In this guide, we’ll dive into the tips for upgrading your Crafting Skill Lines in Elder Scrolls Online. There’s no better time to dive into it than during Zeal of Zenithar! Get ready to master Crafting Skill and really reap the 100% Inspiration boost for your new crafting character!
Take Advantage Of Loadouts
Each character starts out with 2 free empty loadouts at Armory Station, take advantage of this extra gear and either have a loadout dedicated to crafting or leave one empty so you can change to a blank build for free.
Leaving an empty loadout can be a big help when you're short on Skill Points early on, so you can fully upgrade one craft at a time and re-target your points as needed to help you save a lot on ESO Gold costs.
Skill Points provided in the late game are enough to easily unlock everything eventually, so you don’t need to split up your crafts with multiple characters. In fact, if you plan on collecting Motif books and completing Master Writs, it can be more beneficial to keep a dedicated crafting character.
Boost Your Inspiration
Inspiration refers to the experience gained from crafting. You can gain Inspiration by breaking things down, crafting items, researching traits on weapons and armor, discovering consumable traits, and completing Writs.
Zeal of Zenithar’s 100% Inspiration Boost will give you an immense advantage while it’s active. If you have any CP points available, be sure to put some into Inspiration Boost Passive to get up to another 30%.
On top of this, ESO Plus Members also include a 10% Inspiration Boost in their subscription, and characters who are Orcs will benefit from another 10% Inspiration Boost. Regular XP boosts don’t affect Inspiration, though.
Meticulous Disassembly
Another CP skill you can benefit from if you have the points is Meticulous Disassembly, which will generate more materials from all the gear you’ll be breaking down to upgrade.
ESO Plus Members will have an easier time crafting as they have bag space where they can store materials, but you can strategically use the bank and alternate character’s inventory to organize your crafting materials.
Upgrading Crafts
Now, let’s look at each craft and how to upgrade them!
Alchemy Upgrades
Alchemy is upgraded by crafting Potions and Poisons. The higher the rank of a crafted Potions, the more valuable it is, and this is the easiest tree to upgrade if you have enough materials. If you don’t have a craft bag, then you’ll need to spend more time farming Alchemy Reagents and Solvents, combining them in bulk until you reach the next rank of Solvent Proficiency Passive.
Once you’ve leveled up your skill, use the next level of Solvents and continue the process until you reach rank 50. Certain levels of Solvents are harder to find, so just keep using the highest level Solvents you have or can find.
Note that always use Reagents that are not used in any important Potions and Poisons to ensure you don’t waste Ingredients that you can sell or use later. It’s worth noting that crafting with 3 flowers gives the same XP bonus as 2 flowers, so don’t waste your materials!
If you plan to use your character as a primary crafter, take the time to learn traits while leveling, as characters that complete Daily Crafting Writs require limited trait knowledge.
Provisioning Upgrades
Upgrading Provisioning is second only to Alchemy in terms of difficulty and is very similar overall. You need Ingredients and Recipes to cook. At Guild Traders you can find Ingredients you need, and Chef and Brewer NPCs also sell basic Recipes.
When you reach the threshold to upgrade your Recipe Improvement Passive, its inventory will be updated to include level matched recipes, which are the recipes you need to complete Daily Writs, but you can also use them to upgrade Provisioning.
Upgrading your Recipe Improvement Passive as you level, and cooking the highest level of food, will give you more Inspiration.
Enchanting Upgrades
The final consumable crafting discipline is Enchanting. This discipline takes much longer to level up than the other two, as Enchanting is primarily leveled by deconstructing glyphs.
If you have friends or guild mates who also want to level up this skill tree, you can trade crafted glyphs together to speed up the leveling process. Glyphs crafted by other players will give you extra Inspiration, and the higher the level, the higher the quality of the deconstructed glyphs, making your gains even better.
You can even find a crafter who will craft glyphs with your materials, or just get crafted glyphs from Guild Traders.
If you don’t want to find someone to craft with, you can always go to XP farms like Zombie Beach to get trash glyphs for deconstruction.
You can also learn rune traits by crafting glyphs, which will increase Inspiration Boost at higher levels, so learning traits can be helpful in the final stages of the upgrade tree. But like Alchemy, this isn’t necessary unless you plan on doing Master Writs.
Equipment Crafting Upgrades
The last 4 equipment crafts (Woodworking, Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Jewelry Crafting) all upgrade in a very similar way, mostly through deconstruction, with the fastest way to upgrade being breaking down equipment with the intricate trait.
White quality intricate gear increases Inspiration by 280% when deconstructed. You’ll find intricate gear regularly as you complete content, but you can also get it directly from Guild Traders, and you’ll also receive intricate pieces regularly in Daily Writs.
As with other crafts, crafting items and completing Writs also grants Inspiration, and you can even deconstruct equipment you pick up as you level up.
How To Improve The Efficiency Of Trait Research?
Unlike consumable crafts, you can also upgrade equipment crafts by completing Research. When you research a trait, you’re actually deconstructing the item to extract the trait.
Research cooldown timer is different for each item, however. The first time you research an item, it takes 6 hours to complete the trait unlock. The time doubles for each trait after that, with the 9th trait taking 64 days without any boost.
With ESO Plus, however, the research time is reduced by 10%. But more importantly, mastering the passive skills in each craft tree reduces the timer and allows for simultaneous research.
If you have all passive skills and up to 3 research timers at once, the 9th trait will only take 30 days. If you research 3 items and then remove the research passives, the clock will continue to run for all 3 items but will revert to the longer timer.
The first few traits will not be greatly affected by the time reduction, but over time the difference will become very noticeable.
Therefore, it is recommended that you research the traits that are important to you first so that you can get them early and quickly. Master crafters and players who want to make their own gear will eventually want all the traits, but if you just want to research traits for use in transmutation, it is not necessary.
Hireling Mail
As mentioned above, crafting materials are obtained through deconstruction, but you can also use Hireling Passive to receive mail containing materials. Note that Alchemy and Jewelry do not have a Hireling option, but the other 5 crafts do.
You will receive Hireling Mail every 24 hours after the daily reset, but you can only receive it if you are logged in. So, if you are offline for a few days, you will only receive 1 day’s worth of mail. If your mailbox is full, you will still receive automatically generated mail, but not mail from other players.
Mail will now expire after 6 days, though, so be sure to claim it if you let it pile up. You will only receive Hireling Mail if a character with a passive skill signs in for the first time that day. If you have no Skill Points, you will not receive the mail and will not be prompted until the next day.
Keen Eye Passive
Besides mail and deconstruction, you can also pick up materials generated throughout the world. Keen Eye Passive works for all crafts except Provisioning, and it will make them easier to spot by giving them a glowing effect. But you can find Provisioning materials in lootable barrels, sacks, and crates in the world.
Also, about half of the materials you pick up from Resource Nodes are based on your character level, and the other half are based on how many points you have in the top passive skill in the crafting trees, but the passive level does not affect these drops.
Final Tips
Finally, on exiting, make sure you have research traits enabled, and if you have enough points, enable Hireling Passive. When deconstructing items, make sure you use Deconstruction Passive.
After learning all about them, I found that Jewelry and Enchanting are the hardest disciplines to max out, but the more gold you are willing to spend, or the more time you spend farming, the faster you will upgrade. You just have to make sure to deconstruct items instead of selling them when you upgrade. Anyway, hopefully these tips will help your crafter level up faster. Good luck!
Advertisement
