Elder Scrolls Online Gold Road Chapter has arrived, and players will earn a host of new items by participating in the content that comes with it! Along with it, a new gold earning strategy has also dropped, which is exclusive to this new chapter.
Players who own Gold Road Chapter have the opportunity to earn a brand new crafting material, Luminous Ink. And farming this new material is a great opportunity to earn ESO Gold.
In this short gold farming guide, I’ll be covering this new material, which is also the crafting currency of the new Scribing system! I’ll also explain how to unlock and farm Luminous Ink, and the best way to do it if you plan to sell this new material to other players.
Scribing System Explained
This new item is called Luminous Ink, and it’s an integral part of the new Scribing process. For new players who are just entering Gold Road Chapter, what exactly is Scribing?
Scribing is actually a new system introduced in Gold Road that allows players to build and customize new skills after completing the new Scribing Questline. I’ll get to that later.
You’ll unlock the ability to use Scribing Altar. Then, simply interact with the altar, select a customizable skill called a Grimoire, and add a few different Scripts to it to create an ability that complements your build or preferred play style. For example, I’ve scribbled this skill using a Vault Grimoire and Poison Damage Focus Scripts. I promise you, it’s very OP.
What Does Luminous Ink Do?
Let’s get back to our gold farming strategy. Luminous Ink is a material consumed during Scribing Skill process to change any component of your skill, also called a Script.
Each Script you add or change to any given Grimoire will cost you one Luminous Ink. If you wanted to change Focus Scripts of a Vault Grimoire to make it a Bleed Damage skill instead of a Poison Damage skill, that would cost you one Luminous Ink.
And so on, if we change all three Scripts, it will cost me three Inks. So now you probably know why these Luminous Inks are going to be quite a valuable commodity.
But you might be concerned about whether this means Luminous Inks are extremely hard to get, which could affect how easily players who wish to use Scribing system can scribble new skills.
In fact, the developers assured us in a livestream not long ago that they don’t want Luminous Inks to be hard to get, nor do they want it to be super expensive, so that players have to pay everything to get it.
That being said, Luminous Ink is still a rare drop in Gold Road Chapter. Players must complete several quests in the questline to unlock the ability for Luminous Inks to drop from a few sources.
So, this could be bad news for players who don’t like to spend time grinding quests that have a chance to get Luminous Inks as a rare drop. Especially PVP players who would rather run around Tower for hours on end than pick flowers in Overland, or role-players who only log in to ERP with Argonians, will have to consider other ways to get their Scribing currency.
On the other hand, there will always be players who would rather spend a little money to get what they want and do Scribing. This is where you Elder Scrolls Online Gold lovers might want to take the opportunity to earn some extra money by selling your excess Luminous Inks to other players.
Unlocking Your Luminous Inks
To unlock the ability for Luminous Inks to drop from any enemy, you must first complete the entire Wing of the Indrik Quest and obtain the corresponding Sigil of the Luminary Indrik account upgrade. Don’t forget to chat with Adept Irnard Rirnil to officially start your Scribing Questline.
On the other hand, to unlock the ability for Luminous Inks to drop from resource nodes, you must complete Wing of the Netch Quest and obtain Sigil of the Luminary Netch account upgrade to begin that questline.
On top of that, you also get three Luminous Inks for each Scribing quest you complete, but this doesn’t include the first or last quest in the questline.
Best Farming Methods
If you’re looking to farm Luminous Inks for use or to sell to other players, the best way to do this is, of course, to make sure you’ve completed both Wing of the Indrik and Wing of the Netch Quests. You can then either farm monsters that drop loot when killed, or choose to farm material nodes in Overland.
Keep in mind that any location with many monsters, such as popular XP grinding locations like the iconic Rift and Zombie grinding routes or Spellscar in Craglorn, will be ideal Luminous Inks farming spots.
Likewise, any location with a large number of resource nodes, such as Starting Zones, will also be ideal for farming Luminous Inks. If these resource nodes are relatively close to each other and there are usually a lot of players, the nodes will refill faster.
That being said, if you want to farm Luminous Ink to sell for ESO gold for sale first, then I would recommend trying the latter first, mining resource nodes along the efficient material farming route.
The reason I recommend farming resource nodes instead of monsters in this case is that the materials dropped from resource nodes are more valuable and worth more than those dropped from monsters. Since Luminous Ink is a rare drop, the probability of a resource node dropping this item is also higher.
So if earning some ESO Gold is your primary goal, you can also do this: engage in a pretty solid gold farming strategy and make some money by selling the valuable materials you earn while farming, as well as Luminous Ink you earn.
But if you’re new to the trading side of things, I recommend opening up Guild Finder tool and taking a look at all the different Trading Guilds. You can join a guild that sounds like a good fit for you and utilize your Guild Store to sell ESO items like Luminous Ink to other players.
Final Thoughts
In the end, I have to say that while I can’t determine what Luminous Ink will be worth a month or a year from today by simply thinking about it, I will say that like all shiny new things added to the game, these new materials will be in high demand.
Because Gold Road Chapter is still relatively new and players are eager to play with the new Scribing system without having to do any farming, I would recommend taking advantage of the hype.
The prices of these new materials will most likely level out over time as players passively earn them by killing enemies or harvesting resources, causing their supply to increase on the market. And the rate at which they drop in value will be affected by how rare they truly are.
But if you missed the hype train, don’t worry. At least you now know about this new material, so you can take the necessary steps to unlock its abilities once it drops for you.
All in all, whatever you choose to do with Luminous Ink, I hope you could take something useful out of this guide. See you next time!
