ESO – Housing

I’ve never been that into housing in an MMO. I know Wildstar had a super fancy system; I have a house in LoTRO but didn’t use it that much. Actually I let my house in the Shire expire and bought a Premium House in Belfelas because there isn’t monthly upkeep for VIPs. If that weren’t that case, I wouldn’t have that house either. I’ve got plenty of gold, it’s more upkeep is just another thing to think about/remember to do. I had a garrison thing in WoW and never got enough gold together in FF14 to get a house. Maybe I could afford one but I didn’t look into it.

Over in ESO there is a quest to get a free house (room in a tavern) which I did but then mostly ignored. Except… I stumbled on the fact I could recall to the house, for free, from anywhere, with minor restrictions like you can’t be in combat.

So housing in ESO serves an additional purpose – free travel – and that is huge. Say I just finished a delve and don’t want to battle my way out and then ride to a wayshrine… just pop up the house menu and recall.

As a result, I bought the Flaming Nix in Mournhold, since I have to travel there frequently to see Undaunted quest givers. There are also Fighters and Mage dailies available, the usual crafting – except I find the layout of the crafting area in Vivec to be superior since all the crafts are right there in a semi-circle surrounding two bankers! Handy for depositing extra goodies from writs like survey reports, collecting items for deconstruction, etc.

I also bought a few cheap homes that are near wayshrines, as hop off points for more travel options. And for various reasons (close to a wayshrine; close to a Dolmen for some handy quick battles; has a decent sized courtyard relative to how expensive the house is) I’ve made the Cyrodilic Jungle House my main house.

I’ve been working on digging up Antiquities – I find the system to be quite fun: solve some mini puzzles, dig up loot and get decent gold and maybe some housing decorations. That’s where the courtyard comes in – I’ve been placing my ancient treasures in the courtyard.

On display are:

• Beacon of tower zero
• Greensong gathering circle
• Daedric pillar of torment
• Noble knight’s rest
• Ashen infernace gate
• Hollowbone wind chimes
• Void crystal anomaly

The wind chimes and void crystal are animated, which I like.

I’ll switch stuff around and get closer screenshots next time. 🙂

ESO – Gear

My alt stamina warden reached level 50 so now I have two characters contributing to Champion Points. I really like that those are shared across an account; it makes having alts fairly reasonable.

Other things are shared, such as housing, the bank, mounts (but not mount training, that is per-character) and probably some other stuff I’m not looking too closely for. Zone completion is also per-char but that seems fair to me.

I’ve been “shopping” for gear, meaning checking out pages on ESO Sets, UESP (overland, dungeon), and reading over suggested builds on Alcast and Hack the Minotaur. Here is what I’ve come up with:

Templar

I’d like my magicka templar to have dps and healing sets: for dps I want Mother’s Sorrow and Medusa; for healing I’d like Worm’s Raiment and Winter’s Respite.

Medusa and Worm’s Raiment are from dungeons (Arx Corinium and Vault of Madness), so I’ll run dungeons for those gear drops (a.k.a. “farming”). 🙂

Mother’s Sorrow is an overland set, and I leveled through Deshaan so I already got the zone/quest rewards from there… unfortunately when I was leveling so all those drops are fodder for deconstruction (and already have been used as such).

But my alt is CP 160 and hasn’t done anything in Deshaan. Many pieces of Mother’s Sorrow are zone/quest rewards, so I get the shortcut of farming Mother’s Sorrow for one character using another character! Otherwise I’d be stuck with random drops from dolmens, delves, treasure chests, and public dungeons (options remain, even if they are RNG based).

Winter’s Respite is… already obtained! First thing I did on my templar after reaching CP 160 is drop everything and go to Western Skyrim and do all the zone quests and overland quests.

Warden

My stamina warden is currently wearing Defiler’s and Spriggan’s Thorns. These are decent (the Hunger is fun!) and to double down on that (he spawns on a critical hit) another set that has an effect on a critical hit is Venomous Spite, and overland set from Western Skyrim.

The possible downside is any mob that is immune to poison – that essentially nullifies the 5 piece bonus of poison infliction, but of course all the other set buffs remain. Poison immunity is spotty, many undead and dwarf robot it seems… but also most dungeon bosses. And that’s an annoying time to have your damage buff go away.

Briarheart is another set that looks quite nice, overland from Wrothgar. The downside is this overland set is harder to get (??) which I think boils down to the pieces are mostly from random drops with comparatively fewer pieces available as quest rewards.

Nevertheless, I think I’ll make a goal of obtaining Briarheart. For one thing, it is in a zone I haven’t really been to, where Venomous Spite is from Western Skyrim which I’ve adventured through (and unfortunately did not keep any pieces of Venomous Spite received).

So, for variety I’ll head to Wrothgar and if I’m lucky I’ll get 5 pieces of Briarheart along the way!

Misc

Lastly, I caught this note from Syp about long leveling curves in WoW classic –

I can get a lot of other stuff done — podcasts, audio books, movie watching — while I level.

I get it, I was there too and hit the combination of leveling slowdown plus dungeon gap and decided to go back to LoTRO and ESO (see how that worked out!) To be fair to WoW, 2 friends had stopped and my 3rd friend, a leveling monster that locusts content, was also nearing a break because evening classes were ramping up and demanding more time. So in another few weeks I’d be soloing in my last choice of games to solo in. Not throwing WoW under the bus but if I were playing solo, I’d pick ESO, LoTRO, FF14, heck Secret World Legends, Guild Wars 2, DDO – all these games before WoW.

It isn’t my time or subscription money, but if WoW leveling were so dull and un-engaging that I needed to supplement with movies and podcasts while doing it (wtf ?!), I’d unsub.

ESO – Guild and Other Activities

ESO continues to be a ton of fun – this past week brought some new activities into the mix.

Guild

I was blind invited to a guild a few weeks ago. There was a discord site so I signed up, and started to lurk in various channels. I’m one of those quiet members that doesn’t speak too much, but I’m willing to do some activities.

Most days there is a blanket call for people interested in a group activity. One showed up that I wanted to try out – dragon event in Elsweyr. The idea was to group up, ride around Elwseyr and tackle the various dragon world bosses. Along the way there would be grabbing wayshrines, a nearby delve, and a few other quests.

The logistics were great: easy to sign up (just type in chat and a plugin would auto-invite your char to the group), once grouped the game offers to move you to the same instance as the group leader (no travel needed), the leader had a handful of quests to share, and there was a discord voice channel set up to join. I usually don’t get out my headset/mic setup, so I wasn’t able to talk, be being able to listen is what’s really important.

We set off and one dragon was ready to fight. It was total chaos – world bosses on steroids with dozens of players fighting. But it was super fun at the same time!

Our fight orders were to light attack, which I suppose helps with graphics lag, except if you were a healer in which case also use healing skills. I had a few heals and protective skills on my bar so I wove those in between running around and also light attacking.

Our guild event went well and we broke after ~90 mins or so. I’ll definitely look for other events to join.

Dungeoneering

My friend and I tackled a few more Dungeons, mostly sticking to what the Undaunted Pledges were offering. That’s because those count as daily quests during this Anniversary Festival, which means in addition to the normal rewards there is an Anniversary Box. Might as well take advantage of that.

We did Crypt of Hearts 2 and Fungal Grotto 2 (again). Both are challenging for us, especially as a duo. We had several deaths along the way but soul gems are plentiful and it’s fun to overcome a seemingly impossible fight.

Like the last boss in Crypt of Hearts 2, Nerien’eth. We eventually noticed his big attack had a pattern – he’d teleport away, summon 2 wraiths, they would move towards us, then he would teleport and start winding up (red circle AoE) that more or less one-shot us.

So when he teleported away to summon 2 wraiths, we started to separate from each other. When he’d teleport and wind up his attack, we’d starting running away to make it easy to dodge-roll the rest.

It took us 3-4 tries but we eventually downed him, and it was a great feeling!

We’re enjoying this enough to start looking into dungeons to farm for better gear. I’m wearing War Maiden’s and Winter’s Respite, my friend is wearing some combo of Defilers and Leviathan. We’re better off than new level 50 cp 160s with random stuff, but at this point we can starting planning ahead. I’ll get into what I researched as items sets I want to farm another time.

Werewolf

My main, Mayzib, is a magicka templar. This is the char I’m completing zones with, as much as possible. So that means checking off what’s listed in the zone guide – except leaving the public dungeons for later and being OK with not finding ALL the lorebooks. Mayzib is also my crafter and more recently, antiquarian/scryer, so skill points are tight. Since each zone has about 5 skill points between skyshards and delves, I might break from my usual routine and just go skill point collecting for a bit. Having another 10 or 15 to spend would tide me over for a while!

I’m also playing a stamina warden, Sarroc. I’ve got more skill points to work with because I’m not planning to spend any on crafting or scrying. But I’m interested in trying out the Werewolf skill line… which works well since Sarroc is already a stamina build.

Actually if I’m going into “criminal acts” I might as well have Sarroc handle the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests and skill lines. That way I can play that content and not be so throttled on skill points. And if it’s awesome, I can spend into those later, after Mayzib is done bumping crafting and scrying etc and of course I collect lots more skill points.

The first step is to get bitten. You can ask in zone chat, in guild chat, buy the starter quest in the store, or find rare NPCs and have them bite you. I decided to try the last option, at least for a bit before asking in guild or zone.

So my friend and I went to Reaper’s March, during in-game nighttime, and rode up and down the east road looking for werewolves. We weren’t actually sure what we were looking for (enemy werewolf? friendly werewolf? NPCs that became werewolves after attacking them?) so after in-game dawn we stopped. No point since they don’t show in daytime.

Since it is near the full-moon right now in-game, I wanted to try more. I’m pretty sure they only appear at night around the full-moon, which is what makes them rare. This morning I logged in, noticed it was nighttime in-game, and went right back to Reaper’s March to search. (Each alliance has one zone where werewolves spawn; since Sarroc is a Wood Elf, the Aldmeri Dominion zone with werewolves is Reaper’s March. If I were another alliance I’d search in Bangkorai or The Rift. Not sure that matters but I thought it definitely wouldn’t hurt to search in your alliance zone first).

And, I found some! Near the S’ren-Ja wayshrine. Yes it’s a dark screenshot but… they only appear at night.

I walked right up, they attacked, and I just healed through it for a minute. I checked my character sheet and noticed “Sanies Lupines” as an effect – YES! Afterwards I went to the nearby major town of Rawl’kha and… nothing. Nobody approached me, I had to search for the NPC quest giver. She wasn’t hard to find, leaning against the town’s Wayshrine. After a conversation I had a new quest: seek the pack leader (YAY!) or get cured at a priest (BOOOOO).

I haven’t followed up that quest yet but I am eager too!

Scrying

So I took up scrying on Mayzib. It took a few attempts to click, and now I like it. Thumbs up to any MMO content that provides something other than killing stuff (well, you might have to fight on your way to the dig sites). Combat is fun but I’m glad to see some puzzle solving in the game.

Anyway, I’ll write more on this later. Right now, I’m following leads for green and blue relics in all zones. No I don’t want to grind in Artaeum, good lord that sounds terrible. I figure if I’m going to level this skill I might as well go ahead and work on the existing leads that are basically all over the world. So far so good.

I use the Antiquarian Eye to help point the way to digs. What I usually do I ride towards the narrowed down area, and once in, immediately use the Eye while dismounting and running on foot to find it. I do this and sometimes don’t even look first before using the Eye and dismounting.

Sometimes, I ride in, pop the Eye and dismount, look where it is pointing, only to discover I just happened to come in where the dig site is. Basically I use the finder when standing right next to the dig site, as shown below (dig site is the mound of brown dirt with yellow sparkles, Eye is the comet-looking thing with its tail pointed in the direction of the dig site. Here, it is basically adjacent. Doh!)

Now, when I arrive, I take a quick look first, before using the Eye. So I don’t feel silly if I happen to be standing right next to it. 🙂