting up a useful level. As above, at least do Alchemy and Enchanting, then, some Trait Research. While Trait Research is a long journey, doing enough for your characters does not take all that long.

Equipment Crafting

Decon all mob loot other than what you are using to research traits. Research traits, learn two on all items you would use, then learn 3, etc. Focus on Divines, Infused and Training for your first three for Armor, Sharpened, Precise and Training for your Weapons. Then go for the other ones. Nirn is expensive, and a lot of people suggest putting a priority on that, I can't see why. The Trait is all but useless for Armor or Weapons. Best place to find Mob Loot is Public Dungeons, then over land grind spots. Grind on mobs until your bags are full, then go on a decon fest. Remembering to save the ones you need or want to research. Use the Lock Function and or an Inventory Mule to hang on to those. Only invest Skill points while leveling it into the Research and Extraction Passive, the last really only needing one point.

Enchanting

Ignore all the "advice" on the web about using an enchanting partner. First, use Mob Loot decon to raise this up to a point. Later on as you approach end game have some some gold, then start making Green, Blue or Purple Glyphs on one character and decon them on an Alt. You will level Enchanting faster than trading the glyphs with another player, which is tedious by the way. (like pull out your hair and make a doily tedious). Use Green up to about L15 in the Enchanting Skill, Blue up to about L30/35 and Purple up to about L46/47. Then learn the runes you don't know, you should be at or near 50, if not, make/decon some more Purples.

Provisioning and Alchemy

Don't worry about these, you can level these professions in about an 20 minutes, for both. Just collect the Various Solvents and Reagents and Provisioning Ingredients/Recipes as you go along. Once end game, then you can level it. Use Mushrooms to level Alchemy, or Flowers that make potions you won't use. Make sure you grab solvents (waters) as your leveling as they can be rare to find in the guild stores. For Provisioning, make the highest level Green Recipes you can make. Blue or Purples do not give any more inspiration than Greens, so save those for character use.

Yes, use Drop Sets for now, and Yes, level your crafting skills and do the Trait Research. Traits are why you craft as they allow you to make Special Crafted Sets. There are two sets in the game that your going to want to make, Julianos for your Magic Characters, and Hundings Rage for your Stamina Characters. There are no better sets in the game to have 5 pieces of. Period. Well, Twice Born Star is great to, but your a year out from making that. But you need to start learning your traits now.

While it takes 6 traits known to be able to make Hundings or Julianos, 9 Traits for Twice Born Star. You don't need to know learn all of these traits on everything before you craft anything. In fact, there are nice sets that you only need to know 2 or 3 or 4 traits to make. So, learn 2 traits first, then 3 etc. This way you can be making set items in just a few days. So, start learning those traits. Focus on the gear you will use first, then fill in the rest later. This means:

Casters
Heavy Chest/Legs
Light Feet/Hands/Waist
Shoulders and Heads are good too, but there are 2 Piece Monster sets that can take up those slots. So learn the traits on Head and Shoulder pieces for Transmuting later, but prioritize the ones above.
Staves (all 4 of them)

Stamina
All Medium Armors
Daggers, Swords, Axes, Bow

Tanks
All Heavy Armors, Sword and Shield and maybe Staves (Ice is your tanking stick). Can add in Axes or Maces for the weapons if you want.
For Armors, Sturdy, then Divines, Infused, Reinforced. Same with Shields but Nirn can be nice on a Shield.
For Weapons, Infused, Sharpened, Defending. Charged for the Staff.

Learn Training, Divines and Infused on the Armors first, Sharpened, Precise, Infused and Training on the Weapons. Powered is good for the Healing Staff, Defending is good for Sword or other one handed Melee. Then fill in the rest until you have 6 traits on each piece of gear you will use. Eventually you will learn all 9 traits. Some people recommend Nirn as an early trait to learn. Unless they change it, don't listen to them. You might use it on a Shield or a Weapon but that is about it. You need it someday, but it's expensive and you need your gold for other things.

Invest the skill points into the Research Passives. I can't stress enough how much of a time sink Trait Research is. Be able to learn more than one at a time, and reduce the time needed. Get an addon for Trait Research Tracking, I recommend Craft Store. If your on the Consoles, find one of the spreadsheets out there or make one to track this. Have I mentioned you need to learn your traits?

Doing this you will be ready to invest skill points into Crafting when it matters and not have to spend months getting ready. Did I mention Trait Research and how much a time sink it is? The last two traits will take you a month each to learn, on each item you learn them on. Get started now, yesterday would have been better.
Based on testing I did several months ago (so things could have changed a bit):

Mob Loot gives the most Exp
Other Player Made and Alt Made give about 90% of the Inspiration of Mob Loot.
Deconning stuff made on the same character gives about 10%, but you get a better chance of getting a Temper, Style and Trait back, important for deconning things with Nirn or rare Style Mats

Alt made is better than other player made as you don't have to deal with the friction of being able to send only 6 items at a time. You can just deposit a batch in the bank and decon them out of the bank. However:

I still think farming a public dungeon or overland grind spot is better as you gain character experience/champ points, skills, gold, set items on occasion, and have a net gain in Mats. Making and deconning items will burn up 70% of your mats on average. OK I guess if you have a ton of mats but I would rather use my Ruby stuff for making gear for my characters. I farm the mobs, sell the white items to pay for repairs, then decon what is left. This is how I leveled all my characters to 50 in Eq Crafting.

The only exception is with Glyphs, since most looted Glyphs are White and Improved Glyphs give so much more Inspiration, it is better to make Improved Glyphs on one character and decon on an Alt. Use Green up to about L10, Blue up to about L35, then Purple up to 46 or so. Then, learn all the runes you don't know, and that should get you close to L50. No need to make the CP160's unless you have a bunch of Potencies, CP150 or even CP90/140 Glyphs are fine for this process if you have more of those potencies.

Simple really. Make Glyphs on one character, and decon them on another. You level both Alts in Enchanting in about an hour, assuming you can buy or have the Aspects.

The game already provides the ability to make Intricate Glyphs, something you can't do with gear in fact. Use better aspects to make your Glyphs.

Green up to L15, Blue up to L30/35 and Purple up to about L45/48. At that point learn all the unknown Runes, and then finish off any leveling you need with some more purples. Enchanting is done.

Elvenheart · February 2025

I will say out of all the games I’ve played, ESO seems to be the one that we need at least some crafting skills the most. But I have found that to be OK because out of all the games I’ve played it’s been the easiest to max all the crafting skills lines in.

Northwold · February 2025

freespirit wrote: »

Also a fact that is worth considering......

If you are likely to get into buying houses and decorating, many of the really beautiful furnishings are CRAFTED!

Not only are they crafted, all of them require a certain amount of skill in the particular craft used to make them, some a lot more than others.

Ofc there are many, many achievement furnishings, zone housing vendors and you can buy crafted items from guild traders but imo you will struggle to be happy with your designs without some crafting ability.

Yes this is where I went wrong when I started out. I couldn't conceive of ever wanting a house (I was junking furnishing plans because they seemed useless -- who knows what amazing things I binned), and I didn't really understand how crafting connected with furniture in any event. A couple of years later, housing became the thing I most enjoy in ESO. And I was for a while really, really handicapped.

Juju_beans · February 2025

freespirit wrote: »

Juju_beans wrote: »

You don't need crafting but you will be doing a lot of farming and storing sets.
And then you'll need to collect transmutes to get the right traits and then buy the right enchants.

@Juju_beans you cannot transmute if you haven't researched the traits!

Oh you are right. I forgot about that part. I do everything on my crafter and have for so long I forgot.
I have 8 characters total but only 1 is the crafter and so I don't even think about these things.
I can't imagine playing this game and not having a crafter between gear and furniture.

barney2525 · February 2025

DenverRalphy wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Snipped for brevity

coop500 wrote: »

It's about everything ELSE being skipped, the shortcuts that are taken all add up to the point where you'll be at least half-carried in vet dungeons and that's not fair to the other three players.

And your remark about needing researched traits is my point, but OP said they wanted NOTHING to do with it, no matter how easy. That's what my response is going off of. No crafting, research, or ANYTHING.

The traits thing is the only thing I really agree with. Which they can do for next to nothing and it's like one interaction a single day.

I don't think someone is going to be carried wearing say Spriggan's and Briarheart as they do normal dungeons. Or whatever. Just toss on damage sets, literally any will do for normal.

Realistically the only thing they need to do to not be carried later is simply to gear up in normal dungeons/trials before jumping into vet content, which is something that new players should be doing anyway. So they can familiarize themselves with the mechanics. Even people who know how to craft should do that before hitting the vet content because most of the best gear is not crafted.

I don't use crafted gear on any my characters, even new alts. I have not done so in years and it's never been an issue.

Once again, I said carried in vet dungeons, not normal dungeons. But I can see you are arguing in bad faith and won't bother continuing this.

Right but you're saying ignoring the crafting will lead to problems later in vet dungeons.

I'm saying it will not because the same gear drops in normal. So, all they have to do is hit normal first and then they will not have to be worried about being carried in vet.

I'm not arguing in bad faith. I simply disagree that skipping anything but the research will cause problems in vet dungeons later.

And I don't even think they need all the traits as some insist. Someone who hates crafting in every video game is unlikely to suddenly change their mind about that down the road. So, they really don't need all traits. Only the ones they'd want to transmute to later.

And once again, they said they won't touch crafting, so no traits are being researched and if someone is unwilling to do that, they're likely going to be unwilling to do other things to improve their build, and will go in there with mismatched gear.

Look, I've been running vet dungeons with people who rely on drops and ***, and it is HELL. People who won't put in the effort to pull their own weight in vet dungeons don't deserve to be carried.

You can research all traits without any crafting whatsoever.

True, but I think the point is valid. Learning the traits up to just a solid 5 takes a lot of time. Even if you streamline it to just researching Only the specific pieces of armor and weapons you will use.

PrinceDamien · February 2025

I'm like you, OP.
I tend to never delve into crafting in games since I find no enjoyment in it.
But ESO is actually the first MMO where I've maxed out crafting and have crafted stuff for myself and others.
Idunno why but ESO crafting, I guess, never really felt like a chore like it can do in so many other games.

However, I don't craft for money nor do I really sell materials either.
I've pretty much only used it for personal usage like set items and potions & food.
So the time I do craft is very limited, as it's mostly used to restock on food and potions.

belial5221_ESO · February 2025

Some things are locked in crafting,but you can get it leveled by deconning stuff,and before you know it some skill lines will max out,Alchemy and prov you are kinda forced to do em to get the good passives,since they won't level without crafting things.Some dyes are locked in crafting,like the antique silver and divine gold in jewelry,but if you don't need/want any of that,and got tons of gold for buying everything,you don't have to craft.

The reason they talk about crafting is cause making potions,food,and gear is faster and cheaper than trying to find stuff to buy.Also,it helps give XP and gold for lower levels that get bored of grinding to level up.

herkemur · February 2025

“you pays your money and you takes your choice”. My play is so unconventional - totally solo - and sporadic - that I
will never get the uber gear from dungeons. I don't have the time or patience or stress-absorption for it.

For my money, I get my kicks playing very casually, seeing the sights, killing the bad guys I can and having the odd spontaneous "group" fights if I come across a world boss.

It's a visually stunning world to just travel around in.

Crafting is a daily habit that is sort of comforting like knitting (as i imagine knitting must be) and has been essential in getting traits in line with my overall overland sets.

My only gripe is that craftable sets have so far never been as strong as the Vet dungeon loot everybody talks about and which I've never seen.
On the other hand, I may never need that stuff for what I'm doing.

After 4 years of playing, I still find Julianos and the odd bit of Orders Wrath and Deadly Strike to be just fine.

A chacun à son goût.

MidniteOwl1913 · February 2025

spartaxoxo wrote: »

CrazyKitty wrote: »

It's not mandatory, but it's going to be a real problem if you have to ask someone else to craft gear for you every time you want new gear. Much better off to start learning all the crafting knowledge on your main toon so you can do your own crafting when needed. And start immediately. To learn everything will take six to twelve months.

Crafted gear is 100% unnecessary in this game. The best sets come from dungeons and trials.

Overland is easy enough you can just use whatever you find lying around until you get the chance to do dungeons.

The optimal traits take almost no time to learn and there's very few.

The main reason to learn crafting is honestly just it's an easy and lucrative income stream and furnishing writs. There's also some passives in alchemy and provisioning you may want if you're interested in sweaty min-maxing for maximum uptimes in the most difficult content but that's not really an issue to the vast majority of content. So, it depends on what OP wants when it comes to the content they want to run.

Alchemy and Provisioning can be power leveled easily, get it done in a day. So, OP if you change your mind later, don't even sweat it.

The whole year thing is about researching every trait so you can make the best crafted gear for stuff like crafting writs. If that doesn't interest you, then you only need the optimal traits which takes like a day or two passively in the background.

No you don't need to learn all the traits, there are only a few that really work well. Yes the best gear is trials and dungeons, but if you want it with a certain trait then you need to craft it, or transmute it. Transmuting is very expensive. If you reconstruct it much cheaper and you can do that for any trait you know.

Crafting writs don't provide all that much gold. But they do offer surveys, mats and master writs. Fully leveling at least one crafter is really worth the effort. But you only need one. I run all motifs, style pages and recipes thru my main. It's is sometimes a pain because to gold out gear cheaply I need to put in the bank move to my main improve put it back in the bank and then finally logon to the character and put it on. Awkward but it works.

WHen I level a new toon I use "found" gear until level 50. Honestly it's pretty awful. I wouldn't recommend it. Better to solo a low level dungeon a couple of times and use whatever gear suits your toon until you are ready to start reconstructing or transmuting.

frogthroat · February 2025

I absolutely understand not wanting to do some aspect of a game. I personally hate fishing, card games and timed race track minigames in video games.

But what is mandatory in crafting? Strictly speaking, nothing. You can collect all the gear from the content. It will be tedious to get the correct traits so crafting (reconstructing/transmuting with a Transmute station) will save time, effort and gold.

I would still do some minimal crafting with one character to make the gear progression easier and faster.

If you want to make a damage dealer characters, I would at least learn the following traits:
Clothing - Divines for all Medium armour and for epaulets, gloves, sash from light armour
Daggers - Charged, Nirnhoned, Precise (in this order)
Greatsword - Infused
Inferno Staff - Infused
Lightning Staff - Precise
Bow - Infused, Precise
Jewelry - Bloodthirsty

Start with those that are strictly needed for the build you aim for. You can rely on collecting correct trait items, or you can buy research items from guild stores or ask from guildies/friends.

Crafted sets, enchantments, buff food and potions you can buy from a guild store or ask a friend/guildie to craft.

Alchemy would give you longer potion duration if you level that one. Potions have a cooldown so the effect will run out before you can pop the next one. So levelling up Alchemy would be the only way to get potion uptime to 100%. Unfortunately you would need to do this with all characters.

If you deconstruct all the looted gear you don't need with one character, the crafting skill lines will level up and you can put skill points in upgrade passives to make upgrade cheaper. But if you don't care about gold you don't have to.

This would be the bare minimum I would do: learn those traits for reconstruct/transmute and level up alchemy for the Medicinal Use passive. The rest can be bought with gold.

kringled_1 · February 2025

barney2525 wrote: »

DenverRalphy wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

coop500 wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

Snipped for brevity

coop500 wrote: »

It's about everything ELSE being skipped, the shortcuts that are taken all add up to the point where you'll be at least half-carried in vet dungeons and that's not fair to the other three players.

And your remark about needing researched traits is my point, but OP said they wanted NOTHING to do with it, no matter how easy. That's what my response is going off of. No crafting, research, or ANYTHING.

The traits thing is the only thing I really agree with. Which they can do for next to nothing and it's like one interaction a single day.

I don't think someone is going to be carried wearing say Spriggan's and Briarheart as they do normal dungeons. Or whatever. Just toss on damage sets, literally any will do for normal.

Realistically the only thing they need to do to not be carried later is simply to gear up in normal dungeons/trials before jumping into vet content, which is something that new players should be doing anyway. So they can familiarize themselves with the mechanics. Even people who know how to craft should do that before hitting the vet content because most of the best gear is not crafted.

I don't use crafted gear on any my characters, even new alts. I have not done so in years and it's never been an issue.

Once again, I said carried in vet dungeons, not normal dungeons. But I can see you are arguing in bad faith and won't bother continuing this.

Right but you're saying ignoring the crafting will lead to problems later in vet dungeons.

I'm saying it will not because the same gear drops in normal. So, all they have to do is hit normal first and then they will not have to be worried about being carried in vet.

I'm not arguing in bad faith. I simply disagree that skipping anything but the research will cause problems in vet dungeons later.

And I don't even think they need all the traits as some insist. Someone who hates crafting in every video game is unlikely to suddenly change their mind about that down the road. So, they really don't need all traits. Only the ones they'd want to transmute to later.

And once again, they said they won't touch crafting, so no traits are being researched and if someone is unwilling to do that, they're likely going to be unwilling to do other things to improve their build, and will go in there with mismatched gear.

Look, I've been running vet dungeons with people who rely on drops and ***, and it is HELL. People who won't put in the effort to pull their own weight in vet dungeons don't deserve to be carried.

You can research all traits without any crafting whatsoever.

True, but I think the point is valid. Learning the traits up to just a solid 5 takes a lot of time. Even if you streamline it to just researching Only the specific pieces of armor and weapons you will use.

It really doesn't take long to level traits up to 5. Currently I'm estimating with no skill points spent, you can have 4 items researched up to 5 in about a week. The last 4 traits take far more of the total time required to do research (probably 3 months without significant skill point expenditure).