I don't know how feasible - or even desirable - this would be from the publisher's perspective (I know sweet **** all about monetization of GaaS) but from a player perspective, personally I would still subscribe to ESO+ for the other benefits if the craft bag was made part of the base game.

Maybe now that they are 'experimenting' with new monetization methods is worth considering?

The crafting bag is not worth the ESO+ fee. I am managing just fine without it, after dumping ESO+ in favour of the Content Pass. We began playing the game without such a thing many, many years ago, and we can play it today without it too.

cyberjanet wrote: »

The crafting bag is not worth the ESO+ fee. I am managing just fine without it, after dumping ESO+ in favour of the Content Pass. We began playing the game without such a thing many, many years ago, and we can play it today without it too.

In time before ESO+ there were much less crafting materials.

Between free ESO+ (as buying ESO+ is not available for me) I store some materials in alt inventories. My style mats keeper has now 113 slots occupied with them... and that's even not all!

They could at the very least make a Craft Bag Lite or something. Make it only able to hold up to, say, 100 unique items and in stacks of 200 like normal. That way at least people who can't or won't sub don't have to suffer the inventory management minigame AS much as they do currently.

The game has had hundreds and hundreds of new items added but not a single bank/inventory expansion beyond a couple of Pets that are locked behind buying and only give you five more slots per character. ZOS NEEDS to do something about inventory that ISN'T tied to Plus like the Craft Bag and Furniture Vault are. Inventory space shouldn't be locked behind payments.

And I say all this as someone who pretty much needs Plus to function not just for the Craft Bag, but also the double bank space and the double Furnishing slots. Both help greatly in dealing with inventory issues.

(And as an RPer I hate not being able to Dye Costumes so there's that, though it's not an essential thing like stuff that helps with inventory is.)

ApoAlaia wrote: »

I don't know how feasible - or even desirable - this would be from the publisher's perspective (I know sweet **** all about monetization of GaaS) but from a player perspective, personally I would still subscribe to ESO+ for the other benefits if the craft bag was made part of the base game.

Maybe now that they are 'experimenting' with new monetization methods is worth considering?

I subbed continuously for nearly a decade. But I doubt I ever will again for any reason. At this point I think it would be "throwing good money after bad" or whatever that saying is. ZOS already got more than it's earned out of me.

MreeBiPolar wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

They could at the very least make a Craft Bag Lite or something. Make it only able to hold up to, say, 100 unique items and in stacks of 200 like normal. That way at least people who can't or won't sub don't have to suffer the inventory management minigame AS much as they do currently.

That'd not help a lot (an extra character can hold more) but would be a hell to code though. Just imagine all the additional necessary interactions for crafting when you have stuff in multiple places, then on top of that, someone who gets or ends their ESO+ while having this bag.

We have character limits though, and not everyone has the means of buying a new character just to use as a mule. Which the fact that people have to do that in itself points to how much of an issue inventory stuff is.

On your point about what to do with mats if someone goes from Plus to unsubbed, that I think would be easy to handle. If a person drops or has a lapse in their sub, it's no different than having mats in multiple locations in character inventories. The extra space would essentially be the inventory of a mule without the character itself. And if/when a person got their sub back, just like character inventories, the Craft Bag Lite would empty into the main Craft Bag.

I do agree that it would probably take effort to code, but then again so would ANY solution to dealing with inventory management.

PoveusRonin wrote: »

That's why I said I wish they could find something to tempt players into ESO+ besides the craft bag.

and then there would be a gazillion posts on the forums about why -that- thing should be free

PoveusRonin wrote: »

I've played several games that has the free to play with a subscription push. I have to say, this game is one of the few that really makes it hard for me to play without subscribing.

The crafting bag is almost essential for my play style as I am a hoarder and honestly, even after almost a year of playing, I still don't know which crafting stuff I really need to hang on to versus able to sell. I start playing without ESO+ and within a few hours I have to stop to start juggling the items into bank, storage, or alts and the game quickly loses the fun and I end up logging out.

I really wish they could find another way to tempt players into ESO+ and put the craft bag into base game.

Do you do daily crafting writs? If so, do all characters have the same number of skill points invested for materials? If you're doing master crafting (level 50, 10/10 invested) then you only need to keep the highest level materials. If you do dailies on some but only at 1/10 invested, then you'll need those as well but not the intermediate ones. That'll save a ton of room right there. I'm currently levelling up some of the others, so I'm storing relevant mat types on those for the daily writs rather than leaving them in the bank. Again, they only have the ones they can use, so it doesn't take up too much room.

Do you craft consumables? If so, which ones? You'll need a broader subset of ingredients, plants, and solvents if you're doing daily/master writs, but you still won't need all of them. If you only make a small subset of food/drink/potion, then obviously you only need those ingredients.

The biggest space consumer is probably the style mats, since that pool keeps getting bigger with each new style released. But even there you can limit what you need by not learning every racial style that comes your way. Or, you can just keep them on the character that does any master crafting gear writs. If you haven't learned particular styles yet but know enough to get Master Crafting writs from the dailies already, it may not worth storing those ones - if you get a writ requiring that style, you could always trade it for one you can do.

I see these threads but you know it's not going to happen. Without the craft bag, so many people drop the sub. Especially now that ESO plus won't get you all the dungeons and dlc. They've devalued it so much that the craft bag is all they got.

In this new battle pass era, they're not doing great. In a last ditch effort, they did the fallout 76. All content is now free. They took away chapters. With all that predictable revenue gone, do you really think they will risk subscribers? I get it. It feels bad to not have it. I always sub if I'm playing an mmo. Right now I'm subbed to ESO plus and fallout 76's sub for the same exact thing. Unlimited storage of stuff.
What they should do to add benefit is to make more unlimited bags. An armor and weapons bag would be nice. Something to make ESO plus more value for money.

LootAllTheStuff wrote: »

PoveusRonin wrote: »

I've played several games that has the free to play with a subscription push. I have to say, this game is one of the few that really makes it hard for me to play without subscribing.

The crafting bag is almost essential for my play style as I am a hoarder and honestly, even after almost a year of playing, I still don't know which crafting stuff I really need to hang on to versus able to sell. I start playing without ESO+ and within a few hours I have to stop to start juggling the items into bank, storage, or alts and the game quickly loses the fun and I end up logging out.

I really wish they could find another way to tempt players into ESO+ and put the craft bag into base game.

Do you do daily crafting writs? If so, do all characters have the same number of skill points invested for materials? If you're doing master crafting (level 50, 10/10 invested) then you only need to keep the highest level materials. If you do dailies on some but only at 1/10 invested, then you'll need those as well but not the intermediate ones. That'll save a ton of room right there. I'm currently levelling up some of the others, so I'm storing relevant mat types on those for the daily writs rather than leaving them in the bank. Again, they only have the ones they can use, so it doesn't take up too much room.

Do you craft consumables? If so, which ones? You'll need a broader subset of ingredients, plants, and solvents if you're doing daily/master writs, but you still won't need all of them. If you only make a small subset of food/drink/potion, then obviously you only need those ingredients.

The biggest space consumer is probably the style mats, since that pool keeps getting bigger with each new style released. But even there you can limit what you need by not learning every racial style that comes your way. Or, you can just keep them on the character that does any master crafting gear writs. If you haven't learned particular styles yet but know enough to get Master Crafting writs from the dailies already, it may not worth storing those ones - if you get a writ requiring that style, you could always trade it for one you can do.

I have a couple of my characters maxed out in crafting but the rest I have at various levels. I did learn to move most of their points back out so they are all using the same tier overall. On my provisioning, I have been bringing them all up slowly to get the recipes from the daily. I went so fast with my main, I noticed I had missed a lot of the potential drops so I'm bringing them up slowly so I get more recipes unlocked.

I do like to keep a small supply of materials for the lower ranks for making gear sets for my alts to level up with. That will be something that goes away once I have full sets for each level rank I want to have.

I have so many of the potions from daily rewards, that I've not had to make many of those as yet.

I started playing the game about ten years ago and didn’t have ESO+ for probably a year or two. You can do daily crafting writs with just one set of rank mats and one style mat. It takes time to increase your inventory but if you are crafting you are constantly deconning or researching traits that the excess inventory gets taken care of anyway. If not crafting then you can sell all items except what you might need for upgrading your character’s gear.

I couldn’t do it now because many characters have multiple sets of gear for different activities and/or multiple types of siege in their inventory, but by now they have more inventory space and more bank space. The craft bag is mostly good now for keeping all types of mats that can be used for master writs and such, and for housing, both something you can’t really do as a new character until you level up crafting, which takes a while.

After reading the comments about the craft bag, I still feel it's essential. I understand why some people want it free. But ESO is a live service game. Servers, updates and support require ongoing revenue. The craft bag is part of that model. If core systems were free, the platform wouldn't be sustainable. We can debate pricing - but the game has to make money to exist.

3/2/2026

Orbital78 wrote: »

With all the skill styles, houses, companions, etc being bought in the store, ZoS has bragged about how much they bring in. Microsoft wouldn't have bought them if they weren't.

The craft bag is the number one reason they're bringing in what they do. What kind of attrition do you think they'd see in plus subscriptions if the craft bag were free? 30%, 40%, 50%? I don't think that's out of the question.

Suppose they have 50k subscribers across all their platforms (a bit conservative I believe but let's try it), do you think they're prepared to decrease their monthly revenue by $200,000 or more? And these that might drop plus if the bag were free? If that's the only reason they were subbing then they're not as likely to take that money saved and spend it on crown packs either.