Transmute Crystal Guide for The Elder Scrolls Online — Complete with Updated Fastest Farm

To get the most Transmute Crystals per day in The Elder Scrolls Online, you’ll need to be proficient in both PVE and PVP. Events and certain other sources can also provide this critical currency, but their main sources are daily activities in the game — pitting your character against both the NPC foes of Tamriel and other players.

What Are Transmute Crystals?

Transmute Crystals are a non-tradeable currency introduced in ESO’s 2017 Morrowind Chapter that you use to change gear traits and reconstruct gear at a Transmute Station. Unlike most other currencies and materials in ESO, you can’t buy Transmute Crystals, and they’re nearly impossible to find in the overworld of Nirn.

To find Transmute Crystals reliably, you’ll need to dive into the seedy underbelly of ESO’s daily activities.

PVP Transmute Crystal Sources

Your main source of Transmute Crystals in PVP will be Rewards for the Worthy, delivered to your mail every time you gain 20,000 Alliance Points (AP), which you earn through PVP combat in Cyrodiil, Imperial City, or Battlegrounds. The first Rewards for the Worthy cache you open each day is guaranteed to contain a cache containing between 4-25 Transmute Crystals.

Additional Rewards for the Worthy coffers aren’t guaranteed to contain Transmute Crystals, but they can drop 1-5. You also earn one Battlemaster Rivyn’s Reward Box for the first Battlegrounds match you complete every day, yielding 4-25 Transmute Crystals.

Battlegrounds Daily Quests, picked up from Battlemaster Rivyn himself in the Gladiator’s Quarters located in Vulkhel Guard, Daggerfal, Davon’s Watch, Vivec City, and Alinor, can provide between 1-5 Transmute Crystals each.  You can complete 3 of these quests on each character per day, and every time, you have a chance of getting Transmute Crystals. They aren’t guaranteed to drop from Battlegrounds Daily Quest coffers, though.

For each Alliance War Campaign you enter in Cyrodiil, you can earn up to 100 Transmute Crystals when the Campaign ends. Reaching Tier 1 by amassing 25k AP within the Campaign rewards you a cache containing 50 Transmute Crystals when it ends. You still get the same reward even if you get to Tier 2 (50k AP), but reaching Tier 3 (100k AP) can get you up to 100 Transmute Crystals if your Alliance ranks high in the Campaign. Otherwise, you just get a 50-crystal cache.

7-day Alliance Campaigns provide a cache with 10 Transmute Crystals upon completion. All of these rewards are per-character — you can enter different Campaigns with different characters, yielding multiple Transmute Crystal caches at the end.

Whitestrake’s Mayhem introduces new sources of Transmute Crystals a few times every year, such as Battlemaster Rivyn’s Competitive Reward Boxes and Pelinal’s Boon Boxes, both of which can provide up to 25 Transmute Crystals. Overall, PVP can be a very lucrative source of Transmute Crystals if you don’t mind competing against other players.

PVE Transmute Crystal Sources

The most consistent and reliable source of Transmute Crystals on the PVE side of ESO is your Random Daily Dungeon. Random Normal Dungeons are much easier to complete with a pickup group (PUG) than Random Veteran Dungeons, and each yields the same number of Transmute Crystals upon completion: 10.

Things get a bit more complex when you add Undaunted Pledges into the mix, picked up in Elden Root, Wayrest, and Mournhold at Undaunted Enclaves. Pledges are daily quests you complete by conquering specific dungeons. Completing a Normal Dungeon Pledge yields 1 Transmute Crystal; Veteran Pledges give 3.

If you complete a Veteran Pledge Dungeon on Hard Mode (consisting of killing the final boss with certain handicaps or restrictions), you’ll get 5 Transmute Crystals. Completing Weekly Trial Quests also gives 5 Transmute Crystals, and so does placing in the top 100 of the Trials Leaderboard (per character, per trial). The same goes for Veteran Arenas (though Maelstrom can sometimes reward 4 Transmute Crystals instead of 5.

Very rarely, Group Dungeon bosses can drop Transmute Crystal Geodes with 1-5 Crystals. The same goes for Public Dungeon, Delve, and World Bosses — also Treasure Chests. Don’t count on this approach as a reliable farm, though.

Events & Other Transmute Crystal Sources

Seasonal events in ESO like Witches Festival and New Life Festival come with their own opportunities to earn Transmute Crystals — check out these events in the Help menu for more information.

If you count Tales of Tribute as either PVE or PVP, you can get a 5-Transmute Crystal coffer when you win — either against players or against bots. Personally, I don’t count ToT as anything but an incredibly boring mistake.

This isn’t exactly a source of Transmute Crystals since it leverages Crystals you’ve already used, but don’t forget that you can deconstruct gear you’ve Reconstructed at a Transmute Station. Reconstructing a set item can cost up to 75 Transmute Crystals, but deconstructing a Reconstructed item only yields 25 back. I only find this method to be useful when I’ve accumulated gear I reconstructed a long time ago that I no longer need.

How Many Transmute Crystals Can You Farm Per Day?

A day is 24 hours long, and some gamers seem determined to prove you can actually fill every single one of them with gaming. So, let’s consider this question from the most hardcore of hardcore perspectives — how many Transmute Crystals could you conceivably amass in a single day?

The answer appears to be 1,200 max. That’s without a Time-Turner from Harry Potter, but do those even work on video game servers?

Here’s how I arrived at this number. You can have a maximum of 18 characters in ESO. That means a hard cap of 180 Transmute Crystals per day from Random Daily Dungeons. Undaunted Pledges — if you do every single one on Veteran Hard Mode — will get you 270 Crystals. This is shaping up to be quite a day for you in The Elder Scrolls Online!

With activities that yield an inconsistent number of Transmute Crystals, estimates are the best we’ll get. But you can expect an average of around 180 or so from Battlegrounds Boxes, and perhaps a bit more from Tales of Tribute.

If you manage to complete all these activities on 18 characters in a single day, my hat off to you. I’ll even cut my hair.

What Is the Transmute Crystal Inventory Limit?

You can only carry a maximum of 1,000 Transmute Crystals at a time. Without ESO Plus, that number goes down to 500. So, even if you theoretically could get more than 1,000 Transmute Crystals in a day, you’d either have to bank some of your Geodes before opening them or use up some Transmute Crystals at a Transmute Station to make room for more.

Fastest Transmute Crystal Grind

The fastest way to grind guaranteed Transmute Crystals in The Elder Scrolls Online is queuing as a Healer or Tank in Random Normal Dungeons. Since the majority of players queue as DPS, choosing other roles helps you fill gaps in matches currently being made, ensuring you a shorter wait time. I usually queue instantly as a Healer.

Now, a minor caveat — in Random Normal Dungeons, it really doesn’t matter if you can heal as a Healer or tank as a Tank. Some players might think otherwise, though — prepare to receive flack if you queue for a role you can’t fulfill at all. Steer clear of this faux pas entirely if you queue for Veteran content — in Vet, Tanks and Healers must pull their own weight or your team will wipe.

Vanilla Dungeons, or those that launched with the base game, are easy-peasy to complete these days what with the immense power creep ESO has endured over the years. Examples include Fungal Grotto I (where you can just run to the end, only needing to kill one mini-boss along the way) and Banished Cells I, both of which can take as little as 5-10 minutes to complete under ideal conditions.

Completing easy dungeons as a Healer takes your potential Transmute Crystal farm power considerably beyond 1 Crystal-per minute. Having 18 characters spamming vanilla dungeons offers an incredible Transmute Crystal yield potential over a very short timeframe — as much as 180 Crystals over the course of 2 hours.

DLC Dungeons are another matter entirely. Even on Normal, these can take considerable time to complete. Queuing for the wrong role also matters a lot more here — you could conceivably let your team down if you fake tank or fake heal.

Here’s a controversial take — if you don’t have it in you to complete a DLC dungeon, just quit. Don’t even say anything — simply absent yourself, leaving room for a Companion or a new player to take your place. Your presence won’t really be missed — the queue system should provide a replacement within less than a minute.

To be honest, having ESO Plus is a disadvantage here because doing so provides you access to all but the latest DLC dungeons in the game, making it less likely you’ll roll a base-game dungeon. Even without ESO Plus, owning a DLC will add its dungeons into your potential rolls — purchase DLCs with caution!

How Do I Use Transmute Crystals?

You use Transmute Crystals at Transmute Stations, one of which is located in Clockwork City — originally a DLC zone but now available to all players. Outside of Clockwork City, Transmute Stations are also a furnishing players can add to their houses. Most guilds have one in their guild hall.

Transmuting vs. Reconstructing in ESO

Upon interacting with a Transmute Station, two options will appear: Transmute and Reconstruct. Transmuting changes the trait on an existing item and always costs 50 Transmute Crystals. Reconstructing allows you to recreate a Set Item you’ve already found. The cost starts at 75 Crystals when you’ve only found one item but drops down to only 25 once you’ve found the whole set. You can only Transmute or Reconstruct items with traits you’ve already learned by Researching gear with those traits at the appropriate crafting station.

How Should I Spend My Transmute Crystals?

Now that you’ve amassed a hoard of Transmute Crystals, what do you do with them? First, keep in mind that Reconstructing is almost always better than Transmuting due to the decreased cost — but only if you’ve found enough items in the set for Reconstructing to cost less than 50 Transmute Crystals.

Also, remember that finding the ideal trait in Jewelry and Weapons requires more favor from the RNG gods than rolling your ideal armor. So, consider keeping your Transmutes for that last ring or sword you just can’t find in a particular set.

Just make sure to use some Transmute Crystals before you hit the cap of 1,000 (500 for non-ESO Plus). And, if you want to Reconstruct gear in a particular trait, expect to wait — researching gear traits takes longer the more traits you’ve researched. My advice is to only research traits you’ll actually use first — Training, Nirnhoned, Sharpened, etc. — and then research the rest of the traits after you’ve covered the essentials.

If there’s a particular set you want, consider saving up enough Transmute Crystals to reconstruct it all in one go. Remember you’ll also need the Trait Material and Upgrade Materials to Reconstruct your new gear at its top potential. Set aside some Kutas for glyph crafting, too!