how to spend Crafting Points efficiently

Hello, everyone. In this guide you will find advice and explanation on which and why to pick specific crafting perks at the beginning of your adventure. The aim of this guide is to invest the crafting points properly to use the power and utility they provide most efficiently. This is for a stressless vanilla experience, free of: cheats, mods, glitches, min-maxing, milking every 1% power, etc.

introduction

Out of the six perks: alchemy, enchanting, sleight of hand, handicraft, lockpicking, rhetoric; below i will list them in the order of importance, together with the explanation of why is there, based on my experience of multiple finished plays and full achievement completion (achieved thanks to the full achievements guides on Steam).

Note that since you start with 15 points, to max a perk (and not all perks are worth maxing) you need 22 levels, so in a full slow playthrough you may max at most 3 perks, but this will not matter so much as you reach endgame anyway so do not play thinking "i will max this as second or third".

The most optimal way is only picking one single perk to max, and start the second one that is not most efficient only when maxed.

content

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ENCHANTING

By far the most useful and powerful perk based on a ratio of work and dedication required for what it offers to any playstyle. You can further enhance this with basic potions that raise Enchanting.
You should further enhance this with Wise Enchanter from Memories of the Phasmalist tree, and with Arcane Interference from the Thaumaturge tree.
Use just Grand Soul Gem for your own enchants, and enchant your bis gear once you maxed the perk because before you max it you will find items in the world that are better.
Weaker soul gems use on whatever items you find like boots, gloves, or jewels, to use Sneak enchant because it's the most valuable to sell. As a general tip, only keep items on your travels to sell that have higher than 25 value per weight (you can find in the inventory a checkbox to see this easier).
An enchanted item has higher value to sell than separately the soul gem and the item unenchanted. Fill empty soul gems you find with the Soul Trap ability on the corresponding creature.
Maxed enchanting will give more power and money than any other crafting perk or items including sets.

LOCKPICKING

Many of the strongest and most valuable items are inside locked chests. Late game you will have lots of money with any perk, but early game is the most important and lockpicks will save you a lot of money and inventory space for Scrolls, and are easily found from bandits or shops. Upgrade this perk only up to 75 to be able to open Master Locks, any point above is useless, the extra pennies you may find are too few to have any worth in maxing this perk.
If you do not want to play a thief to make money from stealing in the city, you can sneak or move with invisibility in a high level area at a chest and take the valuable items there, then teleport back out or simply sneak away again.
You can ignore this perk completely if you play an archer, because Memories of the Trickster allow you to open higher lock containers with the points from the tree.

ALCHEMY

Healing potions together with Ambrosia are useful at any point in the game. Also enhancing effects for your abilities like Archery damage or spells cost reduction. Defence potions may be useful but your target will deal less damage to you if it dies faster rather than if it dies slowly but deals less damage to you. You can use both offensive an defensive potions anyway.
Specific potions like Damage mana regeneration or Fortify mana regeneration have a high value to sell. You can make thousands of pennies from potions after hoarding regeants over your travels and making the correct potions.
You can either discover the important effects, look up on the wiki, or get the Sensitive Tongue point in the Memories of the Vagrant tree.
This perk will not be used at its full potential unless you play a Werewolf, which can be a very strong style of combat if built specifically for it.

HANDICRAFT

This perk while useful, it's not as strong as it seems. Upgrading your weapons and armors is not as useful as Enchanting or Alchemy. Also, there is no point to craft or upgrade your gear since a few quests later you will find better items anyway. And in the late game where crafted items surpass what you find, you are already strong enough to fight anything. The extra power from upgraded items is not high even at maxed perk.
Even if you craft set items of higher tier than what can be found, their bonuses are much lower than a found item that you enchant with a specific bonus.
The highest unenchanted found set is Aeterna followed by Skaragg for light armor and Righteous Path followed by Starling for heavy armor. Whenever you find one of those, it's close to what a max Handicraft can make anyway, so one of those items enchanted are much stronger than whatever you can craft or upgrade.
If you want to upgrade your enchanted items just for that tiny bonus then you need to do that before enchanting them, or else you need the Memories of the Phasmalist tree for the Arcane Smith point which is also needed to upgrade by a little the set items, which in the end is not worth the hassle.

RHETORIC

The use of this perk is for merchants to have better prices, but pennies are not a problem at any point in the game so this is useless. Also when you are close to maxed perk you can barely start feeling any difference.
However for better immersion this perk is useful for conversations to avoid combat, open secret dialogues that lead to a different outcome, higher rewards and such. This is just a fun side effect that is not worth 22 levels of Crafting Points to invest.
You can ignore this perk completely especially if you play a rogue, because Memories of the Infiltrator allow these effects to go through with the Seducer point.

SLEIGHT OF HAND

While this perk sounds good, it's the worst out of all. If you really want to pickpocket then you can wear a jewel with Sleight of Hand, but usually there is nothing worth the risk in NPC inventories. Also it is capped at 90% so however much you invest in this perk there will always be a failure possibility.
Hidden Stashes in big chests are very low. Most of the time you find Small Stashes that contain 11 pennies and a Petty Soul Gem. Stashes (interpreted as medium) contain a low item like a dagger not even worth to carry to sell at a vendor. Big stashes are extremely rare even with maxed perk, and they don't contain game changer items to be worth.
Totally not worth 22 levels of Crafting Points to invest to only in the best case scenario to find a +1 Memory Point book or a helmet that raises Handicraft (which can't be used to learn the enchant).

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final notes

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This was a little guide with a view and some advices on the Crafting Perks of Enderal: Forgotten Stories.
Share your thoughts in the comments and i hope i helped you in your playstyle, and devs in future games development.
Why the alchemy icon on the guide and not the enchanting one? because i think the alchemy profession is the most balanced and fun. You have to work for it and the work pays off, and it's fun to make potions with all kinds of reagents you find and obtain.
Also alchemy is better than lockpicking, but learning the ingredients and potions, having them strong enough, and carrying all the stuff, will happen late enough in the game to not even need them that much anymore. Lockpicking helps you early game which is more important to start off, just if you don't play an Archer of course.

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[RunForRest]

Imo enchanting is a pain in the ass here. Way to tedious. No Black Star - always looking for souls and soul gems and until u get that high enchant level u r a fish in the water. Im level 26 and i cant do shit with summoned creatures and weapons. Focusing a damage-dealing path and THAN everthing seems to be a must here

[sergykid]

i see, i did not have problems with money in any of my playthroughs, with lockpicking for example you can open a chest in any cave and you will find an enchanted weapon that sells for thousands. Or use enchanting that with 100 pennies you enchant a simple ring or something and sell it for 500. I did try Rhetoric first (on my immersion play character) and then another character with zero Rhetoric, but saw no difference. I always even bought books in advance to have them with me on the field once i level up wherever i am.

[evanzfx]

Having played through Enderal start-to-finish four times now, good luck having any money to buy anything (especially enough books to level up your skills) with a low Rhetoric. Rhetoric is easily the most important crafting skills and you'll quickly find yourself underlevelled with an abundance of learning points because you can't afford the books.

[Kad]

thank you so much

[sergykid]

the wiki is the most probably the best source, just search on google enderal and the quest name. Or if a quest is really too complicated, you can also ask on the forums.

[Kad]

Where would I go for help with Quests please, many thanks

[Kad]

Thank you. I was expecting an "Enderal" game that the "Enderal: Forgotten Stories" would be an extra to... silly of me. many thanks for explanation

[sergykid]

yes there is the Enderal: Forgotten Stories game page on the store, just search it. As it says on their information on the store page, you require the TES V: Skyrim (no DLC required) in order to run the game. You will run Enderal normally from your library like any game, you don't have to have installed Skyrim, only to own it.

note that it's the basic Skyrim, not the Special Edition (i don't know if it works with the Special Edition, i have both)

[Kad]

ok so very new to Enderal - where do I get the 'base game' I thought forgotten stories was it ? appreciate your help thank you

[Tiberkhan]

Yeah i didn't want to spam the whole comment section since i find that a bad move. Thanks for taking the critisim/my opinion well. There are way to many people getting angry if someone disagrees.

In terms of alchemy, yes, unfortunately it does make the game a ton easier. IMO it's actually a bad thing, since a lot of people just go alchemy and enchanting (like in the base game) and voila, the same builds dominate again. Oh well. I still like enchanting and sleight of hand.