How to Develop the Best Profession in The Elder Scrolls Online

In The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO), professions (or crafting skills) are an integral part of the game's economy, progression, and player experience. Unlike many MMORPGs that limit crafting to just a few professions, ESO offers a wide array of crafting options, each with unique benefits, allowing players to forge their own path in both PvE and PvP content. Whether you're crafting gear for yourself or creating items to sell for gold, developing the "best" profession depends on your playstyle, goals, and approach to the game.

In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through the different professions in ESO, how to maximize your crafting potential, and the strategies needed to develop the best profession for your character.

Understanding ESO's Professions

In ESO, crafting is broken down into several key professions. Each profession falls into one of three main categories: crafting, gathering, and refining. Crafting is where you create finished goods (e.g., weapons, armor, potions), gathering is how you collect raw materials, and refining is how you process raw materials into usable components.

The key crafting professions in ESO are:

Blacksmithing: Craft weapons and heavy armor.

Clothier: Craft light and medium armor.

Woodworking: Craft bows and staves.

Alchemy: Craft potions, poisons, and elixirs.

Enchanting: Create enchantments to apply to weapons and armor.

Provisioning: Craft food and drinks that provide buffs.

Jewelry Crafting: Create rings and necklaces.

Each profession has its unique crafting stations, materials, and progression systems. Developing a profession in ESO requires you to gather materials, refine them, and learn the necessary recipes and traits that make your crafted items powerful and useful.

Step 1: Choose Your Focus

Before diving into crafting, it's important to decide which profession (or professions) you want to focus on. The "best" profession for you will depend on your personal playstyle, the role you want to fulfill in the game, and whether you plan to craft items for your own use or to sell to other players.

Crafting for Yourself

If you're playing solo or in small groups, you'll want to choose a profession that complements your character's role in combat. For example:

Blacksmithing: If you're focused on tanking or dealing physical damage, crafting heavy armor or weapons can be a great option. Blacksmithing also allows you to craft endgame gear, like high-level weapons and armor, which is essential for players focusing on PvE content.

Clothier: If you prefer playing a DPS role with light or medium armor, Clothier is a great choice. Crafting your own gear can save you ESO gold and provide you with the best-fitting armor for your playstyle.

Woodworking: If you want to focus on creating staves or bows (for magic users and ranged DPS), Woodworking is a good profession. You'll also be able to craft wooden shields for tanking roles.

Crafting for Profit

If your main focus is to create items for profit, crafting professions like Jewelry Crafting, Alchemy, and Provisioning are great choices. These professions provide a constant demand for consumables and enchantments in the marketplace, and you can profit from crafting and selling them.

Jewelry Crafting: With the addition of Jewelry Crafting in the Elsweyr expansion, rings and necklaces became more valuable than ever. These items are often in high demand because they offer critical bonuses to a variety of stats. Jewelry Crafting also lets you apply specific traits that can be very lucrative on the marketplace.

Alchemy: Potions and poisons are always in demand, especially in endgame content, like dungeons, trials, and PvP. By leveling Alchemy, you can craft powerful potions that provide buffs to your character, while poisons can weaken or debuff your enemies. Alchemy is a high-demand profession with consistent sales.

Provisioning: Food and drink provide essential buffs to players in both PvE and PvP. By crafting food with powerful bonuses, you can cater to a wide variety of players looking for the best possible buffs for their playstyle. Provisioning is another high-traffic profession that can turn a steady profit.

Step 2: Gathering and Refining Materials

Once you've chosen your profession(s), you'll need to gather the appropriate materials. Gathering is crucial to leveling up your professions, and you'll want to ensure you're efficiently collecting resources. Here's a breakdown of how to gather and refine materials:

Gathering Resources

In ESO, you can gather materials from the environment, enemies, and specific nodes. The most common materials you'll gather are:

Ore (for Blacksmithing)

Cloth (for Clothier)

Wood (for Woodworking)

Flowers and Herbs (for Alchemy)

Fish (for Provisioning)

You can gather materials by harvesting nodes you find in the world, killing enemies that drop crafting materials, or gathering specific materials from fishing or hunting. Using Gathering Passives in your crafting skill lines will make this process easier, as they increase your chances of gathering extra resources or reduce the time it takes.

Refining Materials

After gathering raw materials, the next step is refining them into usable crafting components. This is a key part of leveling up your professions. For example, ore must be smelted into metal ingots, while cloth must be processed into refined fibers. Refining is typically done at a Crafting Station in any of the major towns.

Make sure you have enough materials to refine, as refining is a big part of the progression process for each crafting profession.

Step 3: Crafting and Improving Items

To craft items in ESO, you'll need to visit specific crafting stations for each profession:

Blacksmithing Station (for weapons and heavy armor)

Clothier Station (for light and medium armor)

Woodworking Station (for bows and staves)

Alchemy Station (for potions and poisons)

Enchanting Table (for glyphs and enchantments)

Provisioning Station (for food and drinks)

Jewelry Crafting Station (for rings and necklaces)

Each station has a different crafting interface where you can select recipes and modify the items you want to create. Crafting in ESO has a deeper layer of complexity due to the inclusion of traits. These traits affect the properties of the item you're crafting and are key to crafting the best possible gear.

Research Traits: To unlock the ability to craft items with specific traits, you need to research them at the station. This takes time (up to several days per trait), but once researched, you can craft items with those traits.

Improving Items: Once an item is crafted, you can improve it by using Improvement Materials. This increases the item's quality, making it more powerful or valuable.

Step 4: Leveling Your Profession

Leveling a crafting profession in ESO requires consistent crafting and material gathering. Here are some general tips:

Craft Items at Stations: The more items you craft, the more experience you gain in your profession. Crafting items in bulk (like low-tier materials early on) is an efficient way to level up.

Crafting Racial Gear: Each race has access to unique racial traits and bonuses, so crafting racial gear can help you level faster.

Use Crafting Writs: These daily quests give you crafting materials, experience, and other rewards, and they help you level your professions while offering a bit of gold or items to sell.

Step 5: Optimize Your Profession for Profit

If your goal is to profit from crafting, consider the following:

Analyze the Market: Monitor your server's economy. Which items are in high demand? Potions, food, and jewelry are always valuable, but certain times (like after DLC releases or in-game events) might increase demand for specific items.

Craft at the Right Times: Some players craft in anticipation of future updates, events, or new content. Crafting at the right moment and offering high-value items can help you sell quickly.

The "best" profession in The Elder Scrolls Online depends on your personal playstyle, whether you're crafting for yourself or profit, and your goals within the game. By choosing a profession that aligns with your gameplay style, gathering and refining efficiently, and crafting strategically, you can maximize the benefits of ESO's crafting system. Whether you're creating the best gear for your character or turning a profit on the marketplace, crafting is an essential part of the ESO experience. With patience, practice, and the right strategy, you can become a master crafter and contribute to the vibrant economy of Tamriel.

MMOexp Elder Scrolls Online Team