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Saturday, February 15, 2014

Elder Scrolls Online: Crafting & Economy

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Economy

Let’s be clear, stuff isn’t inexpensive and frankly it shouldn’t be.  Armor, weapons, and potions can be purchased from NPC vendors but you will pay the price for having access to NPC produced goods.  Prices aren’t unreasonable but they aren’t meaningless either. 

So you didn’t purchase the Imperial Edition and you want to buy a horse?  Then be prepared to save all your gold because the most basic mount will run you 17,500 gold.  That price does not include the price to feed your one active mount once a day either. 

There has been a lot of complaints about the economy in beta and honestly I think it is all bunk.  In single player Elder Scrolls games, having a horse was a luxury and a rarity.  That same behavior should carry over to the MMO game, failure to do so diminishes the franchise as a whole.  Horses are actually more of an impediment to immersion then they are a necessity in ESO in my experience.  You are MUCH more like to miss lore books, hidden quests, etc. when on horseback then if you are out and about wandering the countryside on foot.

There has also been a lot of talk about the lack of an auction house/broker system.  I have no problem with this being “missing” from the game.  A character can join up to five guild (this does NOT include guilds like Fighter’s or Mage’s) and guilds can establish guild stores.  Guild stores allow you to purchase things from other guild members who may be willing to sell you stuff at prices lower than NPCs. 

Crafting

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Crafting is not the over-simplified creation of meaningless goods that exist in other games.  Crafting has six choices: Alchemy, Enchanting, Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Woodworking, and Provisioning. 

So far in beta weekends, you can have every crafting profession.  However, crafting is resource intensive for all skills expect Provisioning.  It is much easier to acquire goods to craft food and beverages because these items are easily located in the crates and barrels all Elder Scrolls players know to scavenge whenever they can.

Nodes do not magically glow out in the wild, until you place a skill point in the profession to make a node glow.  If you fail to pay attention to your surroundings you will miss that maple log or jute plant you could have harvested.  And just because you harvested the raw materials doesn’t mean you can open the crafting menu out in the middle of nowhere and make yourself an upgrade.  No, you need the appropriate crafting station to even open the crafting menu in the first place.  Once again, planning ahead and thinking are required.

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Crafting is very fulfilling.  It is complex without being overly so.  It pulls goods from your shared bank storage to craft which is extremely nice.  There is also the chance to fail when crafting an improved item.  That’s right, there is no guarantee that when you go to improve an item it will be successful unless you put enough of the raw component to improve the item into the recipe.  That chance of failure makes the successes all the more sweet.

Crafting will keep you in weapons and armor appropriate for your level that will allow you to succeed, even with the common white level weapon or armor that isn’t improved.  Ignore crafting at your own peril my friends.

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