Learn the art of carving untreated wood from across the land into bows, shields, and staves. Your crafting station is found at carpentries, usually where a Carpenter vendor resides.
Woodworking involves the crafting of different types of wood, extracting ingredients from this wood, refining raw materials, optionally adding resins to create improved items, deconstructing items, and destroying finished, wood-based items to research a trait. All of this is done at a Woodworking Station.
Passive Abilities
There are six Woodworking Passive Abilities:
Woodworking Passive Abilities
| Ability | Name | Description | Prerequisite |
|---|---|---|---|
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Woodworking | This allows access to the better-quality wood types, from the lowly Maple to the coveted Ruby Ash. If you want your items to be of increasingly better quality, and want to create items from a wider variety of wood, this is the main ability to pick from and constantly add points to. | 10 Ranks at Levels 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, and 50 |
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Keen Eye | If you’re within 20, 30, or 40 meters of logs in the wild when collecting lumber, they emit a glow—especially illuminating at night. Pick this to grab rough logs more quickly, or if you find log-location tricky. | Three Ranks at Levels 2, 9, and 30 |
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Lumberjack Hireling | Once per day, and every time you log back in to your game (assuming a day has passed), your Hireling sends you wood and other random items related to improving your Woodworking, like resins (once every 24 hours Ranks 1-2, and every 12 hours at Rank 3). This is helpful, and it’s another source of raw materials. | Three Ranks at Levels 4, 12, and 32 |
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Wood Extraction | Pick this to increase the chances of extracting a greater amount of wood, resins, and trait materials from each refinement attempt. | Three Ranks at Levels 6, 18, and 32 |
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Carpentry | To research two traits for a wooden bow or other item at once—or three once Rank 3 is unlocked—and lessen the research time by up to 25%, this is a must-have skill. Grab this when you’re fully committed to trait research. | Four Ranks at Levels 8, 22, 28, and 45 |
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Resin Expertise | When you’re improving an item, there’s a chance of failure. This mitigates that problem somewhat, increasing the chances of improving items with resins. Since the higher-value resins are difficult to come by and this allows you to more easily improve items without risking their destruction, it’s well worth picking. | Three Ranks at Levels 10, 25, and 40 |
Scavenging: Locating Rough Wood
To craft with wood, start with raw materials. These are logs from a varieties of trees, beginning with Maple. There are 10 varieties, and they can be found, as you’d expect, in the wooded areas and forests across Tamriel, as well as on the outskirts of settlements, the sides of roads, and dotted around rivers and streams. You’re not looking to fell trees, but for large log sections of different wood varieties. Take out your axe (which doesn’t have to be bought; it’s automatically used), cut into these wood deposits, and you receive around three to four “rough” logs in your inventory. Keep going until you have at least 10 of the same type, as that’s what’s needed to create a “sanded” version in the refining process.
Now, you can’t create a bow by simply adding a piece of string to a log, so the rough raw materials need to be refined to create sanded versions. The following table lists the available woods, and the level at which you can expect to find raw materials. The wood found depends equally on your current level and the rank of your Woodworking Passive Ability.
Refining: Processed Materials
Sanded sections of wood are collectively known as processed materials, and it takes 10 pieces of rough wood to make 7-10 sanded pieces. Sanded wood is then used as an ingredient to craft wooden weapons and shields. The type of wood indicates the level of the bow, staff, or shield. Simply use up the rough wood you’ve collected, and turn it into sanded varieties so you can start crafting items.
Woodworking: Raw Materials
| Raw Material | Ty pe | Available | Woodworking Skill Rank Needed |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Rough Maple | Level 1-14 | 1 |
|
Rough Oak | Level 16-24 | 2 |
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Rough Beech | Level 26-34 | 3 |
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Rough Hickory | Level 36-44 | 4 |
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Rough Yew | Level 46-50 | 5 |
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Rough Birch | Champion Rank 10-30 | 6 |
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Rough Ash | Champion Rank 46-60 | 7 |
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Rough Mahogany | Champion Rank 70-80 | 8 |
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Rough Nightwood | Champion Rank 90-140 | 9 |
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Rough Ruby Ash | Champion Rank 150-160 | 10 |