My “favorite” nightmare memory is going from Qeynos to Freeport via Highhold Pass or whatever it was, as a lowly level 12 or so Wizard.
And yeah, corpse runs. Lots of corpse runs. And Froon and Choon. And night time in Kellethin. There were real challenges, to be sure. But…nope, don’t want to go back there again, not now.
Yeah, ESO is pretty easy, if you’re questing pretty much to only way you’ll die is if you fight a world boss on your own, or pull too many mobs at once. If you want a real challenge you’ll have to do PvP or dungeons (some of which can be pretty tough.)
I’ve died in ESO many times, usually against a boss-type or stupidly going into a group dungeon by myself. Learned that’s a big no-no.
For me it’s not the ending up in higher zones thing, although that does also bring some excitement and tension to the game, it’s the fact that I can’t go back and farm some lower level place and just utterly destroy it. I like the feeling that my character is growing more powerful, and that if I go back to something that may have been tough, it’s now laughably easy. For me, there is a real hook to that.
I get what they are doing and why, but to me, it not only takes some of the danger and excitement away, it robs me of going back and getting revenge on stuff, or just plain EZmode farming. There are times when I just like to farm stuff, and not have to worry and/or think much. I find it fun and relaxing. I love games where I can farm stuff for a lower level alt, /shrug.
Not sure why, but I really do like the possibility of eventually having a character that’s more or less god mode. I don’t want it to be easy, but I like to level a lot of alts, and the 4th, 5th, 6th time through quest strings, the thrill of fighting and slogging through mobs is not really much enticement. I just want to plow through stuff and get my new skills to see what they do.
ESO is an awesome game, and I enjoyed my time with it, right up to the point where I hit a brick wall on a quest with my main class, never been back since lol. Maybe I’ll give it another go.
Actually, I agree. I love striding across the land one-shotting crap for the hell of it. Especially when farming. I suspect, though, that the devs never wanted that to happen, and specifically hated it when it happened because there’s nothing quite as frustrating to lower level characters as having high-levels kill all their mobs and take their nodes, etc. And the Caldwell’s stuff tried to mediate that with level scaling but by the time people got a second character the CP 40 and CP 100 leveling was trivial for CP 200+ characters. And I guess it was complex to have multiple leveling things going on in one zone? Dunno.
milspec
3749
The new changes in One Tamriel have pulled myself and my gaming buddies back into ESO. So far we are enjoying it. We stopped playing previously as our characters slowly leveled at different rates, and it was hard to group together. Now that everyone, from a new character to an experienced CP 160 character, is all the same level we can group together, explore together and run dungeons together (we could always PvP together).
I shared some of the concerns about “where is the challenge is everything is the same?” but in my experience its been an improvement. Cleaning up old quests in the starting zones is (somewhat) dangerous, and you can no longer gallop through crowded NPC camps and expect to emerge unscathed. Exploring the newly accessible zones is exciting. It feels legitimately exotic to see the Elven lands after being used to Daggerfall.
One Tamriel was a bold move on the part of the developers (right?) but so far seems to have paid off. SteamDB for ESO (which does not show non-Steam players) shows a healthy improvement in player numbers from just below 3,000 players on recent Thu / Fri nights to now just below 4,000 players this Thu / Fri night.
My guild chat had folks observing that the zones were a lot more alive with people after this patch. How long it’ll last I don’t know, but so far it seems like a win for Zenimax.
I started up again on this. John Cleese as Cadwell, is enough reason to play through the main story at least twice. His level of voice acting does tend to make the rest of the voice acting in the game seem much worse lol. One thing I noticed, and that’s very pronounced, is how fast he delivers his lines. Bad voice actors tend to stretch everything waaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy out, trying to give it more weight I suppose, the effect is always just irritating.
Mostly I think this game is amazing, and then once in a while, it’s controller hurdling frustrating. One of the things that drives me absolutely nuts, is the ‘can’t get there from here’ nature of the world building. I swear to god, if I get one more quest that I can see 100 feet from me, but that I have to travel 6 miles to find the entrance to, to get over a 5 foot “cliff”, I’m going to get punchy.
The other thing would be, that I take back what I said about quest level and mob scaling, at least as it applies to this game. Being able to toodle off anywhere you want, and have the quests be the right level, is awesome.
That’s really the only thing that, so far, bugs me about this game as well. “Hey, that quest is RIGHT THERE on your map, but you gotta ride around and then JUST SLIGHTLY up this mountain to get to it. Have fun!”
JUST MAKE A PATH GOD DAMMIT ARG.
That happened today to me for the witches festival. I had to go turn in the ingredients for the whistle and the location was at the bottom of Stonefells near the volcano. The nearest portal was actually the long way around. I got lost and kept trying to jump over rocks. Wasted 15 minutes trying to find this small cave back behind the volcano.
Don’t forget to do the witches quest and get your whistle that gives you a huge exp bonus. I think it’s 100%. The festival starts today and goes for 2 weeks or so.
Here is a link to the info
http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/2016/10/11/the-witches-festival-is-coming
I remember wasting time trying to navigate around the volcano in Stonefalls too. I don’t think other maps are that bad though.
Except for Cyrodiil. Don’t try to find a way to sneak into the skyshards in the corners (near the alliance bases) like I did in the very beginning. Also the area around Ash is annoying, though the gating is understandable since it’s pvpland.
Thanks for the festival info!!! I’ve currently just started leveling a new stamina sorc, so this is great timing!!!
Once I found out that sorcerer pet health scales only with your level, I got the idea to make a bow/pet stamina sorc build. I know the pet damage scales with magic, but all I want the pet for is a PVE tank, which so far has been amazing. Being able to dump 100% into stam, and have this super buff tank pet as an archer is just such a gravy train. Volley, Poison shot, and the AOE CC from the sorc line is just loloverpowered combo.
So far this is the most fun character I’ve made, and definitely off the beaten path/meta lol.
Daagar
3756
Stupid bumped threads. I see that DLGamer has the ‘Tamriel Unlimited’ package at 65% off for the next few days ($13.99) - apparently close to the lowest it has ever been.
I’m sure this is a FAQ somewhere, so feel free to simply point to it, but assuming you buy the above package and DON’T subscribe, how far can you get/what are the limitations before either needing to buy expansion packs, store items, whatever?
I’ve gone overly casual with MMOs lately so subscriptions just aren’t going to happen, but $14 if you can play a decent chunk of things without being horribly crippled sounds doable…
Their marketing sucked me back in. I’m going to create a new character and try to do a Stamina Nightblade to see how it works. Most of my prior characters were Magicka based so this will be all new.
I guess I’m going to create a new toon and immediately go claim the Witches Festival thingy that gives you the 100% xp buff.
I haven’t played in a long while… anything important I should know, or should I go completely crazy and just try to have fun?
You could get more than $14 worth of just base game. It really depends on what your approach to the game is. If you want to just explore, do some quests, level casually then you can do that without the DLC.
Even if you want to race to 50 and then start progressing your Champion Points and get end game gear at CP 160 you do not absolutely need the DLC. I’m not using any item sets from and of the DLC at this point. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests are a lot of fun and add some nice “dailies” variety. I wouldn’t worry about them unless you play and decide you want to spend some time with it. I will warn you that the subscription gives you the infinite crafting bag that is such a wonderful luxury. You can play the game without it no problem but if you like to “collect” stuff and loot every trunk, urn or crate then you will feel compelled to get it.
Stamina is definitely in the ascendancy right now. Pendulum is pegged there actually. Stamina nb is completely OP and you will have a ton of fun with it.
Daagar
3759
Thanks Vic, very compelling. What I’m reading in the wild seems to match what you described, and that $14 gets a whole ton of gameplay just by itself. I’m usually casual enough that I don’t delve deep into crafting so the lack of the bag won’t be an immediate hindrance.
In fact, it sounds like the DLC/expansions are just additional story/quests and they didn’t bury vital equipment/skills/whatever in there. That’s… incredible, and makes me even more likely to actually support them with DLC and/or sub purchases later if I need more.
Oghier
3760
It’s Double Exp week, and that week lasts until November 1st. So now is a good time to jump in or come back. I’ve been playing the heck out of this lately, and it’s a much better game than at launch.
The Exp bonus is a buff you get from the Halloween content. It lasts two hours, and you renew it by re-using the cauldron you get 10 minutes in.
You can easily get hundreds of hours out of this game and not pay a penny, I certainly have. It’s more than worth to drop a few bucks on, amazing game in a lot of ways, and beautiful.
robc04
3762
After weeks of saying I’m going to give it another try I finally completed the first step of installing it!
This is pretty much what I did. I subscribed though I’ve barely touched any of the DLC yet. SO MANY QUESTS TO DO FIRST MANG.
