So I'm one of those people who likes to do it all... I'd like like to have a provisioner, an alchemist, a clothier and probably a blacksmith too. And I would like to level these craft skills as I level up my character so I can keep myself supplied with armor & consumables as I go. I'm sure I'm not the only player who has this kind of playstyle.

But with the skillpoints system I am not sure how to manage it. In the beta I felt like I wasted too many skill points on skills that were not combat oriented and I gimped myself a bit so I'm thinking that taking more than 1 or possibly 2 crafting skills per character would definitely hinder my combat ability.

So as I'm a bit of an altoholic anyway and I plan on playing a character in all 3 factions my plan is to spread those crafting skills out across those 3 characters. But I'm still at a bit of a loss skill point wise...

See, unless I levelled all 3 of those characters up at the same time, the alts would not have the skill points required to invest in the crafting lines. I have heard other people talking about making crafting alts. If that's the case do you plan on making alts that JUST do crafting? Even then, you'd need to at least do some questing / exploration to get the skill points required to do that and if all those points were in crafting then we're back to the problem of being gimped combat-wise.

I'd really rather not level all 3 characters at the same rate as I'll then be progressing very slowly and will probably start to fall far behind the general population in levels which will make it harder to find people to group up with for the group content.

I'd love to hear how other craftaholics are planning to manage this aspect of the game.

Crafting alts for you: level 2 diffrent chars to level 20 - this should take you no more then 5-6 days of intense playing per charactar. At lev 20 you gonna end with no less then 30 skill points (if you dont know how - play in next beta and read some guide)

Then - you can respec your crafting chars -and put all points into 2 separate craft lines - so 15 in each line. This is more then enough to max all skills that are worth having.

So you have 4 carfts covered

Then - make your main, and learn 2 remaining crafts while you playing/leveling. This one takes way more time to level cos you cant spend all points into crafts but spread them into combat skills, but sooner or later this char also master his crafts

Crafting mastery for advanced player: fit all crafts into one char - (main point of this tactic is - maximalize skill points gain)

Its a balancing act really. While we may all want to be able to do everything all at once you have to pace it out. If crafting is that important then yes your combat skill may suffer.

I would suggest (my suggestion only, take it or leave it) that just concentrate on 1 or 2 crafts at a time per character at least. If you try to do too much too soon you'll spread yourself too thin.

I was planning on focussing on woodworking and clothing as I wanted a stealthy archer character, but still not sure if this would be pushing my skill points to do both and just focus on one.

This is certainly one of the better ways. Just remember to pick the blacksmithing and clothier professions for the races which styles you enjoy the most.

With only 2 craft per character your gonna end with more then enough points. just spend them wisely - you really dont need "Keen Eye" and "Hireling" skills, not with these crafts - and while "Research" skill is usefull maxed early - later you can respec all point from there(cos you resarched all traits) and put into "quality % rising"

If you dont know skills, here's a list

http://eldersouls.com/elder-scrolls-online/skills

I'm not sure about the respeccing idea. I would actually like to properly play all 3 characters but just not necessarily all at once. I envisage having one main that I play most of the time and then the other two that I dabble in now and then when I feel like a change from the main. If I respecced completely into crafting then obviously I can't level those characters any more.

Or do you mean literally just creating those characters purely for crafting and nothing else?

I think if I tried to level 2 chars to 20 just for the purposes of then respeccing them, I may burn out a bit. Maybe I should just stick to the original plan of playing the 3 alts side by side.

I'd still be interested to hear how others plan to master several crafts at once...

based off my beta experiences, i think 4 crafts will be okay as long a you only focus 1 weapon skill line (2 max) lower levels might be a lttle tough on your combat skills but as long as you explore and find most of the skyshards you should be fine and have pretty much everything you really want by level 30