cradle of shadows

Nahtal

For me this dungeon is the hardest after this dungeon comes ICP.

As healer kept dying at the end when she climbs up. The route though this dungeon is like every other dungeon (as healer!) as dps its totally different. (and yes on vet) but when you do this on normal and you have 2 lvl15 with you aspect to die allot. Proper gear are not for sale in traders for this lvl,s that's sad.

GreenhaloX

Vaoh wrote: »

I soloed Velidreth on Vet. If I could do that, then surely you can put in the effort and beat it with a group. There's a ton of info and a video here to show you literally everything there is to know, what to watch out for, etc. Good luck!

Velidreth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glxAHgq_6-8

Mechanics:
• Velidreth is about as difficult as the Planar Inhibitor to solo. Impossibly difficult fight. Plain and simple, don't attempt it solo.
• I used a pet. My best attempt without a pet was 39% and it was really stressful as RNG plays a role in how long you live.
• All DoTs applied to you tick once per second

• Velidreth will Heavy Attack you, causing a one-shot unless dodge rolled or flawlessly Streaked away from (not reliable). Only tank builds can hold block and survive.
• Velidreth's Heavy Attack has an extremely short wind-up time and is difficult to see. It seems like it can land early too. Most of my deaths attempting to solo this boss ended because I could not see this attack.
• Immediately after her Heavy Attack, she will attempt to slice you once more, afflicting you with a heavy DoT which lasts awhile.
• Velidreth will suck you in and apply an unbreakable CC on you. During this short period, she will drain Ultimate from you. The amount scales depending on how much Ultimate you have stored up. You cannot be harmed in any way while she is doing this so it does help regenerate other resources.

• Spiderkith spawn often throughout the fight. They will apply lots of pressure on you, and are a priority to kill.
*Shadow Weavers*: Casts spells which causes lots of AoEs to race around the floor that CC you for a long time if not broken and deal a huge amount of damage. This is the most dangerous, and also results in your death quite often. These Spiderkith also place other AoEs on the ground that deal high damage. They are an absolute priority to kill.
• The Red, Blue, and Green orbs around the map (which Velidreth creates when she raises her abdomen) will significantly drain your corresponding resource, along with applying a detrimental regeneration suppression debuff to the affected resource.
• All DoTs/negative effects are purgeable, but are still very difficult to deal with due to the high rate at which Velidreth and her Spiderkith reapply them.

• At certain health percentages (65%/35%), Velidreth will initiate a Catacombs Phase, banishing you to the catacombs. Grab an Atronach Light before going down, and don't forget to build your Ultimate while you're down there!
• The Catacombs Phase is simple: Navigate your way back to Velidreth and get right back into the action
• If you get close enough for Veldireth to see you on the ledge, and you take too long to jump down, she will teleport you directly to her in a dangerous way. Just get back to her and fight.

• Her Spike Phase begins when she climbs to the ceiling and the screen turns darker. If you move during this phase, you die. You need to wait a certain amount of time and then dodge roll or you are dead. There are two good strategies I know of to use to survive this.
1) Popular Strategy: Wait until the screen goes back to normal, then walk forward. As soon as your character feels slightly snared, you dodge roll. The spike will explode from the floor about 1 second after you feel the snare.
2) My Strategy: LOOK AT VELIDRETH! She went up there, and eventually needs to come back down. The moment you see her begin her decent from the ceiling, dodge roll. The spike will explode from the floor while she is mid-flight/on the floor. It is 100% reliable in my experience and easy to do
• More orbs spawn when Velidreth has fallen below 30% health, and she will climb to the ceiling for a Spike Phase even more often.

• Hard Mode: Velidreth's health is increased from 4,700,000 to 5,600,000.
• Hard Mode: Mephala's Totem of Adoration fires mortar-like balls every X seconds which explode for huge magic damage and radiate waves of magic
• Hard Mode: In the catacombs, 1 extra door is locked.

[/font]

Solo vCoS Thread

Yes, vCOS (or any other vet contents) are better when you have a good tight running and experienced group, and yes, roll out from that spike when you see that crack on the ground starting to emerge. As soon as Velidreth says, "Don't move", yes, don't move and then look straight down at your feet for that crack on the ground. Also, Dranos is another crazy fight in vCOS. I hate that dude!

@Vaoh, you are one crazy dude. Aside from your skills, which is half the battle, I can see how you are able solo this (whereas, many groups have trouble) and many others. You (sorc, in general) seems to have one hell of a strong damaged shield. For a DK, the igneous or fragmented shield only covers maybe a quarter, at most, of the health bar and doesn't help protect too well in vet contents. Thus, a lot of rolling, blocking and vigoring for me. Heck, I have over 20k resistance.. sheessh. However, your shield covers what it looks like 90-95% of your health bar. That is some good damage mitigation, particularly in vet contents. That is awesome you flimsy light-armored sorc have such good damaged shield. Also, I've watched a lot of duels between a sorc and another stam dude, where a lot of times, the sorc, even in the 300 CP, came out with the win over toons with maxed CP, all due to that high protection from the shield. If I had that, vCOS or vMA wouldn't be so much of high blood pressure inducing contents. Ha ha. You're the man, though.

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

DRXHarbinger wrote: »

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

Danksta wrote: »

Wrecking_Blow_Spam wrote: »

mrfrontman wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Whoever designed this dungeon needs to get fired. Literally the worst thing I have ever wasted 3 hours on in this game.

Cradle of Shadows is easy, even on hard mode.

l2p issues?

Honestly though, you can't come on a forum and complain about a dungeon when everybody else has no problem running it within 20-30 mins. You need to learn mechanics properly and understand the dungeon to it's fullest. A 3 hour run sounds like it was your first attempt there. You've barely earned the right to be even slightly pissy at the dungeon.

Once you learn the mechanics properly you can run it under 30 mins easily, assuming you and your group are fully geared.

Ok tough guy if it's so easy why don't you go solo it then?

It's not easy so stop being so high and mighty, you've gotta consider that not everyone has BiS gear with a really solid 4 man group.

But hey you said it's easy so go solo it on let's say a stamina nightblade, I mean you'll have no problems cos it's so easy.
Good luck

You do realize someone has soloed vCoS, right?

Yes I do realise this.

it's not "super easy" like everyone has suggested. Ohh btw I said go do it on a stam nb. Has a stam nb soloed it? Not to my knowledge so you're point is irrelevant (aka bait).

The people saying it's "super easy" are trolling or being elitist. It generally requires a good group who know mechanics.

Yet with the words "super easy" being used then please everyone go solo it, may take you about 10 hours or more on only a magsorc.

Good luck everyone (by everyone I mean the condescending ppl) go solo this "super easy" dungeon each time you have it for your pledge.

If it wasn't super easy then people wouldn't be getting the skin...kind of stupid to rinse people who have done the no death challenge. If 4 people in the same sitting are going flawless on it then yes it easy to them.

100m sprint for Usain Bolt in under 10s is super easy for him and gets to gloat about it.

@DRXHarbinger

Missing the point.

Not sure why people are agreeing with you.

Is getting flawless super easy in VMA? No. It's not considered super easy.
But guess what I've got flawless conqueror on all 8 specs - 4 stam 4 mag on console. I can get flawless pretty easy on any spec but it's not considered easy to get, get the point?

This dungeon is not "super easy".
Them achievements you speak of REQUIRE A GOOD TEAM. So stop being so elitist saying it's super easy and like I said - if it's so easy then why doesn't everyone solo it? Because it's not super easy.

Yes if you have 4 top players with BiS gear, rotations and know mechanics then it is pretty easy but that's a group of 4 above average players, which wouldn't happen in group finder.

Go PUG this on a regular basis or solo it, it's not easy to do those 2 things which is my main point.

Another eg: you could be considered best player ever let's say DPS mag Templar; in a terrible group of ppl not fulfilling their roles (die instantly to any attacks, have no DPS, no heals you know the type) then it's very likely he wouldn't finish the dungeon and probably drop out after 1st trash pull.

raglau

Ender1310 wrote: »

Pibbles wrote: »

@Lynx7386 Sorry you appear to be having trouble now, but the posters in the thread give salient advice, once you take this you'll breeze through it at your levels. It's just a mechanical process, like all dungeons, albeit slightly harder than the usual ESO fayre.

Most ESO dungeons are faceroll-stand-there-nuke-everything-in-your-sleep, but CoS is actually one of the few ESO dungeons I enjoy running, because it makes you think and move about for once.

I've never had a particular issue with CoS but situational awareness is key. Certainly with the levels of chars you tell us were in there, it ought to not be a problem, so long as the builds are coherent and people are watching what they are doing. I don't run meta or trials gear for example, and am only CP550 and I've never had an issue.

I do t know about easy. But the mechanics are super specific and most you can work around. Still don't think it's easy as people say but alright.

'Easy' is an objective term. The first time I ran vCoS I was CP300ish and we wiped about 5 times at the last boss, but we had a great tank (in a PUG) who coached the team through it, it was a good gaming experience. However, I suspect I was somewhat carried through the dungeon due to the fact the team was very together and the higher level DDs probably made up for some of my DPS defecit.

But having cracked it the once, it was not unduly onerous to run again, and it's not something that rattles me if it pops in a pledge run. I even managed to tank it on my NB tank, which I actually thought would be far too weak.

So I think when people say it's easy, they just mean it's content they know and can pass on most occasions without too much thought. That said, it's definitely dependent on the team, even someone who does usually find it easy is going to fail if the team is not cohesive. vCoS is certainly a step up from the usual ESO dungeons, which are not exactly taxing and can be solo'd if the rest of the group is weak. I know there are some people who can soo vCoS, but it's not the norm.

Vaoh

GreenhaloX wrote: »

Vaoh wrote: »

I soloed Velidreth on Vet. If I could do that, then surely you can put in the effort and beat it with a group. There's a ton of info and a video here to show you literally everything there is to know, what to watch out for, etc. Good luck!

Velidreth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glxAHgq_6-8

Mechanics:
• Velidreth is about as difficult as the Planar Inhibitor to solo. Impossibly difficult fight. Plain and simple, don't attempt it solo.
• I used a pet. My best attempt without a pet was 39% and it was really stressful as RNG plays a role in how long you live.
• All DoTs applied to you tick once per second

• Velidreth will Heavy Attack you, causing a one-shot unless dodge rolled or flawlessly Streaked away from (not reliable). Only tank builds can hold block and survive.
• Velidreth's Heavy Attack has an extremely short wind-up time and is difficult to see. It seems like it can land early too. Most of my deaths attempting to solo this boss ended because I could not see this attack.
• Immediately after her Heavy Attack, she will attempt to slice you once more, afflicting you with a heavy DoT which lasts awhile.
• Velidreth will suck you in and apply an unbreakable CC on you. During this short period, she will drain Ultimate from you. The amount scales depending on how much Ultimate you have stored up. You cannot be harmed in any way while she is doing this so it does help regenerate other resources.

• Spiderkith spawn often throughout the fight. They will apply lots of pressure on you, and are a priority to kill.
*Shadow Weavers*: Casts spells which causes lots of AoEs to race around the floor that CC you for a long time if not broken and deal a huge amount of damage. This is the most dangerous, and also results in your death quite often. These Spiderkith also place other AoEs on the ground that deal high damage. They are an absolute priority to kill.
• The Red, Blue, and Green orbs around the map (which Velidreth creates when she raises her abdomen) will significantly drain your corresponding resource, along with applying a detrimental regeneration suppression debuff to the affected resource.
• All DoTs/negative effects are purgeable, but are still very difficult to deal with due to the high rate at which Velidreth and her Spiderkith reapply them.

• At certain health percentages (65%/35%), Velidreth will initiate a Catacombs Phase, banishing you to the catacombs. Grab an Atronach Light before going down, and don't forget to build your Ultimate while you're down there!
• The Catacombs Phase is simple: Navigate your way back to Velidreth and get right back into the action
• If you get close enough for Veldireth to see you on the ledge, and you take too long to jump down, she will teleport you directly to her in a dangerous way. Just get back to her and fight.

• Her Spike Phase begins when she climbs to the ceiling and the screen turns darker. If you move during this phase, you die. You need to wait a certain amount of time and then dodge roll or you are dead. There are two good strategies I know of to use to survive this.
1) Popular Strategy: Wait until the screen goes back to normal, then walk forward. As soon as your character feels slightly snared, you dodge roll. The spike will explode from the floor about 1 second after you feel the snare.
2) My Strategy: LOOK AT VELIDRETH! She went up there, and eventually needs to come back down. The moment you see her begin her decent from the ceiling, dodge roll. The spike will explode from the floor while she is mid-flight/on the floor. It is 100% reliable in my experience and easy to do
• More orbs spawn when Velidreth has fallen below 30% health, and she will climb to the ceiling for a Spike Phase even more often.

• Hard Mode: Velidreth's health is increased from 4,700,000 to 5,600,000.
• Hard Mode: Mephala's Totem of Adoration fires mortar-like balls every X seconds which explode for huge magic damage and radiate waves of magic
• Hard Mode: In the catacombs, 1 extra door is locked.

[/font]

Solo vCoS Thread

Yes, vCOS (or any other vet contents) are better when you have a good tight running and experienced group, and yes, roll out from that spike when you see that crack on the ground starting to emerge. As soon as Velidreth says, "Don't move", yes, don't move and then look straight down at your feet for that crack on the ground. Also, Dranos is another crazy fight in vCOS. I hate that dude!

@Vaoh, you are one crazy dude. Aside from your skills, which is half the battle, I can see how you are able solo this (whereas, many groups have trouble) and many others. You (sorc, in general) seems to have one hell of a strong damaged shield. For a DK, the igneous or fragmented shield only covers maybe a quarter, at most, of the health bar and doesn't help protect too well in vet contents. Thus, a lot of rolling, blocking and vigoring for me. Heck, I have over 20k resistance.. sheessh. However, your shield covers what it looks like 90-95% of your health bar. That is some good damage mitigation, particularly in vet contents. That is awesome you flimsy light-armored sorc have such good damaged shield. Also, I've watched a lot of duels between a sorc and another stam dude, where a lot of times, the sorc, even in the 300 CP, came out with the win over toons with maxed CP, all due to that high protection from the shield. If I had that, vCOS or vMA wouldn't be so much of high blood pressure inducing contents. Ha ha. You're the man, though.

Ty!

Sorcs in PvP have very weak armor and easily die when their shields are down. That's the sacrifice required for powerful shields, as a Mag Sorc's only true healing ability is a Crit-based HoT (Surge), which is nice in PvE but rather weak in PvP.

I only play Sorc because it's the class I picked up at launch specifically due to Bolt Escape - my fav skill. Had I been a DK, I would use my tankiness and other more powerful heals to survive without needing to shield, though I wouldn't be able to pass certain mechanics (Dranos, Planar Inhibitor... hopefully soon The Warrior) since I'd lack a pet and Bolt Escape.

Unless a pet or streak is mandatory, any class can solo these dungeons..... even Stamblades

Hey-its-Me

well, I (healing tank cp 490) queued in last night with a healer (cp300+) I'd just met who was brought into my guild a few days ago and 2 random DPS players (cp 400+ & 500+) good players all. I was crown, but had never actually run this dungeon (1.5 years playing) and we moved through it fairly well actually. 1 DPS knew to light the Brazers and then the healer quickly figured out how to catch the light from the Atronachs. We had NO idea why we kept wiping from the gross boss so finally instead of leaving, I did a quick web search and found another thread telling us NOT TO MOVE when she says "don't move" and 5-10 minutes later, we completed it and got our dailies. Now I would love to do it again a few times and understand it even better before I try it on Vet.
It's really just NOT THAT DEEP. It's a game and with a little patience, a moment to stop and read what to do instead of getting mad that you don't know then add some game comradeship friendliness and laughter you m might have fun!

Also, why are people so damn arrogant and pissy towards each other. I find the biggest whiners are in the 20's and 30's while the most measured players are teens and retiree's. What's up with that?

Digiman

Even on normal this dungeons is too unforgiving, it has so many cheapshots and god help you if you have a bad connection...

Honestly when it pops in random I leave, loots not worth it in my opinion and not really that fun to pug either.

I agree with the OP that the designer should be benched.

Mureel

mrfrontman wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Whoever designed this dungeon needs to get fired. Literally the worst thing I have ever wasted 3 hours on in this game.

Cradle of Shadows is easy, even on hard mode.

l2p issues?

Honestly though, you can't come on a forum and complain about a dungeon when everybody else has no problem running it within 20-30 mins. You need to learn mechanics properly and understand the dungeon to it's fullest. A 3 hour run sounds like it was your first attempt there. You've barely earned the right to be even slightly pissy at the dungeon.

Once you learn the mechanics properly you can run it under 30 mins easily, assuming you and your group are fully geared.

Seriously. RECOGNISE that there are MULTIPLE LEVELS of skill in this game - and have some understanding.

You cannot be that simpleminded as to think that EVERYONE IN GAME just goes in there 3 dps and tank and done in 20. That's maybe 10%. Not the rest.

YAY FOR YOU you mastered a VIDEO GAME. BETTER SLAP IT ON YOUR RESUME RIGHT NOW!

Now maybe try the being human part.

No one comes here to hear IT'S EASY L2P.

No one needs you to plop your whatever on the table and point at it.

If you have nothing useful to say just be quiet.

Write out mechanics, write out how you would handle things.

Everything else is unnecessary.

EDITED TO ADD: OK I see you did after the fact; and good. Why not just do that in the first place?

Also, you neglected to mention what happens when Veli bugs and stays on the ground, and when the green circles do NOT show as they often don't, and if you go with a healer, USE PURGE, because it can all be cleansed. Also, WW get rekt in there, poison. I noticed last run WW was always dying/almost dead. ALWAYS FOCUS ADDS

SpacemanSpiff1

is this the necromancer class people keep asking about?

MartiniDaniels

ZOS relies on player add-ons for user interface and player guides to explain mechanics. While I consider this dungeon fun, it's only after googling it's mechanics. Without google idk how you may figured out that you not only must not stay in place when Veli performs that attack, but that you need to make 2 (!) dodges exactly when green circle vanishes.

Mureel

@Lynx7386
Also, a mechanic a lot of people do not know (even those who tell others to L2P): THE TANK SHOULD NOT ULT esp on HM because, she will drain the one with highest ult, and it counts both bars.

This means that when it is TANK (and their highest stat determines ball colour - so stam builds will make stam drain, mana, mana drain, etc.); if tank never ults you only get RED balls, and this can be healed through/damage can still happen, block, shield, healing if you bring one can still happen.

IDEALLY everyone but the tank should ult ASAP and tank never should. THis way, VELI always drains tank and not other people. This will stop the green and blue balls from being all over and then you only need self heal/block/shield and still have resources to DPS.

If everyone is fast on their feet and avoid all balls and DPS is high, then this mechanic is a non issue. However but for people wanting HMs etc - then this is something that will help you.

Drummerx04

MartiniDaniels wrote: »

ZOS relies on player add-ons for user interface and player guides to explain mechanics. While I consider this dungeon fun, it's only after googling it's mechanics. Without google idk how you may figured out that you not only must not stay in place when Veli performs that attack, but that you need to make 2 (!) dodges exactly when green circle vanishes.

Thread Necromancy aside, a little observation + trial and error goes a long way. You have to assume that the mechanics are intended to be solvable. If you take twice your health in unresistable damage from a ground spike while running around after being told "DON'T MOVE A MUSCLE" ... that's probably a clue.

Maybe it takes a few tries to put 2 and 2 together, but it's not like you are required to solve 5th order differential equations to get past the mechanics, but all of the mechanics boil down to a few possibilities given the way the game is structured.

1. kill a secondary target(s)
2. dodge an attack
3. don't stand somewhere
4. stand somewhere specific
5. use a synergy
6. interrupt something

Sometimes things can be a bit over tuned and really rough to deal with, but realistically you are solving the problems using the tools above. Sure fights are generally harder if you can't deal good damage, but they are generally constructed to be doable with 2 dps pulling 30k at most.

kathandira

Lynx7386 wrote: »

mrfrontman wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Whoever designed this dungeon needs to get fired. Literally the worst thing I have ever wasted 3 hours on in this game.

Cradle of Shadows is easy, even on hard mode.

l2p issues?

So tell me, what's your strategy in a fight where you constantly lose all magicka, stamina, and ultimate, and randomly take 40k damage spikes?

Learn to play my arse. This isn't a l2p issue, it's a zos doesn't know frak all about how to design interesting boss mechanics so get just give you a giant middle finger.

Avoid the Orbs, easy enough.

Massive spike, I assume you mean the 1 shot mechanic. That has to be roll dodged.