OK. Just... why?

rockDokRock

OK. Full story. My wife got into housing so she is decorating all the houses I've collected, she's not super interested in playing the game. Fair enough. (Her issue is you can't walk 50 feet without having to fight an apex predator for some reason... do you need to fight a bear every 50 feet? Is spending time killing skeevers to collect a root really worthwhile?). That's a whole other issue.

I just spent the better part of an hour farming Rimmen Necropolis to get gear that I can deconstruct for Shimmering Sand to so she can build things she wants for housing. Fair enough. I killed numerous bosses, went through it twice. Over and over again bosses would drop nothing but gold or useless items, no zone set to deconstruct. In all I got TWO items I could deconstruct. Deconstructed them and got nothing. 0 Shimmering sand. I wasted an hour for nothing.

Why are bosses not dropping items? Why is this game so tight sometimes? I don't get it.

It's not just that, it's other parts as well. Resource maps you get with your writs... why does wood farming not give you heartwood? Just... why? Is it going to break the game if I can make another table?

RNG. Just why? If you can't get a lead for 2 months (I actually emailed to ask as I thought it was broken I had run it so many times) you are told it's just "RNG". When you get a motif or plan there is a "cooldown" because RNG can't work in your favour... just why?

Make it make sense please. Really angry right now. What a waste of an evening.

whitecrow

I agree with your wife, and it's the reason I don't want more overland difficulty. The hostile creatures everywhere are already enough of a nuisance.

rockDokRock

whitecrow wrote: »

I agree with your wife, and it's the reason I don't want more overland difficulty. The hostile creatures everywhere are already enough of a nuisance.

Agreed. It blows my mind how people want to spend more time on mobs and trash. Just... why? There is *way* too much as it is. What kind of an ecosystem has apex predators every 75m?

MoonPile

As is often said, Housing is the real endgame! There's even a huge (and wonderful) housing community called The Real Endgame xD

That's NOT to say it's a good thing; it's a valid complaint. All of those things do suck if you're a newcomer and it takes a long time to get the unlocks, abilities, and gold to make it all viable or even something you don't really think about. Veteran players can forget how hard it is when you're truly fresh.

Furnishing materials drops, for example, were actually buffed in a very recent update – Heartwood alone was, IIRC, something stupid like ~4000 gold per piece on PC NA a few years ago. Eventually you make enough gold to buy stacks of them instead of trying to farm them yourself, and the boosted drops from nodes are a bonus.

Likewise, right now would have been a good time to get mats and Shimmering Sand from Jubilee coffers, and you can double up by doing daily quests in Rimmen - those coffers can give Shimmering Sand. You can also run around opening chests in N. Elsweyr. But it's still way too little to do a full house, and this year is even harder to farm because they nerfed drops from Jubilee coffers. Here, again: if you're a rich vet, right now you're having a great time buying stacks of Sand "on sale" because there's tons on the market from other players selling these drops.

(Even vets are complaining that some styles like Fargrave and Dwarven take like 10-20 of their special style material per piece. I hope that's a future QOL update.)

And frankly, I agree with your wife and whitecrow:
Mobs are just an annoying hurdle to me. I play khajiit with specific gear + skill sets to sneak-run by everything unseen, I don't engage unless I want to. But again, that's another thing that's really annoying until you've leveled up and know what to do.

Housing in this game is just not friendly at all to newcomers. And worse, you may be frustrated enough to be tempted to buy from the Crown Store, where most of the stuff is craftables you can get in-game for cheap gold. Better learn what's what from UESP, because the game itself doesn't tell you where anything comes from – https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Furnishings

Necrotech_Master

part of the reason is if they had it more "realistic" the game world would be vastly empty outside of small pockets of things, i usually just tend to ignore most enemies (if you have the one mount cp that reduces aggro radius on mount its rare anything even aggros on you to begin with)

the best way to get drops really is just farming named bosses in the public dungeon, but you also cant kill them too quickly (you only get "boss loot" every 5 minutes or so)

it would almost be better to farm WBs than public dungeon bosses because of the time it takes to kill and travel time between the WBs, most of the time you wouldnt have to worry about the boss loot timer

i would agree though that the drop rate of style mats from decon is probably too low, especially with the ridiculous costs some furnishing crafts require

spartaxoxo

You're better off doing crafting writs and then buying the mats or gear to decon. It'll also drop master writs which will give you writ vouchers. Those have some nice exclusive furnishings as a bonus.

Much better than trying to farm the style trait.

SilverBride

Each daily quest in Elsweyr gives a shimmering sand when turned in, so we can get a few guaranteed that way.

Hapexamendios

I don't know about you guys, but with a couple exceptions on overland content I am the apex predator.

Arunei

I don't understand why every. Fricken. Fantasy. Game. Makes wolves one of the common enemies. WOLVES AREN'T LIKE THAT. Wolves irl 99% of the time are afraid of people and will avoid them, the only time you'll see wolves actively trying to attack humans is if they're starving/sick or feel threatened. It's a fantasy world replace wolves with any number of made-up animals!

That aside, it really is a pain to try and get certain mats for crafting Furniture. Something you can do is to buy any chapter of the Anequina Motif and learn it, and then you can use Mimic Stones (you get them from the Gold Coast Bazaar now and also from Tamriel Tomes as a possible reward to claim) to craft that item, then decon it. Doing this has a chance to give you the mat the Mimic Stone replaced instead of the Stone itself.

Of course that requires getting a decent stockpile of Mimic Stones, but it's something you can try doing on top of other things that have been suggested. I really hope one day they make all these Style Mats easier to source.

Carlos93

There should be herds of animals to easily gather fur.

There should be more tree trunks of various types scattered around for easier harvesting.

Hunted animals should drop species-specific materials.

If you hunt a wolf, you get wolf fur, animal bones, and wolf meat.

All crafting materials should be sold by merchant NPCs in cities.

There should be mines for various minerals (iron, gold, silver, rubedite, etc.) throughout the world.
Players can collect a large quantity of minerals in these mines.
In The Elder Scrolls V, you could collect minerals from mines and from the countryside.

Lugaldu

Carlos93 wrote: »

There should be herds of animals to easily gather fur.

There should be more tree trunks of various types scattered around for easier harvesting.

Hunted animals should drop species-specific materials.

If you hunt a wolf, you get wolf fur, animal bones, and wolf meat.

All crafting materials should be sold by merchant NPCs in cities.

There should be mines for various minerals (iron, gold, silver, rubedite, etc.) throughout the world.
Players can collect a large quantity of minerals in these mines.
In The Elder Scrolls V, you could collect minerals from mines and from the countryside.

That would all definitely make sense and be nice, especially if NPCs sold all crafting materials. But I doubt that will ever happen, because the scarcity of resources and the in-game costs for resources/plans/furniture will certainly lead many people to resort to the housing store, which is an important source of income. Unfortunately, it "works" for me all the time – I start a housing project, craft as many structural furnishings and furniture pieces as I can myself or buy them from Guild stores (after so many years, my main character knows almost all the plans), but in the end, I always run out of materials, and then I want to finish a project quickly and buy the rest from the Housing store...

frogthroat

rockDokRock wrote: »

(Her issue is you can't walk 50 feet without having to fight an apex predator for some reason... do you need to fight a bear every 50 feet? Is spending time killing skeevers to collect a root really worthwhile?). That's a whole other issue.

Let's make it a trivial issue.

For this, I would recommend making a simple build. I assume she is not a big fan of the combat system? You can bypass this in overland quite easily.

Make a character for her:
Race: khajiit, high elf or dark elf - Khajiit the best.
Skill lines: Storm Calling, Assassination, whatever
Mundus: The Thief
Attributes: 64mag
Food: Mistral Banana-Bunny Hash (max mag + max health) - optional, should work just fine without to make this extra simple
Blue CP: Weapons Expert, Deadly Aim, Fighting Finesse, Wrathful Strikes - the usual suspects. Don't forget Piercing.
Red CP: Boundless Vitality, Fortified, Celerity and... Bastion (if you use shields) or Rejuvenation (not really needed) or anything else.
Green: Steed's Blessing, Gifted Rider, Master Gatherer. Also, non-slottable Plentiful Harvest.
Passives: all class and race skill lines, all Destrcution Staff, Light Armor and Undaunted if you have it levelled. And of course Continuous Assault 1 (no need for the second level) from Alliance War -> Assault. (If you port to Cyrodiil and do the intro quest - no PVP required, you get enough AP to get this passive and Vigor skill open. Absolutely no PVP needed for this.)

Gear:
1pc Slimecraw/Zaan (or Druid's Braid if you want to just craft)
Oakensoul Ring
5pc Order's Wrath (craftable)
5pc Tide-Born Wildstalker (craftable)

- All body pieces Light, Divines + Max Magicka. With Light armor and Piercing CP you'll be at about ~8700 penetration of the 9100 needed. Close enough.
- Overland trash dies quickly so you don't really have time to benefit from Bloodthirsty so all jewelry Infused + Increase Physical Harm (heavy attack restores mag so increase phys harm has stam recovery that might be useful)
- Lightning Staff with Precise + Flame, Shock or Poison

Purple is fine. Maybe gold the lightning staff, but otherwise purple will do just fine.

There are better gear for longer fights. For example Sergeant is good, but it needs stacks. The idea of these sets and skill lines is that we stack shock damage, crit and direct damage as much as we can so that the fight is over before we could even collect any stacks simply by heavy attacking.

Skills: don't matter. At least one Storm Calling and then as many Assassination skills as possible. I recommend Concealed Weapon because that gives minor expedition passively. For the Storm Calling, maybe Streak and show her how to use skills. That is a fun skill to use. Maybe a heal (green Vigor, for example) or some shield (Spiked Bone Shield from Undaunted or Living Dark from Templar's Dawn's Wrath, for example) as one skill.
In summary: shield/heal as one skill (if needed, optional). Streak as a second skill. Concealed Weapon as third. Then just two more Assassination skills and Assassination ultimate. Only need to use shield/heal if needed and if she wants to, Streak.

Otherwise just press the left mouse button down and see enemies die.

rockDokRock wrote: »

I just spent the better part of an hour farming Rimmen Necropolis to get gear that I can deconstruct for Shimmering Sand to so she can build things she wants for housing. Fair enough. I killed numerous bosses, went through it twice. Over and over again bosses would drop nothing but gold or useless items, no zone set to deconstruct. In all I got TWO items I could deconstruct. Deconstructed them and got nothing. 0 Shimmering sand. I wasted an hour for nothing.

Why are bosses not dropping items? Why is this game so tight sometimes? I don't get it.

Bosses should drop gear, but if they spawn before the cooldown is gone they have nothing to drop. Only some gold. They should spawn every 5 minutes with gear. But may spawn more often if new people arrive there but then the boss has only gold. I think Northern Elsweyr dailies give also some shimmering sand? Also, you can buy it from guild stores. Check TTC website where to buy.

rockDokRock

MoonPile wrote: »

As is often said, Housing is the real endgame! There's even a huge (and wonderful) housing community called The Real Endgame xD

That's NOT to say it's a good thing; it's a valid complaint. All of those things do suck if you're a newcomer and it takes a long time to get the unlocks, abilities, and gold to make it all viable or even something you don't really think about. Veteran players can forget how hard it is when you're truly fresh.

Furnishing materials drops, for example, were actually buffed in a very recent update – Heartwood alone was, IIRC, something stupid like ~4000 gold per piece on PC NA a few years ago. Eventually you make enough gold to buy stacks of them instead of trying to farm them yourself, and the boosted drops from nodes are a bonus.

Likewise, right now would have been a good time to get mats and Shimmering Sand from Jubilee coffers, and you can double up by doing daily quests in Rimmen - those coffers can give Shimmering Sand. You can also run around opening chests in N. Elsweyr. But it's still way too little to do a full house, and this year is even harder to farm because they nerfed drops from Jubilee coffers. Here, again: if you're a rich vet, right now you're having a great time buying stacks of Sand "on sale" because there's tons on the market from other players selling these drops.

(Even vets are complaining that some styles like Fargrave and Dwarven take like 10-20 of their special style material per piece. I hope that's a future QOL update.)

And frankly, I agree with your wife and whitecrow:
Mobs are just an annoying hurdle to me. I play khajiit with specific gear + skill sets to sneak-run by everything unseen, I don't engage unless I want to. But again, that's another thing that's really annoying until you've leveled up and know what to do.

Housing in this game is just not friendly at all to newcomers. And worse, you may be frustrated enough to be tempted to buy from the Crown Store, where most of the stuff is craftables you can get in-game for cheap gold. Better learn what's what from UESP, because the game itself doesn't tell you where anything comes from – https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Furnishings

I'm hardly a new player, I had a good deal of stuff already farmed but I guess she took a shine to Khajiit furniture :-P. Just frustrated that I'm trying to do the right thing and earn it fairly and just get blocked at every opportunity.

Yes, I saw it on the market but it's too expensive (IMO) for what it is (good point about the current event however, I'll take another look). I earn gold passively and don't really trade too much so I'm not really loaded. I loathe traders and only use them as an absolute last resort as you have to spend lots of time shopping around as the fantasy prices of some things is just shocking. For the master writs, for example, I have about 90 or so full motifs known but once in awhile one drops that I don't have the motif for which forces me to the traders and you have to shop hard to find something reasonable. Loads of people will want 150,000 for a motif but with shopping around it's not unusual to find it for say 30,000 if your are patient. I just hate having to do that.

I do sell some stuff (like Kuta or other Gold Mats I have plenty of as I do writs every day and farm the resources from maps) but I'll hit the vendors and see the going rate (so say lowest price for Perfect Roe, if I'm selling that, is 29,000) then I'll sell mine for 25,000 or something like that so it shifts. I'm not obsessed with diddling every last coin out of people

Yes you can just run by creatures and mobs and the like I understand that. But it's a hassle and a bit of a deal breaker for her, I don't think that's going to change. You shouldn't have to do that and I kind of agree with her on that point. It's a real nuisance. A nice middle ground would be most of these creatures are passive and you have to choose to engage (I mean I can see why they are there as a source of farming for crafting mats) rather than have every rat or dog attack you.

LatentBuzzard

rockDokRock wrote: »

Why are bosses not dropping items? Why is this game so tight sometimes? I don't get it.

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned the obvious explanation yet but ZOS put a ~3 minute cooldown on the rewards dropped by delve and public dungeon bosses to slow down farming. So if you're plowing through the dungeon and killing multiple bosses within those three minutes, then only one of them is going to drop anything other than a bit of gold.

Zodiarkslayer

The best way to get a ton of mats is treasure chest farming.

With full upgrades, a complete round of Elsweyr will take about 1.5h and yield around 40 to 50 pieces of set equipment. It is a good thing to use a farming editor for an efficient route.
I have been doing these farming rounds in Blackwood, High Isle and Elsweyr. And nothing comes even close to these in terms of total yield. Elsweyr ist even the best because two of the three overland sets will drop Shimmering Sands when dismantled. Only Crafty Alfiq is in Pelletine Style and will yield Dragon threads, I believe. Which are worthless for housing.
In Blackwood and High Isle it is just one overland set that dismantles into the housing mat and in Summerset, W. Skyrim, and Gold Coast it is even none at all. So, there is no reason to farm overland sets there.

I tend to make additional stops at all other crafting nodes as well, so take that 2h estimate with again of salt. It would be much faster, if I focused on chests alone and used a mount in between nodes, but that way I wouldn't get the Alchemy ingredients, the housing mats and upgrade mats from refining raw mats.

rockDokRock

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

rockDokRock wrote: »

Why are bosses not dropping items? Why is this game so tight sometimes? I don't get it.

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned the obvious explanation yet but ZOS put a ~3 minute cooldown on the rewards dropped by delve and public dungeon bosses to slow down farming. So if you're plowing through the dungeon and killing multiple bosses within those three minutes, then only one of them is going to drop anything other than a bit of gold.

Well I've done this before and it works fine. Just didn't yesterday. Due to the event it was busier than usual so it was probably other people's interactions as well that caused the problem now I think about it. What a waste of time. I should have just left when I saw that. My bad I guess.

frogthroat

LatentBuzzard wrote: »

I'm not sure why no one has mentioned the obvious explanation yet but ZOS put a ~3 minute cooldown on the rewards dropped by delve and public dungeon bosses to slow down farming.

TIL I am no one.

xencthlu

It feels like many of the posters here have read my mind and posted my unfiltered thoughts directly on the state of style materials in decorating and the prevalence of overworld enemies that offer no material benefit to players and only serve to waste one's time.

The suicide murder wolves don't enhance my experience of playing the game. It's not fun to have to trip over trash that disables my mails, my ability to teleport, my ability to mount, and my ability to harvest while going from point A to point B. The wolves don't give amazing experience when killed. They don't have amazing drops. They don't make the game world feel more real and alive -- quite the opposite, because as @Arunei accurately points out, wolves don't behave that way. Nothing living does, because it's so ridiculously idiotic, anything that tried would be surely wiped out. I am not compelled by the argument the game world would be empty without trash mobs littering the zones. We've played Skyrim. The mob density in Skyrim is much lower, and the game is better for that. It allows a player to take in the game world without annoyance or interruption. I wouldn't want to teleport around as much if there were fewer hostile overworld enemies. I play Skyrim without fast travel exclusively. I would feel the world was richer and more interesting because I could dedicate my attention to appreciating it, instead of on avoiding the little red dots on my compass.

The problem with style materials used in decoration, I think, is twofold.

One: No activity in game seems to be specifically focused on their acquisition as the main reward and the actual point of the activity. The acquisition of style materials feels incidental to whatever task you are doing. The most reliable way to earn them, doing dailies, isn't even equally reliable across the game -- I stopped doing Blackwood dailies after not earning a single Ivory Brigade Clasp for four days in a row.

Two: You can only earn each kind in one zone in the game. Meaning, you can only earn one kind at a time, and you will be stuck doing the same content over and over. You could live in Elsweyr for months trying to earn the Sand you need for one build. You cannot incidentally earn style materials for furnishings passively by doing all kinds of content all over the place and incidentally have enough to make a build. You will *have* to specialise and limit yourself to progress.

It seems like Zenimax perhaps thinks people are mainly doing zone dailies for zone gear or an achievement or for the chance of zone motifs, and the style materials are just icing on the cake. We don't know the actual chances of deconning a piece of gear into a style material. That is not information Zenimax has released to players, presumably because they think we are better off not knowing. Some style materials can't be deconned from equipment (Culanda Lacquer, anyone?) If you sit down and try to grind out equipment to decon even knowing that you might decon literally nothing for hours of grinding, you will have to contend with a hard cooldown on drops from delve bosses and public dungeon bosses, or the 5 minute respawn timer of world bosses. A minute of activity for five minutes of staring blankly, doing nothing. That's not playing the game. That is dead time.

The reason we are particularly sensitive to the suicide murder wolves is that it is another tax on our time and attention that *does not further our goal,* when we already have *no dedicated way to work towards those goals.*

You can spend an hour trying to grind world bosses, only spend 12 minutes of that time doing content, get at best 12 drops, and those drops then can turn into 0 style materials. Or if you generously assume there is a 50% chance of getting a style material (a number you have no reason to believe,) you come out of that hour with six style materials. Which can be somewhere between six to three furnishings. When the smallest build can now use 150 furnishings. That's not feasible for anyone, no matter a casual player who may only have about an hour and a half to play a night. Not to mention farming materials from harvesting nodes *usually* doesn't give you furnishing materials. Again, as if farming for housing is an incidental reward compared to everyone's passion, just getting some normal wood, probably for crafting dailies. You might run out of that 10k sitting in your ESO+ bag, you know?

If you want to sit down and grind out the hundreds of style materials a single build could easily take, there is no good way to do that. That is the overriding reason people say not to bother trying, and to just earn gold and buy what you need with that. Your time is more efficiently and less frustratingly used that way. And that sucks. No other piece of content in the game has an absence of dedicated activities that rewards you with what you need to do the activity. If you PVP, you have dedicated content in the form of Imperial City, Cyrodiil, and Battlegrounds. Doing PVP will get you PVP gear, rank up your alliance skill lines, rank up your normal skills and skill lines, level you up, grant you skill points you can use to buy skills for PVP, and give you AP you can then use to buy more PVP gear or turn into gold, or PVP consumables, or earn PVP achievements. If you are serious about PVE, you have dedicated dungeons and trials in various difficulties to suit your needs. Doing dungeons and trials earns you gear that makes you better at PVE, gets you skill points you can use to buy abilities you can use to PVE better, ranks up your undaunted and guild and normal skills and skill lines, levels you up, gives you gold, gives you achievements with cosmetics and such. The rewards for doing the activities you want to do feed back on themselves to enable you to do even more and even better. The dedicated PVPer or PVEer can just do the thing they want to do and spend all their time doing it, never having to cut a random bear a wide berth on their way to their objectives. At least the trash mobs in a dungeon are *part of the dungeon* and killing them *advances the dungeon to completion.*

Meanwhile, we can't even get furnishing materials from surveys. Surveys that only exist to reward crafters for crafting, when crafting exists largely in service of housing. We are, if anything, actively punished for trying to farm as a dedicated activity in service of decorating. Doing PVP to earn gold is a better enabler of decorating than harvesting material nodes and doing zone dailies.

I *would* spend an hour doing a dungeon to get, say, 60 heartwood and no other rewards. For the record. I would grind Skywatch for hours every day if the mobs had a decent chance of dropping Mundane Runes. I have friends who won't get into housing because there is no meaningful method to work towards it as a goal.

Zenimax doesn't even think furnishing materials, style or otherwise, are worth putting in their new battle pass system.

rockDokRock

xencthlu wrote: »

It feels like many of the posters here have read my mind and posted my unfiltered thoughts directly on the state of style materials in decorating and the prevalence of overworld enemies that offer no material benefit to players and only serve to waste one's time.

[ snip ]

I *would* spend an hour doing a dungeon to get, say, 60 heartwood and no other rewards. For the record. I would grind Skywatch for hours every day if the mobs had a decent chance of dropping Mundane Runes. I have friends who won't get into housing because there is no meaningful method to work towards it as a goal.

So much *THIS* ^^^^^

Especially the resource harvesting maps. It drives me nuts you don't get heartwood from that. It's just cheap plain and simple.

Earnest_Victory

I don't decorate because of this exact issue. I don't know anyone who wouldn't rather there be heartwood and whatnot available in the tome rewards than all the useless poisons and potions they have currently.

I think in general the game needs some way of eventually gaining guaranteed access to things that are currently pure RNG. Having the theoretically time-to-obtain for certain crafting motifs or furnishing plans be functionally infinite just makes it unappealing to even make the attempt, and the solution for running low on furniture crafting materials probably shouldn't be 'throw ever-increasing amounts of gold at the problem', because that just necessitates gaining an ever-increasing amount of gold.

OsUfi

rockDokRock wrote: »

whitecrow wrote: »

I agree with your wife, and it's the reason I don't want more overland difficulty. The hostile creatures everywhere are already enough of a nuisance.

Agreed. It blows my mind how people want to spend more time on mobs and trash. Just... why? There is *way* too much as it is. What kind of an ecosystem has apex predators every 75m?

I belive for most us who want overland difficulty, it's more about the quests not having big bads that fall over to four light attacks. There's a huge gulf between Dark Souls and Care Bare Wonderland Adventures. ESO currently sits in the My Little Pony section of that sliding scale.

Craglorns group areas feel like a nice balance for me. Mobs that don't fall over like they've been sneezed on, but still whack able with a remotely competent player.

emilyhyoyeon

I was always under the impression housing is supposed to be difficult (expensive/grindy), but I don't know if that's because the ESO devs intended that, or I just hear that sentiment so much from people that that's the case in other games and have assumed that for ESO as well.

I don't want that to be the case and I wish housing specific crafting materials were sourced more plentifully. I have like 5 housing project ideas over the years on hold because of how expensive (or time consuming, if I chose to farm all the mats myself) it is to craft what I need, and I'm not even one of the builders who uses max slots 99% of the time.

anadandy

Honestly, the easiest solution would be for ZOS to stop with the artificial scarcity of housing materials, especially style mats. It irks me that the only way to reliably get some of them is to grind dailies on multiple characters.

SilverBride

anadandy wrote: »

Honestly, the easiest solution would be for ZOS to stop with the artificial scarcity of housing materials, especially style mats. It irks me that the only way to reliably get some of them is to grind dailies on multiple characters.

It would be even easier if they eliminated style mats all together. Base game furnishing styles, such as Breton for example, don't need any special style materials to craft them. There is no special material to craft Colovian either, which is a newer style. It's an inconsistent requirement and completely unnecessary.

Just eliminate special style materials completely and let us craft as many furnishings as we want. They would probably sell more houses if they made crafting furnishings less of a burden.

Tra_Lalan

This game is a combat based game.

If you want overland without enemies perhaps try a different genre of games,

or you can also travel to Wrothgar/Hew's Bane/Goald Coast.

CatalinaWineMixer2

Carlos93 wrote: »

There should be herds of animals to easily gather fur.

There should be more tree trunks of various types scattered around for easier harvesting.

Hunted animals should drop species-specific materials.

If you hunt a wolf, you get wolf fur, animal bones, and wolf meat.

All crafting materials should be sold by merchant NPCs in cities.

There should be mines for various minerals (iron, gold, silver, rubedite, etc.) throughout the world.
Players can collect a large quantity of minerals in these mines.
In The Elder Scrolls V, you could collect minerals from mines and from the countryside.

A great idea. So many of us give up in frustration or simply lose the will to farm. The grind is very real and very taxing.

MoonPile

As usual, agree with @xencthlu 's comment xD
And really, everyone here. It is just a pain, both the mobs and the mats. I'd suppose only certain traders would disagree.

I'd only add that the mats-in-dungeon thing would highly depend on which dungeon and how many guaranteed mats, because I really don't want any rehash, ever, of Mora's glass eyeballs in Scrivener's Hall. One of the most annoying things they've ever done regarding materials, helped only by the fact that they're now also attainable by chance via IA... another dungeon, and endless at that -_- I don't really want to do either.

And yes, it would be AMAZING if they offered a significant amount of furnishing mats via Tomes!

Like 1 unlock granting several stacks would actually make me interested in getting to the latter pages, vs just XP scrolls or cosmetics I don't care about. I'd hope it'd be in the free tier, otherwise it'd lean into P2W when it comes to "competitive housing" (lol, but yes that is a thing).

tsaescishoeshiner

You're better off farming something else and selling it to buy Shimmering Sand. For example, Stendarr Stamps sell for 1.5x to 2x as much for the exact same effort. You can also farm crafting nodes in Craglorn/starter zones and sell the ore, dust, or farm new motif pages/furnishing plans. The public dungeon was the wrong place--as others mentioned, Elsweyr Dailies drop gear (1 from boss, 1 from quest) to decon and Shimmering Sand.

As far as too many overland enemies. I recommend finding a more fun way to kill them quickly or just move quicker in general. It's just worth putting on a fun set combo, honestly.

You can reach +100% movement speed even in combat when you randomly aggro an enemy:

• Adept Rider (30%) (not Coward's Gear, since a lot interrupts sprinting)
• Minor Expedition (15%, such as a Nightblade using Concealed Weapon's passive effect)
• 3x Swift jewelry (21%)
• Steed Stone (15%)
• ^ total is 81% so far that any player can get easily. To get the rest:
• Ring of the Wild Hunt (15%, and 45% out of combat, if you have Antiquities)
• 10% Movement Speed CP star (if your/her account has enough CP)

Nightblade (Assassination and Shadow) is probably best, as you can be invisible (at 200% movement speed!) and get Minor Expedition from Concealed Weapon. I highly recommend switching out Siphoning for Storm Calling so you can use Streak to take shortcuts (it's also helpful for housing).

All you need is a second set that adds damage or has a fun effect--even if you don't like combat, it's satisfying to hit a button and see an impact. How to make eliminating enemies less of a chore? Here are a few fun + efficient ideas for a casual player:

• Use Critical Rush/Lotus Fan and Whirlwind/Reverse Slice to one-shot and execute enemies. Charge skills at least let you use enemies to move around. (This is fun with Rush of Agony)
• Bonus: Use Macabre Vintage to make enemies "pop" when you kill them--surprisingly rewarding lol, makes it a whack-a-mole game.
• I love Elemental Explosion to 1-shot groups of enemies--it takes two seconds, but it mixes up combat for me.
• Some people find Arcanist Beam or lightning staff heavy attacks satisfying to clear enemies at range.
• Use a set like Mad Tinkerer to knock enemies 10m into the air--it's pretty fun! I call it going bowling
• Bring a friend like Mike the Hunger Daedra as your harvesting buddy
• Become a werewolf: they move fast, hit hard and have a charge. (Plus, they harvest nodes by chewing on them. Yes, really.) Just stay away from civilian NPCs lol.

Vulkunne

rockDokRock wrote: »

OK. Full story. My wife got into housing so she is decorating all the houses I've collected, she's not super interested in playing the game. Fair enough. (Her issue is you can't walk 50 feet without having to fight an apex predator for some reason... do you need to fight a bear every 50 feet? Is spending time killing skeevers to collect a root really worthwhile?). That's a whole other issue.

I just spent the better part of an hour farming Rimmen Necropolis to get gear that I can deconstruct for Shimmering Sand to so she can build things she wants for housing. Fair enough. I killed numerous bosses, went through it twice. Over and over again bosses would drop nothing but gold or useless items, no zone set to deconstruct. In all I got TWO items I could deconstruct. Deconstructed them and got nothing. 0 Shimmering sand. I wasted an hour for nothing.

Why are bosses not dropping items? Why is this game so tight sometimes? I don't get it.

It's not just that, it's other parts as well. Resource maps you get with your writs... why does wood farming not give you heartwood? Just... why? Is it going to break the game if I can make another table?

RNG. Just why? If you can't get a lead for 2 months (I actually emailed to ask as I thought it was broken I had run it so many times) you are told it's just "RNG". When you get a motif or plan there is a "cooldown" because RNG can't work in your favour... just why?

Make it make sense please. Really angry right now. What a waste of an evening.

I'd hardly describe most of the npcs from overland as 'apex predators' or even a serious threat, barring a few from very specific locals. With sub classing now its lemon squeezy easy to deal additional damage. In fact, over perhaps the last year or two I've been putting together like a global build that supports all my characters, regardless of class or race. And doing so has gradually eliminated most of my character obstacles. So, if you have not even the best damage build but something tailored for overland then that problem solves itself.

As for scarcity of mats and so forth, that's what trade is for. There are some things I do that bring in things I don't care much about other than to sell them. And sales are doing alright. Like on TTC right now, Shimmering Sand is not that expensive at all and certainly not worth those hours spent searching for scraps. I think you two have some organizational challenges to overcome. One is to setup builds tailored for high performance for overland environment; another is to examine your options for raising funds to buy the things you want by providing a means for others to get what they want.

I'm well aware this message probably won't be well received. But it sounds to me like all of the issues you and your wife are having can be resolved by you. Perhaps not in the way you like, but it can be done. Because I've had to deal with similar challenges in the past and you know, posting here or digging deeper in game won't change a thing. It never has and it never will. Gotta adapt and roll with it. Rule of Acquisition #45: Expand or die. And there is a wealth of opportunity for you both to expand, just as I have had to. Cause I know no one's going to give me anything, but many need the things I can offer them.

DoofusMax

Being a bit silly here, but a lot of the existing comments make me think that Tamriel should be called the Three Fold Land (except that name's been taken): a shaping stone to make us, a testing ground to prove our worth, and a punishment for our sin (perhaps of buying the game in the first place).

MoonPile

Considering rockDokRock's wife doesn't want to play or engage in combat at all – "it's a hassle and a bit of a deal breaker for her, I don't think that's going to change" – I don't think the suggestions for ways to get stronger in combat will help. It sounds like she ONLY wants to do Housing via OP's account, which is fine. ESO has a really fun Housing system that rivals even dedicated sandbox-building games like The Sims... it's just nowhere near as accessible.

If OP were willing to, they could make an invisible sneak-khajiit build for wife, so that if she wants to go overland at all, at least she won't have to engage. I can give specs for that.

But yeah generally tsaescishoeshiner is right, and it is how most of us afford it: Do something that's fun (or at least tolerable) for you, then sell the proceeds from that to buy the thing you actually need.