Crafting in Elder Scrolls Online

Naturally, crafting in ESO is a very MMO-grindy type of thing. Since the start, I had been intending that my main character would be able to craft all the gear that I’d want to use on him. The best set of craftable gear for a light-gear magicka user seems to be the New Moon Acolyte equipment. It requires knowing all 9 traits to craft, and the 9th trait — nirnhoned — is a rabbit hole in and of itself, which I won’t even bother going into here.

Even after solving the nirnhoned rabbit hole problem, there’s the simple issue of time. Researching the 9th trait on any single piece of light gear takes 64 days. Sixty-four in-real-life days, though you can do 3 pieces at a time.

Now, you only need 5 pieces to make a set, so the natural thing to do is to create shoes, pants, chest, belt, and gloves, and finish your armor with a head-and-shoulders monster set. So, at a minimum, there’s something like 8 months required to research enough traits to break into this end-game build-out.

So, for grins, I just searched around on Tamriel Trade Center, and found New Moon Acolyte gear in a guild store. Turns out some master crafter had the same idea. I found all 5 pieces, with the divines trait, and magicka enchantment, just like I intend to create. It costs, like, $6K per item. So it only cost me like 30,000 gold to just buy the stuff, and anyone can afford that.

I guess I’m going to be playing the game, and time will be passing, so I can keep researching, and eventually be able to do this myself, but this experience has really slowed my roll on bothering with the whole thing. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of upside to solving the nirnhoned puzzle to get to the point of being able to create 9-trait gear.

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