Are You Achieving Your Full Player Potential? (Part II)
THIS IS THE CONTINUATION OF "Are You Achieving Your Full Player Potential? (Part I)" You can go back to Part I from here.
Contest: There are 3x deliberate spelling mistakes in this article... the first person to PM me in game with their identity will receive an Excellent prize*. Good luck and happy hunting! The winner & prize will be posted on The Fearless Facebook page - @Veyonda-Quaess.
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Published June 28, 2015 © All rights reserved
Table of Contents (Links main paragraphs this page only)
- Gold-Making Suggestions For Your Storage Upgrades (Buying/ Selling raw mats & craftables, Thievery, Bandit raids, Lock-Picking tips, more Gold in ESO)
- New Game Storage Tips (All the cheap+free storage you'll need, plus Secure Guild space and the low-down on Mail banking)
- Want a Guild Bank Completely Secure? Make it Your Own! (New Crafting Guilds of up to 250x slots per member + 1,080x more!)
- Use Your Alt Team to get Your Crafting into Full Swing (Maximize Hirelings for max resources & purple mats, Crafting Writs, Reliable Pricing, Trait Decon teams, Ultimate harvesting in DF!)
- Conclusion (Summing up... Convinced yet? Why average players aren't doing this?!)
- Character Creation is Easy But this is a Real Problem... (Naming your real problem + How to Overcome it)
- Creating a Fearless Guild Live-Auction (100x Carefully crafted cool names for members, plus 100's more in proposed Name Clearing House, Sample names)
- Contest (Details)
- Popular Trade-Type Addons (For Establishing Fair Pricing)
- Bonus Information (Behind the Name, Skyrim Character Names, Race Lore Names)
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Are You Achieving Your Full Player Potential? (Part II)
Gold-Making Suggestions For Your Storage Upgrades
If you're starting out in a new game, you can find a couple of players in DF chat (unsure about the other alliances), paying a good amount for raw materials on an on-going basis. That's exactly what I collect at the start of a new game, just so I can make a bit of quick gold. So, selling to these players should make you a little more coin than just selling straight to a local merchant. You just need to keep an eye open for their chat ads (if they're still around).
Since the 1.6 update, Thievery has probably become the number one means to make extra coin relatively quick. I've heard some guild-mates have been able to purchase their storage upgrades because they've stolen and fenced such a lot. So, is stealing a good way to make gold? Apparently it is, but not without risk and it can be very repetitive. (Now you can find online 'Stealing Hot Spots' in cities in every Alliance...it's worth a look!)
I don't steal in any big way. I only look out for three particular things, that I know are good sellers; blue Racial Motifs, blue and purple Recipes and the occasional Blue item which I can fence for 250g! And because I've only ever found three blue items and everything else I pay 10g to launder, crime isn't really paying for me... just yet anyway. (Not until I decide to sell my stockpile of valuables when the price is right.)
TIP4: You know when you've stolen something, the item is marked with a red hand and the annotation “Stolen Item”. If you're seen stealing the guards will be alerted to your crime and you will be given the choice to pay a fine or resist arrest (die). And if you think you're getting away without paying your bounty by resisting arrest, check your coin purse after, I hear it's taken automatically... But it's not a crime to look inside containers to see what's there, just as long as you don't get caught taking anything. And that's even when not in sneak (CTRL) mode as well. (However you can't look inside an NPC”s pocket unless you're in sneak mode and then it's theft, there's no having a free look like in Skyrim.)
Now you don't have to be a hard-core salesperson that sells everything for top dollar all the time, you can have just a few preferences to peddle in game when you need to, like I do. And those preferences should probably be items that players need regularly and are cheap to launder - that not only creates high turn-over but also top dollar.
Blue and purple recipes are perfect target items because they can be relatively pricey individually, and are only 10g to launder to a 'fence'. Unless you prefer to hold onto them for your provisioning, they can make you a fortune relatively quickly. All you have to do is find the right buyer in /zone-chat or the Guild Store.
Remember the crafters I suggested you sell your raw mats to at the start of a new game? Well, you can become one of them and buy for a bit more Gold, every type of raw material even the ones you don't need immediately. When you refine those mats at a crafting station, you not only gain valuable Xp for faster leveling in that craft, but also an increased chance to find rare and very rare items the more you refine. So, do your refining on full stacks of 200x or more and the mats you don't need will more than pay for your time refining them.
This will start your collection of high-priced valuables that can add up to a small fortune over time. For instance, I have over 100K Gold in 3x different valuables stockpiled in my bank right now. And you can do this easily with the appropriate bank space and invested time.
Then, you can sell your crafted wares, like Potions, Food items, Glyphs for all occasions, Weapons & Armours of all types and styles. If you're a master crafter (or very good), then there should be a repeat market for your goods. Look into joining as many Trade Guilds as you can that have a full enough roster to sell to and you should be able to make some good coin from your expertise. And don't forget, a portion of the sales goes to supporting your guild which has big expenses to keep trading merchants on contract.
(The best Trade Guilds have a Merchant Trader with Guild Store in one of the main cities available to the most players at any given time. These are expensive to acquire and hold onto though. They're probably only found in the better guilds, so choose your guild wisely and support them a lot because their the secret to your sales!)
Of course, there's the tried and true bandit raid and Boss kill that can divvy up some valuables and loose coin as well as Xp (although you might need a buddy to help). And if you're the handy type you can also try lock-picking for more useful items, Gold and more Xp. Of course, to make any reasonable amounts of good coin, you'll have to do at least 10 to 20x raids and chests a day... you get the idea. (You can find any number of Bosses & locked chests in the wilds, some in plain site and others off the beaten track.)
TIP5: When it comes to locked chests don't say, “Oh that's too hard for me.” and walk away... make sure you have a few lock-picks and try it with these three tricks... 1- Practice on 6x of them to memorize the pins' 3x lock-points - just below the top - just below the bottom - right in the middle. 2- Then depress the pick to each of the lock-points in succession, stopping at one lock-point and then releasing and then going to the next. The chests are mostly Simple which gives you enough time to do this on all five pins - you won't break so many picks this way. But if you let your pick release itself ('failed attempt'), it counts toward a broken pick, but a self-release doesn't (10x fails = break). As you improve, you'll get faster for the Master locks. 3- And here's a vital tip for more advanced locks - DON'T press your finger down on the mouse button so HARD or you'll never release it in time! Keep a light trigger-finger on your mouse and you'll eventually get the hang of the “full stroke and release” method (even this is very hard to do consistently on the higher difficulty locks). Now keep practising.
These are my quick, Gold making tips, and if you have any others to offer, please leave your comments below.
New Game Storage Tips
There are hidden space enhancing features secreted away in ESO if you take the time to look for them. For instance, If you have ESO's Imperial Edition of the game, you can buy a horse for 1g (regular price is 42,700g) and it has storage options available too. Just look into the stables by clicking on the stable master, and you'll see the option to buy 1x extra storage slot, for your character, for 250g.
But if you have to buy a horse for regular price, you should either purchase the newer (1.6 version) Brown Paint horse if you want 10x extra space, or the cheaper Sorrel at 10,000g but with no buffs, and purchase as many single slots as you want.
That's outstanding value IMO, because the storage price is fixed and doesn't increase (it's always 2,500g for 10x slots). The only drawback is, you can only buy 1x slot every 20hrs! Despite this, I readily bought 26x slots, and only stopped because I reached 126x bag space and don't need anymore.
(You should know that when you ride your horse later, you will notice it's now got nice leather saddle bags fitted on both sides. A nice touch really. And did I hear that you'll be able to hide them in a future update?)
A player recommended storage build - best value for investment...
Hayyan (on Tamriel Journal)
My “perfect” storage alt has 2 bag upgrades 2400g, a Imperial mount 1g, fed 49 oats 12,250g. Thats 129 spaces for 14,651g (That's a savings of 2,850g over the typical method of acquiring it which would normally cost 17,501g.)
I've never regretted buying extra space as I know how it equates to income. And you don't have to spend more than you've got with this FREE suggestion...
If you don't have the cash to buy extra space and you really need an extra 10x FREE slots quick, don't worry, ESO has you covered with temporary, storage! I've used this trick many times when I have a full bag and try to deconstruct items at the Blacksmith's in any city. There's always a vendor there to sell cheap crafting materials, just in case you haven't the space to store your own (nudge nudge). In fact, any vendor/merchant will give you access to this feature.
I'm talking about the vendor's Buy-Back tab, and there's 13x slots that will hold you're stuff until you buy them back again (if you buy them back again). However, there's only 13x you can use safely.
For instance, if you sell 14x items then the first gets deleted! So keep this in mind when using this little trick, to prevent losing precious stuff. That's why I only recommend using the first 10x slots for collectables leaving 3x for safety. In my opinion, this is only a 'last resort' banking method you'll use anyways, when you're completely stuck for space. And it can be a bit of a hassle running back and forth to a merchant, but hey, it's free.
Then you have the mail...
When I mentioned that I was thinking of buying another account for the added 540x extra storage space it would give me, a guild member offered to take my stuff via mail and then return it to me for FREE as an alternative. The benefit to this is, you can leave up to 6x items per mail in your mailbox for up to 30x days. However, this is not an ideal long-term banking solution because it's time regulated and it costs postage for each transaction.
And if you forget about it you might just lose all your valuable stuff when the timer runs out! And there's only so many slots in mail you can store stuff in before it becomes full... and I know it will take 56x items, but I don't know what the cap is – sorry, you'll have to experiment to discover that on your own. (Since you'll be getting it all back eventually you'll need space for it - back to square one!)
Then there are Guilds...
If you really think about it, joining The Fearless Guild is a great idea. It gives you a little extra bank space to use and a marketplace for selling your valuable collectables (potentially freeing up storage slots). The only problem is the bank space is insecure, meaning anyone has access to it and can take your crafting mats. This makes the Fearless bank a great contribution area for all members who might find it's contents useful (you only have to ask an officer to take anything out).
This little trick makes guild banks more secure if you need to use them...
Use the Guild Store and place your excess mats up for sale at inflated prices to discourage anyone buying them. You've just found another 30-day storage area that will probably be safe from frugal shoppers. If however, someone buys your expensive mats, you've more than covered the cost to buy others, or perhaps by now you've gathered more! It's win win.
Want a Guild Bank Completely Secure? Make it Your Own!
Become the Guild Master of your own micro, Crafting-Guild to secure storage for yourself in your own guild bank! Anyone can create one and recruit 10x members to gain a 500x slot bank that everyone can deposit their specific crafting mats into. And the ideal number of members would be 10x (of the 500x member cap), giving each one 50x slots of their own, in theory. But there's more...
Regular Guilds suffer from the law of diminishing returns... the bigger they get the less efficient they become. The problem begins when hundreds of members join and the number of slots per member diminishes as you get more joining. Another problem occurs when different members' stored items won't stack which lowers the efficiency of the bank further.
But in a micro, Crafting-Guild, you're all using the bank for the same purpose of storing a limited variety of crafting materials you'll all share and thereby increasing it's efficiency. And for those similar items that won't stack, they can be stacked manually by the GM if needed to free up extra slots.
Of course, a micro-guild might not become a Trading Guild like it's bigger brother due to its smaller income potential. So, it would be advisable to leave space for a larger Trade Guild for any crafting sales. Since it's revenue potential isn't known, this small fault cannot be verified. But it does make an excellent banking solution for a small group of trusted friends.
But there's still more...
Here's something really interesting you could potentially do as well, to sort of spam your micro guild's storage... if you want to enhance the capacity of your micro guild, exponentially, then here's a little trick you can try... (I haven't tested it yet, mind you!)
Everyone's entitled to be a member of up to 5x guilds. That means you can start a 10x member micro-guild, and receive the usual 50x slots per member. Now, you can let one of your members start another micro-guild to extend the capacity of the 1st guild (just for your 1st guild members).
This keeps the 2x Guilds in the crafting family so to speak, and doubles your members' available bank space from 50x each to 100x! Everyone would be using the two guilds' banks for the same shared purpose to maintain efficiency, and now with more crafting potential (perhaps for a different craft)!
And you could keep doing this until you've exhausted all your guild slots and have up to 250x extra storage space per member, for all crafting needs! You could empty your personal storage of all your crafting stuff and keep it in your shared Guild bank for future orders. You could make a killing crafting expensive, trendy items, if this works out for you!
Adding Another Account...
If you're just not happy with all the suggestions I've given so far, to increase your storage efficiency and you want even more... if you can afford it, then I suggest you purchase another account and create another 540x storage slots immediately. You'll have to create all 8x character's to do this, but if it's in your power, it's a real, legitimate solution.
Here's why...
I added another account, partly because I wanted the extra storage for my financial plans in-game, and partly because I have a young friend that can't afford to buy ESO ATM and wants to play it with me until he can afford his own game. And so, this solution worked for me.
One major benefit to having another account, is that you can now mail items to yourself! With one account you can only use the 8x character slots available for each of the two servers, one at a time. With a second account, you can make use of both servers or all 16x potential character's storage – totalling 1,080x slots! You can do this easily by mailing from one account to another (but not from different servers)!
(EDIT: Initially I thought that I could mail from any server on either account resulting in an inflated figure of 2,160 extra storage slots! In reality though, I can only mail to the same server on both accounts resulting in only half (1,080x) the available storage space. 1,080x is only double the available space of one account (540x slots).
But there's still more...
Another benefit of a second account is that you can become a member of 5x new Guilds or 10x in total - that could increase your potential financial gains by a factor of 2x. It may not seem an immediate benefit now, but when you add all of my suggestions up, it results in a significant advantage to you. And since the game is now F2P (Free To Play), the cost for another account is only the initial game price. For me, it was $70 CDN for all the benefits I've mentioned, and so choosing this second account was an easy decision.
Still another advantage of having a second account... if you have a full, Alt team and you want to delete a character, you can mail all your equipment and inventory items to your other account before deleting and creating another toon. Not a real reason to get another account, but a handy way to change names or builds.
Use Your Alt Team to Get Your Crafting into Full Swing
With an Alt team, you can level each of them enough to gain skill points you can use to get each Alt their own Hireling that sends them FREE mats daily for their profession. It's not a lot in the beginning, but it will increase in importance with further investment in this craftline and even get you purple mats!
Also, from the influx of extra raw crafting materials, you'll want to refine full stacks (200x) to gain better Xp for leveling. And remember, the more you refine the better the chance of finding higher level mats, whether refining low or higher level raw materials, it doesn't matter! And it's the pricier high level mats you're after for their Gold value, as this will help you get bag upgrades faster.
And with the influx of those extra daily materials, you'll be able to do all the crafting writs you can to use them up and gain Xp and Gold after completion. But if you find yourself running out of space too quickly, use the Guild Store or /zone chat to immediately sell stacks of mats for an assured price and put it toward bag space.
TIP6: If you're having trouble deciding what's a good price to sell anything, get a Trade Addon. ESO only has a pricing facility in the Guild Store window that shows a reasonable average sales price for the item you're listing. However, they do let you download free 3rd-party, Trade Addons that are designed to help with reliable pricing whenever you access your inventory. You can find a couple of popular apps for this and their download site at the bottom of this page.
Now that you're crafting, you can use up your growing stockpile and gain valuable Xp for faster leveling. In addition, you could find a crafting buddy to use those materials for deconstruction trading. This will gain you more Xp, and accelerate your skill development until you are good enough to start crafting armour & weapon sets for other players, to make even more Gold.
Just don't forget to use the Guild Store to list some of your merchandise. And finally, you can dump what you don't want into The Fearless Guild bank for others to use. With all these tips, you should be well on your way to realizing your full crafting potential!
To tell the truth, I've never been short of materials for any of the crafts I've chosen, and I do them all. I rarely ever spent gold on mats and I've never really been short of anything. Mainly because I stockpile all the crafting materials I find and also because I know where to look for stuff if I need more. If you want to try collecting your own supplies I'll let you onto one of my favourite Daggerfall harvesting zones, and maybe you'll find harvesting as rewarding and relaxing as I do...
(Did you know, there's one of the best harvesting areas in Daggerfall to help with your beginner crafting? It's got everything in it you'll need at level 6 and up – 11x Iron Ore deposits, 11x Maple spawns, 6x Jute, 3x flower, 3x runes stones, 5x locked chests, 5x deer, 2x mudcraps, 1x rabbi, and M'aiq the True. Do you know where it is? Hint: It's a stones throw down from the docks where they drink ???ern Comfort!) Answer at the bottom of this article.
Conclusion
So, are you convinced yet, that using your full character roster, is by far the best way to realize your full potential? Albeit, there's a bit of personal management required, maybe even a second computer to help with lists and such (or at least a note book). But you start off with more storage than any Guild will offer you. You're financial and crafting prospects are excellent and your future storage upgrades are well into the future - probably far enough away that you won't be forced early into buying extra space you can't afford.
I know what I'm talking about. I've learned almost everything I've mentioned from direct experience... I am living the dream. Except for micro-guild 'storage-spamming', everything I've discussed so far, I've tried at one time or another. It works for me, and I don't see why it wouldn't work for you. All you've got to do is give it a try and experiment!
So, we all know now, that the real problem with having too little storage space, isn't because we weren't given enough or that it's too expensive, it's because players don't start off utilizing all the bag space allowed. Now, that does bring us to a potential problem that probably lies behind the reason more players don't use all their Alternative characters.
And you probably know what I'm getting at. It's why it's so hard to create a full, Alt mule-team in the first place. And so, even if you're impressed with all my suggestions so far, this little problem is going to stop you 'dead' from realizing your full gaming potential. But like always, I might have a solution for that!
Character Creation is Easy, But This is a Real Problem. . .
So, now you know how maximum characters can maximize your game experience. You also know that realizing your full storage potential will equally expand your income potential and get your crafting professions fully developed!
So, what's stopping you utilizing all your characters (if you aren't already)? I can't believe I'm the only one that realizes the importance of a full, Alt team... In fact, I know I'm not, so what really is the big deal?
I've got a suspicion I know what it is...
Now you might say, “Okay Vey, I want to try out having all 8 character's on my server, but the real problem I have is coming up with really good names for them. Just, what do I name them all? It's not easy coming up with 2 or 3x really cool names, let alone 8!”
Well, I hear you. And that would be a problem for a lot of you I'm sure. But is it really worth stunting your gaming potential over? I mean just how hard can it be to come up with eight cool names if you really want them?
I think the real problem is the average player isn't prepared to work so hard at name creation, because they just want to get into the game, and initially, it doesn't seem that important! When it comes right down to it, new players don't want it bad enough because they don't foresee the bank space problem yet, and they stop thinking about it when they're not playing.
For me, as an amateur, creative writer, I never stop thinking of new creative names. In fact, I have lists of hundreds of names I've created for Elder Scrolls mods over the years. And I even used to carry a notebook around with me wherever I went, just in case I came up with another good name.
Now, my point is, it isn't so hard to come up with names at all, when you get into the swing of it. You've just got to try and the rest will fall into place. That is, if you want to try at all.
However, for those of you that find it impossible to create really unique and cool names, I may just have a simpler solution for you, if you read on a little more. (It has to do with that names list I told you I have.)
But if you do want to learn to develop your creative skill, with character development, then read my up-coming “Name Creation Tips for ESO”, article soon to be released on this web-site.
Creating a Fearless Guild Live-Auction
Remember I said I was working on something to help Fearless members achieve their full potential? What I meant was, I'm considering giving 100x carefully crafted and very cool names, to the Fearless Guild for auction.
Since my initial discussions about this with @Ghostfarts, she's taken my suggestion and had her own successful auctions! She's gone and proven they work in-game!! All that leaves is me finishing my next article to release some cool names to see if that's popular. If successful enough it will allow me to auction my best names to support our guild and help everyone more easily achieve their full game potential in style.
And if this is successful I'm ready to release hundreds more FREE names for member's use in a sort of 'clearing house', so to speak. It all depends on the popularity of this little article and how many read it. So, if you want to help yourself out and the other members of Ghostfart's awesome Guild, then tell more members about this little article and that we need the support of other members to make my names auction work for all the Guild members.
And here's a little example of the type of names you can expect in my Names Auction:
Jade Waterlily, Helljinx, Calliphae, Devlin Knight, Draeck Zaviour, Caravellå Dræviniçus, Draguula Von Sire, Vaxindrula Novocaen, Avengela Thornclaev, Avulzaveth Necromicon and more... But definitely not my Daedric names, like my infamous Equeziialu Wrathlveth, no I've been warned, nothing like that...Lol.
If you want to know more, become a member of this cool website and keep in touch with this Gameplay Help & Tips Forum for updates. And don't worry, the names listed above are already registered so you can't grab 'em! =^,^=
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If you have comments or would like to add anything to this article, please do so in the space below. I'd love to hear from you and see what's been stunting your potential.
Contest
* The prize for being the first to PM me all three spelling mistakes, will be a Second Tier, Cool Name from my Top 100 list. It will be comprised of a fully completed character build including the name. Also, pictures of this character will be posted on The Fearless Facebook page complete with rules. You can read more about my cool names in my upcoming article “Name Creation Tips for ESO”.
Oh, I almost forgot the skill testing answer to the best DF harvesting area...sdnalsi htob dna ffilc ot ffilc morf aera enilerohS skcoD nrehtuoS - backwards haha!
Thank you for reading my extensive and comprehensive article, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I did writing it!
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You can return to Part I from here.
BONUS INFORMATION
Popular 'Trade' Type Addons (For Establishing Fair Pricing)
A lot of new players eventually ask about good Addons and so I'm mentioning these two for Trade, as they come highly recommended and will help you decide on a good price for selling your wares. But remember, only use them as a guide as they are based on daily price 'averages' which have the tendency to lower prices generally. You can get them and many more from here: http://www.esoui.com
(Click on name link to visit download page.)
Deome's DataDeadra & Master Merchant addons are among the most popular downloads. They both arrive at estimating item pricing in roughly the same way by producing averages of total sales for a product in all of your guilds for a particular time period.
The good thing about these addons is they do a great job of reducing price fluctuations by giving a reliable average price for popular items already sold. They allow the seller to confidently post a price for their merchandise in /zone-chat or the Guild Store for instance, and know it's in the ballpark of acceptable prices. And for anyone needing to post a quick price quote for any item, they're ideal.
As long as the sales prices are not too far apart, this system works well. However, neither addon can STOP price fluctuations from occurring even among different versions of themselves. (Therefore, don't be fooled into thinking your average price is a fact! It isn't even the same as other players with the same addon that have different guilds with different sales information! Remember, it's only a guide.)
In addition, the more information included in a transaction, such as the number of sales, and the highest and lowest prices will give you a better understanding of how the average price was established by either of these addons. And MM achieves this better than DD by including a very informative graph showing the number of sales, the time period and the high & low sales prices. It's all you need to understand why the average is what it is.
From rank beginners to experienced players, you want to get top dollar for your sales, and averaging just won't deliver it alone. When you know the highest price you can better target your sales to make just a little more coin than an average price will give you, and still not anger frugal shoppers! And with MM you can achieve this easily. But they are both good at what they do, so choose for your needs – simple averaging = DD or more detailed & targeting = MM.
I just have to add this to the list of excellent addons for beginners or anyone else crafting equipment. You won't require any hand-made lists or notes to account for your researched Traits in any of the equipment professions... it automatically shows all Blacksmithing, Light & Medium Clothing and Woodworking traits, researched (with a large tick) and those not (with a large 'X'). Definitely useful and simple enough for anyone to use. (Except for me...it didn't work. IDK what went wrong only that the same thing has happened to others also. Maybe the next version will be fixed.)
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For those of you that would like to do your own research on gaming, lore or real cool names you can start with these sites for lists to stimulate ideas.
BEHIND THE NAME
http://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/mythology/2
Help with Choosing Your Skyrim Character Name
http://skyrimfansite.com/help-choosing-skyrim-character-name/
Google: 'Race lore names ESO' – (High Elves, Dark Elves, Wood Elves, Bretons, Redguards, Nords, Khajiit, Orcs, Argonians or Imperials)
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