A thought for those of us that will be dedicated crafters.

I am not sure if this will work but I plan to test it this weekend.  Let me know if you agree with this plan or give ideas to make it better. 

When I begin I will create my 8 characters.  #1 reason for doing so is names will run out fast and a lot of the names I like to use are from books etc.  After I create my characters I plan to take 6 of them to level 4-5 (the other 2 will be my main fighters that I don't want to waste crafting skill points on initially.  Just enough to add the first skill points into crafting skills with the goal being getting 3 points in the Hirelings.  2 for Blacksmithing, 2 for Clothing and 2 for Woodworking.  This will equal

1 Smith Hireling with three skill points - will send you more ore and possibly better items twice a day=  for this example we will say a minimum 4 ore/items per day

I won't bother typing the same thing for the other smith hirling, the lumberjack hireling etc.  You get the idea

Multiply that by 6 characters and you are looking at Hirelings stocking your account regularly at 24+ items per day!

This could be time consuming initially but I think the reward would be worth the initial time sink. Especially for those of us that plan to craft for a living initially. 

If the guild likes this plan for the initial crafters to speed level and provide our folks with better gear faster,  we could have guild members volunteer to feed us the iron and weapons to break down etc.

Flaws in the plan that I see so far. 

To get a the Hireling skill you will need to level your craft to 3.  I am not sure how long this takes. I will be figuring that out this weekend.

It may not be worth the initial time sink.  You maybe be able to gather with 1 character just as fast

Your feedback is appreciated!

If you would like to join me this weekend I will be testing out this theory and would love to chat with people as I go.

That sounds like a pretty good idea to me. It doesn't take long at all to get a craft to level 3.

"If the guild likes this plan for the initial crafters to speed level and provide our folks with better gear faster,  we could have guild members volunteer to feed us the iron and weapons to break down etc."

When I read this part I thought of our guild marketplace (you can see it by clicking on the Marketplace icon at the top of the page). I am not sure if you are familiar yet with our marketplace system in the guild, you can look at the GW2 marketplace set up that we have in place, we will have something similar for ESO. You can order the materials you want there and guildies can then claim the order and gain contribution and family vault credits so that they can then use those points to order armor from the crafters. It is a pretty great system, well worth browsing to see how it works although the ESO section is not ready yet.

It is my understanding you can craft all craftlines with one toon. I would then assume you can have 3 points in hirelings for wood, blacksmith, clothing, enchanting.  sending 12 hirelings out twice a day on each toon. unless im not seeing something that would stop this. thoughts?

 Ronin

Ronin - the only negative to that is that takes away that many skill points that could be put in other skills.  But I suppose if you were super dedicated to crafting and weren't going to use those toons for anything else then that would work.

That is the plan eventually, the plan I proposed above is for right out the gate.  It would take a while to get each character to the hireling 3 stage in all 3 categories but I do plan to do that.  I only plan to have one crafter.  For lack of a better term I will have 5 mules feeding my crafter.  I will test it all out this weekend and have a much better idea to put an official plan in place at release.

I'll be crafting, but I'm going with two crafts on a toon along with points that will keep them worth fighting with.  There are several things you need to level in a craft in order to do higher level gear.  Blacksmithing, clothier and woodworking have 9 increments of what level you can make and what metals you can work with.  The cool thing is your crafting level will not have to match your game level the way it advances.  This is do to the end game levels of gear with their own raw materials that take up some of those levels.

Leveling isn't that bad though provisioning seems to be the fastest of them all.

We will want to work out making sure our crafters get items with various traits for them to learn, but we did some math on this already (not me even if I'm a math nerd) and each item to gain all 8 traits on it is going to take DAYS.  You can spend skill points in order to research more than one item at a time.  It is broken down to first one takes 6 hours, next is 12, next is one day, then two days,  etc.  So the first four traits on one item is going to take 3 days and eighteen hours and thats if you have the item and get it started right after the other ends.  You can spend skill points to shorten this as well.

So a lot goes into crafting in this game and no one can be an overnight success, but we sure can work so the guild has what feels like an overnight success if we work together and organize.  Know that I'll definitely be one of the guild's crafters and will probably go with blacksmithing and provisioning on my first toon because that will fit best with a templar.  I'm going to do clothier and enchanting on a nightblade more than likely with her leaning to the leather side of clothier first as far as trait research goes.

Two things:

1) I'm assuming that your "hirelings" will only send you crafting material appropriate to the level the toon is crafting at?  If so, then you will get a bunch of low level materials that will have limited value.  And even at higher levels I doubt you will get much/any(?) or the rarer materials  Is this true?

2) If you're a dedicated crafter, it would seem that "hirelings" would provide a stream of materials over time, but hardly at the level that would support a dedicated crafter.

General question:  If your crafter toon is busy "learning" a trait that can take many hours I've heard, does that mean they can't do anything else?  Or can they be out killing things while learning?

Yea you are right, the hirelings are only going to be sending you low level items if they are hired by a character that is going to stay low level with low level crafting skill in that particular craft. I didn't think of that, good call. 

Learning the trait, researching, goes on in the background once you set it going you can go off and carry on playing the game.

My plan is probably to do 2 crafts per character, but I plan to play 3 classes to max level eventually anyway, so they won't be just crafters.

My plan was to have six toons one craft for each.  Mainly because those Crafting trees are very point hungry and I would like to leave room for fun/necessary stuff like Alliance points.

So do we know this as fact?  I assumed hirelings sent items based on your crafting level not your character level.  But I haven't found evidence to say otherwise yet.  If that is the case then this whole idea would not be worth it. 

Vyse, It is based on that character's crafting level. If you are just taking the materials from the extra characters, they will not be leveling, but you will have successfully leveled one character faster. You certainly could have an impact on craft leveling over the short term, and you also can speed up research into traits by sharing the burden across multiple characters, but frankly I don't think this is a viable plan.

I do intend to level up multiple characters and do as good a job as I can leveling their crafting skills, but I think I would find this approach tedious.

Yeah good point.  Well I think over time to fill work orders for the guild etc this theory would work but it is definitely not a speed thing.

I appreciate the feed back folks.  looking forward to playing this weekend.

Here's something I posted elsewhere regarding crafting and bag space (crafting comes with LOTS of inventory/bank issues):

I've developed a management system for this, get 4 characters out of the Wailing Prison, and move them immediately to where they have bank access in their first faction zone. One character is smithing/woodworking/clothier (probably the first one I will level), one is provisioning, one is alchemy, and one is enchanting. Every bank trip will require character switching to optimize storage. I'll probably need to level each to about level 4/5 (i.e. get them to the second faction zone) so I have enough money to buy some inventory and bank upgrades before I focus just on my main. This will be tedious, but about the only way you'll effectively be able to pursue all the craft skills (if you want to) w/ the current storage limits and how expensive the upgrades get. I could add 2 characters and have one craft per character, but that actually gets more inefficient (after all who wants to try to track down more than one copy of each racial motif book?). I can really see why folks are quitting crafting.

You might want to note that I've got the 3 skills that will require Racial Motif Books on one character. The motifs are going to be premium items, especially early, and their drop rates these days seem pretty low. The prices these will draw will not be pretty (for buyers), so looking for more than one of each will be a negative and really slow your craft leveling in these 3 skills. If you put those three on the main character you will level first, and you actually go through the PvE content, you'll have more than enough skill points (there will be some times when you have short-term shortages of course).

From What the Devs have said... is that you can learn everything in this game because there are enough sky shards and quest line points to allow you to be able to learn all skills

Well... at least we'll know who to beg for crafted goodies :-P

So I did a lot of crafting this weekend and the method I mention above will not work.  Something that skills sites like www.esohead.com do not have in their calculators is the actual level requirements to add skills.  For example: Metalworking - you can add one point at Smithing level one.  You can not add another point until your smithing is level 5.  This is not factored in the current skill calculators so it skews things a little.

Keen eye ore is another one.  I really enjoyed this skill, especially at night.  However you can not upgrade it until your smithing level is at 9. 

All in all I found a really good strategy which I plan to share in a future post.  Crafting in this game is really well done and I like the way they have tiered it.  It will make it very difficult for most people to stick with it and hit the master levels.  For those who do, they will make a huge difference.

Sweet, I am definately a crafting junky so my Imperial Templar will go all the way with Blacksmithing, with some in provisioning if I can't find a Master Chef er Provisioner in Aussie PT

Nice, Vyse, can't wait to see what you've come up with.  I'm also wondeirng what to do with all the extra ingredients I pick up, where to put it, etc.

the only issues I see with dedicated crafters, is that you do have to level them to get the skill points for crafting.  You can run around and get skyshards to use for that purpose, however you would then have to be escorted to the skyshards because if you don't actually level the character directly, or haven't invested in some skills to fight with, you will have an uphill fight to get those skyshards that or alot of dieing.  Also, I don't see any means to transfer money from one character to another, which then means you will have to funnel in materials including the items for making specific racial items, and then either sell half the stuff you make or all of it, and rely on breaking down stuff for materials or your main leveling characters to funnel in every mat possible.   

That being the case, its alot of effort to not spend your skill points on one chracter towards crafting, to spend all your skill points on another for dedicated crafting.  

My plan is to create 3 characters at launch.  I don't want to many alts to be honest to start with, and I am going to give each of these 3 crafters 2 professions.   I will end up splitting up mats accordingly with the use of the account bank.  For skill points dedicated to crafting, well my solution is my main and alts will specifically use skill points from skyshards towards crafting, and the ones they get through leveling and directly from the few quests that give them, will be used towards combat skills and passives.   This way, to improve my crafting, it will be done through exploring and gathering, and skyshards are from exploration to begin with.   This might limit me a little by some skills as I get towards running dungeons, however I will be preplanning my skill choices, so I will not be wasting any skill points initially through unnesscariy weapons or armor lines that they will not be using.   I will be dedicating myself to crafting, however I do not see a need for a dedicated crafter since you can technically do all crafts on one character and will eventually get enough skill points for all the craftings.  That being said, I would rather limit my dedicated crafting on each character, and have them specialize, however I will dabble in what ever crafting i need on the character as needed especially as I might need to improve items that I get during gameplay.   

To transfer money from one character to another, you can deposit money into your bank and then withdraw it with another character. 

Technically, they said you could get all crafting skills of all crafts but you will be very limited in actual character and combat skills.  I think they purposefully made it so you wouldn't have enough skill points to be able to max out everything.

http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2014/03/10/ask-us-anything-crafting

At that link, they said: "you can advance in or even master every crafting profession we have—just keep in mind that skill points are limited. A skill point spent in crafting is one you didn’t spend on a combat skill that you might want on the battlefield, so make sure you consider your choices carefully."

Personally, I see a max of maybe two crafts per character.  And I don't see how we can advance craft alts without leveling them at the same time, if advancement in the crafting skills is gated by level. 

It looks like it will take at least 21 skill points to master one craft if I'm looking at the skill builder correctly.  So, I would think that a character would have to be taken to about that level in order to master a craft, taking into account that skyshards will be found along the way and some quests will grant some skillpoints but some of those will need to be used for character/combat skills to actually have enough combat skills to do enough damage to be able to progres through the content, etc. 

It looks like it will take at least 21 skill points to master one craft

Dex, I actually did the math on it (below), but it kind of depends on what you are trying to do. For example the research skills give you faster research times, but you don't have to invest skill points in them to research every item (it just depends on how much time you are willing to take to unlock every trait on every item). If you want to be able to make the best SWORDS, you can prioritize your research, and cover all of the traits much quicker than covering the entire Blacksmith item set -- that could save you 3 skill points = 9 sky shards.

Alchemy = 19
-------
Solvent Proficiency (1/7)
Keen Eye: Reagents (0/3)
Medicinal Use (0/3)
Chemistry (0/3)
Laboratory Use (0/1)
Snakeblood (0/3)
----------------
sub-total = 6+3+3+3+1+3 = 19

Blacksmithing = 23
-------------
Metalworking (1/9)
Keen Eye: Ore (0/3)
Miner Hireling (0/3)
Metal Extraction (0/3)
Metallurgy (0/3)
Temper Expertise (0/3)
----------------------
sub-total = 8+3+3+3+3+3 = 23

Clothing = 23
---------
Tailoring (1/9)
Keen Eye: Cloth (0/3)
Trapper Hireling (0/3)
Unraveling (0/3)
Stitching (0/3)
Tannin Expertise (0/3)
----------------------
sub-total = 8+3+3+3+3+3 = 23

Enchanting = 20
----------
Aspect Improvement (1/4)
Potency Improvement (1/9)
Keen Eye: Rune Stones (0/3)
Hireling (0/3)
Aspect Extraction (0/3)
-----------------------
sub-total = 3+8+3+3+3 =20

Provisioning = 22
------------
Recipe Quality (1/3)
Recipe Improvement (1/6)
Gourmand (0/3)
Connoisseur (0/3)
Chef (0/3)
Brewer (0/3)
Hireling (0/3)
---------------
sub-total = 2+5+3+3+3+3+3 = 22

Woodworking = 23
-----------
Woodworking (1/9)
Keen Eye: Wood (0/3)
Lumberjack Hireling (0/3)
Wood Extraction (0/3)
Carpentry (0/3)
Resin Expertise (0/3)
---------------------
sub-total = 8+3+3+3+3+3 = 23

I could be wrong but the way I see it if you want all crafting  of nearly everything on one toon.  you simply have to level that toon up basically normally til you get the 100 or so skill points.  then you respect your skill points. put them all into crafting an park the toon  in a work area. Your other toons  would become main gatherers.

The other thing to remember  is that there are items that can be crafted that immediately become bound to that toon.

One thing I really like about the game is if you are willing to put in the time and do all the quests, find all the skyshards, etc., you can pretty much do everything you want to do on a single toon.  The only reason to create new ones, aside from having mules, would be if you wanted to play a different class/race.  That's pretty cool and I absolutely love the level of customization that brings to the game.

I'm definitely going to be crafting as much as I can and I don't know if it's really going to be that big an issue of not being able to proceed through content.  If you use the terrain and strategize your blocks and attacks, you don't need your uber skill sets in order to adventure successfully - it just makes it faster and more efficient.

One of the pet peevs I have about the game is that if you are illustrious and utilize terrain, instead of being able to snipe with impunity from heights or areas that are very difficult to get to, the mobs basically bug and reset. :(  That being said, if you get yourself a good form of CC, you should be able to solo the majority of the PVE content even if you dump the majority of your skills into the crafting lines.

Something else that might be interesting, is creating alts to use for making gold.  A high enough hireling skill should result in a fair amount of free daily mats that could be sold to vendors or others.  If you had all your alts doing that, it might equate to a nice income over time?  Theoretically, of course.

FYI regarding hirelings - Mail will not pile up from them when you're not online.  You have to log into each character to get their hireling mail for the day.  Essentially, you log in and it will check and see if it's been at least 24 hours since your last hireling delivery.  If so, you'll get a package from your hireling.  They only send one in response to you logging in to that character.  Mail is shared account-wide, so you could log into each character briefly to trigger it, then go onto a final character to open everything up with him.

I just wanted to clarify and differentiate between what hirelings will and won't do.  Personally, I think the materials and time spent leveling alts in their level and tradeskills just to load them up with hirelings and having to log into them regularly to trigger the mails... it's just not worth it from a time or resource standpoint IMHO.

I think in the long run, it would be something that would become worth it.  A bit of time spent leveling in order to get a decent hireling element going on a host of toons and then all you have to do is log into each prior to logging into your main could prove fairly lucrative in the long run.  Short term though, yeah, I'd have to agree with you on the amount of time and resources it would require.

Once they were leveled and the hireling skill added, you could sit back and let reap the benefits of a residual income.

I never tried the hireling since that seemed pointless given the beta tests were generally 2-3 days max, so I'm curious as to what types of mats are actually supplied by them and of course whether or not alot of the crafting mats that currently sell for 0g would have any value to vendors come launch.

Grymjack -"1) I'm assuming that your "hirelings" will only send you crafting material appropriate to the level the toon is crafting at?  If so, then you will get a bunch of low level materials that will have limited value.  And even at higher levels I doubt you will get much/any(?) or the rarer materials  Is this true?"

I only have experience with Woodworker, Clothier and Blacksmith (which mechanically all seem pretty identical), but from what I've seen, the only materials related to the level of the crafter have been the harvestable base materials (eg. wood, ore, cloth and leather), which (as you suspect) a hireling is unlikely to provide in enough abundance to offer any sustenance to a crafter.

All other crafting materials like the stones used to give a crafted item its racial appearance, the stones used to give an item a specific trait, and the unique materials used to upgrade the quality of a crafted item (green, blue, yellow, purple) seem to be level free, and are probably the materials you really want your hirelings for.

In fact, I imagine this is probably how all the bots in this game will operate - one account, multiple characters, multiple hirelings, and each character just has to be logged on briefly each day to receive a mail delivery. Mobs in this game are probably too tough and too random (as are the harvesting nodes) for a bot to navigate successfully.

Nice vid from the peeps at Tamriel Foundry about crafting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtEnAKmnlpE clears up some things I read above.

He mentions 300 skillpoints total available in-game and 134 required to master all crafts; that leaves us with 164 skill points on everything else. After playing around with a skill calculator maxing passives and morphing skills in all lines i'm interested in, that's plenty enough for me and ATM I don't plan on mastering all crafts.

What I plan to do is level my first character to Vet Rank 1 quickly, getting every skill point I can along the way focusing primarily on PvE combat with some initial crafting essentials.  Then I'll get all the skyshards available after you get VR1 and access to Daggerfall lands.  That should get me somewhere in the ballpark of 140-170 skill points.  I will then respec to master all 6 crafting disciplines and retain some basic essential defensive skills to assist with making runs out to set crafting stations.

I am planning my main with the Clothing crafting skills (medium armor specialisation).  If someone who is thinking about specialising in Light armor would like to buddy up with me, I can send you all my Light armor drops and collected Jute, you send me all your medium armor drops and hide?  Just drop me a note in-game (@doklar) or PM me here... or talk to me in RC, whatever works for you :)

You get more Inspiration (crafting xp) for breaking items down than you do for creating items, but _far_ more for breaking down world drops and items crafted by another player than for items crafted by yourself.  Therefore, I can make light armor and send it to my buddy, s/he makes medium armor and sends it to me, we both break it down for the mats and both of us gain maximum crafting xp benefits.  It's a win-win situation!

Crafting has been something I've always enjoyed and this system looks much better than WoW's is. I'm looking forward to starting asap. Trying to read up on all your suggestions, as I've only played a few weekends at the last of the beta invites. I'm an alta-holic and love moving between different classes of toons, but it's not always a good idea, still, it sounds like from what Landrix says, having 3 toons each with 2 professions, you could master craft and fighting. I'm looking forward to joining you all and absolutely love crafting and exploring etc.

@Dok

If someone who is thinking about specialising in Light armor would like to buddy up with me, I can send you all my Light armor drops and collected Jute, you send me all your medium armor drops and hide?

Light and medium armors are the same as far as crafting goes, so when you gain experience, it is applied to both.   Cloth items seem to be more plentiful, so even if you plan on wearing only medium armor, you can skill up by constructing/deconstructing light cloth armor.

Questions:

• I assume that with provisioning that the only way that you gain experience is actually cooking.  There is no equivalent of deconstruction with that craft?
• I assume once you "learn" a provisioning recipe, you know it forever? Provisioning seems to be a very finicky crafting area, requiring a lot of different mats to keep the consumables going?
• When deconstructing items with traits or enchantments will you get just the materials used for that trait or enchantment, or something that would allow you to research even though the item has been deconstructed?  During the beta I found my bank slots quickly disappearing because I was reluctant to deconstruct items whose traits I wanted to research.  With the real-time limits on research it could be a real problem for the crafter?

...my current plan is to have at least three toons that are handling two crafting areas apiece.  That may lead to a lag time for me getting up to speed in a couple crafting areas, but it will also allow me to accumulate a supply of the mats for the areas I'm not immediately working on.

Grymjack,

You are correct in that Provisioning does not have a deconstruction mechanic... neither does Alchemy.  However, you get much more experience for making food and provisioning is actually the easiest thing to level up to 50.  I've found provisioning to be a big money maker if you like to loot everything around you, because most of the base ingredients are worth 0g to vendors, especially early on, but when you cook something with them you can sell stacks to merchants for income you wouldn't have otherwise.

Inventory management with crafting is ALWAYS going to be a challenge, and provisioning is one of the more item intensive crafting disciplines for sure.  Provisioning recipes are learned forever by the character that uses up the recipe.  Alchemy does not use recipes... just combine the a certain combination of ingredients and you'll always get the same output.  As far as deconstruction goes, you'll get some random small portion of whatever components it would have taken to make the base item, but nothing you could then use to research off of since researching is done with completed items, not base materials.  When you have a weapon, or piece of armor you have to choose whether to research it or deconstruct it.  With enchantments you can either use it or deconstruct it (no researching in enchanting).  I hope that answers the bulk of your questions.

   For your crafter toon a draft horse would also seem to be a necessity.  The way I'm told it works  that your horse's inventory slots add onto your own while you have that horse selected as your active mount.  A draft horse starts with 10 slots, after 50 days, you could have that horse trained up to 60 slots.

Toon slots = 110 eventually.  Starts with 60 now?

Horse slots = 60

That's 170 inventory slots you could be carrying around with you.  For me, I've never cared much about getting to that quest 15 seconds earlier.  I would be much more interested in having more inventory room.  Once I can afford it, I will buy a light horse and train it for speed for those Cyrodiil cross-country runs.

However:

Maximum inventory space Some sources tell that the maximum inventory space is 110 slots but I am not sure about it. If you watch official video demonstration of Blacksmithing you will notice that the character has 200 slots. I think this is a confirmation of the fact that a player may reach at least 200 slots. I don’t know if it is possible to make the inventory larger than 200 but we will see it soon.

@Radgasken

Thanks for your answers:

 I've found provisioning to be a big money maker if you like to loot everything around you

Hmmm, seems like some sort of auto loot mod might be in order.  Maybe where you just have to place your reticule on something, hit a key and it moves whatever is in there to your inventory.  Or does auto loot already do that for anything besides corpses?

On researching, once you have started the process, can you deconstruct the item being researched before the timer finishes counting down?

Hirelings have been mentioned several times and, having researched as much as I can from the web (with the caveat that I am not a PTS player), one of the dev blogs stated that the hirelings give you better stuff the more points that you have put into them.  At max (3) level, I would expect to be receiving green and possible even blue refining mats (eg honing stones/dwarven oil) in the mail on a semi-regular basis.  This _will_ be extremely useful, if true!

Troy, you said "The other thing to remember  is that there are items that can be crafted that immediately become bound to that toon."

Do you have any actual examples of this?  I don't think there are any in the game with the exception of improving the rarity of high level dungeon dropped bound items.