Transmute Crystals are probably one of the most hunted resource in Elder Scrolls Online. I wanna give you a quick overview how you can get them and what i usually do to be able to hoard them.
General Info
Transmute Crystals are used to reconstruct gear you have found in the game or change the trait of items in your inventory. You can check out my guide on How the transmute System works for more info on how to do that.
Important: Transmute Crystals have a cap of 500 or 1000 with ESO+. Every Crystal you earn over this cap will be lost.
I’ll discuss some possibilities to store more transmutes at the end.
Random Dungeons (10xChars/Day)
Every day you can do one Random normal or random veteran Dungeon with every Character that is over Level 10 (Level 50 for Vet). The first Random Dungeon of the day will earn you 10 Transmute Crystals per character. Any further run will grant you 1 Transmute Crystal.
Pledges (4-20xChars/Day)
Pledges are daily quests given out at the Undaunted Enclaves in Eldenroot, Stormhaven and Mournhold. You need to be level 45 to start the initiation with the Item “Undaunted Invitation” from your inventory. Once done you can pick up 3 quests per character which will need you to complete 3 different dungeons daily. Two of these dungeons are base game and will provide 1 transmute on normal, 3 on vet and 5 on vet hard mode for completion. One is a DLC Dungeon and will give you a geode that provides a radom amount between 2 and 10 Transmutes for completion.
Rewards for the Worthy (25+/Day)
Rewards for the worthy are rewards provided for participating in PVP. Every 20k alliance points you earn you will get one rewards for the worthy. It doesn’t matter if you gain these by repairing walls in Cyrodiil, doing battlegrounds or any other means of PVP. The first Reward you open a day will grant you a guaranteed 25 transmutes. Every other opened reward has a chance to drop another 25 but doesn’t guarantee it. So i recommend to only open one daily.
PVP Campaign Rewards (50xChars/Month)
This is by far my favorite since it is an easy way to stack up a lot of transmutes if you have enough characters.
open the Cyrodiil Campaign menu (on PC it’s the L key) and go into any of the 30 day Campaigns.
In the best case pick one where your alliance owns a good part of the map.
Set this Campaign as your home campaign by opening the Campaign menu again, right click the campaign you are in and click Home.
Now you want to earn 25k Alliance Points (AP) in this campaign. This will get you to the Reward tier one of the campaign at the end of the month and grant you 50 Crystals.
To get the 25k AP you don’t have to engage in PVP. I personally suck at PVP so what i do is i repair walls. You’ll need Cyrodiil Repair Kits which you can buy in every Keep of your alliance. Add the repair kits to your quick slots and go into any keep with low health walls. once there you can buy the repair kits and start repairing walls by hitting the Q button while aiming at a wall or door. This will grant you some AP for every used repair kit. You’ll need about 400 repair kits for the 25k AP which will total to 38k Gold. If you don’t have that gold spare just keep an eye out for battles on the map and ride there. You can help out by hitting any enemy using siege or what ever. If your alliance wins the battle/defends the keep/claims the keep you will get alliance points based on how hard the battle was.
Weekly Leaderboards (10xCharsxLeaderboards/Week)
Once you have a certain level you can start competing for places on the weekly leaderboards. Each character you have that is on the Leaderboard Monday evening when they reset will earn you one piece of free gear from the trial/arena/infinite archive and 10 Transmute crystals. There is one Weekly trial (needs to be completed on veteran), One weekly solo arena (maelstrom or vateshran hollows) which also needs to be done on veteran to get a chance on a leaderboard space. And Lastly the infinite archive solo/duo weekly leader boards. The last being the easiest to do in my opinion. You can get on the Leaderboard for some classes by completing the first 3 Arenas. You are more or less guaranteed a spot on all of them if you complete 1-5-3.
Important side note on on the IA Leaderboard: To get a leaderboard space you need to finish the run by either loosing all three thread or going back into the entrance room and using the Thread Weaver to officially finish the run. To get a space on the solo leaderboard you can’t have your companion out.
How to store your Transmutes
With the transmute cap in mind i always struggle to have my transmutes stack up to more than 700 or 800 in the currencies since i don’t wanna accidentally waste them. What i do is to recreate any set item (in my case yolnakhriin ice staffs) i have a reconstruction cost of 25 crystals. When i deconstruct these items i get 25 crystals back.
Also i don’t open the 50 Transmute Geodes i get from the campaign rewards. I store them on a separate Character so i have them available if i am in need for more crystals.