Elder Scrolls Online - Tips for Writs (v5.0.7)

We recommend you use our reorganized Elder Scrolls Online Crafting Guide for New Players instead.


In the Elder Scrolls Online, you can have your characters of level 6 or higher certified to do daily writs -- easy crafting in exchange for Gold, Experience, and a Inspiration (the crafting skill line equivalent of experience). Here are some lesser know tips and synergies:

Setting Up Your Alts

• Race and Class:
• The obvious choice is Orc for the Inspiration bonus, but think long term -- Inspiration will cap at some point once you maximize your crafting skill.
• Instead, I recommend a good Thieving race/class combination for all non-adventuring crafter alts. Once you maximize their crafting skills and stabilize the skill points you put into crafting, you might want to work on their thieving-related skills and expand their utility without having to actually invest much into combat. This way they can, for example, do Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood repeatable missions, which generally require little or no combat.
• To save you some headache, I recommend specializing your crafters to distribute skill point expenditures: Alchemist, Enchanter, Provisioner, and a Primary and Secondary Crafter focussing on being Blacksmith-Clothier-Woodworker-Jeweler. All crafters should be doing all writs even if they stay at the lowest level writs. Eventually you will bring them all up to maximum rank, but in the early stages, skill points will be hard to come by if you try to make one omni-crafter.The basic setup is here. More detailed reasons will be provided in the topics that follow this section.
• To get them to level 6 so you can have Jeweler Certification and accept Daily Writs, some easy quests you can do for experience without having to fight anything are:
• Undaunted in the pubs, to unlock Undaunted skill line
• Joining the Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild, and the breadcrumb quest Divine Deputation introducing the Divine Prosecution dailies in Alinor.
• All the certification quests other than Jeweler (which requires you to be level 6).
• "Room to Spare" housing quest
• Primary Crafter: This is the one that you will try to develop the fastest in levelling to focus skill points
• Combination Blacksmith-Clothier-Woodworker-Jeweler. We are not separating these three skills because:
• For gathering and surveys, the materials you get are tied to your level and your crafting skill rank, so it's handy to keep them together instead of switching characters to get materials.
• A lot of furnishings need multiple skills developed.
• For making set items, it's handy to consolidate research on the one character and do all the crafting with that one character.
• Maximum possible Rank for Blacksmith, Clothier, Woodworker. Develop skills for extracting materials when you refine, and for the Hireling. For the skill related to improving gear to Green or better, you can probably delay and get it much later.
• Uses your material Surveys. As the highest ranked crafter they will get the best materials.
• Save all Intricate items from all writ rewards to give to this character for Deconstruction to focus their development.
• Focus this character for research. Set item construction depends on how many traits you have researched for a particular type of gear so it's important to have at least one character complete all research. Once you have finished research with a skill, you can pull those skill points out and put them elsewhere and the pressure on having enough skill points will ease greatly.
• Secondary Crafter: This alt will support the growth of the Primary Crafter.
• Crafts items with excess materials for Primary Crafter to Deconstruct. Deconstructing something made by another character (even an alt) gives Inspiration roughly equal to twice the amount gained from Constructing it.
• Depending on Guild Store prices, it may be cheaper and faster to just sell a stack of plentiful materials like Sanded Maple and buy CP 160 rated Intricate gear to deconstruct.
• Possibly even cheaper than buying Intricate gear, but involving more legwork, might be to buy Treasure Maps, which drop a range of items, often including blue gear and glyphs.
• Doing dolmens such as with large groups in Alik'r is probably the most profitable way per unit time for getting items, and free as well. Great for getting jewelry to deconstruct for plating, as well as glyphs.
• For Tiered Crafts, the rank should be based on the Primary Crafter's LEVEL. So if the Primary Crafter is level 40, they should be Rank IV as a Blacksmith to use Dwarven Ingots.
• Keep this character's Research slots free initially. Later, when your research times become unbearable on your Primary Crafter but you need a particular trait more quickly, you can get them to research that one trait in less than a day.
• Alchemist, Enchanter, Provisioner:
• Does most of the crafting where possible -- including the other characters' writs unless those. For items that stack, such as potions, food, and drink, the game does not distinguish who made the item.
• Each of these crafters will focus on their particular specialty, and especially on the skills that increase output, reducing your overall material consumption.
• To save yourself headache, just leave them all at Rank I for the other crafts to use the lowest ranked materials.
• You will quickly start to have an excess of those materials so you won't have to worry about not being able to complete your writs on them. Eventually you may have accumulated enough through purchase or Surveys that you might want to improve their ranks but since you already have a Primary Crafter that is unimportant.
• Only Inspiration gained is affected by the Rank of the writs you are completing. Experience and Gold rewards are based on your character's level.
• Only the highest tier Writs have a chance of giving you Sealed Writs / Master Writs. Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning Sealed Writs are probably the easiest to do, so these three crafts are worth maximizing on all crafters, even secondary ones.
• Your Provisioning Recipe Improvement Rank determines the rank of the recipes you get, so you may want to have crafters at all ranks to steadily get all the blue and purple recipes, which in turn can help you get more Sealed Provisioning Writs.
• Be cautious about increasing the Ranks for Enchanting early on if you are not confident of your ability to reliably get the required runes for the writs. Many runes can be purchased from the Enchanted NPC but for the rest, until you have acquired a good supply, you are subject to random factors.
• Spend points on the Hirelings when you can. If you are willing to sacrifice the time to coordinate logging in twice a day at 12-hour intervals, go for the third rank for the Hirelings. Otherwise 2 ranks is fine.
• It is not terribly hard to run around looking for Skyshards to get skill points without levelling -- it's really a matter of how much time you want to spend grinding each alt. I recommend instead doing the easy event quests that are typically fast, and with Experience point bonuses and extra rewards. For the lower levels, dolmens in Alik'r can quickly get your level up to the first free bag-space upgrade.
• Other Crafters
• It will probably be easiest to get everyone to maximum Provisioning skill first because the materials are very plentiful.
• Once you reach Rank IV (Provisioning level 40) you can probably jump to Rank VI (Provisioning level 50) because those recipes give so much Inspiration.
• Unlike the other crafts, the writs here require ingredients that are easy to accumulate over time. And Rank IV-VI Provisioner writs use the same 6-recipe set at each rank for all the factions, so it's useful to have all your characters be at the same Rank, and cook/brew a big stack of the food and drink for the writs.
• You may want to keep at least one crafter at each of Ranks I-V to keep getting blue and purple recipe drops for those Ranks.
• We'll talk about Master Writs below but for all other crafters, steadily work them toward maximum Rank in Alchemy, Enchanting, and Jewelry. Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking can stay at Rank I if you don't want to worry about material shortages.
• Main Adventuring Character and Main Thieving Character
• Ideally in the long-term you'd want your Main Adventuring Character to also be your Primary Crafter because they will earn the most Skill Points through adventuring. And it's not hard to re-allocate Skill Points later once you have them. The main issue will be doing research and collecting motifs and recipes all over again.
• Just do your writs but leave all your skill point for adventuring skills.
• Get all the one-ingredient recipes so that any Stolen provisioning ingredients can be crafted into items for writs instead of being Fenced, Laundered, or Destroyed.
• You may still want to get them to Provisioning rank 6 because it's easy and all your characters will probably get there. No need to develop other skills -- save your skill points for adventuring / thieving until you have an excess.

Blacksmithing, Clothier, Woodworking, Jewelry

• The Jewelry skill is similar to Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking except their Ranks are more spread out in terms of what levels of items a material can craft, but the basic ideas are the same.
• You will probably find that Rank I materials will start to accumulate very quickly for various reasons, one of which being that as a writ reward you often get a stack of 20 in the writ reward bag if you don't get a Survey (which is basically an even bigger stack of materials). That stack is more than you used doing the writ so even if you get Surveys now and again you'll basically be running a surplus.
• If you can't sell them fast enough you can also have your Secondary Crafter make something and your Primary Crafter Deconstruct it. If it gave N Inspiration points crafting it, Deconstruction will give 2N points IF it is not the same character who crafted it.
• If you can sell your excess materials, it's generally cheaper to buy Intricate items from Guild Stores instead, even if they are of a level higher than you can recover materials from.
• Instead of buying anything at all to deconstruct, you can also do dolmens, such as in Alik'r, where your character's level and gear hardly matters because there are so many people swarming each dolmen. The treasure often contains blue gear which deconstruct for a lot of Inspiration.
• Try to save your surveys for your Rank X crafters because as the Rank goes up, the materials per daily writ start to outpace the materials you get back from a writ. In this way, even Rank I crafters are useful if only to collect surveys to keep up the demand by your higher-Ranked crafters.
• You can put some or all of your crafters on Rank II, which gives you 15 units of the material you used, and 5 units of Rank I and Rank III materials.
• This runs a deficit of materials, but if some of your crafters are on Rank I, their daily writ rewards can help make up the shortfall, keeping you more or less even. Also, deconstructing the Intricate items you get, plus Hireling deliveries, can also help to make up the slight shortfall, meaning Rank II is practically as self-sustaining as Rank I.
• If you have a big surplus you can run all crafters on Rank II and occasionally buy Rank II materials if you see them at a good price in Guild Stores.
• For convenience, especially if you use Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter, have all your characters eventually learn all the basic race Motifs so you can stock whatever you can in the Bank or Crafting Bag and won't be suddenly stuck for a particular Style Material. Sometimes Guild Stores will have someone selling Style Materials at less than the vendor price of 15 gold, so when you see that, snap it up until you have a good stock. 
• When choosing what Rank to be at for what materials you can use, it is useful to first understand how you get materials.
• For nodes you encounter, the random distribution gives you roughly half based on your character level and half based on what Rank you can use.
• So, if you are level 40 (Rank IV) but have your Blacksmithing at Rank V, you will encounter only Dwarven Ore and Ebony Ore nodes.
• For Surveys, there are always six nodes and the distribution will be three based on the level of the character using the Survey, and three based on what Rank material that character can use for crafting.
• So, if you are level 40 (Rank IV) but have your Blacksmithing at Rank V, each survey will give you exactly three nodes of Ebony Ore and three nodes of Dwarven Ore.
• Gear you find from any source is always tied to your level so the material will be based on that.
• Writ rewards often give you materials instead of Surveys. You get one stack of any material you can work based on your Metalworking passive.
• Hirelings give you a chance of getting a small amount of material based on the Rank you can use. Do not rely on them for raw basic materials to cover your daily writs -- it won't be enough. Instead, you are basically using them to steadily accumulate materials that will let you improve gear Quality, with the aim of eventually having a good supply to do Master Writs.
• Because of how you get materials, if you are too spread out in your crafters in terms of what materials they need for writs, you may find you are using up too much time buying, gathering, or using Surveys to acquire the materials you need. Until you get a good stockpile of materials and surveys, we recommend:
• Primary Crafter can be any rank, preferably the highest rank they can work. Over time you will hopefully accumulate the various materials of lower ranks.
• Secondary Crafter uses either Rank I materials or preferably materials of the same Rank as the Primary Crafter's LEVEL.
• Because roughly half the materials the Primary Crafter finds will be based on their level, you can quite safely assume the Secondary Crafter will in this way have enough materials for their writs.
• All other Crafters stay at Rank I.
• This does mean that their Hirelings will only get you Rank I raw materials, but you will also not have to worry about whether they have enough materials or not. Also, Hirelings are really there to get you other materials than the raw materials for your daily writs making Normal-quality items.
• Also, it means you don't need to really worry about playing them at all to get skill points. They are just there to supply you with Gold from doing writs daily, and materials from their Hirelings. Gold and experience gain from daily writs are the same regardless of the Rank of the writ; it is based on the level of the character turning in the writ.
• Sealed Jeweler Writs rewarding under 400 vouchers for Legendary quality or 100 vouchers for Epic quality are unlikely to be worth the materials, so do not be in a rush to get maximum rank to get writs.
• Joining the mass dolmen runs in Alik'r is a fairly good way to get free jewelry for deconstruction not just to improve your crafting skill but to get plating. Chrome plating required for Legendary jewelry will mostly come from your daily writ rewards, so you probably want to be very choosy about which Sealed Writs for Legendary jewelry you want to do.

Alchemy

• Initially you may be stuck for the materials for the writs so you might want to just do the writs on your Primary and Secondary Crafters until you can acquire a good stack, probably from Guild Stores. Once you have a sizable stack of around 50+ you will find that over time you won't use up quite as many as you think because each writ reward give you some materials, sometimes of the type you need for your writs.
• Get the Chemistry Passive for the Primary Crafter so they can craft extra potions. Then have them do all the writ crafting for Alchemy because the game does not distinguish who crafted the potion.
• Looting containers is a very poor way of getting Alchemical ingredients so you won't have the same excess of supplies you do with Provisioning.
• A very useful add-on to remember where you found a good density of gathering nodes is Harvest Map.
• You do not actually have to go to different locations to get a chance of a particular ingredient -- land nodes are typically based on type.
• Waterfront ingredient nodes are either Nirnroot or Water Hyacinth and do not vary.
• Do not rely on Surveys to get the exact ingredient you need because there is a wide range and not the same based-on-level-or-rank predictability as Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking.

Enchanting

• Enchanting roughly shares the same supply issues as Alchemy except you can also Deconstruct glyphs to hopefully get some runes.
• Like Alchemy, Surveys won't always get you what you need so be cautious about advancing your Potency Improvement beyond Rank I. At low ranks the required materials for turning in are typically easy to stock in large quantities but it's trickier at higher ranks, so you might need to be prepared to spend on Guild Stores.
• Joining the mass dolmen runs in Alik'r is a fairly good way to get free Glyphs for deconstruction.

Provisioning

• Make note of where there are a lot of containers and no enemies, and repeatedly loot that area.
• For example, inside The Windstorm at Seyda Neen, where you also get some weapons and have a good chance of an empty soulstone.
• If you are Stealing, a good location is upstairs in the Lerano home at Balmora, which remains open after The Memory Stone. The one servant in the home does not go upstairs so you can repeatedly relog up there and loot all the containers over and over.
• If you haven't finished the Balmora quest, then Captain Brivan's quarters in the Redoran Kinhouse is a good location as it is completely isolated with no character inside to hide from while you steal from the mix of containers.
• If you are just trying to level the skill, it is not necessary to get higher Ranks of Recipe Qualit or Improvement to get the more complex recipes. Complex recipes do give more Inspiration when you craft them but if you regularly loot containers you will have an excessive amount of materials and crafting 200 Tarragon Chickens will level you just fine without using up valuable skill points in the early levels.
• For the same reason, unlike Alchemy, it is not necessary early on to get the Chef or Brewer passive skills to make extra servings just to complete writs. Later, however, these skills become a money-maker because they let you convert excess food into gold: Rank 6 recipes might use two ingredients to make something that sells to a vendor for five gold, multiplied by four servings if you have the maximum Chef or Brewer rank.
• Your primary thieving character may want to have these skills to profitably "launder" stolen ingredients -- instead of Fencing or Laundering low to zero value Provisioning ingredients, make food (that will not be considered "Stolen" even if you use all stolen ingredients) and sell. You can do this without the Chef or Brewer skills but with them it will be more profitable.
• Although you can quickly get all your alts to maximum Provisioning, you may want to leave one alt at each of levels 1 to 5, to collect recipes from daily writ rewards.

Master Writs

• Alchemy and Enchanting Master Writs are some of the best because even though the voucher return is very small, there are not a lot of prerequisites. You can basically do them right away if you have the materials and various Addons can help you with figuring out what you need to make the required item.
• Provisioning Master Writs are almost as good but you need to have the recipe.
• Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking Master Writs can be the worst and most expensive if you buy motifs to do them. Otherwise materials are generally plentiful from deconstruction.
• You may have the skill and equipment but typically you are months of research away from qualifying for the set required, and then it's quite random whether you know the required style or not.
• I recommend bartering motifs and blueprints for the styles and steadily accumulate them. You can literally spend millions buying motifs only to use just a handful of them and once each. Over time, the cost is ludicrous for the time and gold spent. In the very late game when you've accumulated a lot of motifs and research are you are more likely to be able to do one of these writs right away.
• In the meantime, try trading your Master Writs for ones you can do immediately or soon.
  
• Jewelry Master Writs are extremely expensive because the plating is hard or expensive to get However, a single really high-voucher writ can be worthwhile doing, and is often easier, because there are no motifs involved and there are only two lines of research -- Jewelry and Rings.
• For Epic quality jewelry writs, aim for 100+ vouchers. For Legendary quality, aim for 460+. If you do too many low-reward writs you'll probably run out of plating too fast.
• Depending on how much stuff you want, you really only need 1,100 vouchers to get all the housing storage boxes so a few high-value Jewelry writs can get you there quickly.