ESO: Crafting Writs Guide

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Human Made

Penned by Angus Green

Angus is our resident Elder Scrolls Online specialist. He lives in Eugene and is a teacher by day.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Writs are excellent resources in Elder Scrolls Online. They’re great sources of income and additional crafting materials that you can use to maximize your weapon/armor effectiveness. They can also be completed relatively quickly once you get in the habit of doing them!

But how do you start doing crafting writs? Better yet, how do you get to Crafting Level 50 so you can get better resources from crafting and master writs? We’ll be covering these questions and more in this guide to Crafting Writs in ESO. Let’s dive in!

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Who Do I Find for Crafting Writs?

Millenith and Danel Telleno are the ones to talk to first to start out your crafting writs. They can be found in each major city of the alliances — Daggerfall in Glenumbra (DC), Davon’s Watch in Stonefalls (EP), and Vulkhel Guard in Auridon (AD). You can also find them in any DLC zone — Blackwood, Elsweyr, Vvardenfell, etc.

You don’t need to start your crafting missions based on your alliance. You can simply walk up to any of them to start on your crafting certifications.

Crafting Certifications

To be certified for any craft, you’ll need to gather necessary materials, construct an item, and then deconstruct that same item. You’ll be doing this for each craft trade from the two above, other than jewelry crafting. Jewelry crafting can only be started in Alinor of Summerset with Felarian, and a guide on that can be found here.

You’ll need to mine ore for blacksmithing, find various herbs for alchemy, and so on. If you have a crafting bag, you’ll be able to pull directly from it (you can do this during crafting writs as well). If you don’t have the crafting bag through ESO+ or otherwise, you’ll need to have the crafting materials in your inventory.

Even after ESO+ expires, you’ll be able to pull materials from your crafting back for these quests/writs. You won’t be able to actively pull items in and out to sell or trade. If you’re playing a character that’s already established with crafting, the certification process will be shortened since you no longer have to “prove” that you’re capable of crafting.

Crafting the Writs

Having enough materials on hand is very important for crafting writs, whether they’re materials like sanded maple wood or food/drink recipes known. Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking, and Jewelry materials will all be mined/collected in their raw forms, which will need to be refined at their respective crafting stations.

Once you refine them, you’ll have the chance to get some extra crafting items, such as trait or leveling mats. After they’re refined, you can start to create items.

It can be quite tedious to get all the necessary recipes and materials for various crafts, so check out some of our specific crafting guides here if you need help on a craft. A quick fix to when you don’t have the necessary materials to complete the crafting writ is to buy what you need from a guild trader.

Crafting Writ Missions — Billboards

Major cities will have billboards near their crafting station locations where you can pick up daily crafting missions. One board will have Blacksmithing, Clothing, Woodworking, and Jewelry (Millenith crafting jobs + Felarian for jewelry). The other will have Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning (Danel Telleno crafting jobs).

Each town has a slightly different layout, but crafting stations are usually close to an area where you can turn in each writ’s items for a reward. Crafting writs on one character is definitely beneficial, but once you start doing it on multiple, you’ll see your item bag or inventory swell with crafting items you can then use or sell on the guild traders.

Craft Bag / Stocking Up on Items

Crafting writs use up a lot of crafting resources, but also return you many more. This will take up a lot of bank space. I strongly advise keeping your crafting items in your bank so each of your characters can pull from the bank for their writs rather than keeping them on one “crafting mule.”

The exception to this, of course, is if you only craft on that singular toon. You can find crafting materials through harvesting in the world, and you can even buy and sell these items on the guild traders. Hirelings are also another solid way to get items — we’ll cover more on this below.

Storage Expansion

The best way to store all the crafting materials you find or buy is, of course, the craft bag. It’s a serious game changer and one of the major reasons people get the ESO+ subscription. Every crafting item can be stored in the craft bag, including trait materials, wood, metals, herbs, you name it! The craft bag will clear up your bank very nicely and allow you to store other items to trade between your toons.

It’s okay if you don’t want to buy the subscription, just be sure to get the free trial when it comes around. While it’s active, pull all your crafting ingredients out of the bank and they’ll siphon right into your craft bag. You can interact with your craft bag from your inventory and pull out specific materials you want to sell or store in your bank separately. 

Hirelings are a great way to stock up on items rather than running around Tamriel gathering each item yourself. Hirelings will bring you items every twenty-four hours (or twelve hours, if you max out the passive). You’ll need to increase each crafting skill to unlock these hireling passive stages, but they’re well worth the skyshards. You’ll get different different selections of crafting materials, occasionally even gold rarity mats!

They can be a bit overwhelming if you don’t have ESO+ or plenty of free bank space, though. You can always pick and choose which hirelings you get. The only crafts you cannot get hirelings for are alchemy and jewelry.

Fastest Way To Complete

Once you get the groove down, you can complete each crafting station quickly without much time wasted. But you still won’t be able to match the speed of add-ons. When I finally started using Dolgubon’s Lazy Writ Crafter, it was a game changer. We talk about downloading this add-on here if you need help installing it, along with some other very useful add-ons.

With this add-on, you walk to the crafting board and it gives you each quest. When you walk up to each crafting station, there will be a new area with a “craft” option. At turn-in, it will interact very quickly and automatically open up each reward in your bag, streamlining the whole process. If you don’t want to use any other add-on, make this your one exception.

Join the High Ground

We hope you become a master crafter soon, or at the least fill your pockets by selling off all the crafting materials you can farm. Let us know if you prefer a different addon for crafting in the comments below! For more information on all of your favorite games and the latest in all things ESO, follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter. 

Happy gaming!