ESO Crafting Guide

This is a guide for those who want to learn more about crafting in ESO and how it can improve their game experience! WORK IN PROGRESS!

Introduction

This guide will cover all the basics of a crafting but eventually I would like to include some more high-end skills as well.

Crafting plays a much more prominent role in ESO than it does in other MMOs. In other games crafting is just pushed to the side and normally labelled a 'profession' or something like that, not in ESO! In ESO crafting is used throughout the game and is a good way for getting decent gear that is tailored for your needs (pun intended) and with the exception of a few dungeons/raid drops, crafting can be used to make some of the strongest gear in the game.

So in this guide I hope to help you understand the slightly daunting world of ESO crafting, and I will try to go through it in the most simple and logical way possible. I hope you enjoy the guide!

Armour Types

Before we get started on the actual process of crafting I think it is important to first understand how various armour types work in ESO. There are 3 types of armour: light, medium and heavy. The various armour types don't effect your movement speed/stamina depletion like in many other games, the main difference is that they provide you with different unlockable abilities.

Light Armour

Light armour has the lowest armour rating of the 3, the light armour skill tree mainly involves magicka regeneration and spell resistance, so these armours are used mainly by spell casting characters.

Medium Armour

Medium armour has a mid-range armour rating, the medium armour skill tree focuses on stamina regeneration, evasion and weapon damage, so medium armour is mainly used by damage dealers.

Heavy Armour

Heavy armour has the highest armour rating of the 3, the heavy armour skill treem mainly improves health recovery and damage mitigation, so heavy armour is recommended for tanks and other characters who plan on taking a lot of damage.

General Gameplay Tip: Have a mixture of armour types as you can level all 3 trees up which will give you more options at end-game.

Basics of Crafting - Ingredients

Before you can begin crafting you must first have the right ingredients, these vary depending on the armour type and your current level but all follow a similar pattern. All the ingredients needed to start crafting can be found as you wonder Tamriel, here is what you need to look for:

-Light armour, you need to harvest plants
-Medium armour, you need to kill certain creatures
-Heavy armour, you need to mine ore (look near mountain sides/rocky areas)

Once you have harvested 10 or more of one type of ingredient you can head to a crafting station and on the first menu refine them, you must have 10 or more, just drag them into the box at the bottom and then hit refine, and you will recieve 7-10 of a refined version of the input material. Once you have enough refined material (usually between 5 and 15 depending on the item) you can move onto the next step and begin to actually craft.

Basics of Crafting - Crafting

So now you are ready to craft! Where you go to craft depends on what you want to craft, this should help you:

Light/medium armour - clothing station
Heavy armour/weapons - blacksmithing station
Bows/staffs/shields - woodworking station

To craft just walk up to one of the above, found in most cities, and activate it by pressing 'E', a menu will appear, follow these next steps to do some crafting:

1) Firstly make sure that 'have items' is unchecked, so that you can see what you can craft. In
addition I like to have 'have knowledge' unchecked, but this is optional.
2) To start click the arrows on the left/right in the 'Type' section, until the item you want is shown
in the centre of the screen.
3) Then make sure in the 'Material' catagory the material you refined earlier is shown. The +/-
can be pressed to increase both the level and armour value of your item.
4) In 'Style' make sure your race's style is selected, and that you have purchased the required
material from a vendor.
5) If you have researched a trait (see below) and have the right item to add it to the item, then also select
the trait that you want.
6) Finially press 'R' to craft your item.

Basics of Crafting - Styles and Traits

By using various styles and traits you can customise you finial crafted product more finely.

Styles

Styles change the way your item looks once it is crafted. There is a style for every race and a few more besides. You will always start of with your race's style unlocked, the other styles can be learnt from tones, which can be found throughout the world or purchased from other players. Tones can be relativly cheap (racial tones) to very expensive (eg: dwarven).

Once you have a style unlocked you need to buy the material to craft that style, these can be bought from a vendor (although I'm not sure about some of the rarer styles).

Traits

There are many traits in ESO. The basic idea behind traits is that they add a certain quality to the item you craft, granting additional effects.

Basics of Crafting - Dyes

Although not really a core aspect of crafting, dyes can add a lot to an armour set and really do a good job of making it look epic.

Dyes are earnt by completing achievements throughout ESO. To use you dyes just visit a dying station (not found in all cities):

[Revalopod]

a good thing to do is to a have a separate character PURELY for crafting, and you put ALL the skill points into crafting skills, and then with your main character, put materials in a bank, and use you crafting character to craft the stuff and they have added bonus

[Peace and Harmony]

thanks,this help me a lot!

[LadySarii]

Thanks :)

[Durandus]

Awesome, Any good methods on how to level blacksmithing without the help of a nice friend or multiple chars?

[Pie Ro]

To my knowledge there are already quite a few good tutorials, I made this mainly as a more in-depth guide. I would recommmend this guy though for both eso tutorials and funny general gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/user/KevduitGames

[rahdintimelord]

good I thought, any video tutorials?