Games

Hey Friends! I did some nonsense this weekend. When we last spoke… and yes I am treating this blog like a two way conversation even though I am the one hogging this discussion… I was talking about leveling using the Jesters Festival buff and Dark Anchor grinding in Alik’r Desert. Since that post I have finished off my Two Hander Warden and decided to set a new target of my Destruction Necromancer. Since that previous goal that I didn’t talk about… I have finished off that character as well and dinged 50 last night during Walking Dead. As a result I am once again setting a new mission to work on Belghast Thornbite aka my Nightblade that will ultimately be bow/dual wield.

So I feel like at this point some perspective is needed. I am doing this because my joy in Elder Scrolls Online is casually working my way through quest content. However I also suffer from this annoyance that as I am leveling alts… I am not also contributing to my account as a whole. Champion Points are an alternate advancement system much like Paragon Points from Diablo 3. The more you play the game the more you get access to additional perks and while leveling through content I would love to know that at least on some level I am advancing the overall ranking of my account. This is ultimately what lead me to power level my alts using this experience buff so that I can return to leveling them slowly but also be improving my account level as well.

So you might be asking yourself… what amount of time did it actually take you to level your Necromancer since it started the lowest level. The problem with this notion is I have no clue how much play time I had actually spent prior to starting this. If I type /played in game it shows that I have 14 hours and 51 minutes on this character and I would say a maximum of 2 hours was spent prior to this grind. So that leaves you with an estimate of around 13 hours to level all the way up using Dark Anchors and overlapping the Jesters Festival buff and Experience Scrolls. Not exactly the fastest thing in the world with the core problem that things slow down significantly once you pass your 20s and again in your 30s and 40s.

It also greatly depends on how good the group is that you are with. If they are active and tagging every single mob then you are going to reap the benefit of a significant amount more experience than just from closing the Dark Anchor. So for example in the above group I can see that two people are now showing up as being in combat meaning that there are two people who are just soaking up experience while semi-afk. Ultimately that harms everyone in the group and I probably should have kicked them out given that I was leading this alphabet party.

Another thing that I talked about in the last post was the AutoInvite addon. If you are looking to do large scale group content, then I would suggest going ahead and downloading this. Ultimately this is what allows folks to auto invite when a phase is typed in chat. There was no Z group and there were no openings in X or Y and as such I decided to fill that role. It is super easy to turn on and all I had to type was “/ai z” to assume the mantle of inviting people off the “z” trigger. To turn it off likewise was just typing “/ai” without an argument. It seems like there is always a struggle to find someone to take a group over when the previous leader needs to leave. When I was nearing 50 I started trying to find a replacement and ultimately did so that the group could continue on after I tagged out. For reference here is the addon and its requirement.

• AutoInvite Updated
• LibAddonMenu

So you might be telling yourself that 13 hours is still a really long time to level in an MMORPG. This is very true but I ended up streaming my original leveling experience in Elder Scrolls Online and it was somewhere between 40 and 50 hours. For reference on my main character that I have spent the majority of my time playing over the years I have 21 days 9 hours and 42 minutes of play time, which sounds like a lot but is on par with the amount of time I have spent in Destiny 2 for example. Essentially for me personally that 13 hour investment per character will let me feel better about leveling them in the long fun given that I am just able to enjoy quest content while knowing my account is improving as a result.

This mornings blog post is largely going to be common knowledge for anyone who has been around the game for awhile, but given that this is my very first Jesters Festival I thought I would share it with my readers who might be returning to the game. Right now there is an event going that has a bunch of sub components, but the big one is a “Pie” that goes into your tool inventory that when used gives you a 2 hour long buff that effectively doubles your experience gain. There are a number of other activities that happen during this event and you can find the official blog post here. Also if you are so inclined there are numerous video guides going over the various activities and events. Since this only lasts a week I thought I should probably make this my Friday post in case someone else wants to do the thing that I am doing.

When it comes to MMORPGs I tend to be on the digital hoarder spectrum and my bank vault is littered with items that I have acquired but never got around to using. As such I had a number of Grand Gold Coast Experience Scrolls and Crown Experience Scrolls sitting there wasting. I’ve been slowly working on my Warden, given that I want it to be my next max level character. However while questing on him there has been a part of me that wishes I could just leap straight to 50 so that I could start gaining Champion Levels for my account instead of traditional levels. With this event already giving me +100% experience gain I decided to take advantage of this and stack an experience scroll. Technically were I wanting to take this to the extreme… there are a number of other experience bonus sources that I could abuse. Far as I am aware the best of each is as follows:

• Purple “Training” set gear 7 pieces plus weapon +80%
• Event Buff +100%
• ESO Plus Buff +10%
• Mythic Aetherial Ambrosia +150%
• Grand Gold Coast Experience Scroll +150%
• Pledge of Mara +10%

So if my math is correct that leaves you with a possibility of +500% experience gain. The challenge however is that you are going to rapidly outgrow a training set as you move from level to level which gets a little spendy resource wise for my tastes. Similarly Mythic Aetherial Ambrosia is expensive to acquire and currently going for in the neighborhood of 200k to 300k. Since I have a stack of scrolls and already subscribe to ESO Plus, I decided to go with those options for +260% gain. So the question is where do we go to grind? The answer is the same as it always is… Dark Anchors in Alik’r Desert.

For the uninitiated, there are three Dolmen in Alik’r Desert that are extremely close to three Wayshrines. By the time you have done a circuit of Dark Anchors, the very first one is respawning. The important Wayshrines in zone are as follows:

• Aswala Stables Wayshrine
• Goat’s Head Oasis Wayshrine
• Shrike’s Aerie Wayshrine

Folks doing the Dolmen/Dark Anchor grind tend to use an addon called AutoInvite that allows groups to be formed by typing some phrase in Zone chat. If you watch chat for a bit you are likely going to see the phase but so far in my experience it tends to be X, Y, Z, or G. If you are new to the zone, the easiest option is to find someone in guild chat that is also in Alik’r to get your first wayshrine. From there wait until the group ports and then teleport to a player in that group until you have collected all three shrines. From there just follow the pattern and reap a ton of blue jewelry, armor, weapons and a truly shocking amount of treasure maps all while watching the levels fly by. You might check the Fighters guild and see if there is a Dolmen quest for Alik’r because a side benefit is you are going to max out that skill line while doing this nonsense.

For reference I was level 22 around 6 pm and shut down for the evening around 9:30 pm gaining 19 levels. There was a break somewhere in there for food and a few to get up, stretch and hydrate but all in all it was a pretty nice ride. In theory this means I should be able to finish things up tonight and then comes the decision if I take this express elevator up on another character or not. The truth is I play this game differently than most and the enjoyable bit is randomly questing around the world, not rushing to the end game. However since I am already at level cap on one character… it benefits ALL of my characters to be at the level cap while doing that leisurely questing. So I am contemplating taking advantage of this express elevator while I have it.

Side note the current event only lasts until reset next week, but from what I understand the Anniversary event is right around the corner and lasts two weeks granting the same buff.

Hey Friends! I am obsessing over a system in The Elder Scrolls Online called Antiquities, in part because I have a number of “Leads” that I have collected through doing content in the game that have expiration dates associated with them and I am afraid of missing out on something very cool. I had no real clue how this system worked, but watched several videos last night and as a result I am going to share that information with you. Nothing I am about to say is revolutionary if you already have a firm grasp on the system, but since I knew nothing I thought maybe also some of you could benefit from the knowledge. At a high level Antiquities is a system that allows you to find items out in the world, some of which will be worth money and others will be furnishings, mounts and in a few cases pieces of exceptionally high end gear. For those of you how have played World of Warcraft, this system is a lot like a more interactive version of Archeology.

Let’s start with the basics however. In order to interact with the Antiquities systems you are going to need to have access to the Greymoor expansion and more specifically you will need to travel to the City of Solitude in Western Skyrim. If you own the expansion the base Wayshrine just outside of town should be open to you. Rather than drag this out with three screenshots I created the triptych above to aid with this conversation. First you are looking for a building with an icon that looks like an Eye with Two Shovels crossed behind it. This is the Antiquities symbol and the door shown in the middle should be marked The Antiquarian Circle when you go to enter it. Specifically you are looking for Verita Numida who will give you the starting quest. This will walk you through a quick tutorial and give you your Antiquarian Eye.

Now you should have a tab in your quest log that is also marked with the Antiquities symbol where you store all of your “scryable” content. Every zone is going to have a green item that is immediately scryable and these generally sell for 250 gold when you eventually find them so not an awful source of pocket money. From there you will get additional “Leads” which should begin unlocking Blue and Purple variants in that same zone. Additionally while doing content in the world you have a chance of getting other leads as drops. For example if you look I have one called Ritemaster’s Slate that is purple in quality and flagged as advanced and requiring Antiquarian Insight rank 3 and states that it expires in 29 days and 19 hours. Essentially it is that last part that is leading me to dig into this system now, because up returning to the game I have been collecting leads…. some of which seemingly fairly rare and I don’t want them to go to waste.

Above I mentioned that the purple lead required Antiquarian’s Insight at rank 3, and that I did not have access to that yet. Like so many things in Elder Scrolls Online, this system is governed by a skill line or more specifically two different skill lines that appear under the World section. Much like opening lockboxes and chests increases your Legerdemain skill…. scrying and excavating leads levels your Scrying and Excavation skill lines. In order to unlock these fully with both skills at level 10, it would require a total of 31 skill points. However apparently once you reach rank 7 in both, you have access to attempt every lead in the game.

The first step is to scry the object using your Antiquarian’s Eye which is accessed by double clicking on a lead in your quest log. This brings up a grid like the one above… except mine shows an example of what it looks like when everything has been solved. Essentially there are different symbols on the board and you start at the needle protruding at the bottom and try and connect your dots until you touch all six stars. Later skills in the scrying line apparently allow you to swap symbols so that more connect allowing you to solve the puzzle in fewer picks. Ultimately you are given a fixed number of turns and you are attempting to connect as many stars as you can within that limit.

If you manage to connect all six stars within the move limit you get a single area highlighted on the map. If you only connect 4 or 5 then you will get multiple areas highlighted in blue. Each area will either be the final treasure or allow you to dig up another item that represents the “star”. You can apparently level from 1-7 in Artaeum pretty easily and that is effectively the defacto zone given how small it is and how relatively safe to run around freely. The next step involves going to the blue highlighted area and trying to find the dig pile. If you have ever done a treasure map, the dig pile is going to look very similar.

You can bind your Antiquarian’s Eye to a quick slot and when you are within the region outlined on your map in blue, it will render a blueish comet on screen. The “tail” of the comet will be pointing in the direction of the dig pile. Then when you find the pile it will have all manner of blue sparkles radiating from it. Especially in a small zone like Artaeum, the dig spots are going to tend to be the same handful over and over so once you get used to where they are located you can probably find them without using the quickslot item.

Once you open a dig it starts the excavation stage of the process. From here you have a handful of tools at your disposal. Initially it will be the scrying eye and your brush, but eventually you can unlock additional tools that will show up on the right hand side of the screen. The scrying eye pings the ground and gives you an impression of how close to the treasure you are. Orange if you are far away but going in the right direction, yellow if you are getting close and green if you are on top of the item. Once you find a green square you can begin brushing away the soil and revealing the treasure. You are given a “time” bar at the top of the screen and each action you take removes time from it. Your goal is to uncover the item as fast as possible so that you can spend the rest of your time digging for bonus treasure.

That friends is Antiquities in the shortest version I can supply. I am sure there are some finer points that I missed so feel free to include those in the comments. I am in the middle of leveling and right now my pattern seems to be to do a green lead which will unlock a blue lead… which allows me to gain a decent chunk of experience but then requires me to cycle back around to greens again alternating back and forth. From what I understand it is pretty reasonable to level from one to five quickly within Artaeum before needing to branch out into other zones. Each zone has a single purple lead that you can do once, and the idea being to hop around to all of the smaller zones knocking those out. At seven then you would need to focus mostly on legendary quality leads that you pick up from the world. At least that is my plan moving forward. Now time to run around a lot and dig a lot.

Good Morning Friends. This weekend you did not get an episode of AggroChat because I was effectively knocked the hell out at the time we would have recorded. On Wednesday of last week I got my second shot of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination and as such I am super happy to be on the downward curve towards at least partial immunity. The first shot was pretty chill and the only real impact is that my arm hurt for a day and a half… but like weirdly it hurt to type sort of every inch of my arm hurt kind of pain. With dose two… my arm hurt almost immediately and then when that faded this weird generic “sick” feeling started to enter in its place. Thursday and Friday were rough and if I didn’t have some pretty important meetings and if I were not remote… I would have absolutely taken sick days.

Saturday I still felt completely awful and it is hard to explain what that feeling is. So imagine you have the flu and that general achy horrible feeling that you have when you have the flu. Then take away all of the symptoms other than that. Because I didn’t have much in the way of symptoms other than this big generic “I feel awful” sort of feeling. I also couldn’t seem to make it through the evening without falling asleep super early. Like I normally get around six hours of sleep and during this little episode I have been getting eleven to twelve hours of sleep. Yesterday I started feeling like myself again so effectively that was somewhere in the neighborhood of three days of awful before the world righted itself.

During this time period I watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier and live tweeted my reaction to the Synder Cut with apparently Tweetdeck auto populating the wrong hashtag. Apart from that and sleeping… I played an awful lot of Elder Scrolls Online and managed to make my way through the Summserset expansion content. Like on initial survey this region is not really my jam. I am not a fan of High Elves and their machinations, but the longer I have spent here the more its natural beauty has grown on me. I mean I guess I understand why they are so highfalutin when your entire world looks like manicured. It would make it exceptionally hard to appreciate the beauty of someplace like Stonefalls.

The thing that I really want to talk about this morning however is Elder Scrolls and the writing behind the numerous side characters that you interact with over the course of the content. Like I have mentioned before how damned good their character writing is when you can become attached to a character after what is effectively a handful of paragraphs of text. What is even more amazing however is how much you will remember that character in the long run. Elder Scrolls has this wonderful history of resurrecting characters that you met during a side mission and then bringing them back into modern context much later.

The thing is… each and every time I remember this character and the adventures that I have been on with them in the past… even though in my case with Summerset and one of the characters some seven real world years has passed since I last encountered them. Often times I don’t necessarily remember the name but as soon as I encounter the character for the first time my brain is like “Oh Shit! It is the Dude from the Place!”. So not only do they make us care about these characters for the course of thirty minutes of quest interaction… they manage to make us care on a level can can be summoned up to add richness to future content.

Sure there are characters like Razum-Dar that at this point we have been on enough adventures with that we should probably reasonably name a child after them. But for ever Raz there are hundreds of smaller characters in the background of each and every mission that leave a similar impression on our brains as we play through the content. Then the Elder Scrolls team has this way of summoning forth these past voices in ways that seem natural and happenstance… and also create this living feel to the world. Characters aren’t just locked within that specific vignette that we first encountered them. They instead have their own lives that often times cause them to cross our path again.

Summerset is the conclusion of a story arc that begin with Vvardenfell and continued through Clockwork City. The multi tiered narrative was new for me and reminded me of some of the things that they managed to weave into the main story for each of the factional areas. This makes me really look forward to the new dragon based content arc because if my understanding is correct it is going to offer a lot of the same story beats spread across multiple content blocks. For now however I am doing another one off, or at least what I think is a one off in the form of Murkmire. I love Argonians and I am super down to be hanging out in their ancestral lands… even if it is a fairly bog standard swamp…. pun intended.

If you have never played the Elder Scrolls Online you should really give it a chance. It is quite possibly one of the best narrative experiences in MMORPGs. I am pushing forward in a hopes of getting caught up on at least one character before the major content drop in June, but even then there is so much content between me and that goal that I am not sure it is humanly possible. I don’t want to rush the content and want to instead spend time wandering around and exploring everything. I doubt I came close to 100%ing Summerset but I probably managed to see at least 90% of the content before moving on. At some point I should probably revisit all of the zones that I never quite completed and see about finishing them off as well.