ESO – Endgame

Well I’ve been quite the slacker, not posting in almost a year!

Part of that is I’ve settled into the “endgame” of ESO, that is, pursuing hard mode clears and attempting trifectas. Progress along these lines is slow so not much to say…

An explanation for folks not familiar with ESO… there are 3 difficulty levels of dungeons and trials: normal, veteran, and hard mode. Technically hard mode is an optional difficulty within veteran – bosses will have a way to crank the difficulty up before the fight starts. For base game trials, once you start hard mode, you can’t toggle back down without restarting the entire trial. For the rest, it is a toggle that you can flip and then unflip if hard mode proves too hard for the group.

The way this occurs in practice is the group will attempt the hard mode version of the fight for a while, and as the group nears the end of the scheduled time, will flip back to veteran to advance and finish the trial (thus getting players a new piece of gear, thanks to item curation). In a bit of an oxymoron, a lot of time the leaders will mention going back to “normal veteran” or “regular veteran” which by context everyone knows means “let’s turn off hard mode”.

Starting out the normal difficulty seems overwhelming but after running a trial repeatedly – there are currently 12, 3 of those came with the base game and are considered easy and/or training for absolutely new players – players will gravitate towards veteran for the added challenge (which feels like the intended difficulty), and hard mode for the score-pushing, trifecta attempts, achievements, and leaderboard positions.

Note: a trifecta in ESO means completing the content by fighting the bosses in 1) hard mode, taking 2) no deaths, and within a time limit for a 3) speed run. You get a title, and sometimes some extra gizmo like a special mount or memento to flash around.

The difficulty step between normal and veteran and very noticeable, and the step between veteran and hard mode is sometimes quite extreme. Everything hits harder and hurts more, bosses have more health, and extra mechanics are piled on.

For instance, there is the Bahsei fight in Rockgrove. In normal, Bahsei summons adds (flesh abominations) that pound the ground leaving an AoE damage field (malignant taint). The field goes away after a while. In veteran, that damage field stays permanently, and becomes an issue for positioning in the rest of the fight and mechanics. In hard mode, a portal mechanic is added which diverts 2 teams of 3 players to deal with, and this occurs for the duration of the fight on a timer. Throughout all difficulties there are extra mechanics to handle as well. This fight is widely considered the toughest in the game.

I mentioned earlier I joined some cores. Some of those finished, some dissolved, and I am again the a few cores… I suppose 3: 1 working on Sunspire trifecta, 1 working on Rockgrove hardmode, and 1 loosely working on Asylum Sanctorium hard mode and eventual trifecta. All these meet once a week, which is probably less than ideal from a “getting enough time and practice in” perspective (twice a week for each would be much better; however that is a lot of time to devote to getting achievements in a game!).

I do have fun, but I also enjoy playing other games, and doing other stuff besides playing games!

There are also achievement and trifectas for dungeons, with the same general design, with the obvious change that dungeons are 4-player content, where trials are for 12.

My friends and I had a fun time getting the “Out of Sight” achievement from Imperial City Prison, which involves stealthing/sneaking by 5 specific enemies. We did it by doing an exploratory run (we were all familiar with the dungeon, we did a run scouting out the enemies and where good places to hide would be, plus timing on fighting extra enemies as the patrols walked around) and doing the achievement run right after.

I am bummed I completely forgot about taking screenshots while we were doing this, or even after when we received the notice about obtaining the achievement.

While I do enjoy the trials, I’m also not wanting to overly schedule every week with 11 others just to play the game. I’m picking off the single-player content as well, finishing zone quest lines, guild quest lines, etc. while also trying to group with friends for dungeon runs. The goal with the dungeon runs is to attempt to finish on veteran, farm gear, farm for mythic leads, try for quirky achievements, and just enjoy.