So, last week I decided to do something about the transmute stone inventory problem on my main account and on the two that my young children play on.

The first problem I had was that a lot of these stones were on the respective accounts main crafters who multiclassing made playable again but geodes can't be banked or moved around. The second problem is a lot of these were the old 4-25 stone geodes and would require much fewer inventory slots if I could store them as 25 stone reconstructed items. The inventories were stuffed to the gills. I have plenty of complete item sets that require just 25 stones to make and yield 25 on deconstruction but I went with what seemed like the logical choice and just grabbed a mythic set as all them are 1/1 for 25 stones so I didn't have to dig through the sticker book looking for a complete set.

Here is the thing though. You can deconstruct new mythics, so you remember doing this you probably even think you have deconstructed a reconstructed one. There is also no text on the item saying they can't be deconstructed. There is no warning when you make them either. There is even some conflicting information on the web about whether or not you can deconstruct them. I am telling you now though. You cannot deconstruct a reconstructed mythic item to get the stones like you can some (I'm really not sure if there are other item traps) other items. This information may be buried on page 3 of some patch notes but I didn't know it despite reading more patch notes than probably 99% of players and neither did any of the buddies who have played with me since beta.

Anyhow, I reconstructed 3,500 stones worth of useless mythic items across 3 accounts including using at least half of the stones on my kids accounts before realizing my error by accidentally making one in the wrong trait and deciding to decon it right away because it looked messy by taking another column in my inventory insight page. I could not decon it, became very confused, and after a bit of conflicting research found a 5 year old thread where about half the responders knew why. I then filed a help ticket asking to get my stones back, explaining how such an error was very easy to make, expressing that we would all also like stones to simply be a currency without the gotcha limitations, and also explaining raising the cap another arbitrary amount doesn't really fix anything.

This is the response:

"Greetings!

Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.

I understand you are dissatisfied that your reconstructed Mythic items are ineligible for deconstruction. We can empathize with your frustration and thank you for taking the time to report this issue.

Unfortunately, we're unable to fulfil your desired restoration request. We understand this is disappointing and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.

While Customer Support is not composed of members of the development which assist in the creation, maintenance, or stabilization of the game. We are passing feedback to the development team daily, so we will make sure your suggestions reach them as they continue to improve The Elder Scrolls Online.

Thank you so much for your patience and understanding throughout this process.

Thank you,
agent name redacted as workers should never be blamed for policy
The Elder Scrolls Online Team"

Honestly, I thought this was an AI generated automatic denial of any request until I noticed the typo. Wow, way to tell me I misunderstood the meaning of your big new customer focused, re-dedication to the game with a new leader you talked about on the whole yearly big reveal.

To be frank, bad game design caused this issue and it is a very easy issue to fix and also to prevent in the future. It is not a difficult challenge to do either. In fact, in the early years of the game, when, due to poor game design in the form of having no lock function on items, people accidentally deconstructed their good armor at crafting stations frequently, I knew people who had their destroyed items restored manually by customer service. Customer service even went out of it's way for me on a tougher ask a good deal less justified in the pre-Microsoft, pre-maintenince mode days as well.

Anyhow, have fun with the survey and let me know what you think about this situation or ZOS new focus on the customer.

I, too, reconstructed some Mythic items before realizing they can't be deconstructed, so I feel for you. But in my case, I just reconstructed enough Rings of the Wild Hunt to give each of my characters one, and I hadn't really intended to deconstruct them, so it was no major loss. I can't imagine using 3,500 Transmute Crystals to reconstruct Mythic items with the intention of deconstructing them later to get the Transmute Crystals back, only to discover that you've as good as simply DESTROYed them because you'll never be able to recover them. Hopefully we'll eventually be able to deconstruct reconstructed Mythics, so hang onto them, just in case.

https://help.elderscrollsonline.com/#en/answer/54425

That said, I agree there should be a warning in game. There’s enough info missing from the game that one could make a career of cataloguing it all.

I don't understand why this is a poll? Its currently "25 stones and a chance at one of the upgrade mats you used to make it higher quality if you did so" AND "25 stones unless it's a mythic item, those can't be deconned".

I wish mythic items were deconnable. I've had to reconstruct mythics at raid lead request just for them to now be unusable. I understand its a bit "cheese" to be able to deconstruct mythics since its always 25 but as others have said, there was no warning. I've seen multiple posts now about losing a lot of transmute to reconstructing mythics unknowingly essentially deleting their transmute.

I always forget you get the transmutes back when deconning, and I am always at the cap so I lose those 25.