I also started playing this recently thanks to the good sale prices out there on the gold edition. Enjoying it so far, though I don’t know how long I’ll play it… the last thing I need is to get addicted to another MMO. (Took me long enough to quit WoW.)
That said, since I’m fumbling my way around without looking at guides or anything (because I prefer it that way), I would ask one question - is spending gold on inventory upgrades early on a wise use of my money? Because I’m pretty much constantly full. I’ve bought one bag upgrade and one bank upgrade each, but I can see the cost increases are quite steep. Yet I can’t think of what else I need my gold for.
Should I be hoarding it for anything else at this point in the game? (I’m currently level 10, if that matters.)
At level 10 go to Cyrodiil and do the (short) tutorial. You’ll unlock the most important skill in the game – Rapid Maneuver. You’ll wonder how you slogged through 10 levels without it.
Having training gear is helpful, but I believe the bonus experience only applies to kills and not quest completion. So it’s not vital.
I would upgrade space until it starts costing around 5k. At level 10 you may not have that much though.
Honestly the best way to solve the problem is to sub to ESO plus but that’s the easy answer.
You can go old school and create a couple alts to mule for you.
Also, find and join a trading guild. Almost everything is worth more than what it vendors for, especially mats for alchemy. Good way to significantly improve your income as well.
Yeah, I think I just bought the second pack upgrade for 2000, but the next is 5000, and I think the next bank upgrade is a similar amount (may be higher, I don’t recall at the moment).
I may end up making a mule for the short term… I think my main problem is that I’ve always been a packrat and there are just so many crafting materials… and I haven’t yet figured out which ones I need/want to keep. Sending some of the stuff I’m not actively using to a mule would probably be beneficial.
I’ll look into a trading guild, but I hate to commit to a guild when I’m not sure how much / often I’ll be playing. I don’t want to be dead weight to any guild. Anyway, thanks for the advice!
There are many trading guilds that have no requirements to stay on with and since you can be in 5 guilds there’s no reason not to. The guilds with the prime vendor locations (i.e. high traffic like Daggerfall) do usually have some kind of requirements simply because they are popular.
ESO plus fixes the inventory problem in one fell swoop with a special crafting mats bag and if you ask me is the biggest reason to sub. That said you can still old school mule and see a metric shit-ton of content in the base game.
First time I tried this game I got a character to level 7 and then stopped. The next time I played I started a character and got it to level 6 and stopped. I just played the 2nd character for a bit and got it to level 7. I just met the prophet guy in the cave. While the basic of playing the game are pretty simple - go to next quest, read dialog, fight things, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m not sure if I should just ignore crafting because:
1- I have no idea what components are important to keep so I keep everything.
2- Running to the bank to make deposits gets tedious.
3- My bank account is full.
Maybe I haven’t played enough to really tell, but it seems like the game is less about wandering around like in Skyrim and more about following the quest lines. Is that right?
The combat feels a little better here than in Skyrim. I’m wondering if that is the main benefit of playing this over Skyrim since I play it single player and ignore the PvP / group stuff.
If you don’t cheat like 99% of the player base, wandering and finding skyshards / lorebooks on your own can be a nice incentive to explore. There’s even in game riddles and hints to help you along.
The majority of people (like me) just downloads an add-on that shows the location of all the books and shards though.
I sympathize. The crafting in this game drives me up a wall. There’s a zillion crafting bits and my inventory keeps filling up. I have to start destroying stuff to make room and I have no idea what I can drop without screwing myself later. Then there’s research, runes, and now furniture, and on and on.
It’s like Fallout 4 before I figured out that I just didn’t care about any of that stuff. Maybe that’s what I need to do here. Just throw my hands in the air and give up on crafting.
It sounds from the inventory comments like you guys are playing the non-sub version–which is perfectly fine for everything except having lots on inventory space.
I can’t recommend enough taking a few minutes in one of the capitol cities and braving zone chat to hunt for a trading guild.
You might not want to craft–and that’s cool–but there’s gold in them thar crafting materials! Some of the basic alchemy herbs you find in the starter zones can sell for 75-100g each. You might get 1-2 gold each from an NPC vendor.
So you can deal with your inventory issues and make money. Win / win.
Anyone know which crafting requires less inventory space - blacksmith or alchemy? I’m at the quest where I need to get certified and want to pick the one that is the least annoying.
Also large guilds are free teleports to every zone in the game. You can teleport to anyone in your guild for free, at will. There are addons to assist with that too.
I suggest skipping crafting until max level. It’s a pain in the ass. Gathering is worth doing just to sell though.
You’ll never make anything that you’ll actually use and not outlevel or find something better as a quest reward/drop, as your leveling.
The time you spend crafting, which is not inconsequential, would net you enough levels to make the gear you are leveling up for useless.
The money you spend by using the mats rather than selling them, would pay for better or as good of gear as you could craft by about a thousand percent. The game has a ton of crafters, as well as drops in guild stores. It’s incredibly easy and cheap to find gear if you want it. It’s also incredibly easy in this game to farm for gear.
Crafting is really only viable and/or needed if you just love crafting, or you are trying to set yourself up to supply a guild as a full time crafter etc. Doing crafting as a self sufficient means of getting gear, is actually a serious waste of time and money (sadly). I really wish that someday, there was a game that had crafting that was viable to level along with your character, and not a huge money/time sink. I get that there has to be some investment in it if it’s going to be worthwhile, but I found the ESO crafting to be pretty much like crafting is in most games.
If it’s a labor of love, and you enjoy it, more power to you! It’s nice to be able to make set pieces for your alts but then again, you can just buy them.
I’ve got the standard ESO and thought I may pick up the gold version since it is such a good price right now, but I just don’t think I like it quite enough. It’s OK, but I think it’s too focused on just having the player follow the quest icons to the next thing. I think for me to really get into an action RPG l need at least a great story / writing, or excellent combat or really well-done exploration.
Like many people I think The Witcher 3 sets the bar very high for other games to match - great writing, good combat and good exploration. It was so solid in each area. Dark Souls has excellent combat and good exploration. Skyrim has great exploration, but is pretty subpar in the other areas. ESO has medicare writing, OK combat, and just a bit of exploration. It certainly is a beautiful place to walk around in but The Witcher 3 spoiled me in that area too.
I think ESO is something I’ll fire up once in a while, gain a level or two by following some quests, keep my eyes open for something to find outside of the quests, and then put if away for months at a time. The base content should keep me busy for quite some time.
I think I’ve come to have the same thoughts as you on the game @robc04 - maybe that’s even a general feeling I’m developing towards MMOs (I guess non-sandbox versions, anyway). As far as playing ESO, Bethesda does have events every now and then, and I find that the event reward is often enough incentive to get me to pick it back up and fiddle with it for a short while. It’s good that the events are timed, because it sort of limits my longer-term involvement.
I have a really hard time getting into this game. I’ve never been a big fan of the Bethesda-style UI, and I’m so used to the controls from WoW and EQ I always feel lost.
There are lots of addons that might help counter the feeling of ‘run to next icon’ - I would suggest the ones that add fog of war to maps, allow you to hide the compass (and many other “immersion-breaking” things), remove the dialog boxes for anything that is voice-acted, etc. I bet there are more in this vein that would help, I just know of these off the top of my head.
It won’t change the game enough if you really just aren’t into it, but for those that want more incentive to explore this can help tons.
