Level up your crafting skills through stealing

[foojoo]

Guide to stealing crafting mats in town or instances.

With the introduction of the the Justice System it is now possible for players to grab any free standing weapons or armor that are normally on display in town. What people might not realize is that you can steal/pick up many of these items and deconstruct them in order to get ingots (that become laundered after decon) for crafting/selling. What you want to try and do is steal as many items as will fit in your pack but leave about 2-4 slots for the deconstructed items.

The trick with this however is that the material of the item when picked up is dependent on what level you are. For instance, when you create a new character, any armor or weapons you steal will be made of iron/jute/maple until you reach a higher lvl (About lvl 14-15). Once you lvl past 14 you will notice that the tier of stolen material goes up, Iron weapons from the same area that you were stealing from before, now are made of Steel and so on. The only problem I have seen with this is the availability of wood items and light armors, as most armor/items on display are medium armor/heavy armor. I do see shields/bows/staves every so often but not as much as metal items.

What is neat about this is that you can have a regular habit of stealing from areas that have weapons/armor on display (Fighters guilds/Weapon Shops/Blacksmiths) and deconstruct them as you level. You can then either use the mats to craft stuff for yourself, or sell the ingots to other crafters looking to raise skill quickly.

As a side note for those people who like to zip through stuff, if you have several alts that are within the lvl/tier range of mats you are looking for you can park them inside guild houses to steal everything in sight and then log-off to another character who will wash/rinse/repeat.

I hope this gives you some ideas in the game as far as profit goes, have fun!

[windily]

well thanks for your sharing

[ZoeF]

What the original poster forgot to mention is that 8 out of 10 items you stole and deconstruct have 0 items in it.

[foojoo]

I have not found this to be true. I did find that items that were marked as "0" value gave little to no deconned mats back. Items that were marked "Stolen" did give more mats back.
*edit* Also, putting point into extraction will yield more mats

[truejake]

Unfortunately in the first patch or so after they released the justice system update, they nerfed the deconstruction value of stolen and 'generic' items.

[delushin]

This seems to still work for the console (PS4) ... It can be good for leveling but I need gold and XP more

[Brettl]

Confirmed working on PS4. I really like farming Windhelm for Ebonheart Pact.

[Shrekle]

+rep for sharing

[C++]

I can confirm for console this method has been fixed; you receive MINIMAL experience for deconstructing stolen equips. The fastest method to raise crafting professions is currently to have another player create equipment & deconstruct it. I will post a guide on how to do this ASAP.