The Elder Scrolls Online Provisioning Guide

The Elder Scrolls Online Provisioning Guide by Middygal

I’ve been working with a few folks and wanted to get some of this information out there to help everyone understand the subtleties of Provisioning! I’d love any feedback you have, specifically information you have that doesn’t jive with what I have here.

How To Level Provisioning

Step 1: Find two recipes. One a Recipe Improvement (RI) 1, Food level (FL) 15 and the other a RI 3, FL 35. I recommend using drinks – if you’re going to buy mats rather than farm them, drinks are cheaper, and you can generally sell food mats for more. There are other sites that have information on the exact numbers – I know it’s somewhere over 100 of each that you need to create, depending on how many skill up books you’ve come across.

Step 2: Level provisioning to 30 with the RI1 FL 15.

Step 3: Spend 2 skill points in Recipe Improvement

Step 4: Use the RI3 FL 35 to level to 50.

Optional Step 5: Spend two or three points in the Provisioning hireling. You want tomatoes and oats, these are the most valuable ingredients in the game because they are used in purple food recipes.

How to Farm Provisioning Mats

There are a few mats you can only get from the Hireling (Tomatoes, Oats) or purchasing from a grocer (VR5 base mats.) As far as I can tell, everything else can be looted, but a couple of the rare beverage mats may be hireling only as well.

Otherwise, just take a character – any character – to the zone that corresponds with the level of mats you need and loot every container in the city. Some have higher chances of getting rare materials such as pepper or red wheat. There is one exception to this rule: Starter Islands and Zone 1 will only have mats that make level 1 and 5 food until the character you are looting with hits level 12.

If you are farming mats for money, Zones 1-3, including Vet zone equivalents (credit to uShutitPlox), will have faction specific ingredients, and Zones 4+ will have mats that are common across all factions. The base ingredients (fats, meal, broth, grapes, mash, and hops) are the most valuable lootable ingredients as they don’t come up quite as often as the faction mats; however the base ingredients can also be purchased from grocers so be aware of their prices before you try and sell thin broth for 60g each.

If beginning provisioning in higher levels, the low level dungeons are full of crates and barrels, and don’t have the time delays of entering/exiting doors that the cities to. (credit to untranced2)

How to Get Recipes

There are supposed to be 351 recipes currently in the game, but we know two are missing. 171 Greens, with Saltrice Slurry missing, 135 blues with Invigorated Crawdad Etoufee missing, and a Horker recipe that uses crawdads. 45 purple recipes are available, and those are rare enough we don’t think any are missing – we just haven’t seen them all.

Looting recipes is based only on the character’s level who is doing the looting. Not the provisioning level – that makes no difference at all when looting – but the actual character level. Dressers, Trunks, Vases, Cabinets, Desks, etc. are your friends when recipe looting. Unless you are ingredient looting too, stay away from crates, barrels, sacks, and produce as they will fill up your inventory faster. You also have the chance to get Motifs out of these same containers, which is nice until you have 80 of the blue ones and don’t want to flood the already flooded market.

Character Level 1-11. You will pick up only green recipes at Recipe Improvement lvl 1, and Food lvl 1 & 5. You will still get motifs 1-10 at these levels, and I got lucky and got an Imperial Motif while I was researching.

Character Level 12 – 15. You will pick up all green RI 1 recipes, and can loot RI 1 blue recipes for food levels 10 and 15. These are the most rare blue and green recipes in the game as there is only a 4 character level window to get them. Completionists are paying well for these.

Character Level 16 – 25. You will stop picking up RI 1 recipes when you hit 16, and will pick up green and blue RI2 recipes.

Character Level 26-35. You will stop picking up RI2 recipes when you hit 26, and will pick up green, blue, and purple RI3 recipes. Oddity: AD players will start looting the RI1 Roast Goat Ebonheart Pact recipe here. This is part of the Saltrice Slurry bug.

Character Level 36-45. You will stop picking up RI3 recipes when you hit 36, and will pick up green, blue, and purple RI4 recipes. Starting at RI4, the recipes are no longer faction specific, and the value of green and blue recipes nosedives at RI4. Purples are always valuable.

Character Level 46 – ?? (at least VR1 – credit to hubby for hitting VR1 tonight). You will stop picking up RI4 recipes when you hit 46, and will pick up green, blue, and purple RI5 recipes. Again, the green and blues are lower value than the RI 1-3 counterparts, but these purples are significantly more valued than RI3 and RI4 purples.

Character Level Vet ?? This is where I have a knowledge gap. I do not have a VR toon yet – I have obviously been spending all of my time figuring out the lower level looting. :) I do know the values of the RI6 green and blue recipes are also low; however these purple recipes are coveted and go for astonishing prices. It is not possible to farm for low level recipes in the Vet zones as the low level mats will drop for that faction, but the recipes will not due to your character level. Frustration will ensue if you don’t have alts to supply you with cross faction recipes. (credit to uShutitPlox)

Thank you very much for your time, I hope you enjoyed this information!

If you’d like to say Hi, I am @Ilysanna on both the NA and EU servers.

Happy Provisioning!