The Elder Scrolls Online Crafting Guide To Master All Six Types

Crafting not only helps you save money, but also opens you up to master-grade items.

In-game weapons and armour crafting are a big deal as far as the modern-day gamer is concerned. There's hardly a title in the market that doesn't support the crafting mechanic, since it's one of the most effective ways to acquiring master-grade items and weapons, with developers stressing on players to craft stuff as much as possible.

Similarly, in the recently released The Elder Scrolls Online, crafting plays a major role, although it might drive impatient players to craziness. For the game's crafting system, players are required to make use of their precious skills to master the crafting classes.

So what are the essentials that you will have to keep in mind when crafting items and weapons in The Elder Scrolls Online? Here's a guide that will take you through Tamriel while you look to level up and craft even more intense stuff.

The Elder Scrolls Online – Crafting Guide

Before anything else, know that there are as many as six varied crafting types in the game – Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Clothing, Enchanting, Provisioning and Woodworking.
Here's a breakdown – Alchemists craft potions, while Blacksmiths make heavy armour sets and metal-based weaponry. Clothiers, on the other hand, create light and medium armour sets, whereas Enchanters add mettle to existing gear. Provisioners cook food items and Woodworkers craft wood-based weapons.
At the beginning, you will have to determine the crafting type you want to focus on throughout the game and spend your time crafting accordingly. There's also an option to choose more than one crafting type, since a number of facets of crafting consume lot of time.
To craft items and weapons, you will require appropriate material and access to a crafting station. You will find crafting stations in every town in the game, although there are few crafting stations scattered around the world that will let you add special traits to your item.
When you come across a suitable crafting station, you will need crafting materials that are required to create a specific item. There's no need to carry around these materials as you can use them from your bank.
Crafting is more than just creating a new item. You will also require breaking down existing items so as to obtain materials and conduct research. Note that you will gain more Inspiration Points (IP) for braking down other items, compared to ones that are already with you.
You can later use the newly-gained IP to level up your crafting type, so it's almost imperative that you acquire as many materials as possible. For instance, you can use Extraction to process raw materials into items that you can later use for crafting.
Remember that the higher the quality of the material, the more materials and IP you will be able to gain via Extraction.
There's also the option to Research items and the method is quite similar to Extraction. Researching allows you to learn new qualities or traits that were added to items during the crafting process.
Researching claims a considerable amount of time, although levelling up your crafting skills can considerably shorten it. Don't be impatient as performing Research can sometimes take several real-time days.
If you want to Research more than one item of the same type, you'll need to level up your crafting skills.
Apart from crafting new items and weapons, or breaking down the existing ones, there's also the option to augment your current gear. These are effectively divided into five varied levels of quality: Normal (white), Fine (green), Superior (blue), Epic (purple) and Legendary (gold).
Each upgrade will be marked by a matching colour to make it easier for the player to identify the current level of quality. However, for low-level gear, it's recommended that you improve your items once or twice.
To improve them further, you will require rare materials. It's recommended that you save the Epic and Legendary improvements for higher-level gear, in case you don't have a lot of rare materials at your disposal.