When Does Crafting Become Worth It?

RylukShouja · May 2014

My first character used mostly dropped gear because my dedicated crafter didn't have enough skill points. My second character will use only set gear (unless I happen upon a really nice world set) because I now have points in extraction (3/3) and hirelings (3/3) across woodworking, clothing, and blacksmithing. It makes it a lot easier to gain tempers that way. That being said, I likely will not use much blue gear, at least not yet.

As far as dedicated crafters being gimped, my level 37 crafter has had little trouble with 11 skill points in combat-related abilities (5 skills, 1 ultimate, 5 passives, no morphs). He's a heavy armor 2h dragon knight, and with the abilities I have I basically have enough survivability for anything I have so far come across, aside from public dungeons (I need help with those). So gimped...yes, but not unbearably so.

Master_Liu · May 2014

I was wondering about this myself, I went into Reaper's March with gear drops, made just about one or two items because I out leveled the pieces I was wearing.

When I hit 44, I was noticing that I out leveled my gear about 2/3 - 10 levels again. I was practically holding on to alot of gear drops either to research or thinking of my alts which the next highest one is a level 18 NB. Realizing that once I get this main toon/healer leveled up there would be no point in holding on to anything really. Just to deconstruct what I get and craft out what I need for the alts.

Seeing Sendarya's post made me think, hmmm maybe I'm doing this wrong. I've mostly been focusing on Light Armor traits, Woodworking, and Enchanting (being the pain that it is, I'm 14, almost 15). But from time to time I research the traits for Blacksmithing, I figured that I would be able to craft out what I need for alts, not to mention the traits so that my alts could research them aswell.

I crafted out some things at 44 and am still using them, but I did not upgrade them, I was looking into what I want as far as Set bonuses , so now I'm 47 Sorc/healer and got the quest for "Message across Tamerial" for Coldharbour. And I just got my vampirism.

I mean, I'll take suggestions, PM or ingame @masteryoda028

Halrloprillalar · May 2014

Crafting ARMOR <50 used to only be nice so you don't have to spend lots of gold repairing your stuff. And to make new weapons if you couldn't find an upgrade.

After 50 (VR1-10), if you have actually been leveling your crafting and researching traits, crafted set bonuses and traits (as well as ability to make everything blue/purple much more easily due to reduced improvement mat requirements) are incredibly strong. see http://tamrieljournal.com/crafted-item-sets-eso/ for more info.

Even if you don't like the crafted set bonuses, you can buy/find the dropped set green pieces of the kind you like and upgrade them to blue/purple.

Enchanting is essential if you wanna min max your charcter, especially jewelry and weapon glyphs.

Alchemy is excellent for making all-in-one potions (hp/mag/st) and specialty potions (armor/sp/scrit/crit/wdmg).

Provisioning is a joke to level atm, and lets you basically always have a massive hp+other stat buff (blue recipes are not that rare... but mats can be), or softcap your regens.

ArRashid · May 2014

I believe you guys just thaw dozen stacks of materials a day bought from your slaves or botters and so you think it's normal..

by normal exping, I have (now) about:

50-90 green ones (mostly quest gear)
5-10 blue ones (almost none since the the Delve boss nerfs)
10-20 purple ones (since I don't use them to craft bellow VR)
1-4 yellow ones (since I get like 1 per week from resources or hirelings)

per profession.

Faustes · May 2014

I didn't mean to imply crafting is useless.

My main point that it is feels simply unnecessary in the lower level zones. I've been able to breeze through them with only quest items and drops.

The question is: does this remain true in the VR content (ignoring endgame, where I know I'll be crafting for max stats)

psychoman88ub17_ESO · May 2014

at the start of the game

huntgod_ESO · May 2014

If you are not wanting to spend 150-200k gold for your legendary gear, then yes it is worth working on as you level up.

If you learn training for the gear you use, you will max your primary armor and weapons in your 30's and be able to branch out to level up other wpn and armors before 50.

If you have a glut of items to be researched...research them on alts - each alt can research 1 item from each profession every 6 hours, it frees up your inventory and then when you are rdy to research it, they create a level 1 item with the trait for your main to research. Voila!