Kuratla's ESO Journal

Kuratla

Hello all. I think this will be the best place to maintain a journal of my time on ESO. I won't be writing fiction; I'll be writing about my experiences of the game and about my characters' progression. My thoughts, complaints, amazements, etc.

So, why I am doing this? Well, in a couple other MMOs I've played, I maintained a blog on their forums as a way to track my progress through the game so I could write down my thoughts, reflect and come back to the journals later on and see how I progressed through the game... from noob to expert. I found those blogs to be very useful and I just enjoy writing so I plan on a similar process here.

Let's start then. I'm a fan of the Elder Scroll universe. Not a hardcore fan; just someone who thoroughly enjoyed the games from Morrowind onward. Couldn't tell you how many hundreds of hours I put into the games... especially Oblivion. So I was quite eager to play ESO when I heard about it. I didn't get a beta invite until early February so I have some pre-launch experience of the game but not a terrible lot. From the beta, I got a good idea about what I wanted to do during the real game and that is primarily crafting. I really enjoy crafting in any game I play and I love how they did it in ESO.

From 5 day early access, I made 6 characters; one for each craft. I define my characters by their craft, not their race or class. Kuratla (Blacksmithing). Montador (Woodworking). Incantatrix... "Immacolata" was already taken so I'm not the only Clive Barker fan out there. She's my Clothing crafter. Sartori (Alchemy). Vatcher.. my last name... (Provisioning) and Mordeus (Enchanting).

I, of course, am not leveling up all 6 characters at the same time. I would never get to end game that way. Instead, I'm working on Kuratla. He's an Dragonknight Orc - going full tank with him. As he explores and levels up, I put all the non-blacksmithing mats I find in the bank and transfer them to the appropriate crafter a couple times a day to clear out bank space and for them to use. So far it's been working well. Each of the crafters has either reached a good rank in their respective craft or have stockpiled a ton of mats which I will use later.

My provisioner is up to rank 31, for example, and my alchemist around rank 14. Blacksmithing is slow to rank up but I still reached rank 8, mainly because I wanted to be able to research two traits at the same time as soon as possible due to researching times becoming extremely long as you go on.

I got all of the Keen Eye skills on Kuratla to help with his crafting mat searching and I spend a lot of time stopping and searching barrels, trunks, etc. I search everything I possibly can. I often see people running past an alchemy flower or ore vein and not bother to stop and get it. Don't understand why they don't. Even if they aren't crafters, they can still sell what they find.

My level progression is going slowly but I have no interest in power leveling. Several people in my guild are in the 20s and good for them. I explore more and craft more. I explored all of K. Roost, did all the quests, got all the Skyshards and then moved on to Auridon. I'll do that entirely before I move on to the next area as well. Kuratla's at level 10 right now and I did spend a couple hours in Cyrodiil... not pvping but exploring, getting mats that I won't be able to use for a long time and finding as many Skyshards as I could.

I'm in Thailand and lost the entire day yesterday due to the NA server being down for maintenance. Additionally I am (and will be) offline every Thursday and Friday until Friday evening due to weekly work obligations. Due to my unusual work schedule, I'll have large blocks of free time to play ESO but other times (like today) when I'll be offline completely. So day-long maintenances during one of my free days off really hurts.

I plan to post of this thread and update my ESO journal once per week, every Thursday morning. Rather use my work time to do so than my ESO time at home. I'll start getting some screenshots of my characters and interesting stuff I find in the game and begin posting screenshots in this blog next week.

Thank you for reading.

Rev Rielle

I look forward to reading about your experience and journey within the game

Kuratla

Thursday again so time to deconstruct last week's ESO gaming experience. I got some screenshots to add to another post after this one. I'll work on improving the quality of the screenshots as I continue to play. I run the game on medium quality to avoid lag so I guess I should have changed to the highest quality for pictures but I didn't.

Anyway, I got in quite a bit of time over the last week to play ESO. I continued in much the same vein as before. Exploring and questing with my dragonknight tank, Kuratla, and stopping when he is full on inventory space. Then go to a bank, deposit all the non-blacksmith related mats and items and cycle through my alts, taking out their related items according to what craft they use. It is quite time consuming doing this because I always run around the bank in Vulkhel Guard with the alts and get some extra mats and sometimes a racial motif book (which I sell as I have them all on my blacksmith already and want to make some extra gold). Cycling through all 6 alts, going to deconstruct items and make potions and glyphs, takes well over a half hour.

It is getting better now though. I've bought a draft horse and feeding it to increase carrying capacity and all extra gold is going towards increasing inventory. I'm at 103 on Kuratla and 90 in the bank so that means I can stay out exploring and questing for longer times before needing to return to a bank. As such, Kuratla is leveling faster these days. He's up to level 22 now and more than half way through the quests in Grahtwood. Auridon is all done except for a couple little things to do for achievement's sake.

I'm really enjoying Kuratla and how he plays. He's mostly an Earthen Heart dragonknight (around rank 33 in EH now) with all skills possible obtained and morphed and all passives possible bought as well. Got some amazingly good CC abilities and excellent damage absorption. The ultimate makes him pretty much invulnerable for a period of time and restores health, stamina and magicka upon use due to one of the passives. Basically, he's got good staying power. I was soloing quests in Grahtwood... not in order, but doing some of the level 23s when I was level 20 and had some really long and difficult boss fights but got through them without dying.

I can imagine that the other classes come into their own around level 20 or so as well and just become really fun to play.

Concerning crafting, here's where I am (so I can compare the numbers next week): Blacksmithing - 13, Woodworking - 14, Clothing - 10, Alchemy - 28, Enchanting - 10, and Provisioning 50. Provisioning 50 was a piece of cake. Unfortunately, that alt, Vatcher, is only level 5 so there's a whole bunch of Provisioning skills I need to take but he doesn't have the skill points. I need to spend a few hours on him, leveling him to 10 and getting him to Cyrodiil so I can go skyshard hunting there. He's got high level recipes that he can't use yet and I'd also like to get 3 ranks in hireling to see what good stuff I get from that. Rank 1 hireling gives like 1 pathetic mat only sometimes. A total waste of a skillpoint but I can only assume it'll be useful at rank 3.

Crafting is beginning to take off now as well. Once I started getting pristine waters and other high level waters for Alchemy, the exp went through the roof. Hope to reach rank 50 in Alchemy before I write up next week's blog. Only last night did I reach Enchanting 10 so now I can use rank 3 potency runes so I also expect Enchanting to rank up faster now as well but it will probably be the slowest of them all. Finding runes is a slow process. The 3 major crafts are also beginning to rank faster because I'm getting a lot of stuff to deconstruct from mobs and quests in Grahtwood. That will, of course, only get better as I move on to Greenshade.

My clothing rank is low for a couple reasons. Most of the stuff I find has a trait that I don't have yet so I'm keeping that gear on Incantatrix until she can research them all. She's got around 20 - 25 pieces of light and medium armor sitting in her inventory. Also, I just don't make any light or medium armor on a regular basis like I do with heavy armor for Kuratla so not getting any exp there. Clothing is just not a priority so it will level slowly.

Just for fun, I ran through all Aldmeri Dominion areas up to Reaper's Marsh. Didn't fight anything or do any quests along the way because I would have gotten slaughtered. But I do have several wayshrines unlocked along the way and found some interesting crafting sites. One in Reaper's Marsh needs 5 items to get the set and you need 6 traits to make. That's a lot of time investing in research. I can only assume that there will be gear out there that need 8 or 9 traits unlocked so it'll literally takes months and months of real time before anyone can make it. My aim is to be one of those crafters... that makes the really rare stuff, for a modest price, of course.

I told myself that I would keep all improvement mats until endgame but I couldn't resist using 3 honing stones on a level 22 axe I made for myself. It's weighted so +2% attack speed. Upon white to green quality, it went from 49 damage to 55 damage and up to +3% attack speed. So when we improve from white to green to blue to purple to yellow (gold?), weapon damage increases a lot (armor ratings will increase a lot as well) and what trait you have will get better as well. Good stuff. Legendary quality gear is going to be boss. Also put the best glyph I could make on it for 16 frost damage. That axe is better than anything I have currently found in Grahtwood and that makes me feel really good about the worthwhileness (is that a word?) of crafting.

Well, that's about all I have to say. Some quests in Grahtwood were bugged but I'm not a hater. I didn't (and don't) expect perfection from the developers and I'm sure all the bugs will be worked out in time. They've made a damn fine game and I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

Back again in 1 week for another update of this blog. Thanks for reading.

Kuratla

Hmm... it's seems attaching screenshots can only be done via attaching the image URL. I got some screenshots saved on my thumbdrive. Just wanted to upload them from there. Need to find out if that way is possible. If not, I'll need to find out another way to post images.

Rev Rielle

Kuratla wrote: »

Hmm... it's seems attaching screenshots can only be done via attaching the image URL. I got some screenshots saved on my thumbdrive. Just wanted to upload them from there. Need to find out if that way is possible. If not, I'll need to find out another way to post images.

I use Photobucket. It's not perfect, but does well enough for me, and is free

Kuratla

Thanks, Thalesian. I'll look into it.

Kuratla

Journal Update: April 17, 2014. Hi everyone. Pre-emptive thanks for reading. This past week was the Songkran holiday in Thailand so I had about 5 days off work so I got a lot of gaming time in. Unfortunately, that extra time was tempered by long maintenances, difficulty logging in and the 209 error which caused me to reinstall the game yesterday (resulting in a loss of a full day's game time). Balance of the good and the bad, I guess.

I came across Force Strategy Gaming's Youtube channel and watched several of his ESO posts. The one that resonated with me was his anger post about being unable to advance to V6+ areas because of bugs. While I'm not in that position (only sitting on a level 33 character), what I saw from him in that video is a love of a game and an extreme frustration at being unable to play the game as he wants to. I completely understand and know those unpleasant feelings when stupid stuff like bugs or 209 errors prevent you from playing a game that you have quickly become addicted to.

I'm not nearly at the point where I'll say "I'm not playing anymore until they fix all the bugs" and I hope to never get there. I do believe that it is obvious that ESO was released before it should have been though. Even in the last beta just before launch, the game was riddled with glitches and bugs and we knew it wouldn't be ready for launch. Now we are more than 3 weeks in and the game is still bugged all over the place. They should have waited an extra couple months and had a cleaner launch but I understand that that was probably never an option once they officially announced a launch date. Probably would have cost millions in lost subscriptions. Though, now, lots of people are quitting due to an incomplete game. Oh well. Loss-loss situation.

But on to happier thoughts: my last week's gaming experience. I continued on in the same line as previous weeks. Working on Kuratla, DK tank, though I've come to realize that Draconic Power skills are way too good to pass by so I've been ranking up Earthen Heart and Draconic Power together... using a combination in both my melee and ranged skill bars. Bit late in the game to start working on Draconic Power but I've gotten far enough to have Green Dragon Blood slotted. Magma Armor, Dragon Blood and Obsidian Shield makes for some serious tankiness in PVE.

Kuratla has completed all but 2 or 3 quests in Grahtwood and has gone mostly though Greenshade as well. I won't spoil it but there was a wonderfully intense and fun sea battle in Greenshade. When we get on that ship with the female Khajiit captain (forget the name of the ship), you'll be going into that quest. Most action filled quest I've done yet. Kuratla is up to level 33 now. Looking forward to level 36 when I can start wearing dwarven armor. Every even level (28.. 30.. 32.. 34, etc) I make a new complete set of gear for Kuratla... for several reasons. I'm trying out different motif styles so I can see what the armor looks like. I did oricalcum heavy armor in Altmer, Dunmer and Orsimer styles for 28, 30 and 32 (probably get Redguard for 34) and each looks great. New gear puts me at a very high armor rating making my questing easier and I don't need to repair any gear because I just replace it. That's a lot of gold saved.

I got maybe 150 dwarven ingots so that'll be fine for at least 36 and 38 and I'm sure I'll pick up a lot more ore as I quest into Malabal Tor. I've enjoyed Greenshade. Reasonably open and full of mats. Always stopping to get ore or cotton or flowers for alchemy. I saw a lot less mats in Malabal Tor when I was there. Greenshade (and beyond) is great for crafting, pretty much all professions. Mobs drop weapons and armor pretty regularly so I deconstruct all of that. I get some glyphs but not as much as I'd like. Enchanting remains my lowest craft and I've yet to find any really practical way of ranking it up quickly.

Here are my crafting ranks (I'm including last week's for comparison):
Blacksmithing - 20 (13 last week), Woodworking - 21 (14 last week), Clothing - 17 (10 last week), Alchemy - 45 (28 last week), Enchanting - 13 (10 last week), and Provisioning 50 (maxed). As predicted, the three main crafts are ranking up nicely as I loot better gear to deconstruct. I didn't quite reach rank 50 in Alchemy but that will certainly be done by next week. And Enchanting is just painfully slow. I will soon be getting into gear that is higher than my ability to enchant. I might need to devote gold to buying people's glyphs to deconstruct. While a lot of people consider enchanting to be the most useless of crafts (due to the majority of glyphs being jewelry glyphs), I am hopeful that future updates will increase the variety of armor glyphs. Besides, I want to max all crafting... that's how I roll... so even if it isn't so useful, I'll max it anyway. Though it seems it's going to take quite a bit of time.

Our guild did a pvp guild raid in Bloodthorn last Saturday and another is planned for this Saturday. It was interesting. I, unfortunately, cannot get onto TeamSpeak so I was put at a significant disadvantage and confusion in not knowing what was going on, what the plan was, etc. This lack of TS has always been a problem for me and has limited my experiences in EVE, SWTOR and now here. But it is something that I have to accept. I'm not much of a pvp player anyway. I enjoy the storyline, enjoy crafting, enjoy exploration, enjoy developing my character, enjoy talking on guild chat. Lots to do without needing to go pvp.

It was a learning experience. We started by taking the resources around a keep which was successfully done. Then we went after the keep itself. We knocked down a wall and charged in but player characters were waiting for us. Kinda got bad after that. The defenders were obviously better prepared and skilled at pvp than our learning group was. We were beaten back soundly. After getting ganked a couple of times and not being able to effectively communicate with the group, I called it quits on Cyrodiil. The group continued on for a while but I don't think they took the keep.

I did return to Cyrodiil on Monday (Dawnbreaker campaign because it's AD dominated) and I went skyshard hunting in enemy territory. Which was easy because the enemy was limited to like 1 keep each and I was pretty confident of roaming around without getting ganked. I found a couple things that stopped my skyshard hunting. First was a PVE area with a bunch of really easy quests (daily, I do believe, but I haven't been back to repeat) so quick exp and gold. The other was I found a crafting area on the map. I went there and tried to find out what set gear could be made. Unfortunately, the amount of NPC mobs around was too much and I couldn't get to the forge to see. I'll try again another time and/or bring some friends with me. I've seen websites listing set gear locations but none that I've seen for set gear from Cyrodiil. So I'm keen to find out.

Last thing I'll write about is my alts. As I previously wrote, I made 6 toons, one for each crafting profession. Only one of them am I leveling up currently. The blacksmith, Kuratla. The rest are levels 3 - 7 only. I generally take them out for a level or two when they need a skillpoint to add to their crafting line. But that's the only questing I do with them. I also made 2 extra alts named "Alt Mat" and "Mat Alt", skipped Coldharbour tutorial, started at level 3 with 3 skill points, deconstructed some gear to get both of them to rank 3 in Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing and used the 3 skillpoints to get hirelings in each. While I will, most of the time, get crappy mats from a rank 1 hireling, there is a possibility of improvement mats like honing skills or turpen, etc. So, why not? It's daily, it's free. Takes only a couple minutes to log in and get the hireling chest. I will NOT level up those two guys in any way because I want to keep 2 character slots free for possible future updates that include new classes. So I don't want to level them only to turn around and delete them. I'm also thinking about getting Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing hirelings with the rest of my alts but that will require an additional 3 skillpoints to use so let's call that a goal to do a bit later on.

That's my journal post for this week. Thanks for reading and may your gaming be fun and the maintenances short (and error free).

Kuratla

Journal Update: April 24, 2014 Hi everyone. Thursday again so time for another update. Well, last week was a bad week for ESO game time. I got in a few hours on Friday before maintenance and then had to wait till Saturday morning. However, during their sweep to ban guild bank duplicators, I got catch up in their widely-cast net. My launcher wasn't working on Saturday morning so I tried to go to the website to download a new launcher to update the patch but I got the message that I was banned from the website.

After contacting them, I got an automated reply that was I permanently banned for "large violations of the Code of Conduct". I was floored, let me tell you. I had no clue what was going on. I was offline 2 days previous to the maintenance so I didn't know about the guild bank duplicating and that they would be banned violators. I found that out from guildmates on Facebook on Saturday. While it is certainly possible that in removing or putting items into the guild bank, something got duplicated along the way, it wasn't a glitch I knew about nor exploited. I'm pretty sure that I got tagged for a ban simply because I use the guild bank a lot so, on their end, they must have figured that that was suspicious.

So then on Saturday morning, I tried to send in a ticket pleading my innocence but their customer service page was down... no doubt overloaded by hundreds or thousands of banned players trying to appeal, like myself. All in all, not a good day. Finally got a ticket submitted later that day and my ban was removed on Sunday.

However, even after downloading a new launcher, I still couldn't get it to work. Now the problem was on my end. I have an old computer and I download stuff all the time. Been a long time since I've had a purge done so I figured my computer was clogged up with too much stuff and too many viruses... and so it was. So the rest of Sunday and Monday morning was devoted to restoring my computer and then another day to re-download and install ESO.

So, finally, I got into the game on Tuesday morning... just in time for maintenance! Actually, no. Just joking. That would have been heartbreaking. The maintenance was in the evening for me so I had the whole day to play. I got in two full days (like 8 - 10 hours game time per day) on Tuesday and Wednesday before I left for work this morning. What did I accomplish in two days? Not so much but I do have a few things to talk about.

Even though I was level 33, I went to Reaper's March and grinded there with Kuratla. I wanted faster exp from the mobs and better drops for deconstructing. Generally it was fine. Only died a couple times from being overwhelmed but usually I could handle the level 37 - 41 mobs no problem. Somewhere along the way, I got into a fight with some werewolves but I don't even recall it happening. I know because when I checked my character sheet to see when my food would expire, I saw the virus... "you were scratched by a werewolf". Oh nice. People try to get infected or even pay tens of thousands of gold for it and it just randomly happened to me.

So I got the quest from the girl at the wayshrine and completed the werewolf quest. Had to kill a level 42 snow troll which was tricky but I just barely managed to do it without dying. Ranking up werewolf levels turns out being a bit of a pain (unless you devote your time to specifically doing that and not questing). How it works is that you need to get 1000 ultimate points, use those to transform into a werewolf and kill things while in werewolf form. Problem is, you only stay in werewolf form for something like 30 seconds so I usually only got 2 or 3 kills before I reverted. Each kill nets 5 werepoints and you need 25 to get to werewolf rank 2, 50 for rank 3, 75 for rank 4, 100 for rank 5 and (I think) etc.

The 1000 ultimate points is the biggest pain because it takes so long to accumulate. And, it seems that ultimate points resets back to zero for unknown reasons to me. Like was questing, around 900 ultimate banked, talked to an NPC to turn in a quest, and my ultimate was down to 0. Or when I entered a ruins. Or when I used a wayshrine. I don't even know. Need to research that and see if there are set conditions to reset ultimate points or if it's just some random glitch.

I ended up just reaching rank 4 in werewolf before bed last night. I believe I'll spend some time killing undead for the extra ultimate points and try to grind to rank 6 so I can take Bloodmoon and pass along the bite to guildmates. Overall, werewolf doesn't seem to be so good because you lose access to all your class skills in werewolf form and you can only get Pounce and Roar to put in your skill bar. However, I do get the feeling that once you got all the passives and you rank up your stamina a lot, they will be quite nice. Probably not something to be using for pvp though. Just adds some dimension and character to your... character. It's also a skill point sink.

I also spent some time skyshard hunting. I've completed all in K. Roost, Auridon, Grahtwood, Greenshade and just one or two more for Malabal Tor. Then I work on Reaper's March. By then I'll hopefully be leveled up enough to go to Cold Harbour and I can get the ones there before moving to on veteran rank areas. Kuratla is level 38 now. Tried Breton style for level 36 dwarven armor and High Elf for 38. Not so different from the oricalcum armors of lower levels. Bit nicer.

Crafting didn't progress so much because I only had 2 days to play. But here are the numbers now: Blacksmithing: 24 (up from 20), Woodworking: 24 (up from 21), Clothing: 21 (up from 17), Enchanting: 15 (up from 13), Alchemy: 50 (up from 45), and Provisioning: 50. Hoping to see Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Clothing skyrocket as I go into Coldharbor and maybe even VR areas over the next week and get tons of weapon and armor drops for deconstructing. Enchanting should rank up a bit nicer as well. At rank 15, I got access to Potency 4 runes and translated the 4 different types I had... that first translation gave huge inspiration. I got to 15 1/2 just from those 4 translations. I'm holding on to my aspect runes for now and will try to look for an Enchanting partner to trade level 35 - 45 glyphs with. Plus Kuratla will hopefully find nice glyphs to extract as he progresses higher. I've also been buying glyphs from guild stores and zone WTSs as long as they aren't overly expensive. Enchanting is the weak link in my crafting so it'll get more attention from me. I'll be able to use the Reuta (sp?); the purple aspect rune, at rank 16 but I won't use those ones for grinding Enchanting. Those and the Kutas I have are being saved for end game.

While I do want to level up Kuratla and get him into VR areas, I also want to level up my crafting alts to give them enough skill points to buy everything they can in their respective crafts. My Provisioner 50, for example, is still using a hireling 1 and can't use purple recipes but his rank is high enough for all skills in Provisioning. Just don't want to spend the time on the lower level characters even though it overall benefits me. I'll be forced to when I get high enough for Hireling 3/3 in the main crafts and Enchanting. I'll get those hirelings asap as I believe they give you the best chance of getting the purple and yellow improvement mats.

Last thing to write about today is that, while banned from ESO, I downloaded and played Wildstar beta for a few hours. I figured "why not? Could be a long time before I get back into ESO" (but it was only the next day that I was unbanned). However, I just could NOT get into Wildstar at all. The cartoonish, over the top, WoW-like graphics really turned me off for starters. While I admit I didn't get very far, I was quite bored with learning how the game works and just didn't have my heart into the effort. And I was reading in zone chat there about how Wildstar was so much better than ESO, etc, etc. I didn't see how that could be true. I guess ESO vs Wildstar is going to be a "cats vs dogs" kinda thing. Most people will love one and hate the other. Few people will like both equally.

Thanks for reading. I hope Kuratla is level VR1 by next week's update and my main crafting skills are all in the 30 - 35 range. Enchanting, no clue. It's an anomaly.

Kuratla

Journal Update: May 2nd, 2014

This update is coming in on Friday night, not my usual Thursday morning because yesterday was a holiday, Labour Day, and I was busy playing the game... not writing about it. And today, at work, a week-long renovation in my building left my office without any electricity so I had no internet access until I got home.

I've had a nice long week of playing ESO. It was pretty much error-free until a few hours before Wednesday's maintenance as well as after the maintenance. Both times were full of lag and made the game pretty much unplayable. Cleared up well enough for me by Thursday afternoon. So lots of time online from Saturday till Wednesday.

Got a nice surprise when I logged in last Friday after I got home from work and checked all my alts, got the hireling chests, set new research times, etc. Did a quick run around Vulkhel Guard's bank with Kuratla opening the dressers and trunks and, big surprise, I got the Imperial motif book. Some people previously told me that that book was only found in higher level areas like Reaper's March or something but that's obviously wrong. So I got all 10 "basic" motif styles on Kuratla now. Still need the more advanced ones but I hear that the drop rate has been nerfed due to over-farming so I'm not hopeful of finding any of those... but who knows.

Imperial armor turns out looking quite nice. I didn't order the Imperial edition of the game so I had to run around on foot until I could afford the 42,700 gold for a good horse and no Imperial armor... until now. I like the look of it. Makes Kuratla look like a Roman Centurion. The historian in me appreciates that.

On Saturday, I reached werewolf rank 6 and took the Bloodmoon skill. There's a couple guildmates who wanted the bite so we worked that out pretty quickly after I got the skill. I forgot where the werewolf ritual site was so we needed help finding it. I remember now and took a screenshot of the location as well. I forget the exact names but it's northeast of Reaper's March between a delve and an archor... or directly west of the wayshrine in the northeast city. It's pretty straight forward in giving someone the bite. You need to charge up your ultimate, go to the ritual site, transform and you'll see the option to Devour the person. That infects them and they get the werewolf quest. They'll need to go on themselves to complete the quest and become werewolves. I'll pass on the bite to another guildmate tomorrow when the 1 week cooldown is down.

I quested up to low 40s in Reaper's March and did the level 40 main quest and level 45 main quest as well. But it didn't open Coldharbour for me yet. I needed to complete the Fighter's and Mage's Guilds questlines as well. The Mage's Guild one was a piece of cake and I took the book for the skillpoints. "It's worth's half a dozen of those skyshards you adventurers like". Yeah, pretty sure I was going to get 2 skillpoints and I did. The Fighter's Guild questline was more difficult; particularly against that supped up Doshia boss in it. More feasts to restore her health but she wasn't alone. Mobs were attacking and knocked me down to stop me from killing the feasts. I tried aggroing her back so my Fighter's Guild friends could help fight her but they just stood passively and watched. So I had to wait till the feasts were eaten and then went full dps and ultimate against her... hoping to kill her before more feasts appeared. That did the trick.

Got a really nice prismatic sword for completing the Fighter's Guild quest and it served me well as I went onto Coldharbour. Needed to get the quest "Messages across Tamriel" from one of the cities in Reaper's March (forget the name) after completing the guild questlines and the main story line (level 45). That took me into Coldharbour.

I quite enjoyed Coldharbour. The difficulty was appropriate to my level (I think I was level 45 when I got there) and I loved all the ebony ore and glyphs drops. Did very well in raising up my crafting skills. I planned on completing Coldharbour in its entirety... every quest, anyway. I ignore dungeons for the most part. However, when I finally reached the end of level 49 and leveled up into Veteran Rank 1, I noticed that I got no more exp for killing stuff. Experience points turned into veteran points. While I did get some VPs from quests, I got zero from exploration or monster kills so my desire to complete all of Coldharbour died really quickly and now I just wanted to kill Molag Bal and move on to the VR areas.

I made a full set of level 50 ebony armor for myself (not VR 1 because I can't enchant that high), improved the set to blues and greens (only two honing stones to make a green item now due to my blacksmithing skills) and made a bunch of purple enchantments for the armor. Basically, I feared that Molag Bal was going to be a hugely difficult boss to kill so I wanted the very best gear I could make and enchant. Also make level 50 health + stamina + magicka potions for him and level 50 food. I was prepared.

I finished off Coldharbour with destroying Molag Bal's ability to planemend Nirn into Coldharbour but didn't fight Molag Bal then. That done, I returned to Nirn and got the final main quest to return to the Anchorage. The new 5 companions returned to Coldharbour with the plan to use the Amulet of Kings to sacrifice one of them to imbue Kuratla with a ton of power so he could kill Molag Bal. I sacrificed the old blind man because I figured he had little left to live for anyway and went godmode for a while. It was really funny just running through daedra and destroying them with the slightest touch of my sword. Even the titans fell in two hits. On to Molag Bal and, I guess, I was a bit overleveled and certainly well-prepared and over-geared because he was extremely simple to kill. Even his big knockdown attack only dropped me to 80% health and I'd drop an obsidian shield and health recovery would take me back to 100% for the next attack from him. I danced around him and whittled him down without an issues. He died... and I was thinking... "Hmm, that can't be it. Maybe I need to fight him a 2nd time and he's stronger that time." But no, it was done. Best thing I can say is that my crafting did a good job in overpowering me to make it an easy fight. Or, maybe, he's just really easy to tank against.

My week was just about up but I did have an hour or two in the first VR area. It's kind of interesting. Like starting over the game. New area, new locations, new people, etc... only your character is already leveled up and the mobs are tough. From what I hear, you should complete every quest in each zone and each zone will pretty much give you one veteran rank. At the moment, I am interested in continuing with the VR areas... at least until I max out my main crafting skills. Then I'll need to decide if I want to continue to VR 10 with Kuratla or start leveling up on of my other alts.

For crafting, here's where I stand now. Blacksmithing: 40 (up from 24), Woodworking: 33 (up from 24), Clothing: 30 (up from 21), Enchanting: 20 (up from 15), Alchemy: 50 and Provisioning: 50. I got 3/3 in Hireling in Blacksmithing and Woodworking and I enjoy the twice daily chests from them but haven't gotten anything really nice yet. Blacksmithing pushed past woodworking because a guildmate wanted to partner with me using his own calc ingots. I didn't have any because I wasn't in VR areas yet but he had about 1500. I guess he wanted the blacksmithing exp and also to get rid of some ingots from his inventory. He made daggers, gave to me, I deconstructed and made daggers for him using the ingots I got from the deconstruct. I also used up all my iron - dwarven ingots to make lower level stuff from him to deconstruct. I didn't feel right about getting all the free blacksmithing exp so I wanted to give some back to him. In the end, he gained more than 4 full ranks and I gained 3.

Being in a VR area now, it's certainly possible to get to blacksmithing 50 by next week. I'll be looking for a woodworking and clothing partner over the next week as well. I have done almost zero clothing crafting and my clothing alt is just sitting on tons and tons of mats. Like 500 cotton, for example. So that rank 30 in clothing will go up a lot once I take the time to improve it. I'm still buying cheap glyphs wherever I can find them and made quite a few to push past rank 20 so I could make glpyhs for Kuratla at level 50 so I have some glyphs to partner up with as well. Enchanting will continue to be slow but I plan on investing a lot of gold into maxing it and, who knows, maybe VR areas has a lot of glyph drops to extract. We'll see. So, with any luck, I'll be Blacksmithing 50 next week, Wood and Clothing in the 40s and maybe high 20s for Enchanting.

I have no idea how long it takes to go through the zones in Veteran areas so no prediction on what VR Kuratla will be by next week. But, as I said, Kuratla's main job now is to help max out all of my crafting skills on my alts by providing high end gear for them to deconstruct or extract. Once maxed in all crafting skills (including Enchanting), then it will be decision time on whether to continue with Kuratla till VR 10 or try out a different alt and work them up. I would most likely level up my healer templar as she is similar to the build I used in beta and I quite enjoyed that templar.

That's my journal for this week. Thanks for reading and happy gaming!

Kuratla

Journal Update: May 8, 2014

Gah.... Veteran Rank areas are so slow! So, where we left off last time was just after I reached VR 1 and was starting my quests in Ebonheart Pact. It was a new area, kinda interesting and everything but it got old once I saw how horrendously slow leveling up in VR areas is.

I did all the quests in Bleakrock and Bal Foyen, which didn't take so long. Maybe a few hours. But then on to Stonefalls with its 69 quests to complete... if you want the achievement. You can only a tiny amount of VPs for killing monsters in VR areas and also a small amount for completing quests. It took me about 3 days until I completely finished Stonefalls... which was interesting enough and the storyline is pretty good... and now I'm into Deshaan and got that more than half finished as well.

After all of that, Kuratla is now at VR2 and about 2/3 towards VR3. Completing the rest of Deshaan should put him at VR3 but the quests are turning into a grind and becoming not much fun at all. I guess the slow progression of your leveling drains the interest and excitement out of it. A lot of people are doing it the "fast" way (well, faster way) by grinding world bosses and dark anchors and I join sometimes when I hear people yelling that this or that anchor is up because I know that the VPs for those are good and it's a faster way than questing. However, it's a supplemental increase for me because I still plan on going through the quests. Grinding anchors over and over till VR10 would kill my interest in the game completely.

Even though you get higher quality drops and more gold in VR areas, I found that your overall wealth doesn't increase so much. The reason for that (at least for myself) was that from levels 1 - 50, I'd always wear out my armor until it broke or I leveled up and could make new gear. Always with fresh armor every 2 levels meant I never had to pay a single repair bill. Until now. Going from VR 1 to VR 2 took me about 3 or 4 days so it was much too slow for just making new armor once you reached a new armor tier. I had two options: repair my armor continually or make new VR1 armor. Since I had used a lot of good enchanting glyphs on my armor, I didn't want to scrap it and make new armor because my VR1 enchanted armor would be better than VR2 non-enchanted. So I paid the repair bills. Sometimes 500 gold. Sometimes 1500 gold. It adds up.

Another huge gold sink for me was buying enchanting runes and glyphs. I decided to start leveling up a second enchanter so he could make glyphs for my main enchanter to extract. I've gone from Enchanting 20 to 31 on my main enchanter, so that strategy is definitely working but I've spent a ton of gold on buying glyphs from the guild stores and WTB aspect runes in zone chat. I estimate somewhere between 30,000 - 40,000 gold spent on enchanting since last week. My secondary enchanter is my main character, Kuratla, and I think he's around Enchanting 21. Funny that he went from nothing to more than my main enchanter's rank was last week in only one week. Kuratla makes Potency 5 glyphs using blue or green aspect runes for my main enchanter and the exp is really really good.

So, I guess I'll build up some more gold and go through the zones with "WTB your Potency runes and blue/green runes" and spend tens of thousands of gold in the Enchanting process. It's either that or just quest and grind and find those runes naturally but that would be so slow. It's fine as long as my enchanter is keeping up with Kuratla's level and can enchant for him. Currently, it's ok. Kuratla is VR2 and I can make up to VR5 glyphs (I think).

Learned a couple things over the last week as well. Both about crafting... well, one of them indirectly. First thing is that at Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing 32, when you take the relevant extraction skill to 3/3, you can get the best improvements from even tier one raw materials. That's why you see people with "WTB raw jute for 1k" or "WTB iron ore for 1k" in zone chat. They don't want your jute or ingots. They want the raw materials because, at 3/3 extraction skill, you can still get gold improvements like rosin or tempering alloy. I was surprised, but it's true. My clothing character, because I've been leveling with a heavy armor user, had never refined any of the raw mats I gave her. So she was sitting on several hundred raw jute, raw flax, about 500 raw cotton, raw spidersilk, etc and lesser amounts of the raw leathers for medium.

Her clothing rank is past 32 so I spent the time to get her some skillpoints and got 3/3 in her extraction skill (whatever it is called for clothing). And I went to town extracting everything. Mind that she's only level 7 and that had no impact that I could see on the results. I got 1 gold and 2 purple improvements from the raw jute alone. I think the chances improve as you go up in tier because I definitely saw better improvements more often with cotton and spidersilk but the chances are still there for even tier 1. Think about it. 3/3 in extraction. WTB 1 stack of raw jute for 1k. Refine 10 times. You only need to get 1 purple to make your money back. Everything else is profit.

At the end of her refining, including what she got from deconstructing armor and hirelings, I'm now at 16 yellows, 30 purples, about 60 blues and 230 green improvements for clothing. Insanity. That's way over 100k in value if I were to sell all that stuff at today's market prices. If only I knew this before because I've been refining ores and woods as I've been going along... and not at 3/3 extraction. So my improvements for blacksmithing and woodworking are significantly less that clothing. In fact, I've yet to get a single tempering alloy from any source. My hirelings don't drop them (despite 3/3 in blacksmithing hireling for about 1 week and a half now) and even today at 3/3 extraction, I never get them from refining calc ore. I do get a fair amount of purples though... just no tempering alloy. Either the drop rates are lower for blacksmithing improvements (which wouldn't surprise me) or I'm just really unlucky in this regard.

The other thing I learned (which indirectly effects my crafting) is that your toon can teleport into areas that they haven't discovered themselves as long as you are grouped or a guild member is there. Doesn't work for VR areas (I tried) or Coldharbour (I think). But you can put your level 5 alt in Reaper's March if you want. I was on my alchemist when I heard a "WTB for level 40 alchemy solvent" over guild chat. Since I'm maxed on alchemy, I don't need that water to level so I figured I'd sell and make some gold. He was in Grahtwood and my level 6 alchemist was in Vulkhel Guard and obviously hasn't progressed enough to go to higher areas. He wanted me to come to him to save on COD charges. We grouped and the teleport worked. I was in Grahtwood. Didn't previously know that that was possible. Sold the water, got the gold and went back to Vulk.

Then I thought on it. All of my crafting toons are level 5 - 7 but are close on maxing out their crafting skills and I don't have nearly enough skillpoints to buy all the skills in their respective crafting lines. Why not teleport to Grahtwood, Greenshade, Malabol Tor and Reaper's March and collect a bunch of skyshards to get those skillpoints? No sooner thought than done. My templar clothier spent an hour doing just that and I got a bunch of skillpoints to get her up to making level 50 armor and 3/3 in extraction. She still needs more skillpoints plus I want to get her at least having 1 skillpoint in her class and weapon skills so she'll be able to fight once I start leveling her properly.

Going to do that will all my crafting alts over the next week. I'll finally be able to make VR food, for example. And get 3/3 in aspect rune extraction. It's also good because it breaks up the monotony of questing in VR areas. I'll do a few hours on Kuratla and take one of my alts skysharding hunting for another couple hours. Questing up to VR10 is a nightmare and I'm not sure if I can hold out. I may just end up doing only the quests to complete Cadwell's Almanac and grind dungeons or even pvp... anything that gives good exp at VR levels. Or just work on leveling up another character. Still undecided.

Lastly, here's my crafting ranks for the record. Blacksmithing: 46 (up from 40), Woodworking: 39 (up from 33), Clothing: 38 (up from 30), Enchanting: 31 (up from 20), Alchemy: 50 and Provisioning: 50. I could have reached Blacksmithing 50 by working with a decon partner but there's no rush. I can't use that high gear anyway so there's no point in being able to make VR10 gear when I can't use it and not in an area where I can find the mats so I can't sell it either. After 40 and the 3/3 in improvement skills, there's not much reason to rank up crafting skills anyway... unless you have a character who can use VR 6+ gear... which I don't. So my Blacksmithing, Woodworking and Clothing will only rank up now from deconstructed loot only. It'll be a slow increase but that's fine.

Probably get 2 ranks in Blacksmithing and low 40s for Wood and Cloth and hopefully at least 35 in Enchanting over the next week. Kuratla is close to VR3 so hope to get at least VR4 by next update and have most of Ebonheart completed.

Well, that's the update. Thanks for reading and see you next time.

Chryos

Since this is an awesome idea. I will be in here reading and awarding everyone who comes in to participate an Awesome! everytime I come in here! Good Idea!

Kuratla

Thank you, Chryos. I'm happy to have readers and hopefully other people can learn new things about the game from what I write and/or learn by seeing my mistakes and not repeating them. Cheers.

Kuratla

Journal Update: May 15, 2014

Hi all. Time for another update. Been trying to max out all my combat skills and morphed skills on my main character as he's questing and "POI"ing through the Ebonheart Pact VR area. As a tank, I started with Earthen Heart abilities long ago and have long since got to rank 50 in that and maxed out all skills, including morphs and passives. Draconic Power came next and also rank 50 on that and almost got all morphed skills maxed and all passives.

Since VR1, I've been working up Ardent Flame as well... to give myself some dps options. Currently that rank is up around 44 now and I got all skills except the fire breath one and working up to either morphing the ones I have or maxed them out. Quite a few of the passives there I've yet to take.

Also reached Mage's Guild 10 over the last week and took the ultimate: Meteor. The knockback is nice but the damage is lacking. Maybe if I were a magicka build, it would be better. It's slow going but up to rank 4 in Meteor and should be morphing it soon. I don't use it much and tend to use Ardent Flame's Standard of Might ultimate instead. My usual skill bar is 1) Ransack (morphed Puncture) 2) Invasion (morphed Assault) 3) Burning Embers (morphed Searing Strike) 4) Green Dragon Blood (morphed Dragon Blood) 5) Shattering Rocks (morphed Petrify.... I took the wrong morph there, I think). Ultimate - Standard of Might (morphed Dragonheart Standard).

Where I am in Eastmarch now, more often than not, I need to fight 2 or 3 mobs at the same time so I usually start with Shattering Rocks to take out one of them for 14 seconds and Invasion in to stun another and then turn on the 3rd guy and go Ransack + Burning Embers dps until dead. Take a few hits while the stunned guy gets up and attacks but usually can kill him before the Shattering Rocks on the first guy ends. If not, I use hit him again with the CC and finish off the 2nd guy. If my ultimate is up and I don't think I'll be needing it anytime soon, I'll just Invasion in and drop the banner and go full offensive. Green Dragon Blood when needed and always at the end of a fight for the stamina regen boost.

Trash mobs don't give me any problems in VR areas so far. Even the giants and mammoths in Eastmarch are easy to take out... it just takes a bit of time. The world bosses and dark anchors are different stories of course and I've died plenty in those... especially against new world bosses and ones that do things I don't expect.

Last week, I noticed that I was around rank 9 in Mage's Guild so I figured I'd get the lorebook addon and finish off the books till rank 10. I got them all (barring some group dungeons ones in Ebonheart) in AD and EP but was still maybe 8 - 10 books shy of rank 10. So I figured that I'd need to wait till VR6 and the next faction area but it suddenly dawned on me that Cyrodiil has lorebooks too. So I went there.

I rarely go to Cyrodiil. The last three times I've gone, I get weird problems like phasing or lag that isn't occurring in the PVE areas. Nothing like walking around and suddenly start dying but not seeing anything on the screen. This oft problem with Cyrodiil and my lack of interest in PVP means that I only go to Cyrodiil for reasons just as PVE quests, Skyshards or lorebooks. So I went around and collected up lorebooks until I finally got to rank 10 in Mage's Guild. Collected a few skyshards as well until I was finally stealth ganked by two guys. Getting the drop on someone = auto win, it appears. I was walking towards a skyshard when I suddenly got hit in the back and knocked down. Before I stood up, I was hit with something else and dead. Fast as that. High armor, high spell resistance, high health... all irrelevant, it seems. My spirit saw two guys running past my body but there could have been more. I respawned and called it quits on Cyrodiil.

I was working on the Ebonheart Pact hero achievement but not going to happen now. I did all quests in Stonefalls and Deshaan but ended up in Shadowfen around 6 quests short of the achievement. Apparently, you need to do quests in a certain order. If you don't, you cancel out some quests and they will not appear for you. Makes sense storyline-wise but really stupid for the completists. And it punishes exploration and going off the beaten track. So I go over here, away from the main storyline in Shadowfen, see a quest or two and do them while I'm there (why not, right?) but it ends up canceling out other future quests. I was around VR3 + 90% at the end of Shadowfen and moved on to Eastmarch.

Quite like Eastmarch. It's a fairly small zone. Only around 40 quests or so to do. Tons of treasure chests all over the place. I'm maybe around half way through the quests in Eastmarch at the moment and about VR 4 + 1/3. Oh! That reminds me. I was waiting for VR4 so I could make new armor with my new motif - Barbaric.

Somewhere in Shadowfen, I picked up the Barbaric motif. I autoloot and don't use any addon to tell me what I'm getting so I just go along and check my inventory every once in a while. I was surprised to see a Barbaric motif but no idea where I got it from. I read the book and waited on VR4 to make a full set of gear with the new motif. I improved most pieces up to blue and also added purple glyphs because I wanted a good set of armor as I figure I'll be using that same armor at least past VR5 and probably get new armor at VR6. Two VR levels is a good week of gameplay at the rate I'm leveling so I don't mind using a lot of improvement mats and glyphs on them. I won't use gold improvements until VR10 though.

I'm happy with the style of the Barbaric motif but I'll keep looking for the Primal motif and will make a new set of armor in Primal style just to see it (if/when I get that motif). And, of course, I'll be looking for Daedric and Ancient Elf motifs once I get to VR6+ areas.

Due to my lack of doing dungeons (I've skipped over almost all the dungeons of the game as I leveled up past Auridon) I didn't know the difference between "solo" dungeon, "public" dungeon and "group" dungeon that you see when you mouse over a dungeon on the map. Turns out that the solo dungeons are easily soloable (imagine that!). Before I'd just try to sneak in and get the skyshard and leave the boss alone (unless other people were around). But there's totally no reason to do that. Even in VR4, the solo dungeon bosses are no more difficult than a boss from one of your quests, especially if my ultimate is charged up.

I did two VR dungeons over the last week. One in Shadowfen.... Sanguine Demense (or something like that) and Hall of the Dead in Eastmarch. Both times we had a group of 6 - 8 people so it was a big zerg event. Kinda fun. One boss in the Hall of the Dead was tough and we got a few wipes against it. I went into the Hall of the Dead with around 80 / 150 inventory space so 70 empty spaces. It was amazing how quickly it filled up. Before the end of the run, I had to drop stuff to make room. Just tons and tons of bows, staves, weapons and armor. Some green, blue and even a purple or two. I can see that dungeons are an easy way to make money and/or rank up crafting professions. The stuff I picked up sold for between 40 - 65 gold at the vendor so that really adds up. Of course, we wiped several times so I ended up with an expensive repair bill so it balanced out but I can see ways for people to just grind gold if they wanted (and I'm sure that people do).

One dungeon is interesting for the first time for me. I may be interested in a second run but after that, it's a grind and I have no desire to grind anything in the game. I may need to grind sometimes but only out of necessity... like if I complete all VR6-10 areas but still not VR10 then I'll need to grind VPs to finish off leveling. I may go back and try out the un-done dungeons from Stonefalls to Shadowfen before I move on to the Rift.

My crafting has slowed down... mainly because my crafting is well beyond my needs for a VR4 character. So rather than spend a lot of time and money maxing out the crafts, I'll just let them rank up slowly just from stuff I get from drops and decon. Kuratla is up to Enchanting 25 now so he's been feeding my main enchanter with crafted Potency 6 glyphs so that's been extremely useful for ranking enchanting. I would guess that I'll stop at level 32 with Kuratla because I'll be able to get the twice-daily hireling chests with him as well as with my main enchanter so that should be good for high quality runes. I also got two low level alts who get Enchanting hireling chests (1/3) but hirelings are going to be changed in the Craglorn patch where the alt with the hireling skill, gets the stuff and it will be geared towards his level. So it'll be rank 1 runes from those alts (in other words, basically worthless but I guess there is still a chance of getting good stuff). So it makes sense to get to 3/3 hireling with other alts.

My crafting is currently at - Blacksmithing: 50 (up from 46), Woodworking: 44 (up from 39), Clothing: 45 (up from 38), Enchanting: 35 (up from 31), Alchemy: 50 and Provisioning: 50. So I'll probably be at rank 50 in everything (or close enough) except Enchanting which I don't expect to raise by no more than a couple ranks. I'm not buying enchanting glyphs or runes anymore and I'll just rely on drops and finding runes from the world map. Then make stuff with Kuratla and feed the main enchanter. It doesn't matter if it's slow because I can make up to VR8 glyphs (I think) right now and I'm probably three weeks of gameplay from VR8 at the rate I play. By then, I'm sure to be Enchanting 40 which can make up to VR10 glyphs. Doesn't seem to be any current reason to rank up Enchanting past rank 40... not until they add Potency 10 glyphs for VR11+ anyway.

Long post today. If you read through it all, go get a cookie. You deserve it! Thanks for reading and see ya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update: May 22, 2014 Hello again. Another Thursday, another update of my ESO journal. Pre-emptive thanks for reading.

I work weekends so didn't get much time online till Sunday evening where I finished off Eastmarch and moved on to the Rift, the VR5 zone. Got a group to zerg through the anchors and world bosses as well as the public dungeon there, the Lion's Den, so picked up some nice exp early in the zone. On Monday, I had the whole day off so I dedicated it to going through the quests in the Rift.

I probably did around 45 or so quests in the Rift (out of 69, I believe) on Monday and finished off the Rift's quests on Tuesday... well, almost. Several quests are bugged, including the last two progression quests on Caldwell's Almanac. If a non-important quest is bugged, I'll just ignore it and move on but I couldn't do that with progression quests. So I had to go to google and find out why those two quests were bugged and how to get around it. Such a killjoy!

So after some screwing around, I managed to finish Caldwell's Almanac but ended up at 68/69 on the Rift's quests because that troll Redmaw wouldn't spawn. Another stupid bug. Didn't matter much because I didn't complete Shadowfen's quest achievement either so I couldn't get the Ebonheart Hero title. If that weren't the case, I would have tried to find a way to kill that troll.

I finished off Ebonheart at around VR5 and 2/3rds towards VR6. Back to the Anchorage in Auridon to talk to Caldwell and begin the last faction - Daggerfall Covenant. Now, I spent quite a bit of time on DC during the beta so the two starter islands, Stros M'kai and Betnikh, were familiar to me and so were the quests. That wasn't the case with Ebonpact where everything was new.

I was happy to see new world mats like quicksilver ore and mahogany wood around and scoured both islands on Tuesday and some of Wednesday doing everything there was to do. The enemies were so easy to kill mostly because almost all fights were one on one... not the 3 or 4 on 1 I saw in Eastmarch, for example. So easy to control the fight when there's only 1 mob to worry about.

I also took the time to test out some new combat combos and buy some new skills. For example, the fire whip (don't remember the exact name) from the Ardent Flame skill line, with my morph, sets off balance enemies that are stunned plus I can get a 2nd free swing of the whip which heals me for a bit. Against 1 opponent who isn't immune to stuns, it's horrible for them. Here's the plan: Open with a heavy sword attack --> power slam (1 hand and shield skill which stuns) --> double whip (which sets off balance) --> heavy attack (knocks them down) --> ransack and heavy attack while they are knocked down --> power slam again when they stay up. Repeat if necessary but they are usually dead around this point. Mob gets no chance to attack at all.

Second bit of fun was finding synergy between the Mage's Guild skill line and the Bow. I ended up taking Ice Comet morph for the ultimate which does a moderate amount of damage and applies a large % snare for 8 seconds or so. Also, I took the Fire Rune skill, ranked it up and morphed to Volcanic Rune. That skill sets a trap on the ground which damages a mob walking into it and throws them up in the air and applies a few seconds of stun. So, with Bow, I can put the rune trap on the ground just in front of an enemy, back away to Snipe range and do this: Snipe --> Snipe (second snipe hits because the mob has now run into the rune and stunned itself --> Heavy Attack + Venomous Arrow --> drop another rune in front of me --> Heavy Attack + Venomous Arrow. And that should do it. Maybe I need to throw a Stone Fist to knock them down if they get too close but the two runes does the job of keeping them away.

All of my Dragon Knight skills are rank 50 now and all skills and passives are maxed (except the 15% snare passive in the Ardent Flame line... didn't buy those yet). 1 hand and sword and Bow are rank 50 as well as Heavy Armor. Mage's Guild is 10 and Fighter's Guild is around 9 1/2. I don't grind undead or anchors so my Fighter's Guild isn't maxed yet. But I'll get there and will take and morph the Ultimate when I do. I need to consider now if I want to continue with my build... which is working out fine in pve... or if I want to expand and maybe go into the 2 handed weapon skill tree for more dps options. I would like to but not sure if I'm happy with spending the skill points. I want to keep some skill points for future stuff like Thieve's Guild and Dark Brotherhood skills plus I may end up getting to rank 32 in all crafts on my main just to give him 3/3 in all hirelings... that's quite a few skill points right there.

After completing the two starter islands in DC and doing a couple quests in Glenumbra (sp?), Kuratla finally reached VR6. I didn't have much more time after that so instead of grinding more quests, I did some exploring around Glenumbra and ported around to the other zones in DC just so I can see how they look. Kinda liked the look of the Alkir Desert (sp?) and look forward to eventually getting there. If I can keep up this pace, I may hit VR10 in the next two weeks or so which may correspond perfectly with the release of Craglorn. If I'm not VR10 by Craglorn's release, I'll at least be close.

I noticed on Dulfy that Craglorn's patch has changes to the craftable set gear stats as well as a new 8 trait set craftable in Craglorn itself... the Arena set. That set will give increased health (3 piece), increased armor (4 piece) and 15% less ultimate needed (5 piece). For a dragonknight tank, that's about perfect. Only issue is needing 5 pieces of gear with 8 traits each. I'm currently researching the 8th trait on 1 handed sword and heavy chest piece. That's only 2 pieces and they won't be ready anytime soon. Then I need the other three pieces. My woodcrafter is researching the 8th on bows and shields right now as well but he's only level 7 and can't enter Craglorn anyway. So might need to work out with guildmates later about this issue. Maybe I can make some pieces and they can make others and we can all get the set that way.

My tempering alloys problem (the problem being I was getting none of them) has gotten a bit better. I got one from a hireling and one from refining last week. Not much but noteworthy for me because a full month of hireling 3/3 only dropped one. I also dropped about 55,000 gold and bought 21 alloys I believe. Didn't really want to do it but gold isn't so hard to get these days but the alloys are. And I will certainly need the alloys in the future as I want to craft full legendary for Kuratla.

On to crafting: Blacksmithing: 50, Woodworking: 49 (up from 44), Clothing: 50 (up from 45), Enchanting: 39 (up from 35), Alchemy: 50 and Provisioning: 50. Just another load of dropped bows, staves and shields from Glenumbra and my woodcrafter will hit 50. Also quite close to rank 40 in Enchanting and that is where I'll actively stop leveling crafting. There is no current difference between rank 40 and 50 in Enchanting so there's no reason to rank it up. Later on, I'm guessing they'll add potency 10 runes and glyphs (or higher) which will need rank 45 or higher so I can continue ranking Enchanting then. In the meantime, I'll just stockpile runes to make it easy. My second enchanter has reached rank 30 so he just needs two more ranks so he can make purple glyphs (which would help the main enchanter's leveling a lot) and the 3/3 hireling at rank 32.

I've got around 35 of the additive potency 9 runes and maybe 20 or so Kutas at this point so way more than I need to enchant my upcoming legendary gear so I may just set aside what I need and use the rest to make gold VR10 glyphs and sell for profit. Think they may be going for 4000 - 5000 each now.

Not much else to say. My interest in ESO is still high. Still keen to play every chance I get. Going from zone to zone and being in a new area with new things to do keeps it fresh. Plus I'm learning new things about my character, etc. After VR10, well, I guess there's Craglorn to keep things going and I haven't leveled or experienced the other three classes at all either. So still tons to do and anticipate my interest in ESO remaining high for months to come.

Thanks for reading. Cya next week.

Kuratla

Oh wait! Craglorn patch is coming tonight? Oh well..... guess I'm not hitting VR10 then. I thought we still had more time... not complaining though. Good to see new content.

Kuratla

Journal Update: May 29, 2014

Continuing on. So the first thing to talk about in this update is Craglorn. It came out last Thursday so I had to wait until Friday when I got back online to update the new patch (which was something like 5 GB) and play. Took several hours to get the patch and I was in the game Friday night.

I didn't have any log in problems like some people where complaining about so that was good. I went Deshaan (iirc) to get the quest for Craglorn and headed over. I was only VR6 so wanted to group up and tons of people were there. Unfortunately, my game crashed every time I got into a group so I ended up unable to do any group content on Friday. Instead, I did some exploring, unlocked the POIs on the map and got some world mats.

I ended up going back to Glenumbra (VR6 zone) but I was concerned because the Craglorn patch (intentionally or otherwise, I still don't know) boosted up the difficulty of most (but not all) mobs in VR zones. Somewhere around double the health and double damage inflicted. The first thing I fought was a wolf which was still only around 1400 health so I thought... "hmm, looks the same to me" but then I came across cultists and imps and whatnot with 4000+ health and yeah.... there it was.

Because I knew the mobs were boosted from reading the forum before I fought them, I was exceedingly careful and didn't charge in to my surprising doom. Even still, killing just two mobs was very tough. I didn't die once but each fight was life or death. I'd be low health and no magicka/stamina at the end of it. And that was 2 on 1s. I didn't even try 3 on 1s unless I had my ultimate charged.

So I'm torn between the group of people who are saying "VR zones are unplayable now" and the other group of people saying "Learn to play the game" because it was doable with the boost to the mobs. It wasn't fun and it was really hard but doable. I'm an old gamer with bad equipment and a Thailand internet connection - if I could manage, why not you younger players who've been MMOing for most of your lives? That's the L2P side of me talking. Of course, they did a hotfix and restored the VR zones to pre-Craglorn difficulty and that had to be done. Too many people were dead set against it.

Others complained about the bash skill and the hirelings being "nerfed". But they weren't nerfed. They were just put back to the way they should have been. Zenimax just removed an exploit from the game and it's amazing how many people complained (or even unsubbed). I used bash, sometimes, pre-Craglorn. Generally only when I was near death and I needed fast damaging attacks to save myself. Most of the time, I'd actually forget to use bash. So I could care less about the "nerf".

As for hirelings, I made level 3 alts (2 of them) and got all the hireling skills except provisioning on them. But, stupid me, I didn't know that you got better stuff by opening the chests with your main character with high ranks and skills in the respective craft. So I opened the chests on the level 3 alts. Only learned about that maybe a week before Craglorn. So I got some exploiting in... about a week's worth... before the "nerf". And, yesterday, those two level 3 alts, gave me one rosin each so the RNG is at work and you can still get yellow improvements from them. Admittedly, most of the time it's utter crap but hey, it's free.

So what am I doing now? I've leveled up enchanting, clothing and woodworking to rank 32 on my main character (who is a blacksmith) and I've taken 3/3 hireling in each of those. If it's all about the RNG in getting improvements (yes, I'll still get raw jute and maple but who cares), then every 12 hours seems to be the best way to go.

With the main done (and remember that I have 3/3 hireling on each crafter as well), I'll pick another alt and work up to rank 32 for him/her as well. Eventually, I'll be looking at 3/3 hireling in 4 crafts (ignoring provisioning) on 6 characters. It'll be pretty painless to do for blacksmithing, woodworking and clothing because of the amount and quality of gear you get to decon from VR zones but enchanting will be slow and painful (as usual).

I won't be listing my crafting progress anymore because it's all (effectively) completed. 50 in everything except enchanting sitting at 40. But Enchanting 40 is all that is needed to make VR12 glyphs so I'm effectively maxed in crafting and I can make everything in the game... barring 8 trait crafted gear and Primal motif.

Oh yeah, that brings up my next topic - motifs. So, lucky me, I found the Ancient Elf motif somewhere in Glenumbra (some instanced area with a lot of skeletons around) and made a new set of gear at VR7 in Ancient Elf style. I think it looks pretty sweet. I made a 5 piece and 3 piece crafted gear set and improved most of it to purple quality and used yellow quality glyphs. I figured I'd go all out because that VR7 gear will take me to at least VR10 so I'll be using it for several weeks and that'll give me time to replenish my used improvements and mats.

However, yesterday, in Stormhaven, I found the Daedric motif as well. Not farming, just making sure to check every trunk and wardrobe, etc in instanced areas. I didn't even know I had it until someone "WTB purple VR5 recipes for 200k" in zone chat so I figured "Let me look. Never know. Maybe I found such a recipe and can get myself 200k." But no recipe. Instead the Daedric motif was there. I did not immediately go off to a crafting station and make new Daedric armor. I'll wait till VR10. I did make a 2 handed Daedric axe... just to see how it looked... but I was highly disappointed in it. Maybe the 2 handed sword or maul looks better.

On to Craglorn: On Monday, several members of my guild wanted to try out Craglorn as a group. We had 4 players, two VR2s, 1 VR6 (myself) and 1 VR7. We figured that it would be tough because we were underleveled. We were right. We did successfully go through one quest and gave up about halfway through a second quest. They were very hard and our skills/gear just wasn't up to the task. Plus we had an off healer as well (who did a good job healing but a full healer would have healed a lot more). Craglorn is a mix of badlands and desert and I like the look of it. I'll definitely be returning to Craglorn and plan on completing all quests and POIs there and maybe even giving the trials a shot but going to concentrate on the VR zones first for leveling.

Upon completing Glenumbra, I was VR7 and went into Stormhaven. First thing I did was get a group together and we went through all the dolmens and world bosses. I later finished off all the solo dungeons myself. That's a good portion of exp to start off a zone on. Then I got to the questing. Ran into a guild member doing the same quest in the same zone so we grouped up and decided to go on to Rivenspire and zerg through the Cadwell quests for that zone plus any minor quests we found along the way. We didn't quite finish but got close. I ended up just shy of VR8 and after he logged off, I went back to Stormhaven for a few more quests to push the level up to VR8.

So Kuratla is now VR8, in Stormhaven, and maybe only 1/3 completed the quests in that zone. I'm going to try again to complete every quest in Daggerfall (I failed at that in Ebonheart) and see if I can get the achievement and title.

I won't be online much next week so I don't predict much advancement before the next journal update (which'll probably be short or I may just skip if I have nothing interesting to write about). Working all day Saturday and Sunday and on my day off, Monday, I'll be going to Bangkok for a day trip. Then back to work on Tuesday. So not much time online and I'll be lucky/happy to get to VR9 by next Thursday.

Thanks for reading. This concludes the journal update for this week.

Kuratla

Journal Update: June 3rd, 2014

As predicted, this will be a short update of my journal. Got in only a little bit of gameplay over the last week. Worked all weekend, went to Bangkok on Monday for the whole day (bought a few PC games as well), and back to work on Tuesday. A couple of the games I bought, I got for my son, so he's been wanting to use the computer for those games so that's been eating into my ESO time as well.

I finished off the Rivenspire (VR8 zone) area with all quests done so I'm on line to get Daggerfall Hero achievement once the last two zones are completed... assuming I don't do things in the wrong order and lock myself out of some quests and ruin the achievement (like I did in Ebonheart Pact). Kinda sucks because otherwise I'd be not so far from Tamriel Hero achievement. On to zone 9, Alik'r Desert, now.

As usual, upon going to a new zone, I try to get all the world bosses, dolmens and solo dungeons done right away for the big exp boost it gives. Actually did several of them (including the dolmens) with just one other guy. A fun one was the Giant Camp WB in Alik'r. I've fought lots of giants in EP so I know how to tank them solo but this guy was nuts. His heavy attack one shot me even when blocking. His light attacks did around 1000 damage... even when blocking. But me and other guy managed to tag team him. I tanked and taunted and ran around like nuts avoiding, dodging and blocking while the other guy used ranged dps. It worked.

Learned something new about dolmens as well. They can be actually easier with just two people (particularly if you don't get storm atronauchs spawning) because you get a lot less mobs. And I learned that clicking on the anchors restores your resources to full so you can definitely time it well to heal up. Didn't know that stuff before because people are always saying "Need more for dolmen". But more people just makes more mobs but PCs are stronger than mobs so, of course, once you start getting 5 or 6 or more players hitting a dolmen, it becomes a piece of cake. Seems like 3 or 4 players will be the most difficult. I may even try to solo one next week... just to see if I can do it.

I think Kuratla got most of the POIs in Alik'r done and he's around VR9 + 30% right now. Kinda doubt the quests in Alik'r alone will put him to VR10. That'll need to be done in the last Daggerfall zone and I predict ending up around VR 10 + 50% at the end of Cadwell's quest and zone 10. Then it'll be off to Craglorn to get to VR12... though, I'm guessing that new updates may be out by then and the level cap increased again. I may be chasing max level for a long time.

I did make new armor for Kuratla at V9. It was a new tier in blacksmithing (voidstone) plus I hadn't tried out the Daedric motif for armor yet. I like the stats, set gear and glyphs I made but not so thrilled about the Daedric style. It's ok, I guess. But just being "ok" is the problem. It should be totally awesome. The blue and gold color is all wrong, for starters, and it doesn't look nearly enough evil as Daedric armor should look. The one handed sword design is good. No problem there. I probably won't make any new armor till VR12 and then I'll be hunting the Arena set. I should be able to make at least 2 pieces myself by then and I'll trade the pieces I can make with pieces that I need... either from guild chat or zone chat. One guy in zone chat could make 8 trait heavy helm and boots (iirc) but he wanted 15k each (just for the white quality). That's just ridiculous for something that he got by waiting for (ie, the research times). Everyone who wants 8 trait weapons/armor will get there eventually. He's just trying to take advantage of his early research. Fair enough, I guess, but I won't pay (nor would I charge) that much.

I do charge 5000 gold per VR12 legendary glyph though. That seems to be the going rate and I just keep my ears open for someone in guild/zone chat asks "Any VR12 enchanters on?" Yup, I am. Though I do need to slow down and/or start buying Kutas because I'm running out. I need to keep a minimum amount of Kutas for my own use. Anything beyond that and I'll happy to get some gold. Made quite a few glyphs for sale over the last couple days and got enough money to purchase two new draft horses for two alts. So that's 3 alts with 42k draft horses now. Kuratla's is maxed at level 50 and he's got 170 personal inventory space so that's good. I gave another horse to Sartori (my alchemist) because he's the next likely alt I'll level up and to Vatcher (my provisioner) because he needs the inventory space in a bad way. He's got 92 inventory space (all food mats) and always full with a bunch of food mats spilling over into my bank. So I'll get those two horses fed everyday and work on another 42k for another horse. May as well. Got nothing else to spend my gold on.

Anyway, not much else to write about. Limited time and experiences online over the last week. High potential that I'll be back in Bangkok again next week so low playtime on ESO next week as well. I'll just push on through Alik'r and hopefully get to the last zone in Daggerfall over the next week.

Thanks for reading. Cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update: June 12th, 2014

I've gotten a bit tired of questing and just want to hit VR12 at this point. Kuratla finished off the Alik'r Desert area with quest achievement so just need to do all the quests in Bangkorai (which'll put him close to VR11) and get the Daggerfall Hero title.

I wasn't online too much over the last week. Another day trip to Bangkok and lots of work over the weekend. Additionally my motivation in the game has decreased somewhat and even on a day like yesterday where I had the whole day to play, I just played on and off. Turned off the game, played some Hearthstone, came back to ESO, played some more, watched a movie, etc. Previously I would have put in 12 - 14 hours straight with only bio and food breaks but I'm not feeling the game as much.

Kuratla finished off 8 trait research on heavy chest so I went to Craglorn and made an Arena piece for VR12 (for when I get there). It was surprised to see that the set was changed yet I saw nor read no mention of a change to the set. A stealth nerf? At 5 pieces, the set previously gave a 15% reduction in ultimate costs (which is really useful) but now, it's a 15% reduction in breaking out of CC costs which comes across as a more of a pvp benefit than a pve one (while the ultimate cost reduction was universal). So that kinda sucks for me.

Still, I made the heavy chest piece, improved it up to legendary and added a legendary glyph of health as well. It's a pretty impressive looking piece of armor. I also made another heavy chest and traded it for heavy boots (also Arena). In a few days, I'll have 8 traits on sword researched and I'll trade 2 Arena swords for a bow and shield from the same guy. It shouldn't be too hard to do some trading and get a full set once I have two pieces to offer. Just need to consider now what secondary set to go with the Arena set.

At least I'll have some kick ass legendary gear waiting for me at VR12 so that's a nice motivation to push on. After finishing the desert, I got with a group in Bangkorai and zerged through the POIs so it's just the quests left to do there but I didn't do too many of them. Probably only got around 10 done and I'll need a full day to sit down and go through them, I'm guessing.

Instead, I've been doing other things. Like gold farming in a vet dungeon the other day. I was invited so I went. Felt like an exploit.. probably was. That particular dungeon is well known so it'll get nerfed (or put back to "unexploitable") soon enough. I did it for about an hour and while a lot of gold was earned, it was boring and I generally hate grinding. Doubtful I'll return to that... whether it's nerfed or not. Great gold but it's not my thing. I don't like grinding and it just felt wrong. I can see how some people have millions of gold in the game though. Just do that for a couple days with a like-minded group of people and a million coins in your bank. Not for me.

And yesterday I joined up with a Craglorn EXP group and, again, felt like an exploit. Or am I being too sensitive? So it was basically running a circuit of bosses in, more or less, a circle. Some scorpion boss here. 37k exp. An ogre boss there. 37k exp. Some blood fountain boss. 37k exp. A guy downstairs. 37k exp. Rinse, repeat. Did that for an hour as well but got bored of it. I mean, it really was easy easy exp and it's definitely a fast way to level but you'd still need to be at it for dozens of hours to hit VR12.... though I'm VR10 1/2 now so I could probably hit VR12 doing that if I committed a full day to that grind. But I won't. I hate grinding (think I already mentioned that).

Even though I'm getting bored with questing (which is understandable as I've quested my way from level 1 to VR 10 1/2... no pvp and no exp groups except for that one hour I mentioned above), I'll still finish off Bangkorai via questing. It's more fun than grinding and certainly more challenging than just zerging around with a group of 12 or whatever. I'll either go see what PVE quests are available in Cyrodiil (and if they are worth doing exp-wise at my level) or to Craglorn and try to get a group for doing the quests there. I'd rather not get into another exp grinding group but I will if I have no other options. Need to get to VR12 and put on that shiny legendary armor.

Actually, a lot of yesterday, I didn't even use Kuratla. I played on Mordeus, my enchanter. Due to deconstructing gear instead of selling, Mordeus is up to rank 32 in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking so I needed 9 skillpoints so he could get 3/3 hireling in each. I plan on doing this with all 8 of my alts... eventually. And even Enchanting 32 and 3/3 hireling there as well but everyone knows how painful it is to Enchanting that high... nevermind on 8 alts. So I quested through K. Roost with Mordeus and some of Auridon until he hit level 10 and then I sent him to Cyrodiil skyshard hunting. Mordeus is a Nightblade and my original idea for him was melee dps.

Such a different playstyle from the DK tank. Kuratla's combat was always about CC, blocking and slowly nickel and diming the mob down. Mordeus runs in and goes full on dps burst. Gets things done a lot of faster. I am aware that that full offense and no defense thinking won't be viable at higher levels but it's working fine in Auridon for now. And Nightblade will be probably be the last (if ever) class I level up to max.

After Dragonknight, I want to max out a dps magicka-based sorcerer and then a healer Templar. By then, will ESO still be around? Will I still be playing? Will I be burnt out by then? Who knows. Still, it was fun on Mordeus yesterday with his dps bursts. He still needs around 2 more skillpoints before he's 3/3 in 4 different hireling types (he already got 3/3 in Enchanting hireling as that's his primary craft) so I'll put a bit more time on him. Then I'll need to do the same with another toon and I'm working up my Alchemist, Sartori, to rank 32 in the main crafts now but it'll take a while.

Up to 4 alts now with draft horses and needing to manage their times to feed the horses and remember to keep 250 gold on them. Also bought the 160 bank space slot for 45,000 gold. Could have bought another horse for that but didn't really see it as needed right now. Next bank upgrade is 50,000 and I hear (but not confirmed) that the bank goes up to 250 spaces maxed. Not sure how long it'll take me to get there but I will... eventually.

Also noticed that the player base seems to be dropping off, at least in my main guild. Don't think I've really mentioned that guild here in this journal yet. I met them in beta and they are based out of Australia which is close enough to Thai time that I'd have a guild that was actually online most of the time that I was (instead of playing and raiding and questing while I was sleeping... as was the case having an American guild while I played SWTOR).

TDE is their name, The Doppler Effect. Think we are up to close on 200 members now. Not everyone in the guild is from Australia (I'm not) but the vast majority are. Good people. They do weekly guild events on Saturdays but I often can't participate because I work late on Saturdays so kinda sucks. Unfortunately, I've noticed that a lot of the guys and girls I'd see on a regular basis are just not logging in anymore... or logging in a lot less frequently.

That's too be expected. A new game like ESO... lots of hype and expectations. Only the really hardcore are going to stick around indefinitely. Some people put so much time and effort into their characters that they are unwilling to drop the game even if they don't really enjoy playing the game anymore. I'm not one of those people. I played Uncharted Waters Online for almost 2 years (like many many hours put in daily) and had no problems leaving the game once I became bored of it and felt it had nothing left to offer me. I put in less time on SWTOR or EVE or WoW than UWO but still left just as easily. In those games, I gave all my stuff away because I was certain I would never return. UWO, I didn't because it's the kind of game that I can (and have) return to.

For ESO, I'm loving the game but I got my doubts that it has staying power. I hope to be proven wrong on that... especially as I'm close to maxing my first character and then I'll be thinking "WTF do I do now?"... other than leveling another character. Just need to wait and see how things develop, I guess. SWTOR definitely didn't have staying power. I hated endgame there. It was just dailies. I was a maxed crafter and had around 6 or 7 maxed characters. It just became blah. Nothing left to do. So I quit. Let's see how ESO handles that immortal problem of "endgame".

Well, not much else to say. I could be VR12 by next week but it really depends on how strongly I want it versus how much I dislike grinding. We'll see. Thanks for reading, as always.

Kuratla

Journal Update: June 19, 2014

So I finally hit VR12 with Kuratla. It was actually a lot less painful than I thought it would be. I went through Bangkorai in about a day and completed all the quests, finishing Cadwell's Gold and getting the Convenant Hero title. There's a bug going around because I noticed that I also can change my title to Pact Hero as well and I'm 100% sure that I did not complete all quests in Ebonheart Pact... particulary in Deshaan (as I wrote about in a previous journal update).

I am not a Dominion Hero either because when I was leveling, I skipped over Malabol Tor almost entirely and need to get back there one day. I don't even have the map completely discovered yet. And then there's all those PVE quests in Cyrodiil that need to be done in order to get Tamriel Hero... which would be cool and worthy of doing.

So after Bangkorai, Kuratla was around VR11 and 1/3 so he needed about 3.5 million exp to get to VR12. I went to Craglorn and tried to get a quest group going but no one is interested in that. It's all about the exp grinding. That scorpion - ogre - blood altar - guy downstairs cycle I wrote about last week seems to be ongoing all the time and you see people in the low VR levels in it.

Upon completing Coldharbor, looks like some people are completely ignoring the other two faction zones and just going straight to Craglorn and planning to grind all the way to VR12. That's got to be days and days of mind-numbing grinding. I couldn't handle that myself but more power to them... if that's how they want to roll. I only needed 2/3 of a level so it wasn't too bad. I joined up with one of those groups for a while and dropped out when the group got small enough that it became difficult to beat the bosses.

Came back later and joined up with a Bala dungeon exp grind group. Much better than the scorpion cycle. Got a good group. I tanked. There's around 5 bosses in the cycle, iirc. Takes about 10 - 12 minutes, depending on the group. Did that for a while until maintenance on Monday shut down the server. Then, after maintenance, I went back to Craglorn, got in with another Bala group (they seem to be omnipresent like the scorpion group), this time I went dps (which is easy mode compared to tanking), and grinded until I hit VR12. Exp came in a lot faster than the scorpion exp group so I'll go Bala in the future with other toons if/when I want to get them to VR12.

For the next while I worked on my VR12 armor. I managed to get a 4 piece Arena set and a 5 piece Song of Lamae (sp?) set to go with it. I improved everything up to legendary quality and applied legendary glyphs to everything, including legendary jewelry glyphs as well. As a stamina build, I forsook magicka completely and went with some health glyphs but mostly stamina glyphs. Kuratla, fully geared in tank mode, is around 2900+ health, 2100+ stamina, 2361 armor (but should be 2600+ because the Arena set is bugged which I found out about yesterday), health recovery around 70 and stam recovery around 80.

I did quite a few normal dungeons after hitting VR12 for the skillpoints and achievements and did my first vet dungeon last night with my guild as well. It went quite well. Only 1 wipe and that's because we were trying to get a rare achievement when you kill the last boss by not removing DOTs and not a single person in the group dies. Really hard to manage when the boss is throwing perma dots around that need to be cleansed. If you don't cleanse, you eventually die. We tried for the achievement and wiped. We went for the straight kill after the wipe and it was a piece of cake. Happy that I could tank successfully on unknown vet dungeons. I figured I'd die a lot until I figured out the mechanics but that wasn't the case. Of course, my group explained the boss mechanics to me but them telling and my seeing it for myself and surviving are two different things.

While I did fine in that first dungeon, I, unfortunately, still don't care for dungeons and I don't much see the point in doing them beyond the first time (for skillpoint and achievement). I'm not getting any exp. The loot (at least in the dungeon I was in) wasn't very good either. I can run Craglorn scorpion groups... just zerging along like a piece of cake and get a lot more loot (hence more gold upon vendoring) than dungeons. But I'll try out other more difficult and higher tier dungeons over the next week and see if those are more worth it.

Not having much to do with Kuratla after maxing, I ran through several of my alts, giving them some levels and skillpoints to put in crafting and chose Sartori, my alchemist sorcerer, to level and continue with. He's up to level 14 now and still going through Auridon. I quite like the sorcerer and, upon getting some skillpoints to put in his class skills, destruction staff and passives, I quickly found out that sorcerers are extremely overpowered when it comes to magicka pool and recovery. Sartori is a High Elf sorcerer in light armor. He'll get racial passives for magicka pool and recovery, light armor passives for magicka pool and recovery, Sorcerer class skills for magicka cost reduction and magicka recovery. Then add magicka gear and jewelry. And that's only with a level 14 character who's only got a small percentage of skills unlocked and only a couple morphed. Sorcerer even has a class skill that reduces the cost of ultimates and the Mage Guild skill line fits so perfectly with the Sorcerer that it's like they have 4 class skill lines compared to 3 for the other classes.

Comparing all that to Kuratla, an orc dragonknight in heavy armor, while trying to max out stamina pool and recovery as much as possible, Kuratla still runs out of stamina on a constant basis... especially when tanking. I get the feeling that the sorcerer has unlimited magicka reserves. Is it any wonder that most of those Bala groups I joined in Craglorn were 3 sorcerers and myself? Their dps was constant and even their storm atronauch ultimates seemed to be dropping constantly as well. When one class is so clearly superior to others, there's every expectation that most people will play it. Sad but true.

All that said, I like Sartori and it's renewed my interest in the game again. I'm going to enjoy leveling him. I want to see how insanely powerful he's going to become. Apparently patch 1.2 will include controls over pets so that'll be very useful. Send in the Clannefar tank instead of having it slowly react once a fight starts. Right now, at level 14, Sartori is just dpsing the hell out of the game and bosses found so far. I remember back with Kuratla that some boss fights while questing were really hard and it took skill, tanking, time, and determination to achieve victory. Sartori just blasts, burns and freezes the crap out of the boss and they are dead in seconds. Lots of differences here. First, I know the game now and how to play. Kuratla back at level 14 was a noob. Second, superior gear. Everything Sartori has is at least blue quality. He has maxed crafters (my woodmaker and clothier) supplying him with top quality gear constantly. Third, different playstyle. I'm not tanking and slowly whittling down the enemy. Sartori just goes nuclear and puts out too much dps for the enemy to handle and, due to a large magicka pool and recovery, he can blast down one, two and three mobs in short order. Three mobs for the tank to handle requires careful planning and clever use of CCs. And apparently the Sorcerer has some overpowered CCs as well.... I just haven't gotten them yet. Nor I am using potions or food with Sartori at the moment... just too easy and not needed.

Yup, Sorcerer. Easy mode. I guess the Dragonknight was normal mode (which is done) and the Nightblade will be hard mode (though the NB might be beefed up by the time I get around to leveling one). For the record, I'm not playing the game according to what classes are easy or hard. I play the classes and roles I enjoy. I got my tank maxed. Now working on a dps. Then I'll work on my healer. Nightblades (thieves, rangers, scouts, etc.. whatever similar class from any other game) have always been my least preferred type of role. Though, with a maxed alchemist, I'll strongly consider a nightblade once/if they add poisons to the game. Sneak, snipe (bow), crit, poison. There's some one shot love.

Over the next while, I'll probably only log in to Kuratla for doing vet dungeons with my guild or anything guild-related they'd like to do in Craglorn. Otherwise, I'll be working on Sartori - a nuclear bomb in the making. However, from today, I'll be working everyday until the beginning of July so not going to have much time online but I'll still try to get a few hours in each night.

One last thing to write about before I leave. I got into a zone chat last night and started talking with one guy in private. Just this and that; random stuff. Eventually the talk got to purple VR5+ recipes and he told me a "well known secret" about how to get them. I don't know if this is true or not and I'm not likely to test it out and see but I'll unspoil this secret for you, my readers. If it's true and you guys can get a VR5+ purple recipe and sell it for millions of gold, good for you.

So, according to the well known secret, you need to complete every fishing achievement first before you can get a VR5+ purple recipe. Not sure if you just get a recipe as a reward or if you can fish and find a recipe afterwards or if they drop in dressers once you've completed the fishing achievements. Don't know and since I don't fish, I'm not likely to ever know... unless someone confirms and tells me. Happy fishing... I guess.

And to help that along, here's some fishing info I've taken from another post on the forum:

"Use bait as follows:

Stagnant pools/sewers: crawlers/roe
Salt water: worms/chub
Rivers: insect parts/shad
Lakes: guts/minnows"

Thanks for reading. Cya next time.

Kuratla

No Journal Update for June 26, 2014

Working 7 days a week and came down with the flu on Sunday night (still sick now but getting over it). So I've been spending most of my free time sleeping, instead of gaming. Didn't spend much time online over the last week and certainly didn't do enough to post a journal update about it. Sorry about that and cya next week.

Kuratla

Journal Update for July 3, 2014

Welcome back. Sorry about skipping last week's journal update but I really had nothing to write about. However, I got in a lot of gameplay this last week so this should be a long one.

With Kuratla maxed at VR12 and doing fine in his legendary gear but nowhere to go and nothing to do (because of a lack of meaningful endgame, imo), I'm leveling up a different character now. While I should have gone with Montador (my woodcrafter) or Incantatrix (my clothier) so that I could get access to 8 trait crafting stations and put their crafts to use, I didn't. I've been working on Sartori, my alchemist, who just happens to be a sorcerer.

Last I mentioned him, he was up to level 14 and that is admittedly not very far and not much opportunity to test out all the skill combinations and passives because he was too low level. But, now, Sartori is level 38 and he's a vampire too. And holy crap, here's where I complain my azz off.

Kuratla is a dragonknight tank and he's a werewolf. He's VR12 and I soloed most of the game... sometimes easily, sometimes rather difficult but doable. Now, if you haven't heard, werewolves are complete garbage. They start at needing 1000 ultimate to just change into werewolf form and then they got around 30 seconds to kill some mudcrabs to level up werewolf before you revert to humanoid form and need to build up that 1000 ultimate again. And the fact that ultimate points seem to reset to zero sometimes for no reason at all and you got a huge pain in ranking up werewolf.

Either a change in WW ultimate requirements (or the fact that Kuratla is maxed in that skill), now it's down to 750 ultimate or something. Still way too much. But what about the active skills? What about the passive skills? Are they so amazingly cool and useful and overpowered that it makes it all worthwhile? Hell, no! They are all related to being in werewolf form. Making it a bit longer or giving more stamina. The two actives are a pounce and a roar and that's the only skills you have while in werewolf form. You can't heal or tank or use your class or weapon skills while in WW form.

So I asked in guild chat about Sartori becoming a vampire (since I hadn't had that experience in the game and wanted to see what all the fuss was about) and, luckily, one vampire was online and his bite was up. So, at level 30, Sartori went over to Reaper's Marsh and got embraced (yes, WoD rules!). Kinda tough doing the quest at level 30 because I missed most of the time with my attacks but I eventually figured it out and killed the 10 cultists and got the vampire skill line.

First thing I noticed was that you increase in vampire ranks just by gaining exp. Compare that to the insanity of leveling up werewolf ranks. Sartori is rank 6 or 7 vampire now after only several days. Once I started gaining some levels in vampire and getting some skills, the second thing I noticed was that you add the vampire skills to your normal class and weapon skills bars. Mix and match them to fit your character. Again, compare to the werewolf which has two skills... only. And can't use class or weapon skills.

Fire damage debuff is an annoyance and I've learned to hate pyromancers and scamps but it's the same deal with werewolves and hating spiders. Stage 4 vampire (Sartori has never fed and I'm not even sure how to do it) gives a nice 21% (23%?) magicka reduction to vampire skills but a huge health regen debuff. Sartori is 6 health regen at the moment... and 80 magicka regen. But there's a later passives to decrease that debuff (Supernatural Recovery) which I don't have yet.

Extremely low health regen seems to be a big problem but it really isn't. Not when you look at the first vampire active skill... which Sartori uses all the time... Drain Essence. Stuns an enemy, drains his health and restores 150% of that health to Sartori in health and stamina. All while my pets are hitting the guy while he's stunned. It's a pretty amazing heal. I laughed when I saw the morph possibilities.... gain ultimate while using the skill (as if sorcerers don't already have it easy enough concerning ultimates).

I got Mist Form as well and leveling it up in my 2nd skillbar (which I switch to when I turn in quests) but not currently using it. Just got access to Bat Swarm as well. Interested to see what insane morphs they have.

Almost finished with Malabol Tor quests, yesterday I went into the public dungeon there. It's level 35 and Sartori was level 36. In both Grahtwood and Greenshade, there were a ton of people running around so I didn't need to look for a group in clearing out those PDs, I just tagged along with the crowd. I figured I'd do the same in Malabol Tor. However, there was nobody there. Just Sartori and mobs of 6 - 8 enemies. If I were playing back on Kuratla, I would have turned around and left. But not Sartori.

My skillbar was 1) Drain Essence, 2) Lightning Pool (for AOE damage), 3) Crystal Fragments (high damage, knockdown and potential for auto recast, 4) that dps pet sorcerers have that flies around and heals you when you are low, and 5) Inner Light (because 20% crit chance on all my attacks is nuts). That 20% plus a purple staff and light armor passives and two sets of crafted gear giving 5% each puts Sartori at 41% spell crit (which is all attacks for him) currently.

I gave it a shot. Throw in a crystal, knock someone down, drop a lightning pool and, oh crap, here comes 6 or 7 people charging me. Then I learned how insane vampires are against mobs. Naturally I started blocking against all the attacks and dropping more AOEs around me. Drain Essence on one guy to heal up and restore my stamina so I could continue blocking. Drop another AOE and Drain Essence someone else. Soon enough, I got 7 dead bodies around me and I'm full health and stamina. Magicka a bit low but Sartori got high magicka regen. If I had tried that with Kuratla, he'd be 100% dead. No way he could block all that damage and still fight off the mobs. But a vampire sorcerer... in light armor... with around 400 armor rating and absolutely no passives or skills in tanking, no problem. Tanked like a god.

So Sartori went on to clear out that public dungeon... solo. Did both quests. Killed all the bosses. Even did the "group" (lol) challenge. 4 ogres or whatever it was. I mean, it's crazy. It boggles my mind how they put in two world skill lines, werewolf and vampire, and one is utterly useless while the other is insanely overpowered. Shouldn't they have been at least somewhat comparable in power? Werewolf is cosmetic. It's fun to transform, roar and chase skeevers around and feast on their corpses. But Kuratla has never used a werewolf transformation during a quest or dungeon or any serious gameplay. Sartori will be using vampire skills and passives all the time... because they make him so powerful and make the game so easy. It's easy enough being a sorcerer... adding vampire to it.... makes me feel like I'm cheating.

Seriously, if anyone complains about sorcerer or vampire skills, you need to shut the F up. The dragonknight is slowly taking hits and being nerfed in each patch. The sorcerer isn't. Nor is the vampire. How does that make any sense? Vampire Sorcerers are all over the place. And why not? Don't you want to play a powerful character and not a wimp? Granted, Sartori still dies sometimes. Fire ruins his day and so does big enemies like a storm atronauch that is immune to CCs and drain essence. But he just needs to swap around some skills to deal with it. But when you are soloing public dungeons (at your own level, mind you), there is something seriously wrong.

I like Sartori, I really do. I just don't like how easy it is. I don't like how easy mode is possible in an MMO because you know people are going to go that way. And, after I'm done with Sartori, how difficult is it going to be for me to try leveling up a templar or a nightblade... unless I go vampire with them as well.

Not completely finished with Malabol Tor, Sartori at level 37 and 38, has been in Reaper's March since yesterday finding all the skyshards and doing all the solo dungeons. He's several levels underleveled but they are still a piece of cake. The only thing I did have trouble with was going to Cryodiil and trying to solo the dungeons there (looking for skyshards and lorebooks). The VR5 mobs with 2500 - 3000 health are just too strong to solo. If they are one on one, no problem. Two.... possible but really hard. Three or more, dead. Have to wait till VR1 or so and Sartori will be back to Cyrodiil to clear out those dungeons. Too hard now and not worth trying to solo.

No reason why Sartori shouldn't be into VR levels by next week except that I do want to get Dominion Hero with him so I need to spend time in Malabol Tor and Reaper's Marsh doing quests... which is ok. Turning in quests give nice skill exp so that's worth doing. Sartori secondary weapon is a restoration staff and he's around rank 30 in it and got 4 out of 5 of the skills learned (a few morphed already) even though he's never actually used that staff in battle. Just building up that healing potential for times when I'll actually need it... against Molag Bal, for example.

I've been enjoying the sorcerer pets. I used both of them (morphed for the clannfear and the healing flying thingy) for a while but don't need the tankiness of the clannfear anymore so it's just the extra dps from the flyer now. I hear that pets die really fast in vet zones so hopefully my sorcerer CC abilities will be up to par when I get there. Kuratla relied heavily on CCs to successfully solo the vet zones. Not sure if it will be the same for Sartori or if his vampire sorcerer godliness can just dps zerg through. I'll find out when I get there.

More or less just interested in seeing what skills and morphs the sorcerer, vampire, destruction and restoration staves have to offer. All of those things are complete unknowns to me as Kuratla didn't use any of them. So going to keep on going with Sartori till at least VR1. After that, highly doubtful I'm going to run through the two factions again... just takes too much time. Maybe I'll work on a different class then and hope that the game offers up some meaningful endgame.

That brings this update (or was it a rant?) to a close. Thanks for reading. Cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update for July 10

Welcome back. Tomorrow is a Buddhist holiday here in Thailand so I need to get today's and tomorrow's work done today so I can't spend a ton of time thinking about, drafting and editing a journal update. Usually I have more free time on a Thursday morning at work so I can take my time but I need to be brief today.

What have I been up to in the last week? Well, mostly on Sartori. He's at level 47 now and began Coldharbour yesterday. I didn't quite finish Reaper's Marsh. I got bored with it there and left for Coldharbour being around 12 quests shy of getting the Dominion Hero title. I'll probably go back to Reaper's Marsh to finish that off bit by bit when I get bored with Coldharbour and/or vet zones.

Monday's patch apparently reduced the difficulty of vet zones but I haven't gone to any with Kuratla so I haven't got any experience of reduced difficulty to talk about. I'll send Sartori to check it out after he kills Molag Bal. Previously people have been saying that sorcerer pets are nearly useless in vet zones because they die so easily which means you need to change your playstyle around a bit. That may not be the case now that the vet zones have been made easier. We shall see.

Sartori did tackle the Vile Manse solo (Reaper Marsh's public dungeon) since he was so successful at the last public dungeon. I wasn't quite as successful as the last one because I didn't kill some of the bosses and a guy showed up behind me to help me kill the group challenge boss (which was a huge frost atronauch that I wasn't specced to kill). I would have died without that guy's help. Otherwise, I soloed the rest of it, including the last boss to get the achievement. There was a lot more fire damage involved here than in the last public dungeon so that made things tougher for my vampire. I've also noted the public dungeon in Coldharbour and I'll get on that next week.

Sartori is almost to the point where he has all the skills he'll get. Only core skill he doesn't have yet is Bolt Escape but I just need to put a bunch of the right skills in my secondary skill bar for turning in quests to level up the skill and get Bolt Escape. Versatility seems to be the name of the game for the sorcerer. DPS, of course, and destruction staff skills for AOE damage or crystal shards / surge for single target dps. CC... yup, got lots of that too but haven't been using those skills except for the Volcanic Rune (because it's fun). Heal, yes. Both vampire heals through drain essence and morphed ultimate (Devouring Swarm) and restoration staff. Tanking, yes, that too. Bound Armor and Conjure Ward and drain essence to heal up and restore stamina. Just need either Inner Fire or take some sword and board skills for taunt. So, sorcerer can run any role and pretty damn good at it too.

Sartori is at 93 magicka recovery at the moment. Someone in one of my trade guild was trying to tell me not to try to max out one type of recovery at the expense of the others and go for some kind of balance because I'm losing points in the soft cap. I know that, of course, but let's consider the character and his role. He's a sorcerer dps vampire (stage 4). He has almost no health recovery and doesn't need any. He can get healing from 4 or 5 different sources. Draining Essence. My pet. Resto staff. That skill that trades stamina for health and magicka. As for stamina recovery, Sartori also doesn't need it. He doesn't spend much time tanking and even when he does, it's against mobs that are easily killed with draining essence which restores stamina. I think Sartori has two rings which give magicka recovery and everything else is just all the insane passives for sorcerer, high elf, light armor and vampire all working together to get such a high magicka recovery.

And he needs as high a magicka recovery as possible because he spams spells like nobody's business. After going through almost all the same quests in AD with Kuratla (DK tank) and now Sartori (sorcerer dps), a very key point I've noticed is that the boss fights for Sartori generally only last 5 - 10 seconds long. Spam crystal shards (which crit for close to 700 damage currently), pet attacks, drop storm atronauch. The boss doesn't have enough time to do whatever he is supposed to do. He/She dies too quickly. With Kuratla and the slow control fights, I remember fighting some bosses for like 10 straight minutes before I finally managed to win. Kuratla just outlasted them... out tanked them. A 10 minute fight for Kuratla is a 10 second fight for Sartori. Even that really fun ship battle in Greenshade that I wrote about with Kuratla a long time ago, with Sartori it was a piece of cake and not at all exciting because it was simple and easy. Kuratla survived by the skin of his teeth and the battle was so much fun because of the challenge.

Other than playing on Sartori, I've been working on my crafting for my alts. Kuratla himself finally got to rank 40 in enchanting (as my secondary enchanter). Having 3/3 enchanting hireling for him but around rank 33 or so, I kept on getting potency 7 runes all the time from Kuratla and never (I think) a Kuta aspect rune. He did get Rekutas fairly often but only my primary enchanter would get potency 9 runes and Kutas from the hireling. So I boosted up Kuratla to rank 40 so hopefully he'll start getting some Kutas now (in addition to the potency 9 runes). 4 potency 9 runes per day (plus 4 shots at Kutas) is pretty good. Those are really the only valuable ones to have. The other useful thing is that if Enchanting is reworked and you need rank 50 to make the highest glyphs, then suddenly my primary enchanter (at rank 44 right now) won't be able to but I can make potency 9 glyphs from Kuratla and give to Mordeus to decon so shouldn't be that difficult to "re-max" him. Also working on Kuratla's provisioning as well. May as well get him to rank 50 in that and get 3/3 hireling as well. More tomatoes... even though I currently don't have any recipes that use them. Maybe in the future.

All the gear drops Sartori has been getting have been deconned by other alts. Currently Kuratla, Sartori and Mordeus (my enchanter) have at least rank 32 in BS, Cloth and Wood and each have 3/3 hireling in each. Montador (my Woodcrafter) is working on BS and Cloth now while Incantatrix (my Clothier) is working on woodcrafting. Soon both of them will be at rank 32 or higher in all 3 crafts and will have 3/3 hirelings. Then that will be 5 toons giving 10 shots a day at getting BS, Cloth and Wood improvements. Then I'll work up my Provisioner in those 3 crafts as well. That leaves my two level 3 guys who are basically worthless since the hireling changes but I didn't bother to delete them. Once the other 6 are done, I'll delete the two level 3 guys and think of two more toons to properly level up, create and work on the crafting with them.

Eventually, I'll have 8 characters giving me 16 BS, Wood and Cloth hireling mails per day. There's little reason to level up Alchemy expect for one toon at 50 (which is done... Sartori) and I'll work on getting rank 12 in Enchanting for all the alts (for hireling 2/3) before I work on rank 32. I'm guessing that a change to Enchanting is coming soon enough and it'll be easy to level up so I can work up for hirelings then. After that, no idea what to do about crafting. Maybe the max rank will be increased to 60 by then and tier 10 stuff will be introduced and/or new crafting types (eg, spellcrafting... whatever that will do??? and I think I may have heard about jewelry crafting as well).

Ah crap. I've been writing for longer than I planned. I need to get some work done. Thanks for reading and catch you next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update for July 17, 2014

Hello again. Continuing from last week... Sartori reached VR1 around halfway through Cold Harbour. I did all the POIs there and the public dungeon. I wanted to try to solo the public dungeon (or try to, at least) but there were so many people around that it was impossible to do it alone. I guess that public dungeon is a good place to grind gear or exp or whatever.

After hitting VR1 and not getting exp anymore (except for turning in quests), I fast tracked it to Molag Bal to complete the main storyline and move on to the vet zones. Since Sartori breezed through the entire game, I was confident that Molag Bal would just take one look at the awesomeness that is the vampire sorcerer and just concede. However, couple things.... firstly, the Molag Bal final battle was redone. Some time between when Kuratla did it and now, the devs reworked the final battle. It was so different. What Molag Bal did was different. His attacks were less predictable. Molag Bal was a lot more mobile. And, bad for a vampire, a lot of his attacks were fire based.

He did one heavy attack... a flame scream (or something) and it one shot killed me. 1800 damage. I could dodge to avoid it but one mistake (or low on stamina) and I was dead. I died 3 or 4 times before giving up on it. Instead of crafting fire resistance jewelry and reworking my skills to give me more spell resistance (since Molag Bal was throwing around more spells than actually attacking with a weapon), I just went over to Reaper's Marsh and looked for the priest to remove vampirism from Sartori. I didn't know exactly where the priest was and, of course, despite there be tons of people in Reaper's Marsh, not a single person would help me with info. I was about to say "I'll give 10,000 gold to the first person who shows me where the priest is." but I had just found him myself. If I had, I'm sure that I would have gotten dozens of message for people wanting to help. But just asking "Where is the priest to remove vampirism, please?" gets ignored. ***.

Anyway, after removing vampirism, I returned to fight Molag Bal. I did it on the first attempt but it was still difficult. Needed to heal a lot to stay alive and needed to be really mobile to avoid attacks. Kuratla went in with shields up and never got below 80% health. Big difference. Molag Bal is much more difficult than he used to be. I guess that's a good thing. Need a nice challenge for the final boss, after all.

However, as soon as I took Cadwell's Silver quests and went to Ebonheart Pact, I stopped playing on Sartori. The Road Ahead dev info is saying that veteran ranks are going to be replaced with Champion ratings or some such so I really really don't want to grind to VR12 with Sartori only to have all the progress removed once the devs do whatever they are going to do with the vet ranks. Now, I don't know for sure that vet progress will be lost but it's certainly a possibility and I'd rather be safe than sorry so Sartori is on the back burner for now. I'll return to him once whatever changes to vet ranks happens.

So I moved on to Incantatrix (who should have been called Immacolata but some other Clive Barker fan already took the name). She's my templar and my clothier. She's a good choice to work up to VR1 because then she'll have access to all the crafting stations and I can put her 8 trait light armor research to good use. Then Montador, my woodcrafter nightblade, will follow to VR1. I had originally planned to go light armor and destruction / resto staff with Incantatrix but I just did that with Sartori and it would have been pretty boring so I changed her up and went two-handed sword and heavy armor instead. Her secondary became 1-handed sword and shield once she reached level 15.

I'm glad I did because I found some nice synergies in 2-handed weapon and templar skills. Like the critical charge and javelin throw. I can hit an enemy with sun fire, charge in, throw a javelin which knocks them back and then charge again. That's a lot of damage in a very fast time but it seems to me (so far) that templars are lacking in AOEs and CCs but they are good at taking down single targets. So I'm hoping that the heavy armor and innate templar healing can make up the difference.

Incantatrix is only level 18 now and she just finished Auridon and moved on to Grahtwood. She's only touched the bare minimum of templar/2-handed weapon skills so I'm sure that I'll be discovering new and fun combinations over the next week or so. Since I ran through the game with Sartori only a couple weeks previous, it's pretty easy to compare the power levels of the sorcerer to that of the templar. For example, Sartori had almost no problems soloing world bosses and public dungeons from Auridon to Cold Harbor. I've tried soloed several world bosses with Incantatrix in Auridon but she always dies. She doesn't have high enough dps nor is her magicka/stamina regen strong enough to keep the fight going. She'll maybe half kill the boss but then she's out of magicka and stamina. Can't block anymore. No magicka to heal herself or continue the attack. Recovery is too slow to make a difference. I'll just need to find groups in the future for her and no way am I going to try to solo the public dungeons with her.

For crafting, Incantatrix got to woodworking 32 and took 3/3 hireling while Montador got BS and Cloth to 32 and also took 3/3 hireling and 2/3 hireling in enchanting. So that's 5 current toons with 3/3 hireling in BS, Wood and Cloth. My provisioner, Vatcher, is deconing everything now and he'll be the 6th. Just for interest, I'm going to record how many purple and gold improvements I get in BS, Wood, Cloth and Enchanting over a one week period. I'll report that next journal update. I hope the numbers are large enough to make me happy that I put so much time and money into crafting.

Last thing to talk about is the upcoming 1.3 patch. I've read up on it from the PTS server info and on some websites. I'm really excited about the dyes, in particular. The guild tabards will be cool as well. Available dyes depend on what achievements (crafting, questing, exploring, Craglorn, pvp, fishing, etc) you've made in the game. I do believe that once you apply a dye to some armor, it becomes bound to you so "trading dyes" won't be possible. It would be interesting to have a dye market out there but looks like that isn't going to happen. Instead, if you want this or that dye for your armor, you need to get the achievement. This encourages (or forces, I guess) more overall play and people like me who don't do Craglorn or pvp may end up doing Craglorn or pvp just get to the dyes. Of course, depends on the dye. If the pvp ones are amazing, then, yeah, I probably will hit pvp (as long as the achievement isn't super hard to reach). But if they are meh then I'll just ignore them. Need to wait and see.

I have no idea when patch 1.3 is coming but it's live on the PTS now so I'm assuming it'll probably be released before the end of July. I even bought the Primal motif book for Kuratla because there's an achievement dye for having all the books and that was the only one he was missing. Generally I wouldn't pay money for a motif book but I did in that case. Incantatrix's level 16 gear was made in Primal style. I like the horned helm but not so much for the rest of it and the 2-handed sword in Primal looks more like a giant club than a sword. Incantatrix is a short Breton girl and her sword is as long as she is tall. Funny looking seeing her wield it.

Anyway, that's my journal done for this week. Plan for the next week is to continue leveling my templar and see how far she gets. Once she's VR1 and killed Molag Bal, I'll work on my woodcrafter to VR1 as well. Both of those toons to VR1 will take me more than 1 month I'm guessing so that sets my time for the near future well. By then we'll have patch 1.3 and info on patch 1.4 should be out. Really hope that new guilds and/or new classes are introduced soon. Since the endgame isn't doing anything for me, then new classes to start over with will keep me playing until endgame is playable.

Thanks for reading. Cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update for July 24, 2014

Gonna start with the hireling data this week because it's rather interesting. As I said last time, I got 5 toons up to 3/3 hireling in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking (and a lesser amount at 3/3 hireling in Enchanting and even Provisioning but food isn't represented here) and I kept an ongoing list of purple and gold improvements received over the week from Friday evening until Thursday morning. My hirelings came in a total of... let me do the math... 12 times in that time period. I did miss out on some time due to Monday's maintenance and needing to leave for work this morning.

I didn't keep track of ores or woods or fabrics or greens or blues or gemstones and also didn't keep track of how many purple or gold improvements obtained from refined but there was certainly a significant amount of them. One time doing 100 or so raw maple I got 3 rosin. I was amazed because previous experience has shown rosin to be the least likely to get via refining compared to alloys or wax. So here's the numbers... all purple and gold improvements obtained via hirelings alone in a 6 day period (well, 5 1/2 days, really). Drum roll, please.....

Blacksmithing: 7 purples and 7 golds.

Woodcrafting: 9 purples and 11 golds.

Clothing: 25 purples (wtf!) and 17 golds.

Enchanting (from 2 toons with 3/3 hirelings): 11 purples and 1 gold (I kinda knew before that Kutas are really hard to get).

The reason for the increase in clothing mats was that almost always, it would be 2 purples or 2 golds per time, not just 1. If I was lucky enough to get a purple or gold blacksmithing or wood or enchanting improvement, it was almost always just one of them. But with clothing, it was usually 2 per time and I even got 4 purples once from one hireling. Maybe that's because clothing uses both light and medium armor so they generally give double improvements. Make sense, I guess.

In the North American server right now, the prices for purple improvements go for around 600 - 1000 gold (depending on if you are buying them or selling them) so let's average that to 800 gold and for the gold improvements, 2000 - 3000 so let's average to 2500 gold. So, in 5 1/2 days of hireling mails, my account net value increased by [(7+9+25+11) x 800] + [(7+11+17+1) x 2500] = 131,600 gold! (at current market values). Wow. That's pretty damn significant and makes me wish no devs read my journal because I can smell a nerf coming.

I'm working on my 6th toon now for rank 32 in the crafting skills. He's between rank 12 - 18 in them now so hopefully I can get another guy at 3/3 hireling by the end of the next week. I'll keep track of the numbers next week as well... just to see if last week's amounts were particularly lucky or if they are standard. If I get a similar amount again, then I can deduce around 25,000 gold value per week per toon if said toon has 3/3 hirelings in each of the three major crafts. It'll get even better if they had 3/3 hireling in enchanting as well but that's a daunting task... even for someone like me whose primary focus is crafting. Once 8 toons, 200k gold value per week. 5 weeks... 1 million gold... arriving in your mail box! Doesn't include actually playing the game or any other ways of getting gold. Interesting stuff indeed. So, yeah, definitely happy I went the route I did. Maybe after next week's data is in, I'll also include the improvements received from refining the crappy ore you get with the hirelings as well. That'll push the numbers even higher.

As for gameplay last week, I've been playing on Incantratrix, my templar clothier. She's up to level 32 now and may or may not reach VR1 by next journal update. I'm guessing she won't but she should get close. The main goal is to complete the mage's and fighter's guild storyline lines to have access to the set crafting stations there and to hit VR1 so she can go to Craglorn and have access to the Arena crafting stations. Killing Molag Bal isn't necessary. Secondary goal is to do as many quests as possible to level up skill lines so she can get as many Templar skills and 2 handed weapons skills as possible and as many morphs as possible so I can explore the Templar gameplay and possibilities.

So far I'm less enthusiastic with the Templar as I was with the Sorcerer. I find the Templar ultimates to be pretty bad overall, compared to the Dragon Knight and Sorcerer ones. I use the Radial Sweep one a lot because it's only 75 ultimate to replenish so you can use it several times in one fight. It's effect and damage aren't much, of course, but it's a pretty good AOE. Spending a lot of time with skills in the bar just leveling them up instead of using them because some of them are bad or just not overall useful... like Backlash. It's just sitting there... waiting up rank 4 so I can morph it and remove it for something more useful.

While the Templar has lots of AOE damage, some DOTs, of course heals, and I'm using 2 handed weapon for single target damage like Critical Charge and Uppercut, they are bad at resource management. My two builds with my Templar is melee dps and tank so I don't want to be using light armor for magicka regen, for example. I originally went with heavy armor but have since gone down to 4 heavy and 3 medium because I needed more stamina management and medium armor provides that. Jewelry and mundus stone for magicka regen. Since both her stamina and magicka regen are decent but not really good (like Sartori's magicka regen being at 105 or whatever it is), I try to skill bar about half templar spells and half melee weapons to help with the overall poor resource regen. Rotating between magicka and stamina for damage makes both last longer and allows some time for each to recover.

It's been working okay. Incantratrix dies more often than Sartori did but not really a super amount. She's in Greenshade now and I tried to solo the public dungeon there... just to see if she could. I went tank mode using as many AOEs for damage as possible and using Repentence to get back some 80 health and stamina per dead body to quickly health up and recover stamina to continue blocking. Worked like a charm. The mobs were taken care of effectively; not quite as easily as my sorcerer could but still done. Then she'd switch to 2 hander mode to take on the bosses. More difficult than the mobs but she cleared the dungeon, got the achievement, did the quests and skyshards.... all solo. Only thing she didn't do was the group challenge because I couldn't find it.

So I guess what that all means is that it depends on how you build your character... to match what challenges you are going to come up against. Sure, some classes are better at some things than others but there's no reason why any class can't be built to solo public dungeons (as an example). And this will get even more universal with the future inclusion of spellcrafting.

Let's talk about this for a bit. I watched the ESO presentation at Quakecon 2014 on Youtube during Monday's maintenance downtime. Imperial City... PVP stuff. Seems good but I'm not a PVP guy so not much interest there for me. Animation work making NPCs more human and realistic. Ok... that's good. Justice system... I like the idea but I can just see EVE mentality of bad guys in safe space locking on to noobs trying to get them to attack so they can be legally killed. Something like that. PVPers specifically stealing so they can have to fun of killing the people who are stupid enough to attack them. I think the Justice system is a nice concept. I just don't know how it will be exploited by players... but I'm sure that it will. Champion rating replacing vet levels... I like that. Continue to get more exp but level stays the same. You just put the exp into champion points improving your character by buying passives and such. Seems like a lot of flexibility and customization involved so that looks good to me.

The thing that most interests me is spellcrafting. You'll need to unlock it via some exploration (and probably some quests) after completing the mage's guild storyline. Looks like there will be different quality tablets so spellcrafting may end up being the 7th proper craft in the game with a skill line attached. Spellcrafting will be some (if not all) of the schools of magic we are familiar with from Elder Scroll games... Destruction school, Alteration school, Conjuration school, etc. There will be a huge amount of customization in the creation of a spell so, as an example, a fireball player x creates can be quite different from the fireball player y creates. The spells will be slotted in your skillbar so you know that they are going to be good because they'll be replacing one of your class or weapon skills. Even ultimate versions of the spells can be made. There's not a huge amount of info on spellcrafting out yet but I really like what I've seen so far. Whatever particular area you are lacking in for your particular character and build, perhaps there will be a spell you can make to fill that gap and create a more balanced character. Seems to be all about more customization for your characters. Can't really argue with that.

Well, long update today. Maybe 1 1/2 weeks till Incantatrix gets to VR1 and then to Montador... Nightblade woodcrafter. Kill two stones with one bird with him... getting to crafting stations for 8 traits for woodcrafting (he'll be done with all 8 traits in woodcrafting over the next couple weeks) and exploring the nightblade. I currently have no idea about the playstyle of the nightblade and no idea about their skills. It'll be fun to explore the last class in the game.

Thanks for reading. Cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update July 31, 2014

Hi all. I've slowed down a bit on my templar Incantratrix. She's gotten as far as Reaper's Marsh and at level 41. If I put more time into her, she would have been closer to level 50 than level 40 but I didn't. I worked more on my crafting and got my 6th alt up to rank 32 in clothing and woodworking but not yet blacksmithing. And since that means that my 6 crafters are now getting maxed out on all hirelings (except for enchanting), I deleted one of the two level 3 1/3 hireling do nothing alts and "rolled" a new character.

Rolled? Really? Why do we use that terminology? There were no dice involved and nothing random in the character's generation. I've been playing pen & paper roleplaying games like D&D and WoD for 30 years so I laugh when people say "Sorcerers are really overpowered. You should roll a new character". Uh... no. I made a new character. I digitally created a new character... and she's pretty hot too.

I decided to min/max on this one. Going for that 1400 dps I heard about. Dark Elf for fire damage bonus. Dragonknight for fire damage. And, of course, Inferno staff. Her name is Fire Witch but that sounds lame so I put google to use and looked up the Latin words for "Fire" and "Witch" so I could get a sufficiently esoteric-sounding name. Fire = Ignis... some part of my memory knew that already. And I remember reading my Malleus Maleficarum (The Witches' Hammer... a fine piece of religious misogyny) so I already knew the word for witch. Making it more feminine, her name became Ignisia Malefica.

I made her Ebonheart Pact because ALL 8 of my toons are in the Dominion (because most of them were designed only for crafting so it made sense to have them all together in the same place) and I'm really sick to death of running through the Dominion storyline. I've done the Pact storyline once as Cadwell Silver with Kuratla but, to be honest, it was just a level grind and I didn't pay much (if any) attention to the actual story. With Ignisia, I will. So new toon, cool name, lots of potential, new alliance, new storyline, and (did I mention?) she's really hot. Flaming red hair, tall but not skinny, lovely buttocks and a chest that pornstars pay big money to get.

Anyway, she's up to level 8 now and I'm not as yet sure how far I'll go with her. My priority should be Incantatrix and Montador to VR1 so I can get access to all crafting stations but Ignisia is fun and new and... well, you know. And apparently, her name means something in Spanish as well. So, there I was, in Davon's Watch... kinda for the first time, and I didn't know where anything was. I put 50k in the bank for Ignisia, went and bought a draft horse (all my toons have draft horses) and was looking for the bag vendor. Not marked on the map like it is in Vulkhel Guard. So I asked in zone chat and people helped me out. Seeing my name, some guy started talking to me... in Spanish. After 3 or 4 tells of me not having a clue what he was saying, I wrote "I don't speak Spanish". Then he said, in English "But your name is Spanish". Malefica means "malicious" in Spanish, according to him, but when I told him that I just got the name from a Latin dictionary, he stopped talking to me. I guess he was happy to see another Spanish speaker but not happy when he found out it was just a geek using google to get the name. Guilty as charged.

I plan to immerse myself in the storyline with Ignisia. Listen to all the dialogue. Take my time. There's no rush with her. For sure, I want her to get to a decent enough level that she'll have lots of skillpoints so I can buy 3/3 hirelings with her... which, of course, is the main reason she exists. But no reason why I can't enjoy her as a digital person as well, right?

Ah yes, hirelings. So, last time I posted one week's worth of hireling mails in purple and gold improvements. It was a ton and I was really happy how much stuff I was getting. I actually kept my eyes on zone chat while leveling with Incantratrix and I sold off a fair amount of improvements once I saw people offering an amount of gold that I was comfortable selling at. My total gold at one time record was beaten and hit around 230k. Then I made Ignisia and bought a bloody horse and some bags so that dropped again.

This last week's numbers are in for the hirelings and here they are. No drum roll this time because the numbers are less impressive:

Blacksmithing: 23 purples and 8 golds.

Woodcrafting: 5 purples and 5 golds.

Clothing: 33 purples and 5 golds.

Enchanting (from 2 toons with 3/3 hirelings): 5 purples and 2 golds.

So the blacksmithing and clothing purples went off the chart but the golds, especially in clothing, dropped a lot. RNG, I guess. But let's do the gold value...
[(23+5+33+5) x 800] + [(8+5+5+2) x 2500] = 102,800 gold. Down a significant amount from last week due to the lesser amount of golds but still, that's pretty damn good for free stuff in my mail box.

I'll record the data again for next week. You would think that it'll go up because I got the 6th toon at 3/3 hirelings now as well and it should only take me a day to get Ignisia to 2/3 hirelings so more and better chances but, with RNG, nothing is certain. Might be all zeros across the board.

Additionally, I'm going to keep track out how many purples and golds I get specifically from the raw ore, cloth and wood that come from the hireling as well. This is only be from the hireling and not include any ores I put up in the world. I'm pretty much sure now that crafting (either through making stuff or getting crafting improvements) is an extremely good way of making gold in the game so I'm happy with the choices I've made.

Not much left to write about. Incantratrix found an Imperial motif in Malabol Tor's public dungeon which I was excited about. Kuratla found one way way back and I could make blacksmithing stuff in Imperial and now I can make light and medium armor now. So, naturally, all the new armors I'm making these days are Imperial. As someone who bought the standard edition of the game, being able to make Imperial gear is pretty significant. And, to be honest, Imperial gear is really good looking. May be a bit meh to a lot of Imperial edition owners because you've seen it all the time but to my eyes, it's probably the best motif. I put Vatcher (level 10 provisioner) in full heavy Imperial gear so he could grind out some levels and get skillpoints for 3/3 hirelings and it looks really good.

Incantratrix tried to solo the public dungeon in Reaper's Marsh... the Vile Manse... but she came across some difficulty. Main reason was that the mobs include one (or sometimes) two healers. AOEing the mobs didn't kill them all because of the healers and then I'd find myself without magicka. I needed to skillbar switch to my 2 handed axe and use stamina-based skills to clean up the rest. Sometimes I managed to clear the mobs. Sometimes I couldn't. She died too much and I gave up on the idea of soloing it. She also hasn't gotten the 5th skill in any of her Templar class skills yet (like Sun Shield) and I think some of those skills would be of great use in public dungeons. I planned to return later but heard a call out for a group to do the Vile Manse in zone chat and ended up clearing it out in a group instead.

Last thing to say is that I really really hope that the new patch is coming this Monday. I'm so looking forward to playing around with the dyes and customizing my toons' appearance as uniquely as possible. I spend a lot of time looking at them when I play the game so they should look good, damn it! I'm sure you all agree.

Thanks for reading, Cya next week.

indytims_ESO

Very fun reads! Thanks for posting!

Kuratla

Patch 1.3 Crafted Set Gear bonuses

Edit: Oops. All the bonuses listed are for the highest tier mats... like voidcloth and voidstone but at the minimum level. VR9? Or is it VR10? I didn't click the plus button to get them to VR12 so the VR12 stats will be slightly better and I'm not going back through all the stages and doing it again. Took me hours to do!

All bonuses are listed for VR12. All locations are in AD. All bonues are white quality. I also put the gold bonuses for Arena because Kuratla is wearing gold Arena. I highly recommend making and testing out white quality to see if the bonuses actually work before improving the pieces. Never know how many bugs are in these new sets.

Death's Wind (Eastshore Islets Camp in Auridon)

2 items - Adds 157 Armor
3 items - Adds 118 Max Health
4 items - Adds 118 Max Health
5 items - Enemy knock back and 4 second stun upon going below 35% health

Night's Silence (Hightide Keep in Auridon)

2 items - Adds 73 Max Stamina
3 items - Adds 9 Stamina Recovery
4 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
5 items - Increase speed while sneaking by 60%

Ashen Grip (Beacon Falls in Auridon)

2 items - Adds 109 Max Health
3 items - Adds 13 Weapon Damage
4 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
5 items - 10% chance to breath fire for 89 fire damage on melee hits.

Torug's Pact (Fisherman's Isle in Grahtwood)

2 items - Adds 7 Spell Damage
3 items - Adds 109 Max Health
4 items - Adds 13 Weapon Damage
5 items - Reduce weapon enchantment's internal cooldown by 1 seconds. Increases enchantment potency by 30%

Twilight's Embrace (Vineshade Lodge in Grahtwood)

2 items - Adds 109 Max Health
3 items - Adds 4% Spell Crit
4 items - Adds 7 Spell Damage
5 items - When healed, gain 10% additional healing

Seducer (Temple of the Eight in Grahtwood)

2 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
3 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
4 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
5 items - Reduce the Magicka cost of abilities by 8%

Whitestrake's Retribution (Lanalda Pond in Greenshade)

2 items - Adds 109 Max Health
3 items - Adds 146 Spell Resistance
4 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
5 items - Below 30% health, gain a 780 damage shield for 8 seconds

Hist Bark (Rootwatch Tower in Greenshade)

2 items - Adds 146 Armor
3 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - Gain 18% dodge chance while blocking

Magnus' Gift (Arananga in Greenshade)

2 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
3 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
4 items - Adds 7 Spell Damage
5 items - 8% chance to negate the cost of a spell

Vampire's Kiss (Matthild's Last Venture in Malabol Tor)

2 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
3 items - Adds 109 Max Health
4 items - Adds 4% Health taken
5 items - Killing an opponent heals you for 312 over 8 seconds

Song of Lame (Sleepy Senche Overlook in Malabol Tor)

2 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
3 items - Adds 7 Spell Damage
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - At below 30% health, deal 292 magic damage and recover 292 health

Alessia's Bulwark (Chancel of Divine Entreaty in Malabol Tor)

2 items - Adds 146 Armor
3 items - Adds 109 Max Health
4 items - Adds 146 Armor
5 items - Being damaged by a melee attack has a 15% chance to reduce attacker weapon damage by 10% for 5 seconds

Hunding's Rage (Broken Arch in Reaper's March)

2 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
3 items - Adds 73 Max Stamina
4 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
5 items - Increase Weapon Damage by 23

Willow's Path (Greenspeaker's Grove in Reaper's March)

2 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
3 items - Adds 4% Spell Crit
4 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
5 items - Increases all regen in combat by 15%

Night Mother's Gaze (Old Town Cavern in Reaper's March)

2 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
3 items - Adds 4% Spell Crit
4 items - Adds 4% Weapon Crit
5 items - Crits reduce target's armor by 260 for 5 seconds

Oblivion's Foe (Font of Schemes in Coldharbour)

2 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
3 items - Adds 9 Stamina Recovery
4 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
5 items - Recover 2 soul gems when resurrecting an ally. 4 min CD

Spectre's Eye (Deathspinner's Lair in Coldharbour)

2 items - Adds 146 Armor
3 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - Gain 20% dodge for 3 seconds after casting a magicka spell.

Kagrenac's Hope (Fighter's Guild Earth Forge - Main Room)

2 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
3 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - Decrease time to resurrect an ally by 25% and restore 130 magicka when resurrecting

Orgnum's Scales (Fighter's Guild Earth Forge - Pressure Room III)

2 items - Adds 9 Health Recovery
3 items - Adds 109 Max Health
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - If below 60% health, increase health recovery by 50%.

Eyes of Mara (Mage's Guild Eyevea)

2 items - Adds 9 Magicka Recovery
3 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka
4 items - Adds 7 Spell Damage
5 items - Reduce the magicka cost of restoration staff abilities by 12%

Shalidor's Curse (Mage's Guild Eyevea)

2 items - Adds 109 Max Health
3 items - Adds 4% Healing Taken
4 items - Adds 109 Max Health
5 items - When attacking while you are below 30% health, gain 520 health. 1 min CD

Arena (Lanista's Waystation in Craglorn)

2 items - Adds 109 Max Health (136 at gold)
3 items - Adds 73 Max Magicka (91 at gold)
4 items - Adds 73 Max Stamina (91 at gold)
5 items - Reduce cost to Break Free by 40%

Kuratla

Journal Update for August 7, 2014

So this week saw patch 1.3 come in. As expected, stuff got broken - the guilds, in this case. People have short memories, I guess. Before the patch I said in guild chat "Patch 1.3 is coming on Monday but expect lag and broken quests and whatnot." And people replied "Why do you said that?"... as if I was being overly pessimistic about the game. Every major patch breaks things... it's a damn safe bet that stuff will get broken and another maintenance and/or hotfix will be required to fix what gets broken. Patch 1.3 followed that trend.

So, what was in Patch 1.3? I'll list the major things and then talk about them a bit. 1) Dyes. 2) Guild changes and tabards. 3) Set gear overhaul. 4) Guild traders. 5) More class rebalancing

So I love the dyes. First thing I did after Monday's maintenance was to get to a dye station and see what's what. Kuratla's daedric mix of heavy and medium armor looks a lot better in red and silver than the stupid blue it was before. Incantratrix's mix of heavy and medium Imperial armor was dyed various light and white colors to give her a holy paladin look. And, of course, Ignisia Malefica is wearing the red robes of a fire mage.

While the dyes are account wide, I needed to visit the dye station with all my toons to unlock all possible dyes that I have. For example, Incantratrix is rank 50 in clothing so she gets an achievement and a dye for that but it wasn't available on Kuratla (because he isn't rank 50 in clothing) until I went to the dye station with Incantatrix first.

There's a bit of bugginess with the dye achievements as well. Some examples include: there are 3 achievements and dyes for learning motif books. One for the alliance motifs, one for the rare motifs, and one for all motifs. Kuratla has all motifs learned and gets the dye for the alliance motif and the "all motifs" but not for the rare motifs. Doesn't make any sense. How can he get all motifs without having rare motifs as well?

Another is upgrade an item to legendary quality and apply a legendary glyph to a legendary item. Everything (except jewelry) Kuratla has is legendary so I should get those dyes retroactively but it looks like I need to waste gold improvements and make something and apply a gold glyph to it to get the achievements I should already have.

And other crafting achievements like deconstructing items and refining raw mats. I started at 0 for those but Kuratla, in particular among my toons, has done tons and tons of deconstructing and refining since launch. So looks like I need to build those up for the achievement dyes.

Once I got all my toons to the dye stations, I listed how many dyes I have available currently. They are 34/61 Common Dyes, 48/74 Uncommon Dyes and
10/40 Rare Dyes. Several more dyes will become available to me with just a bit of work like the one for rank 10 werewolf (Kuratla is rank 9 WW), closing 100 dark anchor pinions (Kuratla is around 85 now), collecting 10,000 harvesting nodes (Kuratla is around 9000 now), and rank 50 in enchanting (Mordeus is rank 45 now). I'm sure that there are others that I can work towards as well.

I end up missing out on a lot of dyes due to having no achievements in pvp, Craglorn or fishing. Will this motivate me to go to Cyrodiil and Craglorn? Probably not, but we'll see.

Since the guilds have been shut down until only several hours ago, I can't say anything about the guild changes in patch 1.3. I only had time to go to the guild store and look for guild tabards. One of my trading guilds had the tabard available for 2000 gold and I put it on. It was a purplish-yellow tabard that looked horrible on Kuratla's daedric armor so I immediately took it off. It may look better on my other toons with different armor. I'll find out later and would like to promote that guild via the tabard.

I put up a whole post about the set gear changes. I spent Tuesday morning traveling around the world to each set crafting station and wrote down all the info. I think it's good to have all the info in one place so that I can reference it easily and choose what gear to make. I have no current plans to redo Kuratla's VR12 armor. Since he was my first toon to VR12, a lot of mistakes were made along the way and any other toons I get to VR12 (like my sorcerer or fire mage) will certainly be built better, more effective at their roles and will be deserving of legendary crafted gear. So I'll wait on that. And, of course, vet ranks are going to be removed later down the road anyway so I really want to be careful about using tons of expensive mats.

I like that the set gear has options for 2, 3, 4 and 5 pieces now. Lots more mixing and matching choices. A 5 piece Hunding's Rage and 3 piece Ashen Grip looks pretty good for a stamina-based attacker like Incantatrix with her 2 handed axe or Mordeus's dual wielding. Torug's Pact 5 piece with it's 30% enchantment bonus looks like it'll stack really nicely with the infused trait so that may be the set to go for if you just want a lot of health or magicka, for example.

Lastly, guild traders and class rebalancing. I haven't checked out the guild traders at all and I don't pay too much attention to the class rebalancing stuff... though apparently the DK has been nerfed again... I just don't know how. I do know that the sorcerer storm atronauch doesn't taunt anymore and that sucks.

Over the last week, I put time on Kuratla, Incantratrix and Ignisia. Kuratla was trying to get closer to some achievements for more dyes and had to solo a vet dark anchor because not a single person was in the zone at the time. Incantratrix got a couple levels and working towards her original goal of VR1 and completing the guild storylines. Also going to complete the Dominion Hero achievement as well with her (haven't done that on Kuratla nor Sartori) because that offers up another dye.

Ignisia almost finished off Stonefalls. Just got a couple little things to do there and she can move on to the next zone. She's currently at level 17 and doing quite well for herself. She's still a baby but burning things up and easily producing enough dps to make her current zone a piece of cake. She's gotten to rank 12 in the major 3 crafts and got 2/3 hirelings in them all. I hope to get her to rank 32 in them by next week and will most likely need to purchase a lot of mats from guild stores to complete that quickly. I'm fine doing that because the faster she gets to 3/3 hirelings, the more purple and gold improvements she'll be getting and I can get back the gold and more. My provisioner, Vatcher, got to 32 in Blacksmithing so that's fully 6 toons with 3/3 hirelings in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodcrafting. Ignisia will likely make it 7 toons by next week and that leaves the 8th toon.

I'll make a new toon for DC (because I don't have a DC toon) but no current idea what race or class or build to go with. I'll give it some thought. I have been selling mats on and off over zone chats and have reached a new "total gold at one time" record - 360,000 gold. More than 1/3 of a million. Pretty good stuff. I could buy a lot of bank slots with that but I have so many toons with draft horses sharing my inventory that isn't not necessary. I'll just stockpile the gold for sometime down the future when I really need to buy something.

Here's last week's hireling numbers (after the + signs are mats obtained from refining the crap ore and stuff I get from the hirelings):

Blacksmithing: Purple: 16 + 2 and gold: 7 + 1

Woodcrafting: Purple: 19 + 4 and gold: 9 + 1

Clothing: Purple: 41 + 2 and gold: 18 + 0

Enchanting: Purple: 10 and gold: 3

I am aware that the prices of the purples have dropped a bit so 800 as an average is a bit high so I'll adjust the average down to 700:

[(18+23+43+10) x 700] + [(8+10+18+3) x 2500] = 163,300 gold!!! A new record. Good RNG going on there plus more hirelings coming in. I'll stop keeping track of this stuff until I get to 8 toons at 3/3 hirelings and then I'll revisit the idea again. In the meantime, I'll keep getting the improvements and selling them off at a decent price to keep my gold increasing.

If I really really want the 8 toons at 3/3 hirelings, I could probably get that in a day by just dropping 100k in gold (or more) and buy out all the guild stores of crafting mats, make gear and give to the toons to decon. I'm not really willing to spend that much money though. Normally, I don't do that until the toon is around rank 25 or higher and I can smell rank 32 so I want to fast track and I hit the guild stores for mats. Rather not do that on a fresh toon though.

So lots to do over the next week and lots to look forward to. Kuratla needs to get more achievements and more dyes. Incantratrix needs to get to VR1 and complete the guild storylines (because she's close to have 8 traits in around 5 different light armor pieces so she'll be able to make full sets of light armor crafted gear then). Ignisia remains hot and fun to play so definitely going to spend more time on her. Montador is still waiting around to be leveled up so I can experience the nightblade (and he's a few days ago from having 8 traits in EVERYTHING for woodcrafting so really want him to be able to access the 8 trait crafting stations). And there's that 8 toon for DC to create and play around with.

High enjoyment and high interest in ESO right now. The devs did a great job with patch 1.3 (yeah, yeah, they broke the guilds but that's fixed now so stop complaining) so big congrats to them.

Thanks for reading and cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update: August 14, 2014

Hello again. Most definitely this last week has been the week of the merchant... the trader... the gold seeker. Since the guilds were down for a few days after patch 1.3 went live, no one could take advantage of the guild traders and I had nothing to say about them in last week's journal update. Well, today, I got lots to say about guild traders and it's all good... golden-good, in fact.

I am in 5 guilds. One is a social guild, TDE, an Aussie-based guild that I got involved with back during the beta. Unfortunately, that guild has seen better days and we are down to no more than 10 people online at a time and guild chat is pretty much non-existent. The guild leadership has been gone for quite a while and only recently returned so we'll see if things pick up or not.

My other 4 guilds are all trading guilds. Two of them are very chatty and I enjoy the conversations and add my 2 cents where needed. One of those guilds is called Merchant's Circle and it benefits from a very active and very determined guildmaster. Even though it's primarily an American-based guild, I often see 120 - 150 people online early or late in my day here in Thailand and maybe 50 - 70 people online primetime for me. The guild is constantly at 500 members with 7 day inactives being booted and new members joined. There's even a waiting list to join that guild.

Our guildmaster got us a guild trader in Rawl in Reaper's March... right next to the wayshrine. Since Rawl is THE hub of trade in the Dominion, that guild trader spot is arguably the best one to be had in the whole game. So, well done, GM. And we have been requested, many times, to try to keep 30 items for sale in the guild store at all times. Good stuff at good prices. A certain percentage of guild trader sales translates into gold put into the guild bank which will be used to bid on future guild traders so the more we sell as a guild, the better it is for the individual and for the guild as a whole.

Over the last week, I've had 30 items up for sale all the time. Mostly I sell the gold and purple improvements I've been getting from my hirelings but I also put up some vet 5 potions and vet 12 gold glyphs as well. I made a blue 5 piece Arena set and Orgnum's Scales set and put those up but not a single piece sold. I guess pre-made crafted gear is a bad idea. People want this or that trait or motif instead of the ones I picked. Except for the crafted gear, stuff has been selling great. Some mornings I'd wake up to 15 "Item Sold" mails and raked in the cash.

So, of course, I'm well past my previous "most gold at one time" record and that new record is my current gold total of 880,000 gold. Amazing since last week it was 360,000 gold. About 2 1/2 times my max gold ever in just one week - the power of guild traders! Not all of that gold was gotten from the guild trader though. I did make some big sales in zone chat but the majority of the profits were from the guild trader.

I certainly hope to past 1 million gold next week and, by that time, I should slow down considerably because I'm kinda running out of improvements to sell. Other guild members have made a lot more than me but I think they are selling purple recipes or motifs and gear gained from trials. I don't farm recipes (though I did find one in Coldharbour by accident with Incantratrix) and I don't do trials so I don't have those options. Pretty much all the gold I've made this last week (over 1/2 million gold) was from stuff received in hireling mails. Free mails and sold while I'm sleeping. Can't beat that.

The other 4 guilds I'm in don't have guild traders nor do they have the strong leadership of Merchant's Circle. I've seen it so many times in so many games over the years. A strong leader is what keeps the guild together. Once the leader stops playing, guilds disintegrate. I've been guild leader several times over several games but I have no taste for it anymore. Too much work and generally under-appreciated. I'm pretty sure the GM of Merchant's Circle is going to try to keep our guild trader sales constantly high and bid high for the next week's guild trader each time in order to keep our profits flowing in... pretty much going to make everyone in the guild millionaires. Well, the people in the guild with decent stuff in the guild store, anyway.

And that raises another point. I've been all over the place checking this and that guild trader and seeing what's available and it's amazing. So many guilds are getting these guild traders but they aren't selling anything (or selling for hugely marked up prices). I do a check for all items at gold or purple quality and very often find nothing available. Or, if I do, I see guilds trying to sell purple improvements for 2000 gold or gold glyphs for 10000 gold. Stupid prices and no one would pay that much. I put stuff in the guild store at the current market prices and it sells... very well. 520,000 gold made in one week. No exploits. No farming. No item more than expensive than a vet 12 gold glyph.

So, basically, tons of guilds out there are not using the guild traders to their full potential. I am quite happy that I just happen to be in one of the guilds that is.

For gameplay last week, I finally got Incantratrix to vet 1 and completed the Mage and Fighter's guilds storylines so now she has access to all the set gear crafting stations in the world. She has two 8 trait light armor pieces ready with another 3 more pieces finishing up over the next 6 days. Then she'll be able to make full 5 piece light armor sets. Kuratla can already do that with heavy armor. He has 5 pieces of heavy armor done at 8 traits plus the 1 handed sword. And Montador, my woodcrafter, is completely finished with the woodcrafting traits. He has 8 traits in shield, bow and all the staves. However, he's only level 11 now so he can't make the guild stuff or Arena (Craglorn) but everything else is possible.

I made Incantratrix Hunding's Rage and Ashen Grip gear once she hit vet 1 and bought some cheap vet 1 jewelry. She's equipped pretty nicely now and she's ready to complete Coldharbour, kill Molag Bal and move on to the vet zones... if I so want.

I didn't put any time on Ignisia this last week except for getting her to deconstruct stuff until she reached rank 32 in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodcrafting and got 3/3 hirelings for all. So that's 7 toons now. Then I made my 8th toon. This one I wanted a full on healer so I went with an Argonian templar with resto staff. He's called "Heals-Your-Pain" which is a play on Dinosaur Jr.'s "Feel the Pain". If you don't know Dinosaur Jr., then you are way younger than I am.

I made Heals-Your-Pain in DC because I don't have a toon in that alliance. He's only level 5 right now so I haven't done much with him. Just getting some skillpoints for hirelings. He's already at 2/3 hirelings in the three crafts and I'm pretty sure he'll be at 3/3 hirelings next week. I will put some time on him for sure and develop his healing to use him as group healer for dungeons and maybe even pvp. Incantratrix is a templar as well but she's a dps/tank templar and barely ever uses heals. A different animal completely.

I got a couple more dye achievements. Kuratla got the rank 10 werewolf one and the 100 dark pinions one. Incantratrix got the Dominion hero one. After the patch on Monday, they fixed some stuff and I got a few more dyes like the Rare Motifs one and 100 provisioning recipes one.

I will probably spent some time on Sartori next week and let him advance a bit into the vet zones. Primarily to get vet zone drops so I can quickly level up Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking on Heals-Your-Pain and get dropped glyphs for Incantatrix. She's at rank 20 in enchanting now so I'm aiming towards 32 for her and 3/3 hireling. Also Sartori needs a lot more skillpoints to get all the passives he can get and morph some more skills. Just reaching vet 1 through questing doesn't give enough skillpoints to maximize the potential of your toon. You really need to finish that off with either the storyline quests in the vet zones or just hunting the skyshards there. Sartori may do both.

Also need to work on Montador. He also needs to get to vet 1 for the crafted set gear stations plus Nightblade is the only class which I don't have extensive experience with yet so it's about time that I see what the Nightblade can do.

Last thing to mention is about update 4. They released a little video on it. Update 4 is coming in September and it's going to be more Craglorn stuff and the Dragonstar Arena. So... lots more group content... which doesn't do a hell of a lot for me. I'm more of a solo player and rarely group. It's still a good thing though. More content and more endgame stuff is always good. I was hoping that spellcrafting would be coming but I guess not. Maybe update 5... in October? November?

That's it for today. Thanks for reading and cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update: August 21, 2014

First off, thank you to those readers of this little blog as we have passed 1k views. Yea! I generally write for myself so that I can see my progression through the game and, if need be, can read back through old posts to re-live the old days, as it were. But having people reading this blog every week and following my ideas and thoughts with me, well, that's encouraging and helps me to continue writing. So thanks.

I completed the "8 toons 3/3 hirelings in Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodworking" long-term plan I had last week. Sartori spent a couple days in the vet zones grinding for gear for Heals-Your-Pain to decon. Actually, Sartori got really close to vet rank 2 so I may as well put a bit more time on him to hit that level. He also got a ton of skyshards and has gotten a lot of the passives I've been missing so he's bit a stronger than he used to be so that's all good. He was kicking the crap out of vet 5 trolls last week so that's pretty good.

I got to around the rank 25 area from the drops Sartori earned and then ended up spending a fair bit of gold and a couple hours making and deconning gear and finally Heals-Your-Pain got to rank 32 in the three crafts. Then I sent him out skyshard hunting to get 3 skillpoints for the 3/3 hireling.

So, finally, now whatever character I'm on and whatever I'm doing, I can just find a merchant and sell all weapon and armor without a second thought. Saves time not having to put them in the bank for a different toon to decon and now I'll be getting a decent amount of gold from all the vendored stuff. Incantatrix was around rank 20 in enchanting (rank 12 - 19 gotten all from reading books... really good RNG there) so I wanted to see how many glyphs it would take to get her to rank 32. It ended up being quite a bit but I did figure out that the best way to go about it was to use Denata aspect runes.

The difference between blue and purple glyphs while deconning is quite small but the cost difference between Denata and Rekuta is large so the most cost effective way to rank up enchanting is to use Denata aspect runes. I didn't even consider using Kutas for deconning... they are too valuable. I made some with green Jejotas but the inspiration gained was tiny compared to blues or purples. Once I figured out the best way to get inspiration, Incantatrix wasn't too far off rank 32 so I continued and raided guild stores of Denatas runes and got her to rank 32 and 3/3 hireling. So that's 3 toons at enchanting 3/3 hireling now.

Unfortunately, 3/3 enchanting hireling isn't nearly as good as the main 3 types of hirelings. I find that getting Kutas from the hirelings is very very rare. Rekutas are common enough though but it's not unusual for my main enchanter to get no aspect runes at all from the hireling. But still, I'll continue checking guild stores for Denatas and buy when the price is low. Then, when I get around 100 saved up, I'll make a ton of high level blue glyphs and try to get a 4th toon to 32. May as well... and also going to get 3/3 provisioning hirelings on every toon but that's not at all high on my list of priorities.

Other than spending time on Sartori, the only other toon I played around with was Montador... my Nightblade Woodcrafter. Finally, giving the nightblade class some love. He's only level 15 at the moment so no more than 2 skills per NB skill line so I can't yet say that I have even the slightest understanding of the nightblade. In addition to that, he's been using a bow most of the time so my NB skills are more backup than anything else.

I made him level 14 Hunding's Rage and Ashen Grip set gear and enchanted some low level jewelry for weapon damage. With those sets, the Thief stone, 2 passives taken in Medium armor, he's currently into soft cap for damage and 37.5% weapon crit. There's another medium armor passive to take to increase it by another 7% and then there are passives in Assassination and Bow passives for more crit increase. I'm pretty sure that you can get to insanely high crit levels and that's where Montador will be going. Going on advice from my guild, Montador took a restoration staff as his secondary weapon.

He's sneaking around, critting mobs in the back, almost one shotting them and then following up with a poison arrow for the kill. One mob dead as soon as combat starts is a good thing. I'm seeing lots of nice CC abilities.. like roots and stuns and disorientates.. in the nightblade skill line so that should help a lot in controlling the fights. I plan to put most of my time on Montador and get him to exactly the same place Incantatrix is... vet 1 and accessing all set crafting stations. Probably take a couple weeks to do that as my work schedule is going to be busy for the rest of August.

I hear that vet 14 is coming with patch 4 and not sure how I feel about it. Am I going to grind from 12 to 14 with Kuratla... just to have a maxed character? Probably I will because Kuratla got a lot of new skills when he respeced during the 1 gold per skill week respec and I both want to try out those new skills and new morphs and I want to rank them up. Will I be making and/or buying new vet 14 legendary gear for Kuratla? No, definitely not. I am hoping to see a new set gear station in the new Craglorn area and hopefully something for stamina builds. I may redo Kuratla at vet 14 with purple gear (as those mats aren't too expensive and I have lots in stock) but definitely not gold. We'll see. I'll certainly be taking him to the new Craglorn zone and seeing what's what when it releases though.

The Merchant's Circle has continued to keep the same guild trader in Rawl and guild finances are doing very well. My own sales are down a bit from last week but I expected that. My supply of mats is reducing and I don't want to run out as I want to keep some for personal use. The rest I put up in the guild store and things are selling pretty well. I checked my bank's gold before leaving for work this morning and I'm sitting on 1,170,000 gold. 1.1 7 million gold.

So, in a couple weeks, I went from 360 k to 880 k to 1.17 m gold. So, yeah, the guild trader (especially if you got a prime location and got high quality stuff to sell) is amazing. Again, I believe that my own profits will continue to slow down as my stock of gold and purple mats get lower and lower. I think (or hope) that once things stabilize, I should be able to get 100 k - 150 k per week from the guild trader. No current idea what I'm going to do with the gold I have now and the gold I'll continue to accumulate but it's nice to look at and good to have financial power to buy stuff.

I've been waiting for the purple v5 recipe prices to drop and stabilize now that the recipes drop rates have been increased. Then I'll buy one. And I'll have the gold to buy new stuff in the game as it comes out. I could also max out my bank inventory but I probably won't. Doing fine concerning inventory space now so no need to put gold into it.

Last thing to talk about today is ArcheAge. Another game? Not ESO?? "Blasphemy!" "Heretic!" "Burn him at the stake!" Yeah, yeah, slow down. I was only trying it out. My friend sent me a beta invite so I wanted to have a look. I had some lag issues in the game but it seemed pretty good. No voice acting kinda sucked (but it'd probably be in Korean anyway if they had voice acting) and the game, from what I played, was too easy. Lots of skills and combos to make so that's good.

The biggest issue is the crafting and this issue (unless resolved) will be the primary reason why I won't play or sub for ArcheAge. Crafting is huge in ArcheAge.. it's one of the biggest things in the game it seems. However, whenever you want to gather supplies in the world or actually make anything, you need to use labor points. As a free to play, you get 5 labor points per 5 minutes while online (with a 2000 cap). Subs get 10 points per 5 minutes online and 5 points per 5 minutes offline (with a 5000 cap). Even opening loot you get from killing mobs requires using labor points. Free to play is hamstrung by getting a tiny amount, getting none while offline and having a smaller cap. What if end game stuff requires more than 2000 labor points to make?

So, sub then, right? Well, there's another problem. ArcheAge has a cash shop. I looked at it and the first thing I saw was something that automatically restores 1000 labor points. So, even if you sub, other subs will be way ahead of you in the crafting business (which, again, is huge in ArcheAge and it looks like the main economy and wealth will revolve around crafting) if they are buying stuff from the cash shop. Simply put, pay to win.

ArcheAge is a Korean game. I've played Asian games before and enjoyed them a lot. The MMO that I put the most time into... more than 2 years... was an Asian game - Uncharted Waters Online. I loved that game but it had a cash shop and random lottery stuff. So much pay to win that it became one of the main reasons I left. Seems to me that the Asian MMO model is pay to win and it works for a lot of people. I hate it myself though.

If a game is free to play with a sub option that gives subs more benefits than the F2P, then fair enough. I'll sub that game and play the full content (SWTOR being a perfect example) and consider free to play in such a game as a waste of time. However, adding a cash shop with obvious pay to win elements in addition to a sub is just bloody greedy and such a game will never get my patronage. That's how it looks in ArcheAge so I'm not going to entertain playing it while it stays that way. There's something inherently wrong about me working my ass off in a game to build up my character and wealth only to see someone else go leaps and bounds beyond me because he's buying stuff from a cash shop.

I believe that ESO kinda has a cash shop. But I've never looked at it and don't know what you can buy there. As far as I know, it's only vanity stuff like a horse or pet or something. If/When it turns into real power in the game, then highly likely my ESO days will be done. I mean, I refused to buy the Imperial edition of ESO on principle. I could have easily spent the extra $20 but I just got a standard copy of the game. I worked hard, saved money, bought a better horse than the Imperial one and eventually found two copies of the Imperial motif. So I can make Imperial gear.

Fortunately my interest in ESO is a high as ever so I'm looking to trade up games but I do know that they are lots of games out there... PC or MMO... to keep me going if / when I quit ESO. It's good to have options but ESO is still great for me so I'll keep plugging on... developing characters, experiencing all the builds, getting rich, experiencing new content when it releases (c'mon - spellcrafting!!)

Long post today. Hope you enjoyed the read and cya next time.

Kuratla

Journal Update: August 28, 2014

Welcome back. Next week will note 5 months of journal updates here. I think I only missed one week updating my journal in that time. Glad to see that I'm still playing the game and still finding stuff to write about (and, of course, people are still reading).

I've been working every day so haven't had a ton of time online but I still managed to get online every 12 hours to log in for hireling mails. My work schedule luckily allowed that to happen but it won't starting on Monday so I'll end up losing out on a couple hireling mail times. Last week's hireling mails have been the best I've ever seen; partly due to having 8 toons with 3/3 hirelings in BS, Cloth and Wood and now 4 toons with 3/3 hirelings in Enchanting. Also got 4 toons with 3/3 hireling in Provisioning but I don't record the ingredients.

The other factor is that I've gotten some really amazingly good "crits" on the hireling mails. For example, this morning, Vatcher (who is rank 32 in Cloth, 1/9, and only character level 11) got 4 wax from the clothing hireling. Never seen that before. Getting two wax happens quite a bit but never seen 4 before. And it goes to show that character level and rank in clothing itself doesn't have anything to do with the RNG.

Since I'm starting with hireling stuff, I did write down what purple and gold improvements I got from Friday evening till Wednesday (a total of 10 mail events so 80 BS mails, 80 Cloth, 80 Wood due to 8 toons). I did drop a bunch of gold over the weekend to get Montador to rank 32 in Enchanting so somewhere around 35 Enchanting mails at 3/3 as well.

Here's the results (after the + means improvements gained from refining base mats obtained from the hirelings):

Blacksmithing: Purple - 27 + 2 and Gold - 18 + 2

Woodworking: Purple - 23 + 2 and Gold - 9 + 2

Clothing: Purple - 49 + 6 and Gold - 20 + 0

Enchanting: Purple - 10 and Gold - 3

I've been selling Golds at 3000 - 3100 gold in Merchant's Circle guild trader and Purples at around 650 - 700 gold and both sell well. So, averaging the prices....

[(29 + 25 + 55 + 10)] x 675 for purples = 80,325 gold

[(20 + 11 + 20 + 3)] x 3050 for golds = 164,700 gold

Total of 245, 025 gold. That is easily enough mats gained in hireling mails and sold in the guilder trader to keep my total gold increasing consistently by a large amount. And, at this point, it's all free. Just a log in and posting stuff in the guild store. Minimal time needed.

I did spend a large amount of gold last week in getting a 4th toon to rank 32 enchanting for 3/3 hireling and also buying the purple Honey Brittle recipe (considered the best recipe in the game) for 40k. I was trying to get it for cheaper but finally didn't want to wait for prices to drop further and went ahead and bought it from a guild trader. 3/3 hireling in Enchanting is horrible unless you have skillpoints put into various passives in Enchanting, it seems. Mordeus and Kuratla are pretty much maxed on Enchanting rank and passives and they are the only guys getting Rekutas and Kutas. Incantatrix and Montador have 3/3 hireling but bare minimum in passives and they haven't gotten anything good yet. Generally, they don't even get an aspect rune, let alone a good one.

Since enchanting hirelings are horrible, I won't spend money on fast tracking enchanting anymore and I'll just slowly level up the rest of my toons through drops and accumulated runes from the world map.

After gaining gold from trading and the loss of what I spent, I ended the week at 1.36 million gold. So up about 200k from last week. That's pretty good and happy that I'm still able to gain in gold total significantly each week. I was concerned that my improvements (which are the main source of income for me) would run out and my gold total would stop increasing but it looks like my hirelings will keep me going indefinitely.

As for gameplay, I spent most of my time on Montador and got him up to level 28. He's the first nightblade I've leveled up and I'm enjoying him. I use a combination of bow skills, like venom arrow and magnum shot, with NB skills like ambush and concealed weapon. Generally, sneak around a lot, get a crit shot in from behind and follow up with a venom arrow and that kills the first mob. Then take a light shot with the bow or two and ambush in for the stun and follow with the concealed weapon attack.

NBs seems to be weak on the AOEs and I'm not seeing a lot of longer lasts CCs either. They have some short lasting stuns though. Montador is doing a great job of cleaning out the trash mobs. He has a very high weapon damage and weapon crit values and, with using the right equipment and both bow and medium armor passives reducing stamina costs, he rarely runs out of resources in a fight.

Medium armor seems to be made of tissue paper though and Montador sure can't take a hit. He can dish it out but can't take it. Montador needs to be quick on his feet, needs to dodge or block incoming attacks. He can't just take the damage and respond with more dps because he'll be dead before the fight ends (especially against boss fights). Kuratla or Incantratrix in heavy armor had much better lasting power than Montador does. So it looks like the nightblade needs to finish the fight as soon as possible because they haven't got the health or armor to absorb much damage.

And to even go further with that, Montador got turned into a vampire at around level 25. Really easy doing the vampire quest as well. I had a much harder time doing it with Sartori and he was level 30. The main reason why I went with vampire is I'll be doing the stealth-running-faster-than-a-horse thing once I get the vampire passives. I have concealed weapon already and it's not an issue to make Night's Silence gear. I just want to try it out. And Drain Essence is a great self-heal and restoring of stamina so that's good too because Montador is mostly a stamina build.

I have made a fire resistance glyph for him so hopefully the fire damage isn't going to make me cry too much. Montador has finished off Auridon and Grahtwood and is now in Greenshade. He's already completed all the skyshards there except for the public dungeon one. I may go ahead into Malabol Tor and clear out all the skyshards there as well. Montador is hungry for skillpoints. I've taken almost all the class and bow skills I can and morphed a lot of them but he's taken few class, armor or weapon passives yet. Plus he's going to need skillpoints for stuff in the Vampire line as well as the Fighter's Guild and racial passives.

That is always the problem I have when I'm leveling up my secondary toons - skillpoints. For about their first 10 levels, all skill points were put into crafting. Montador, for example, is maxed in woodcrafting and has all the passives maxed (except keen eye) as well as having 3/3 hirelings in all 5 crafts. Then, starting around level 10, I start leveling him up and he's got no skills at all in combat. So it's difficult starting out and takes a long time to finally get all the combat skills I need. Sartori, for example, needed to get to vet 2 (almost there) and hunt down most of the skyshards in vet 1 - 5 zones for him to finally be complete on passives and get him to a point I'm happy with. Incantratrix, at vet 1 and not yet able to go to the vet zones because she hasn't killed Molag Bal, still needs a lot of skillpoints to round her out.

With my last two toons, Ignisia and Heals-Your-Pain, they are not maxed out in any craft and only have hirelings so they have (or will have) a ton of available skillpoints to get skills asap and passives. In other words, they should level up easier and be stronger than the rest. But they are at the bottom of the barrel in terms of priority for me now.

I'll continue working on Montador next week. His goal is the same as Incantratrix - get to a point where he can access all crafting stations in the game so I can put his maxed woodcrafting (and 8 traits in everything in woodcrafting) to use... both for myself and for sale. And, of course, I want to experience the nightblade skills and gameplay as well. So far, I like it. It's fun. It's sneaky. Strong burst damage but less sustainable than the sorcerer or even templar. I recently took Mark Target skill so going to test that out and see how much extra damage the 75% reduction to armor really translates to. He's around rank 35 in bow now so only 3 ranks to go for Snipe. Then I'll be stealth + Mark Target + Snipe from behind. A fun way to start a fight... with a guy dead on the floor.

I'm working heavily again next week so I don't see too much progress from Montador. I doubt he'll clear through Greenshade but we'll see. Luckily, I can see make a lot of gold via hireling mails and guild trader even when I'm offline.

Got into a treasure map discussion while in Grahtwood questing with Montador and we were talking about how nice it would be if the treasure maps were done differently. Like, instead of finding one map in a chest sometimes (or from a boss drop), you find a piece of a map. Maybe you'll need 2 or 3 or 4 or even more pieces of the map to complete it. Once the pieces are assembled, you'll get a viewable treasure map. Completely random location and different every time (if that's possible to do from a dev point of view) so it takes real work tracking it down (instead of getting the location from Youtube which is how most people do it for the treasure maps today). Perhaps the treasure map will tell you what zone it is in so you at least know that much. Maybe the complete treasure map will lead to a portal that takes you to a dungeon you need to complete or triggers a quest or something that you need to do before you get the treasure chest.

Upon opening the found treasure chest, you'll get level appropriate gear. More gear and better quality depending on how many map pieces were needed to complete the treasure map. Possibly some extra gold, or some purple or even gold improvements or unique weapons or armor or trophies. Basically, make it worthwhile. The treasure maps today are not worth hunting at all. At best, you get a blue piece of gear.

Also, to make it more worthwhile, add a "Treasure Hunter" achievement for completing say 10 / 25 / 50 treasure maps and add an achievement dye. I think, with all that, people will be looking for treasure chests more often in hopes of getting treasure map pieces and, if treasure map pieces are tradeable, it would create a market. A way for low levels to make money selling map pieces to the completists who are after the achievement.

It's just a small thing but every little nice addition to the game improves it overall. I think I'll go to "General Discussion" and create a thread about this idea. See what people think and generate some conversation and additional ideas to improve it. Maybe the devs will take note and it'll be implemented down the road (I can dream, right?)

Well, that's enough for today. As always, thanks for reading. Cya next week.