Wow, mALX! It sounds like Misa has a fabulous collection!

Writs are awesome to support crafting, but I doubt you could make enough to routinely buy CP 160 gear from the public guild stores. The guilds I’m in are PvE focused and rarely bid for a vendor. These guys are mostly getting the bind-on-pickup gear that you can only swap while you’re in the same instance. The bind-on-equip stuff they sell is priced low as a favor to members who are still collecting those sets and have not gotten on a Trials team yet (like me, lol).

Jerric’s financial priority was of course the horses, and then crafting. That works great in his adventure-focused life. His buying and selling is mostly just to swap out duplicates of what he finds in the world for pieces he hasn’t gotten yet, but for a long time he was shopping for Nirnhoned gear to research. Not any more, woo!

Stays-Up-Late has reached 50 in five of his crafting skills, but Enchanting is still in the 20s. This is fine because Darnand is not going to let go of that craft. When the next update hits, Stays will take over Alchemy for Lildereth. Jerric wants to keep cooking for everyone, which is not a surprise. Stays has taken over all deconstructing for the group (meaning he has the perks to get the most materials back). Maybe someday he will take over the tempering and free up a few more points for the adventurers. I can’t even guess how long it will take him to catch up with his trait research!

Umm, a lot of this stuff is over my head.

Right now I'm campaigning two characters, struggling for inventory and bank space with both, and considering a Banking Assistant from the Crown Store to help with that while both characters are out in the countryside.

Julian loves adventuring. She is Level 17 (I think) and considering taking on Daedra outside Koeglin Village in Stormhaven before moving on to Alcaire Castle. Thanks to the Death's Wind armor that mALX gifted her, she is much more confident now. And her Siphoning skills are quite strong now. Most of her points have been sunk in her magic thus far. I shall have to remember to put a few towards Medium Armor and Provisioning if she is going to cook for everyone.

Mazul loves blacksmithing (surprise, surprise), woodworking and clothiering not so much but she will do it for the gold.

What we don't understand is quite a lot, actually.

Writs and surveys? Just what are those? Mazul has a Woodworking Survey and Blacksmithing Survey for Glenumbra, which she hasn't looked at yet. She has done three writs (if those jobs you pull off the notice board are writs), one each of blacksmithing, clothiering and woodworking. She certainly has enough iron, jute and rawhide to keep taking them. Our biggest problem right now are the racial material (Manganese, flint, etc) we need to make them. That's harder to find, especially those she already knows (we were excited last night when Mazul found a Nord crafting book - she can now craft Orc, Argonian and Nord stuff - Julian has Redguard, Khajiit and Argonian racial motifs).

I'm trying to understand how to bring up Mazul's skills so that Julian, who is finding High Iron (I suspect that's for steel) and Hide scraps in Stormhaven can collect them and send them back.

And somewhere someone mentioned mats? Materials? Material skills? Not doing writs until crafting skills were maxed out?

I'm trying to make sense out of all this so Mazul and Julian can continue their separate adventures together (if that makes sense) and to identify opportunities for new characters (I'm thinking alchemy and maybe enchanting would be next, for a mage character).

I'm also learning about guild stores. Just the other day, Mazul figured out how to buy something from a guild store. If we could sell stuff through one of those things, it would be cool, but not if we have to be concerned with meeting quotas. At this point, we haven't settled into a routine. I suspect Julian wants to complete the Covenant quest line before settling down to a support role, and Mazul isn't confident enough yet to sell through the Guild stores. So we're selling to ESO merchants, deconstructing, and researching the loot we pick up. It's slow, but we now have 2,000 in the bank. And how does one sell through the Guild stores, anyway? mALX mentioned something about invites?

Anyway, I have lots more questions, but now I've got to go. Thanks for all the info, even though some of it is still confusing to me (first MMO and all that).

First off - I really wouldn't buy the bank assistant unless you think it's absolutely worth it. You'd be better off spending your money on straight up inventory space upgrades (Which can be done in the crown store and with in-game gold).

Writs are the little craft jobs that you pull from the boards. They reward you with crafting experience, materials (mats), and the occasional item. The higher your crafting skills, the better the rewards from writs.

Surveys are maps that lead to areas with a high concentration of raw materials.

Racial style material (Manganese, flint, etc) can be found in random containers, from deconstructing gear, and bought from crafting vendors.

You can buy stuff from any guild store, but you can only sell in a guild store if you're a member of that guild.


There's a lot to take in early in the game, but that's what we're here for

Rider, I second hazmick’s advice about the bank assistant. In a little more time the inventory crunch eases up a bit once you buy bag and bank space and train your riding skills. I would wait and see if you’d rather spend the Crowns on something else.

That said, I am a big fan of the Crafting Bag that comes with ESO Plus subscriptions as long as you are a subscriber. It is like cloud storage for crafting. When you harvest something it goes straight into the bag, which is shared among all of your characters like the bank. Then when you go to a crafting station the materials are available just like banked materials. Same thing when you deconstruct something.

I don’t know what someone meant by not doing writs until crafting skills are maxed. My characters do them from day 1 in part to help level up their crafting skills. Higher level characters get paid more for writs, maybe that’s what they meant?

One thing to note about survey maps, they must be in your character’s inventory when you go to the location for the plants, etc to appear (unless it’s different on PC, I only know the PS4 stuff). I know a person who printed out (seriously) copies of their various maps and then used the Destroy function to get rid of them in-game and clean up their inventory. When they discovered you need the map to get the items, they were upset!

For future reference when you find one, Treasure Maps work the same way. When you have the map in your character’s inventory a “dirt mound” will appear at the site. You will get a prompt telling you to dig. Just click it, and you will find the buried treasure. Just like the survey maps, no one else who randomly happens to be in the area can harvest your surveys or get your treasure map chest. The goods only appear to the person who has the map in their inventory.

For the player guilds someone has to invite you to join the guild, but it is easy to get invitations just by looking on the ESO forums. It is harder to choose a guild that won’t waste your time, but thankfully easy to just quit if you join one that turns out to be a ship of fools. I’ve had the best experience with guilds when Jerric has gotten surprise invites after being awesome to some stranger in a dungeon. The huge PS4 North America server trade guilds often have their own websites, but you PC folks may have better ways of communicating that I don’t know about. Unless someone you know invites you, this is something that can definitely wait until you want to spend the time looking into it, since you are using what you find to develop your own crafting.

This is the first MMO for me, too. I was confused as heck for a while and then things all of a sudden started to make sense. Sometimes the game will give you context for something you halfway learned but didn’t understand before. Just keep playing, and keep asking because we love to talk about this game!

A collection so huge she needs four "Alts" and a 200 slot bank plus 3 characters and a bank on my son's abandoned account to hold it all, I'm about to go through it all and sell off or grind up anything she will never use (like battle axes that are a part of a set, etc.)

You are right, I was thrilled at how much income the writs brought in, but it couldn't keep up with Misa's shopping addiction ... er, issues ... I mean; in her defense, no other game we've played ever had this great of loot in their stores,

But even after she joined the five guilds, she still kept doing the crafting writs. To me they were a lot of fun and a great secondary income - not to mention how fast and steadily they build your skills up! She is just at or under 50 in Woodworking; Blacksmithing, and Clothier from doing nothing but writs and deconstruction.

Your sleepless Argonian should have a friend (cough, cough...Darnand...cough) help him raise his enchanting levels. The girl from Australia that I play with helped Misa go from 20 to 50 in under an hour. Intense training? - no, "In tents training!" BWAAHAA!!!!

Now Misa can train up any new characters I start (at least I think she can, not sure if someone from the same account can or not).






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This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 13 2016, 06:25 PM

Agree 100% with Grits here, Haute. Misa has been doing three writs a day since Grits told us about them. Not only does it provide an income to expand your bank space and character's inventories; but it cranks your skill levels up by 1000 per writ. You can do one writ per day in each discipline and they only actually take minutes a day if you keep the materials in your bank account.

Now I personally don't advise raising your "Materials" skill levels in crafting armor and weapons until you feel confident enough in exploring your next area/territory of the Covenant; because raising that materials stat means you have to go to the next Province area to farm mats (materials) for your writs & surveys; and also turn them in at other Provinces - places that may be over your head for a while combat/enemy-wise.

I told Acadian the same thing when he and Buffy started out - do writs in the skills you want to train up; but only raise the materials levels when you have pretty well explored the next territory of your Alliance and feel comfortable in it so you are not stuck battling enemies over your level (or unable to do writs for periods due to not being able to go to the next Province yet).

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The inventory problem you may be having is what a lot of people used to single-player games experience (me included) - In Oblivion/Skyrim/etc - we saved every quest reward as a memento; every bit of clothing we thought was "cute." We kept vast amounts of ingredients; and even collected things "just for fun" like teddy bears and garden gnomes, etc.

Well, it takes a while to break that habit. Your space is going to be limited in this game. You have to learn to budget your inventory, or do what Hazmick suggested = get an ESO "Plus" membership. The crafting "Bag of Holding" gives you unlimited storage for any crafting raw materials. Then your bank account and character's inventory are freed up for armor and weapons.

If you aren't wanting the "Plus" membership then the next best solution is to create "Alts" like I did - characters each give you 60 slots initially; and you can raise that level via backpack upgrades or horse training (if you have the Imperial Edition they each get the free horse).

They sit in the bank (usually buck naked) with names like "Ima Alt 3.") You are allowed 8 characters, so there is plenty of extra space, right? You would think so, but I'll warn you from experience that they are just a temporary fix. You have the extra space so feel free to hang onto more junk; and next thing you know you are back having inventory problems with a bank full of naked Alts.

I still need to learn how to budget the space restrictions of this game, and I've got 4 Alts plus have been sending my most junky junk to my son's abandoned account !!!!!

Just realised that the Morihaus armour set only comes in heavy armour. Kind of annoying, since now the only way for Haa-Rei to get Minotaur style gear is to craft it. I don't even have any heavy armour wearing characters to give the Morihaus to, so I can either deconstruct it or sell it for a handful of gold.

I'm also starting to see more and more Dro M'athra style pages for sale for a reasonable price (less than 25k) so I'm hoping the Minotaur style follows the trend.

You can do what I did = just get two rings and one necklace of the Morihaus. That makes 3 pieces of it. Make the 4th piece your weapon; Morihaus has every weapon type. If you are on PC I will send you any I have found; I was just going to sell them anyway. The only two Morihaus weapons I wanted I had to buy from the Guild Store = the sword and the dagger.

The 5th piece could be your helmet; and you can opt to hide that.

Just a way to get around that; and it leaves the rest of your armor open for some medium set that rounds out your protection build.







This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 14 2016, 01:17 AM

I was mainly wanting the Morihaus stuff for the style rather than the bonuses (though they're pretty good).

I'm currently trying to get a full Briarheart set, then I'll craft some stuff from another set once I know which equipment slots I have free. The second set will either be Morkuldin or Eternal Hunt.

Well. . . if Buffy collected shoes in SkyBlivion, she seems to be collecting critters in ESO. So far she has a horse, clannfear, winged twilight, storm atronach, mudcrab, fennec fox, pixie, winged snake and a kitty. And she pretty much likes them all.

Heh, quite the collection already! So far Haa-Rei has a clannfear, a storm atronach, three guar, two horses, a bear, a dire wolf, an echalette, a lizard, a jackal, a dwemer spider and a scuttler.

Perhaps they should retire as adventurers and open an animal park?

Thanks for all the input regarding crafting and such.



This was exactly what I was referring to earlier. I couldn't find the earlier comment regarding this, so I couldn't figure out what that meant.

Now that Julian is in Stormhaven (and at level 17 so she's quite comfortable at this point), she is starting to see the next level stuff. And Mazul just picked up high iron ore, oak and flax from each of the crafting surveys she got.

So I'm still not clear on the "materials" levels. Do you mean holding off on crafting the next level up (I imagine that would be Steel, Hide and Oak equipment and armor) until Mazul is Level 15 or 16? She probably won't move on to Stormhaven until she is higher than that.

As for pets and mounts, Mazul hasn't found anything she wants to ride (unless it's that handsome Orc she met back in Betnikh . . . ), and she is unimpressed by Murphy the Windhelm Hound. She is taking Spangles the Abacean Ratter cat out. In the meantime, Julian has Bezo the Northern Lynx while they are exploring Stormhaven.

Uh oh, someone is throwing magic around in Daggerfall, so I'm going to go and make sure Mazul doesn't bash any silly heads . . .

I don't know how or why, but we suddenly somehow accumulated a Jackel last week! It was just suddenly there! Britta and Calia both immediately took it as a follower; but Bubba and Misa didn't want a pet alerting anyone to their sneaky activities, lol.

In your crafting skills line, the first option you can sink skill points into is the leveled materials. Well, while your characters are still in Glenumbra and before they have finished up there = if you use skill points and raise that materials level up; all your subsequent Writs and Surveys after raising it will send you to Stormhaven (etc) either before your character is ready to go there or before the Daggerfall questline sends them there. So you may be stuck unable to do Surveys or Writs for a while till you can enter the next Province (or render you unabie to gather the mats due to the more powerful enemies in the new areas).

("One Tamriel" will make this conversation moot point anyway, but until it does = try to keep your materials level skill in tune with your character's abilities and progress).

(and of course, this is just my opinion).

You get the Jackal the first time you visit the Goal Coast, similar to the Echalette which is received upon visiting Orsinium (post-DB update)

Thanks! That helps a lot! Exactly what I was trying to understand. I will check it out next time I look at Mazul's crafting skills line. I try to sink a point or two there every time she levels up. Once we had nine points! I had fun with those points!

Next question: This is about the writs - do you get paid more if you craft higher level goods? Or is it the same whether you craft Level 1 goods vs. Level 12 (Mazul leveled up again this morning after a bit of croc hunting)? I didn't look too closely when I dropped the stuff off, so I'm not sure . . .

Mazul has plenty of raw/refined materials to craft higher levels now. We're focusing on deconstruction and research of all the loot and quests rewards she gets, unless there's one of particular value to her (such as the flame greatsword).

I haven't ventured with Julian yet, but maybe tonight I will! Man, juggling two characters with work hours and sleep is getting to be a challenge!

Oh thanks! I wondered how we got it!






There is a difference; these pages gives the breakdown:




http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Blacksmithing



http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Clothier




http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Woodworking




http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Enchanting





http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Alchemy




http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Provisioning





This post has been edited by mALX: Sep 14 2016, 06:53 PM

It is the same. You get paid according to your character level, not your crafting level or rank in the skill. Jerric gets 664 gold for all of his writs even though he has different levels and ranks in different craft skills.

Sounds like Mazul is coming along very well! I enjoy crafting so much in this game.

I do too, it is so much fun; and it really adds so much to the RP of the game for me!

@Grits and @mALX: yes, crafting is too much fun. I fell in love with it in Skyrim and am totally enjoying it in ESO.

Julian loves the provisioning line. She might take a hint from TESIV Julian and start alchemy, but she has to return to Daggerfall for the writs at this time. She has to anyway, to use the bank.

I've taken a page from the lessons I learned playing The Long Dark and have become quite ruthless at deconstructing and researching items picked up during our quests. I do have a question, I think I already know the answer. Researching a trait is specific to the item used, right? In other words, researching well-fitted on a pair of greaves does not mean that the same trait is counted as researched on a cuirass, yes? I'd have to research a cuirass with well-fitted traits to be able to craft a similar item?

Thanks for the answers about the writs. I'll focus on leveling up my characters as they (especially Mazul) work on the writs.

Oh, and Mazul found the place in Glenumbria where you can make the Night's Silence set. That's got her thinking, and we did some research on what she would like to have in her own set. Because she finds magical opponents the hardest to fight, Mazul thinks having armor with Magic Resistance and Magic Boost built in would help her.

Julian also told her about a certain quest enemy that is conquered only with fire, so Mazul is thinking how she can craft something that burns brighter than Blake's Tyger.

I think I said this before, but I'll say this again. I'm falling in love with Mazul. Tough, gruff, and yet a softie. Not a gooey, baby-talking softie, but the kind of softie that lets Spangles the Abacean Ratter ride her shoulder as she slogs through the swamps of Hag Fen. She'll even stop and let the cat climb up her back (another reason she favors the heavy armor!) when there are crocs or werewolves around. And she'll not say no when a beggar asks for "a loan."