Evening in Vvardenfell

Morning Friends! I am going to apologize for the rapid tonal whiplash of my posts right now, but like I said the other day I have a case of the inbetweensies and am bouncing around a bit. One of the things that I wish I was better at was staying engaged with Elder Scrolls Online. At least once a year I have this revelation of just how damned good this game is and what a phenomenal success it has been at delivering good story content on a pretty regular release cadence. I am weird when it comes to this game however in that I want to experience content in the order it was released. One of my favorite things about the game initially was that I could experience all the content on a single character and that is more or less what I have set out to do. So far I have tackled:

  • Daggerfall Covenant Campaign
  • Aldmeri Dominion Campaign
  • Ebonheart Pact Campaign
  • Imperial City
  • Orsinium
  • Thieves Guild
  • Dark Brotherhood
  • Morrowind

I’m in the middle of the Vvardenfell campaign, and I think I bounced the last time I was playing because some of the Morrowind area cities have a lot of Z-Axis nonsense on trying to find the next objective. Coming back over the last few nights I have pushed through this and gotten back out into the open countryside which is more my jam in the first place. This game is really damned good folks and if you have never played it, you should really check it out. I have a long history with ESO, and even I sometimes forget what a crowning achievement this game really is. The combat at times is a bit of an acquired taste, but I always find myself greatly enjoying the story.

If my calculations are correct, once I get to the end of Vvardenfell, the content order looks a little bit like this. Please note this is just me being weird and as far as I know none of the content needs to be tackled in any particular order.

  • Clockwork City
  • Summerset
  • Murkmire
  • Northern Elsweyr
  • Southern Elsweyr
  • Western Skyrim
  • The Reach
  • Blackwood

There has been an excessive amount of content released for this game and that is completely skipping over all of the dungeons. I’ve largely mentally done that because I didn’t have a good static group of friends to tackle them with. However more recently I have been hanging out with my good friends Clockwork Bells and Zuulzilla while we all sorta do our own things in game. They similarly have been disappointed by Shadowlands and looking for something else to latch onto, and apparently have some other friends looking to play as well. The big thing is so far we seem to have pretty drift compatible play times, which means in theory we could start tackling the dungeons.

I apparently am still fairly tanky as I managed to maintain threat on this world boss extremely successfully. I am consistently surprised by just how much activity there is for given encounters. Generally speaking when I roll up to a world boss spawn, I don’t have to wait terribly long before a crowd assembles and we can easily take it down. This all feels super organic and I even see calls for assistance answered in general chat, which is such a weird concept to me coming out of seemingly much more toxic game communities. Not saying it is this bastion for all that is good and wholesome in the world, but I have been relatively impressed so far.

There is a love applied to the content and you can tell it. These folks love what they are creating and moments like the freaking Buoyant Armigers like Captain Naros speaking in poems is pretty great. As she says… Warrior-poets are quite versatile. Each time I come back I enjoy myself and wonder why I left in the first place. I think I just sorta get easily distracted and the challenge with Elder Scrolls Online versus a World of Warcraft, is the moment to moment questing gameplay asks a lot more of you. A more traditional MMO I can grind mindlessly while catching up on my favorite shows, and a game like Elder Scrolls requires a bit more focus. There are times I want that and then there are times I just sorta want mindless busywork.

No matter how many times I leave and come back, one thing stays the same. My town of choice will always seem to be Shornhelm in Bangkorai. It might just be my Daggerfall Covenant pride, but I am pretty certain this is the most efficient town in the game. I posted the map so I could have a visual reference while talking about it. The portal is in a super handy place which is just up a hill from the bank, blacksmith, woodworker and stables. Additionally you can get to the thieves guild without encountering any town guards which may or may not be handy depending upon your playstyle. The only thing that isn’t super convenient is the wardrobe and enchanting/jewelry stations but given that the town itself is super small… you can get there expediently if you need to. If my character would have a home town it would be Shornhelm, and based on the high level player traffic I am guessing I am not the only one who feels this way.

The game is set up in a manner now that you can pretty much start any of the expansions and play that as your first content. I however still believe that the best content in the game to start with is the original starter islands of Stros M’Kai, Bleakrock and Kenarthi’s Roost. That is just my personal feeling however and it is entirely valid to start wherever you want in the content stack. The game will default to starting you in whatever the latest expansion is I believe and then from there you have quests that can take you to the other areas.

I have to admit that one of the major highlights of the evening was dusting off House Stalwart and inviting Zuu and Bells to it. I heavily recruited when this game first came out in 2014, and as a result we used to have a pretty massive and active guild. Largely I was just relying on my natural instant of trying to collect all of my friends into a single basket, but that doesn’t always work out in the manner I hope it would. The traditional MMO bounce happened and I quickly found myself in a pretty empty guild home. Over the years various folks have been active for various periods of time but for now we are mostly just using it as a shared chat room. I am hoping that we can actually make good on the idea of running some of these dungeons, because it would be awesome to see some of the more serious content that got added into the game over the years.

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