Precursor Maker (achievement guide)

Saturn

This is a guide for the Precursor Maker collectible achievement in the DLC, Clockwork City. First off, a big thanks to my friend @zeroIndex for helping me locate some of the last few pieces, and spending several hours scouring the Clockwork City for the Integral of Reason with me.

*Originally posted on the PTS forum September 22nd.*

NOTE: There is a bug which may occur if you do not activate the quest before collecting all of the parts. This bug will block you from completing the subsequent follow-up quest, which gives you the reward. (Thanks to @Phage for reporting it)

Below are hints for those just needing a little help to complete it on their own, as well as my video guide showing where to find each collectible for those just looking to complete it.

I found the following 2014 thread by @Gillysan to be a great help when searching for potential Dwemer delves out in Tamriel:
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/138596/dwemer-ruins-list-goggle-drive

The Achievement:

Hints / General Information about the Achievement:

• To start the intro quest for the Precursor Maker you have to locate either Assistant Zanon's Workshop or activate the quest via the notice board, north of the bank inside the Brass Fortress.
• After doing the intro quest to find the Integral of Memory, the Precursor will give you a random clue to locate one of his missing parts. These clues are extremely vague, often just pointing to a specific zone, but can be helpful if you are stuck. The clues for the three Integral collectibles in Clockwork City are a bit more specific, though.
• Every single collectible piece found in Tamriel is inside a Dwemer delve, found in the main game (i.e. no other DLCs are required), and there can be several per zone, depending on the number of Dwemer delves available.
• Two of the collectibles require quests to access, those being the Dynamo (Buried Secrets) and the Integral of Reason (Lost in the Gloam).
• It is possible to collect all the parts before picking up the quest, and does save you a lot of time (if you know where they are) compared to constantly going back and forth to install parts.
• Compared to previous collectible achievements this one right behind Ancestral Tombs Hunter in terms of difficulty, but still nowhere near as hard as Litany of Blood.

Locations of each Collectible (ordered after the achievement):

• 1 - Left arm - Yldzuun (Alik'r)
• 2 - Right arm - Klathzgar (Bangkorai)
• 3 - Left leg - Avanchnzel (The Rift)
• 4 - Right leg - Santaki (Alik'r)
• 5 - Pelvis - Lower Bthanual (Deshaan)
• 6 - Chestpiece - Aldunz (Alik'r)
• 7 - Spine - Mzulft (Eastmarch)
• 8 - Left hand - Inner Sea Armature (Stonefalls)
• 9 - Right hand - Mzithumz (Deshaan)
• 10 - Dynamo core - Bthzark (Stros M'kai) - Requires "Buried Secrets" quest, which is acquireable both outside and inside the delve
• 11 - Integral of calculus - Mechanical Fundament (Clockwork City)
• 12 - Integral of introspection - Near the Ventral Terminus (Clockwork City)
• 13 - Integral of reason - Machine District (Clockwork City) - Requires "Lost in the Gloam" quest, which is the 5th main story quest
• 14 - Nullification staff - Bthanual (Deshaan)

Video Guide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxU159geFmY

Reward:

The reward is literally the Precursor as a furnishing target dummy. He has ~300k health and makes a comment whenever you hit him, as well as when he is killed and respawns. As far as I am aware it is possible to obtain the Precursor dummy several times, if you were to do the achievement on multiple characters, so to those players wanting to assemble a robot army, your time is nigh!

Merlin13KAGL

FFS, you couldn't let it be out a week before posting this, spoliers or not?

Saturn

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

FFS, you couldn't let it be out a week before posting this, spoliers or not?

The choice to use a guide lies ultimately with you. If you are loathe to use such tools as are available to you, that is your choice. I always try to have guides for collectibles available on launch day to cater to such individuals that do not subscribe to this idea of waiting. Also, this guide has been available on the forum for over a month, so perhaps now is a tad bit late for complaining ;p

The guide as it is, will not spoil anything for you in terms of locations, content, etc. (thanks to the "spoilers"), so I have taken all manner of complaints into consideration already, though I never imagined that simply posting the guide would be a point of contention.

Lastly, to quote yourself (in your personalized quote beneath your comment): "Just because you don't like the way something is doesn't necessarily make it wrong..."

DeadlyRecluse

I, for one, appreciate the timely posting of this guide.

Aliyavana

Great guide, sucks people complain

Merlin13KAGL

Saturn wrote: »

Lastly, to quote yourself (in your personalized quote beneath your comment): "Just because you don't like the way something is doesn't necessarily make it wrong..."

Yeah, you missed the second half of the signature...

To each their own. If you're all chomping at the bit that damn hard, have at it.

Saturn

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

Saturn wrote: »

Lastly, to quote yourself (in your personalized quote beneath your comment): "Just because you don't like the way something is doesn't necessarily make it wrong..."

Yeah, you missed the second half of the signature...

To each their own. If you're all chomping at the bit that damn hard, have at it.

I think this kind of pointless ire probably takes quite an effort to upkeep.

AzraelKrieg

Thank you very much for this. Helped a lot since I got into a slight issue where The Precursor stopped giving me hints

vovus69

Just keep in mind that order might be different. I 've got Deshaan first in the hints. May be it doesn't matter, but I would listen to what head will say.

-vovus

Saturn

vovus69 wrote: »

Just keep in mind that order might be different. I 've got Deshaan first in the hints. May be it doesn't matter, but I would listen to what head will say.

-vovus

The order of the hints are random as far as I can tell (although the possible clues do narrow down as you install more parts). The order I follow in the description and subsequent video is that of the achievement list.

Also, sidenote: I really did not like how incredibly vague the hints were. Like one of them is something about his spine being cold and another is about feeling the air of Morrowind with his hand... The way I found all the pieces simply involved looking for dwemer delves that fit with these inane hints.

Looking back on it now, having all the audio clues from Mr. Precursor could have been a nice addition to my video guide, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

vovus69

The main hint is that it is automaton - pieces should be in dwarven delves only. This narrowed it down for me.

-vovus

luen79rwb17_ESO

This deserves a million awesomes!

AlienatedGoat

I had a bug where I picked up all the pieces from the guide, then turned in the quest, and the quest hung.

The Precursor's head is now on the table again, asking for Integral of Memory, and the Associate won't give me the second part of the quest to see the Sponsor.

I've even abandoned the quest and picked it up again via the bulletin board north of the bank. Still have a hung quest.

AlienatedGoat

Would advise anyone doing this quest to do the quest portions FIRST before you pick up pieces.

Everyone I've spoken to that avoided this bug did the quest beforehand.\

Really hoping ZOS comes up with a fix for this in the next patch. It's terribly depressing to have come so far only to have the quest bug.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Lady_Amethyst

Thank You for this guide it was excellent

Gilliamtherogue

Can always count on you having a guide/video for these. Thanks for saving us all the time and frustration with this

Saturn

Phage wrote: »

Would advise anyone doing this quest to do the quest portions FIRST before you pick up pieces.

Everyone I've spoken to that avoided this bug did the quest beforehand.\

Really hoping ZOS comes up with a fix for this in the next patch. It's terribly depressing to have come so far only to have the quest bug.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom

Ah, I did not know that. Thanks for the warning. I'll go ahead and add it to the thread.

ViciousBunnii

Thank you for this! Very helpful.

code65536

They have the same model as the bombers on vHoF boss 4. And a similar amount of health. And you can get multiples of these, you say? Hmm...

Saturn

code65536 wrote: »

They have the same model as the bombers on vHoF boss 4. And a similar amount of health. And you can get multiples of these, you say? Hmm...

You can do you own "Bomber Nightmare" roleplay if you'd like XD

Megabear

Sweet guide, thank you.

Skogsalf

Thank you very much, this was very helpful!

DeadlyRecluse

Thanks again @Saturn ! Completed this in a quick run yesterday, huge help. I especially appreciate the video guide that showed delve location in the overworld and location in the delve itself--perfect amount of time spent on each map to pause and mark waypoints.

Saturn

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

Thanks again @Saturn ! Completed this in a quick run yesterday, huge help. I especially appreciate the video guide that showed delve location in the overworld and location in the delve itself--perfect amount of time spent on each map to pause and mark waypoints.

Haha, it seems I have perfected the duration then XD

MarcoLQ

Thanks!

Dagoth_Rac

I found it really confusing when the Precursor told me to go to "Morrowind". I assumed it meant the Morrowind "Chapter". But since you mention that all items are located in base game, that is clearly wrong. No wonder I have been running around that Dwemer delve in the Morrowind Chapter with no luck. I understand the clues are not supposed to pinpoint the exact location down to the inch, but "Morrowind" seems unnecessary vague and very confusing since there is a Morrowind Chapter.

Saturn

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

I found it really confusing when the Precursor told me to go to "Morrowind". I assumed it meant the Morrowind "Chapter". But since you mention that all items are located in base game, that is clearly wrong. No wonder I have been running around that Dwemer delve in the Morrowind Chapter with no luck. I understand the clues are not supposed to pinpoint the exact location down to the inch, but "Morrowind" seems unnecessary vague and very confusing since there is a Morrowind Chapter.

Omg XD I did the exact same thing. The hints are so vague that to find all of them I just went to all dwemer delves and looked around.

altemriel

very nice, thank you!!!

SydneyGrey

Merlin13KAGL wrote: »

FFS, you couldn't let it be out a week before posting this, spoliers or not?

Yes, it's terrible that he's FORCING you to look at what he wrote inside of spoiler tags, and use the info.

TFJ68

Thanks for taking the time to put this together, Saturn. Helped me out tremendously.

MasterSpatula

Thank you for this guide. I was going to go it alone, but I'm glad I didn't It would never have occurred to me in a million years that they wouldn't put one in Razak's Wheel, so I probably would have spent days scouring every inch of that place.