So this has been bothering me.... normally to research a Trait for a given Item, you destroy an item with that Trait and after X amount of time you learn how to apply that Trait to THAT specific item type.

So I could destroy a Sharpened Dagger and learn how to apply Sharpened Trait to any dagger (but ONLY daggers!) that I make in future. All well and good.

There are skills in the crafting tree that increase the speed with which you can research and/or let you research more than one item at a time.... I can see the potential value in this ---- instead of taking 64 hours to research the 8th trait for Daggers and the 8th trait for Swords, you can instead spend, say, 32 hours and learn BOTH new Trait/Item combos.

Here's my problem, though: Once you HAVE researched every Trait for every Item-Type in the crafting profession to which the Speed-up-Research skill applies, those skill points now serve NO purpose.

Or do they? Is there some other advantage I'm not seeing / remembering?

Because OTHER skills retain their value... your hireling will continue to bring you goodies, you will continue to be able to see resources at a distance easier, you will continue to be able to craft higher level items... but you will never again gain any benefit from the Speed-up-research skill points.

While one might say that the skill points you spent in learning Rank 2 item crafting are "wasted" when you learn Rank 3... you can still craft Rank 2 items, which you would not have been able to do if you had not bought the Rank 2 item-crafting skill.

So, IS the only advantage to the Speed-up-Research that you can research more things, faster and then you have a dead, useless skill? Or is there some advantage that you will retain in the future, AFTER you've finished researching everything to which that skill applies?

EDIT: Typo

Well not only will it take a very long time to research every single last trait, but once you have, who is to say they won't be adding more? Of course though, once you've finished all the traits, there should be nothing stopping you from taking that point out and putting it in something else (which you can do).

I don't see it being a problem though. I might even leave it there since there are allegedly well over 300 available skill points, and I haven't even managed to get rid of half of those for what I need.

Your overlooking the fact that to find all the items that have Traits to learn is going to take you a very long time.

I will try to level all the crafting professions I want on my way to lvl 50, I might consider waiting with the research then.

But as Pseudo said then you can just reset your skills when you have researched everything you want.

When you hit lvl 50 I imagine you will have around 90 skill points, and that number will drastically increase after that point.

and I could have sworn there is a way to respec? So in theory if you did research everything, you could spec out of those skills

yep sofar you are right

when you are finished with your research they are useless

but you got your research time a tiny bit wrong, its not 64 hours for the 8th trait but 32 DAYS

238 days for all traits on all items for blacksmith/clothier, and 106 days for woodworking, this is off course if you always start a new trait as soon as your research finish, and also if you have 3 skillpoints invested in research from level 1 which you cant have, so a bit more

so it will be quite a while before the points become useless and who knows what may have happened in those 8 months

You could retrait after you have all the research, unless that knowledge is somehow tied to skill points.

I fully intend for my crafting character(s) to put skill points into research. However once all research is finished, I can go and respec and put those points elsewhere, they don't have to stay allocated to research once I am no longer using them

Yeah. Don't wait on research or hesitate to throw those skill points in. They will be far from useless. If in one or two years you want them back, respec.

i have heard around 100, which is pretty close to 90

when i try to make a guestimate myself i get it to around 125, but i could be wrong

49 from 1-50

30 from sky shards in your faction area

16 from skyshards in cyrodill

20 or so out of 50 from pvp in cyrodill? this depends on how much you pvp could be a lot more or a lot less

16 or so from group dungeons? when you do a group dungeon in your own faction area, i believe you get access to the ones in the other faction areas

15+ from quests? purely a guess here

this puts us at around 146, before you start on your veteran ranks in the other faction areas(50+, 50++)

some of these numbers could be less, depending on if you get all skyshards, do all quests, do all groupdungeons and how much you pvp, but im fairly sure you will be above 100

I keep forgetting about Respec, since I almost never use them. With that in mind, I CAN see the utility in Researching more traits, faster, and then respec'ing out of them when you're "done" with the skill.

It still seems to indicate that that skill is only useful for a limited time and then needs to be "ditched", which AFAIK is pretty unusual. Can't think of another skill that outright stops working at some point.

Still, Respec it is.... just hope it's not terribly expensive to do so.

With 300+ skill points, I don't expect to be respecing often and I will have many redundant and unused skills.

This is the thing, as long as I am also questing and exploring I may not need to bother respeccing at all - however that depends on how many more skill lines are going to be added at various times after launch, could be I will someday want those points back! In which case I will be able to do so, so it's all good.

You get a lot of skill points... wouldn't worry too much about it.

Technically the skills that "highlight" nodes seem like a bit of a waste, too. The alchemy ones can be difficult to spot, but the mining and enchanting nodes are pretty obvious.

Agree, I didn't have any trouble spotting any resources at all and probably won't be spending points there at least not in the beginning because having said that I do not know what the higher level nodes look like and whether they are more difficult to see.

respeccing late game will be quite expensive, but i guess at that time we will also have a lot of cash to throw around

as far as i know its 100 gold for each skill point, so if you do it when you have 200 it will cost 20.000 gold

In before - "Rolling need so I can break it to learn that trait."

there is no "rolling" for group gear that I experienced

everyone gets their own loot recovery on every carcass

Even 8 levels above a dungeon and doing it for a group member, normal mobs dropped nothing but the mini bosses and boss sometimes did.

Gee, I shouldn't have mentioned that last line now there will be 49 complaint threads on it how that isn't the way they did it in 1974 on the very first ever mmo ever and we must abide by those rules or nerds will invade from the rogue planet orbiting our solar system and exterminate all life on earth...

that planet isnt supposed to come until august

thank god we will get to play a few months first

do they have the servers in a mountain vault somewhere, so we do not lose our characters in case the earth gets wiped?

Well my "guestimate" was based on +50 for levels + the amount of skyshards I remembered in my head seeing on the world map

So its unlikely that its accurate, but I think even people that just rush thru should get around 90 atleast.

Anyway if its close to the number ur suggesting then theres no doubt in my mind that I will put a huge focus on the crafting skills while lvling, in other mmos I usually do the crafting way after I hit max level.