Paul said:
Of course, crafting is going to be vital as well - simply to make the furnishings, if for no other reason. I'm pretty sure that making items has to be cheaper than buying them from Furnishers or Guilds? Or at least I hope so...
Interesting. And with the next patch looking to finesse housing even more, there's a lot to be excited about
I got very lucky in that one of my guilds has a nice, full bank with a decent pool of Furniture Plans that players had deposited. I already had a few of my own spread over all my characters, some unread but kept just in case I ever needed.
I was also lucky in that I had already gotten a decent stash of materials with which to craft thanks to playing through the game with my dedicated crafting character since April. This is because there is a direct link between the skills of Woodworking, Blacksmithing, and Clothing; with that of the materials harvested to craft furnishings. It sounds obvious, but requires a bit of an explanation.
The following picture shows what I have and what I need in order to craft a Dark Elf Angled Armchair. The numbers on the top row in the image represent what I have in my Craft Bag, the bottom row of numbers display what I need to make the item:
To break it down, Heartwood is a Furnishing Material that is occasionally found when harvesting wood. Pitch is an item used to improve the quality of crafted Woodworking items such as staves, bows, and shields. Obsidian is a Style Material used to create armour and weapons in the Dark Elven Style.
We can see that making this one item will use up a lot of my rarer resources, meaning that a person who wishes to get into Homestead had also be prepared to invest into crafting skills and do a lot of harvesting and foraging while adventuring.
For a comparison, Tamriel Trade Centre shows the average price of buying this item already made is 980.43 gold. The price of the Blueprint is 228.61 gold, according to the PC NA search results.
Here's a an Epic quality item to see the difference quality has on resources:
To make that pretty tea table, I'm going to use up almost all of my Heartwood and, what's worse, eat into my Mastic stash. Mastic is used in Woodworking to increase the quality of crafted weapons and shields to Epic. In addition, we can see that Regulus and Alchemical Resin has been added. Regulus is a Furnishing Material used to create metal furnishings, so falls under the Blacksmithing skill. Alchemical Resin is a Furniture Material used to create Alchemical Formulae, so falls under the Alchemy skill.
A character who wants to craft this item, then, needs to have a Metalworking skill of 5, a Woodworking skill of 8, and a Solvent Profficiency skill of 2. or they can buy the recipe, which TTC lists at costing 10,131,51 gold! To buy it already made will cost, on average according to TTC, 4,575,85 gold.
So those are standard-sized house items. We'd expect to see that, when making smaller iitems, our resources are used less. Not so:
To craft this small item, a character needs a Woodworking skill of 6 and a Recipe Improvement skill of 3. Decorative Wax is used in crafting Provisioning items, Ash Crowns are the Style Material for making Ashlander gear, and Turpen is used in Woodworking to increase item quality from Fine (green) to Superior (blue). We simply have to suspend our disbelief that this tiny cup uses more Heartwood than is required to make the armchair!
Lastly, this image is to craft a Redoran Bed:
This piece of furniture falls under the Clothing skill so requires Bast and Hemming. Bast is the Furnishing Material, Hemming is used to improve light armour quality from Normal to Fine. Buying the bed would cost 1493.92 gold according to TTC, while the furniture Pattern may cost 916,24 gold.
Tamriel Trade Centre lists one unit of Heartwood at an average of 68.01 gold.
To summarise, getting involved in making furniture is a decision best made early. As soon as a player decides to get into crafting and spends time harvesting and gathering resources, their stockpiles of Furniture Materials will also grow. It does mean, though, that a room in an inn or a small, unfurnished house will only get decorated in proportion to a player's skill and resource pool unless Crowns are spent. On one hand that is good as it means the character's living space will evolve with the character, while on the other it means that filling it with the more quality items will always be a goal to pursue. Even for my crafter who has maxed out his skills, creating an Epic-tiered item is a singular and noteworthy event.
In any event, it is more economically viable to make the items yourself and invest time into crafting than it is to buy the items already made. Time vs cost is the deciding factor, though. For the long-haul adventure and deep character connection, crafting ftw!
[blockquote][b][url=/profile/Paul]Paul[/url] said:[/b]
Of course, crafting is going to be vital as well - simply to make the furnishings, if for no other reason. I'm pretty sure that making items has to be cheaper than buying them from Furnishers or Guilds? Or at least I hope so...
Interesting. And with the next patch looking to finesse housing even more, there's a lot to be excited about
[/blockquote]
I got very lucky in that one of my guilds has a nice, full bank with a decent pool of Furniture Plans that players had deposited. I already had a few of my own spread over all my characters, some unread but kept just in case I ever needed.
I was also lucky in that I had already gotten a decent stash of materials with which to craft thanks to playing through the game with my dedicated crafting character since April. This is because there is a direct link between the skills of Woodworking, Blacksmithing, and Clothing; with that of the materials harvested to craft furnishings. It sounds obvious, but requires a bit of an explanation.
The following picture shows what I have and what I need in order to craft a Dark Elf Angled Armchair. The numbers on the top row in the image represent what I have in my Craft Bag, the bottom row of numbers display what I need to make the item:
To break it down, Heartwood is a Furnishing Material that is occasionally found when harvesting wood. Pitch is an item used to improve the quality of crafted Woodworking items such as staves, bows, and shields. Obsidian is a Style Material used to create armour and weapons in the Dark Elven Style.
We can see that making this one item will use up a lot of my rarer resources, meaning that a person who wishes to get into Homestead had also be prepared to invest into crafting skills and do a lot of harvesting and foraging while adventuring.
For a comparison, Tamriel Trade Centre shows the average price of buying this item already made is 980.43 gold. The price of the Blueprint is 228.61 gold, according to the PC NA search results.
Here's a an Epic quality item to see the difference quality has on resources:
To make that pretty tea table, I'm going to use up almost all of my Heartwood and, what's worse, eat into my Mastic stash. Mastic is used in Woodworking to increase the quality of crafted weapons and shields to Epic. In addition, we can see that Regulus and Alchemical Resin has been added. Regulus is a Furnishing Material used to create metal furnishings, so falls under the Blacksmithing skill. Alchemical Resin is a Furniture Material used to create Alchemical Formulae, so falls under the Alchemy skill.
A character who wants to craft this item, then, needs to have a Metalworking skill of 5, a Woodworking skill of 8, and a Solvent Profficiency skill of 2. or they can buy the recipe, which TTC lists at costing 10,131,51 gold! To buy it already made will cost, on average according to TTC, 4,575,85 gold.
So those are standard-sized house items. We'd expect to see that, when making smaller iitems, our resources are used less. Not so:
To craft this small item, a character needs a Woodworking skill of 6 and a Recipe Improvement skill of 3. Decorative Wax is used in crafting Provisioning items, Ash Crowns are the Style Material for making Ashlander gear, and Turpen is used in Woodworking to increase item quality from Fine (green) to Superior (blue). We simply have to suspend our disbelief that this tiny cup uses more Heartwood than is required to make the armchair!
Lastly, this image is to craft a Redoran Bed:
This piece of furniture falls under the Clothing skill so requires Bast and Hemming. Bast is the Furnishing Material, Hemming is used to improve light armour quality from Normal to Fine. Buying the bed would cost 1493.92 gold according to TTC, while the furniture Pattern may cost 916,24 gold.
Tamriel Trade Centre lists one unit of Heartwood at an average of 68.01 gold.
To summarise, getting involved in making furniture is a decision best made early. As soon as a player decides to get into crafting and spends time harvesting and gathering resources, their stockpiles of Furniture Materials will also grow. It does mean, though, that a room in an inn or a small, unfurnished house will only get decorated in proportion to a player's skill and resource pool unless Crowns are spent. On one hand that is good as it means the character's living space will evolve with the character, while on the other it means that filling it with the more quality items will always be a goal to pursue. Even for my crafter who has maxed out his skills, creating an Epic-tiered item is a singular and noteworthy event.
In any event, it is more economically viable to make the items yourself and invest time into crafting than it is to buy the items already made. Time vs cost is the deciding factor, though. For the long-haul adventure and deep character connection, crafting ftw!
