ESO Provisioning Guide: How to Level Provisioning

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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

In this ESO Provisioning guide, we’ll discuss tips and tricks for the best ways to level Provisioning in Elder Scrolls Online to help you make the most of the skill. Becoming a master chef is no easy task, but it’s worth it for the different food and drink you can create to optimize your character in any way you see fit. The food buffs that Provisioning offers are essential, and it makes a lot of sense to invest time in leveling Provisioning in Elder Scrolls Online.

Let’s get started!

Other ESO Crafting Guides:

• Jewelry
• Alchemy
• Blacksmithing

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Why Level Provisioning?

Provisioning is an essential skill in ESO, as food buffs can significantly increase your damage and survivability. You can bypass Provisioning by buying food on guild traders, but this means you’re more reliant on the prices other people set, and you miss out on being able to easily customize your character at a moment’s notice.

Leveling Provisioning means you save money and gain some useful cooking passives that extend the duration of your food buffs. After all, there’s nothing worse than your buff falling off in the last minute of a tough fight and dying as a result. To kick off our ESO Provisioning guide, let’s jump into the best ways to level up the Provisioning skill so you can craft top-tier recipes.

Where to Find Provisioning Materials

You’ll need several items before you can even begin leveling your Provisioning skill. First and foremost, you’ll need recipes. These can be found by looting various containers across Tamriel. In those same containers, you’ll likely also find basic ingredients like flour, potatoes, rye, and more.

Once you’ve found and read a recipe, you’ll be able to craft it at a provisioning station if you have the necessary ingredients. Relying purely on finding recipes by chance isn’t a very efficient way to level, though, so here are a few other methods to help you out.

Method #1: Recipe Shopping Spree

Go to your own guild traders — or walk through a section of guild traders — and by all the recipes you can find under 100 gold. This should still net you a decent amount of recipes for fairly cheap. Be sure to avoid buying repeats, but pick up everything else. Even if you think you’d never craft the recipe you’re buying, you’ll still want it just in case there’s a provisioning writ that requires that specific recipe.

If gold is an issue, focus on recipes within your level range. Start with only recipes that require Recipe Improvement 1, the lowest rank. Once you’ve collected a decent amount, focus on getting blue or purple recipes that are more cheaply priced. Sometimes one trader will put up a recipe for 300 gold where another has it for 2000, so it’s a good idea to check around or look up the price on Tamriel Trade Centre.

Method #2: Loot Every Container

This will load your inventory up pretty quick if you don’t have ESO+, but leveling Provisioning burns through a good amount of items as you go. Loot each container you walk past while dungeoneering and sort through it later to get rid of stuff you don’t need.

If inventory space is an issue, choose several ingredient types that your highest level recipe requires and only focus on collecting those. The faster way to do this is to buy them in bulk from guild traders, but this can be costly depending upon the ingredient being bought. TTC is a great resource for finding a reasonable price for these ingredients. 

Method #3: Hireling

This is the last passive you can get in the Provisioning skill line, and it’ll help you out quite a bit in getting resources for free. The hireling will bring you ingredients that vary from day to day, giving you access to a wide selection you may need. Without ESO+, you can always just leave the message hanging around in your messages until you need the ingredients or want to stow them at a bank. The message will only last for thirty days, so keep that in mind. Initially, the hireling will bring you some ingredients every twenty-four hours at the first level. At the third and final level, the hireling will bring more and better quality items every twelve hours. 

Provisioning Leveling Guide

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s get to the meat of our ESO Provisioning guide. To level up your skill, you’ll need to craft a lot of food. You can only craft food recipes that you’ve read and have the proper ingredients for, so be sure to check the “Have Skills” and “Have Ingredients” icons to see what you can craft at the moment. You’ll likely want to invest some Champion Points into the Crafting Tree “Inspiration Boost” passive.

Each stage costs 15 and increases your crafting inspiration gained by 10%. Investing in three stages nets you 30% quicker speeds in maxing out all your crafting skill lines. Once you have this passive rolling, it’ll save you a lot of time and money when it comes to gathering resources. ESO+ gives you another 10% increased crafting inspiration, so make use of that if you have the subscription or if there’s a free week available.

Leveling Tip #1: Prioritization

Purple > blue > green. This is the main thing to remember when it comes to crafting food and drink recipes. The higher the rarity, the more experience you’ll gain for crafting it. Food level is also important, so be sure to craft the highest-level recipe you have to get more experience. Invest in the “Recipe Quality” and “Recipe Improvement” passives as soon as they’re available to you — I usually craft in batches of 5–10 before checking if I can get the passives again and do a higher-level recipe.

The food categories people use most are blue Ragout (health and stamina) and Savories (health and magicka), or purple Gourmet (health, stamina, and magicka). Gold dishes aren’t usually worth making since they require very expensive ingredients to make. There are exceptions like Bewitched Sugar Skulls, which don’t cost any gold-level ingredients, but they’re rare and generally cost quite a lot to get your hands on.

Food is used more often than drink in ESO, as increasing resources by a flat amount is better than resource regeneration. Both are level-restricted, so a Level 30 character will only be able to consume food and drink of Level 30 and below. With all the extra food you craft, you can either eat it as you adventure, bank it for new characters that can only use low-level foods, or sell it on a guild trader.

Leveling Tip #2: Event Recipes

Provisioning writs will only get you so far, as they require you to make green recipes that won’t net you much experience (though the crafting inspiration you get upon turn-in is nice). Event Recipes, however, can be a good way to level up your Provisioning. They’re pretty easy to come by, as players get so many repeats during events that they’re generally put up for fairly cheap on guild traders.

Seek out the purple and blue recipes and get to crafting those. The Witches’ Festival is the most recent event to put out a lot of recipes, so players are actively trying to get rid of their extras. “Bowl of Peeled Eyeballs” and “Crisp and Crunchy Pumpkin Snack Skewer” will be the cheapest blue recipes you can find. Both only require Recipe Quality 2 and Recipe Improvement 1, so they’re great starting recipes to boost your level.

For purple recipes, “Witchmother’s Party Punch” will be your best bet since it only requires Recipe Quality 3 and Recipe Improvement 1, and is one of the easier purple recipes to get for cheap. 

Provisioning Skills 

Here are some of the key Provisioning skills to be aware of.

Crafting Station Locations and How to Get Your Own

Provisioning Stations are easy to spot — they’re usually a fire underneath a cooking pot or other style of grill. These can be found all throughout Tamriel, but there are certain locations where they’re more likely to be concentrated. They’re always in cities where you can do other crafting, will show up in taverns, and are very often in delves inhabited by humans.

The cities with the easiest access to Provisioning Stations are Rimmen in Northern Elsweyr, Vivec City in Vvardenfell, and Leyawiin in Blackwood. The stations are more out-of-the-way in cities like Deshaan, where you actually have to enter a building (the Flamig Nix Inn’s lower floor) to access it.

If you want your very own station, just spend some time working on crafting writs. You can get a provisioning station directly from the crown store, but the hefty price of 2400 crowns is a pretty big bar to entry. The better way to go about it is to use 35 writ vouchers to buy a Provisioning Station from Rolis Hlaalu.

You can earn writ vouchers by completing Event vouchers or the more common Master Writs. It’ll take a little longer to do it this way, but it’ll save you plenty of money. Once you’re ready, Rolis Hlaalu can be found on the outskirts of Elden Root (Grahtwood), Wayrest (Stormhaven), and Mournhold (Deshaan).

Writs — Crafting Missions

On the topic of writ vouchers, Provisioning writs can be found in any major city’s crafting mission boards. They give out a quest that matches your current Provisioning level. If you level up your Provisioning skill and go to grab a crafting mission, it may ask for a recipe that you don’t have, meaning you’ll have to search guild traders for that specific recipe. Luckily, most of the Provisioning quest recipes are common enough that they shouldn’t cost you much to purchase.

When you turn in a max-level daily crafting writ (Recipe Quality 4 and Recipe Improvement 6), you’ll have a chance at getting a Provisioning Master Writ. Some of these writs just aren’t worth doing — namely, any recipe that requires a Perfect Roe, as it’s a gold-rarity ingredient that costs around 35K gold to buy from a guild trader. Opt for using Master Writs that give ~two writ vouchers, as the ingredient cost is lower and it’s more likely to feature a recipe you already have.

(Warning: Never start a Master Writ quest if you don’t have all the ingredients and recipe for it already. Once started, you need to complete or quit the quest, getting rid of the writ voucher in the process. You will not be able to start any of that same type of master writ until you finish the one you have active).

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We hope this ESO Provisioning guide makes leveling your Provisioning quicker and easier! For the latest on Elder Scrolls Online and your other favorite games, follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter.

Happy gaming!