This article provides all the information you need to know about surveys and their locations.
What You Need to Know About Surveys
Survey maps are obtained by doing crafting dailies known as crafting writs. In the writ rewards, you will receive either a material box containing two small stacks of items from that crafting profession or a survey map. The map shows a location where you will find six high yield resource nodes of the profession type. The chance of a survey map drop is between 1 in 7 to 1 in 10 depending on the profession.
Similarities and Differences between Regular and Survey Nodes
The table below summarizes the similarities between regular and survey nodes.
| Comparators | Regular | Surveys |
|---|---|---|
| Appearance | Same | Same for most survey types but there will be 6 nodes at the survey site. Clothing surveys have a special node type for hides. |
| Yield | Low | High 6 to 12 Alchemy Reagents per node. 12-40 Equipment Nodes |
| Zone Drops | All | Special zone drops like trait material and nirncrux do. Disputed if surveys drop ultra rare materials like Aetherial Dust. |
| Harvest Node “Extras” | Yes | Yes. Worms, bugs, and guts. |
| Furniture Items | Yes | No (do not drop items like sapling furnishing from wood nodes. |
| Furniture Materials | Yes | No |
| Events: Harvest Bonuses | Yes | No |
Crafting Material Levels
The crafting level items you collect from surveys depend on two things. The first is your adventure level and the other is the applicable proficiency of the crafting profession. If your adventure level is not the same as the crafting proficiency level, the nodes will be split in half where some will match your adventure level and the other half your crafting proficiency.
For example, you have have a Champion Level Character but a blacksmithing metalworking level of 1, you would get a mix of Rubedite Ore and Iron Ore.
Farming Survey Maps
You can easily farm survey maps on any character level 6 (adventure level) or higher with almost no skill points invested.
You need a small starting supply of alchemy mats, blacksmith (iron ingots), clothing (jute cloth, rawhide hide), enchanting (jera, deni, makko, oko, ta) , jewelry (pewter ounces), provisioning (depends on faction), and woodworking (maple) mats.
Next, certify your character with the crafting certification masters (Danel Telleno and Millenith) usually found in the Mage or Fighters guild in the zone you start in. If you have access to Summerset DLC, you can travel to Alinor to certify with the master (Felarian) just outside the crafting area.
The advantage of farming surveys on lower characters without skill points invested is that when you turn in your crafting writs, in your rewards you always get a survey or a material box with the mats you need to do your surveys.
Making the Most Survey Maps and Saving Time
There are a few ways to make your survey collecting experience more effective: saving time and maximizing yields. You can save time by reducing the time it takes to get the survey location, respawn the survey location, or harvesting. You can maximize your yields by improving your harvesting and refining results. One of the ways to make the most of your survey collecting time is to wait until you have 5 surveys at one location. I can take several minutes to arrive and leave a survey location.
Champion Points
Craft Tree (Green) – 210 CP+ Recommended
Gilded Fingers (50 Points) – 10% Gold Increase from Writs
Fortune’s Favor (at least 10 Points) – Unlock path and increase gold from chests. (Increase to 50 Points if you will also be collecting your treasure maps)
Inspiration Boost (at least 15 Points) – Unlock path and increase crafting inspiration.
Meticulous Disassembly (50 Points) – Improves the chances of extracting Woodworking, Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Jewelry Crafting ingredients and refining of more power improvement materials.
Master Gatherer (75 Points) – Reduces time it takes to harvest by 50%.
Plentiful Harvest (50 Points) – 50% chance to gain double the yield from normal resource nodes per stage (includes surveys).
Steed’s Blessing (50 Points) 20% out of combat movement Speed.
Wander (75 Points) – Reduces cost of wayshrine usage by 50%. (optional)
Fitness Tree (Red) – 76+ Recommended
Sprinter (20 Points) – Reduce cost of sprint 40 units
Wind Chaser (66 Points)
– Hasty (16 Points) – Sprinting Speed boost +4%
– Celerity (50 Points) – Movement Speed boost +10%
Warfare Tree (Blue)
Endless Endurance (50 Points) – Increases your Max Stamina by 1300 (Optional if you prefer running than using a mount)
Crafting Passives – 62 Skill Points Recommended
- Alchemy
- Solvent Proficiency 2+ (2 or more Skill Points) – affects the solvent/oil used and harvested however, you will avoid alchemy writs requiring 3 Corn Flower (a very expensive reagent).
- Blacksmithing
- Metalworking (10/10)*
- Metal Extraction (3/3 Skill Points)
- Clothing
- Tailoring (10/10)*
- Unraveling (3/3 Skill Points)
- Enchanting
- Potency Improvement (10/10)*
- Runestone Extraction (3/3 Skill Points) – not required for surveys but useful for breaking down glyphs for crafting writ mats.
- Jewelry
- Engraver (5/5)*
- Jewelry Extraction (3/3 Skill Points)
- Wood
- Woodworking (10/10)*
- Wood Extraction (3/3 Skill Points)
Notes:
Profession proficiency levels affect level of materials harvested and in the case of jewelry crafting, the chances of dropping better quality improvement items like chromium.
| Craft1 | Craft2 | Craft3 | Craft4 | Fitness1 | Warfare1 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Meticulous Disassembly (refining) / Treasure Hunter (Treasure Maps) | Master Gatherer | Plentiful Harvest | Steed’s Blessing | Celerity | Endless Endurance |
Notes:
If you do not have a character than can maximize the crafting passives and the Meticulous Disassembly Championship perk, you may want to save your maps or sell the unrefined materials for a significantly higher profit. A trusted crafter friend may refine the mats for you.
If collecting Treasure Maps, swap out Meticulous Disassembly with Treasure Hunter. DO NOT FORGET to swap back to Meticulous Disassembly before refining your raw materials. The profit in refining is obtaining as many improvement items as possible.
Gear
While no gear will improve your harvesting speed or yield, many players like equip their survey collectors with speed gear and “stealth” items. The most common speed gear are
- Coward’s Gear (Battlegrounds)
- Fiord’s Legacy (Overland Set – Eastmarch)
- Jailbreaker (Group Dungeon – The Banished Cells)
- Ring of the Wild Hunt (Antiquities)
Respawning Survey Map Locations
There are three ways to respawn the survey map location (if you have a stack of survey maps for the same location).
- Run away and return
- Approximately 6 to 8 seconds depending on the speed of your character and/or mount
- Jewelry Survey locations were introduced with a shorter respawn area. Approximately 3 to 4 seconds.
- Alchemy Survey spawn on each visit. If you have time and patience, you can revisit location repeatedly until you get a favourable crop of reagents like corn flower or columbine.
- Logging out and Logging back in.
- House Preview Method
- This method may fall into a grey area of Terms of Service, but leverages the mechanic that returns you to your location you were at before previewing a home you do not known.
- This method is useful for survey locations where you are unable to the run and return method. For example, in Wrothgar, there’s a Jewelry survey mid-way down a cliff and it is difficult to drop down and return.
Notes:
Once you collect one of the six nodes, a survey map will be consumed. As long as you are in the zone, the other nodes will remain.
Mob Management
Mobs on the way to and near survey locations are annoying. Fortunately, there a couple tricks you can use.
If you aren’t adverse to killing innocents, you can unlock the Dark Brotherhood passive called Shadow Rider. While mounted, you will attract less aggression from nearby mobs.
A few survey locations have mob spawns on the or very near the survey location. If you have combat pets or companions, you can use the pet command to have your pet/companion engage the mobs while you collect the nodes.
Addons
Addons are third-party tools that augment the Elder Scrolls Experience on PC and Mac.
Dolgubon’s Lazy Farming
Link: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1373-DolgubonsLazyFarming.html
This addon will allow you to easily sell farming time if you have a crafting bags. It will separate any mats you gained while farming, and place them into your inventory. One interesting use of this addon is to allow guildies to offer Survey Map equivalent rewards for guild auctions or guild raffles. For example, 5 Jewelry Surveys.
Dolgubon’s Lazy Writ Creator
Link: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1346-DolgubonsLazyWritCrafter.html
This addon will automate the steps to complete your daily crafting writs to earn rewards including surveys. It also provides an useful reporting tool on writs and surveys. Finally, it has some automated inventory management functions like placing surveys earned into your bank.
/outwritstats – command to display all the writ stats for an account (Note: NA and EU) including survey drop rates
/countsurveys – it will count all of the surveys in your bank and on the current character broken down by profession.
Map Pins
Link: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info1881-MapPins.html
This compact addons places the locations of the survey maps and numerous other items on your in-game maps.
Lost Treasure
Link: https://www.esoui.com/downloads/info561-LostTreasure.html
Personally, this is my favourite survey map add-on. It has a lot of customizable settings and displays not only the location of the surveys in your inventory on your map but also how many. This feature allows me to target the larger stacks to spend more time collecting surveys and less time travelling from my crafting hub to survey map locations.
Maps
The following maps were created using locations provided by Lost Treasure .
