One Month Later (Starting New)

Mopar63

So as I mentioned in a previous post I have recently returned to ESO and I am quite happy I did. The game has expanded quite a bit and given me so fun play options. 

I am currently playing an Orc, Zantorg Grynet. Zan is a Blacksmith first and foremost and uses adventuring as a way to gather what he needs to become a master of his craft. Zan believes that Magic is the tool of the weak, a strong arm and good steel is all a true warrior needs. You can find him out and about in Armor and Weapons he has crafted, preferring to rely on his skill than that of others.

For character development he is a Templar but is taking NO class skills. His skills are in his weapons and armor. This means he can use skill points more for racial, guild (fighters guild) and of course crafting. While this can make some combat a bit tougher to get through, he has yet to face a fight he cannot win. For his boosts he uses food he buys at the local taverns.

For adventuring, I am ignoring the typical story quest lines and instead picking up stuff as I find it. I am actually passing on a number of questions as they are either working for thieves (he will not steal) or doing mundane work like delivering love notes :-) The quest must be for a worthy cause and pay well.

This wide open option for play style is something I have never found in other MMOs (Fantasy). Most try to drive you down a specific story line for PVE play and I love the fact I am able to basically right my own story as I go along.

This might not be the most min/maxed character, or the more powerful but I am betting he is unique and I am having a blast.

Kyleran

Have I got the house for you! Considering picking up Forgemaster Falls next time it comes up in the Crown store. (Might even be a way to earn it in game)

Awesome forging area right on the water, several outbuildings, couple of waterfalls, everything an Orc could ask for.

It's my favorite house so far, though I only own three I think.

https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/forgemaster-falls/

Iselin

Mopar63 said:

This wide open option for play style is something I have never found in other MMOs (Fantasy). Most try to drive you down a specific story line for PVE play and I love the fact I am able to basically right my own story as I go along.

Yup. that's the beauty of the One Tamriel change that opened up the entire game to players of any level.

The sheer quantity of high quality stories, quests and interactions, all with professional voice acting, is staggering. Some of it is just there for flavor and some is conditional on what you have done and/or how you have done it and is instanced to you.

A couple of examples.

There's a Khajiit in the Mistral village of Khenarthi's Roost, near the bar, exhibiting her caged, rare curiosity and barking to passerbys "A real, live, dog!" with this poor labrador pup inside the cage wagging his tail if you come up close to it. I always get a kick out of that bit of background color.

There's a quest in Murkmire that has you running around for an Argonian entrepreneur gathering the required bits to put together an ancient Argonian musical instrument that uses live frogs to make the sounds. She wants to demonstrate the instrument to a Khajiit commercial ship captain (whom you may have met before and if so she'll remember you and greet you warmly) in order to export the instrument to other parts of Tamriel.

If you complete that quest, the character in your account who completed it, and only that character, will see and hear, in a few locations around Tamriel (the Vulkhel Guard beach front is one of those I know for sure) an argonian playing that instrument and singing a bizarre song.

The game is full of little details like those.

Kyleran

Iselin said:

Mopar63 said:

This wide open option for play style is something I have never found in other MMOs (Fantasy). Most try to drive you down a specific story line for PVE play and I love the fact I am able to basically right my own story as I go along.

Yup. that's the beauty of the One Tamriel change that opened up the entire game to players of any level.


The game is full of little details like those.

Another fine example of small details. First zone I cleared was Vvardenfel as an Argonian DK.  There is a terrific racial oppression backstory which only will be experienced by Argonian characters which plays off their previous oppression by the Dark Elves.

But nevermind all that.  There was this one questline where I was given the choice of helping a suitor complete his betrothal or help the poor maiden escape from the clutches of the suitor and his evil mother.

I opted to help the girl escape, she thanked me and said to visit her if I ever got to Somerset. (Being new I had no idea where that even was)

So a month or so later and I'm now playing through Somerset, totally enjoy my role as "the Queen's Eye" with my all time favorite Khajit, Raz and running down a nearby beach searching for something.

I see a random NPC fishing by the shoreline and although she didn't have any sort of icon I decided to click on her as I was still new enough to the game to double click on prit near everything in the game world.

I was totally blown away to have her recognize me by name, thanking me profusely for freeing her from that miserable marriage back in Vvardenfel.

As @Iselin said, there are little treasures like this all through the game world, from major plot twists (yes you really should have killed that senator's daughter when you had the chance) to the little things that really make it feel like a world.

One big problem though, my inner completionist lies awake at night sometimes, anguishing at the thought of the many encounters I overlooked in my haste to rush through various parts of the game.

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Iselin

templarga said:

Y'all are making me want to play again!

I am hoping that, while I think the new expansion is a little lacking, the idea of the palace intrigue story is interesting to me. ESO does good stories and I am excited to see one that is not "Oh no, big baddie coming to wipe us out". 

I did just enough of High Isle on the PTS to get a feel for it without spoiling it. Traveled around both islands, fought some random baddies, did a volcanic event, etc.

The location is excellent with great sights and sounds and is much bigger than the tiny world map footprint would suggest. Like Summerset or Vvanderfell big.

And like you say, it's a nice change of pace to be focused on local intrigue (but with some world-wide implications) instead of just going after another UBG threat.

I pre-ordered and am ready for June 6th.

(PS: the free "preview" on the PTS is now over. That was just for the first 4 weeks. If you go on the PTS now and don't already own High Isle you can't go there to check it out any longer.)

Octagon7711

I liked that I could take a new character and go pretty much where I wanted.  I could start and stop main quests as I liked.  It's a lot like GW2 in that regard.  And like others have said a great number of interesting side stories to run into.  The game had a rocky start but has refined itself over the years.

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Iselin

templarga said:

Iselin said:

templarga said:

Y'all are making me want to play again!

I am hoping that, while I think the new expansion is a little lacking, the idea of the palace intrigue story is interesting to me. ESO does good stories and I am excited to see one that is not "Oh no, big baddie coming to wipe us out". 

I did just enough of High Isle on the PTS to get a feel for it without spoiling it. Traveled around both islands, fought some random baddies, did a volcanic event, etc.

The location is excellent with great sights and sounds and is much bigger than the tiny world map footprint would suggest. Like Summerset or Vvanderfell big.

And like you say, it's a nice change of pace to be focused on local intrigue (but with some world-wide implications) instead of just going after another UBG threat.

I pre-ordered and am ready for June 6th.

(PS: the free "preview" on the PTS is now over. That was just for the first 4 weeks. If you go on the PTS now and don't already own High Isle you can't go there to check it out any longer.)

Thank you for the info. I have not pre-ordered it but I just might. I have been game hopping and cannot find something I want to play. Do you play PC-NA by chance? If so, I assume, like most MMO life-cycles, population is down but will pick up with High isle?

Well the megaserver always makes it hard to get a feel for accurate population ebbs and flows  and I have been logging in only very casually for the past few weeks, but when I was playing more regularly, a month or so back, judging by queue times for the daily random dungeon I would say the population is just fine. Queueing as a healer I was getting in groups instantly and as DPS I wouldn't even have time to finish the crafting dailies before it popped for me - so 7-10 minutes typically.

There also seemed to always be Dragon groups chasing the spawns in Elsewyr and Harrowstorm groups in Western Skyrim and The Reach.

And yes that's PC NA.

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Iselin

templarga said:

I never played Blackwood as I spent time since it launched in other games but the story seemed interesting to me at least. I think between it and High Isle, I would have a metric ton of content to keep me interested.

I just went back myself in January after having been gone for almost 2 years. The Reach, Blackwood and the Deadlands were all new to me. I also had just barely scratched the surface of Antiquiies and really got into it pursuing Mythic items in the past few months,

I had (and still have) a bit of catching up, solo content to do. I'm not much of a grinder but January to April took me from about 900 to 1400 CP

Uwakionna

I'm still leveling up my new nightblade vampire personally. Really wanna take them through the western Skyrim stuff and then move into Blackwood/Deadlands.

I also made myself an angry little dremora to putter around with (technically bosmer dragon knight).

Probably my favorite part about ESO, being able to come up with some theme and aesthetic and finding a way to build it. Kinda plays well to my fondness for collecting stuff in games to then kit characters out with.

I try to still make sure they are solid builds, but it's generally concept first. If they aren't that strong of a meta, I still have fun with 'em just exploring all the random story content.

Uwakionna

Kyleran said:

As @Iselin said, there are little treasures like this all through the game world, from major plot twists (yes you really should have killed that senator's daughter when you had the chance) to the little things that really make it feel like a world.

I really enjoyed being called 'crow-friend' because of stuff like this. Was really happy when I got to meet the Blackfeather Court again.

Iselin

Uwakionna said:

I'm still leveling up my new nightblade vampire personally. Really wanna take them through the western Skyrim stuff and then move into Blackwood/Deadlands.

I also made myself an angry little dremora to putter around with (technically bosmer dragon knight).

Probably my favorite part about ESO, being able to come up with some theme and aesthetic and finding a way to build it. Kinda plays well to my fondness for collecting stuff in games to then kit characters out with.

I try to still make sure they are solid builds, but it's generally concept first. If they aren't that strong of a meta, I still have fun with 'em just exploring all the random story content.

Good job nailing the look of your themed characters. The angry dremora even has a suitable mount!

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Scot

Kyleran said:

Have I got the house for you! Considering picking up Forgemaster Falls next time it comes up in the Crown store. (Might even be a way to earn it in game)

Awesome forging area right on the water, several outbuildings, couple of waterfalls, everything an Orc could ask for.

It's my favorite house so far, though I only own three I think.

https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/forgemaster-falls/

Only three?!

What on earth do you need three homes for, one for each gamer g/f that we don't talk about? Seriously, what are they all for?

Iselin

Scot said:

Kyleran said:

Have I got the house for you! Considering picking up Forgemaster Falls next time it comes up in the Crown store. (Might even be a way to earn it in game)

Awesome forging area right on the water, several outbuildings, couple of waterfalls, everything an Orc could ask for.

It's my favorite house so far, though I only own three I think.

https://eso.mmo-fashion.com/forgemaster-falls/

Only three?!

What on earth do you need three homes for, one for each gamer g/f that we don't talk about? Seriously, what are they all for?

I have about 20 houses lol. Some were free event giveaways or quest rewards and others were just the cheapest of the cheap room in an inn some of which were also free.

They act as teleport locations from anywhere in the world for no travel cost and you can port to inside the house or just outside which avoids the house exit loading screen if I'm just using it as a travel waypoint.

I use a couple of them simply because of their location. One of them (in Vulkhel Guard) is about 10 feet away from a wayshrine so I use that one as a waypoint to travel from inside delves or dungeons or wherever and then walk to the wayshrine and use that to go where I really need to go. Very handy when I'm powering through 20 treasure maps or mats survey locations all over the world.

The other one I use a lot (Elden Root) has my storage chests in it so I use it occasionally for that reason but also because it's next to a lot of places I visit frequently like the Master Writ turn in NPC, the undaunted dungeon dailies NPCs, etc. It also happens to be about 15 feet from the entrance to an outlaw's refuge which makes it a handy place to port to to clear bounties and fence stolen stuff without having to dodge guards.

The other ones I just use to store furnishings I have gotten from game stuff so I don't need to waste bank space to store it. None of them are decorated in any way. Just not my thing.

Of the 20 only 3 are premium big houses. One in the Psijiic island I got from an event reward, another in Western Skyrim I got the same way and the third in Elsewyr was a quest reward for the main quest chain there. I have spent maybe 200K gold total and 0 crowns to get the other 17.

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