Imperial City Story Missions

jfgribbin

I am very new to Elder Scrolls Online but have played it for some 10+ a day on average due to being otherwise stuck at home long before all of this virus nonsense. I have previously spent years playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim using mods but recently decided to try ESO. I went all in; bought everything. But I am big believer in solo single player aspects of games; no PVP at all; no hate; just not my thing. But the Imperial City has Zone Story like all the other zones. But it can only be entered via Campaign and I can’t seem to get through any significant mission battles because as soon as I am battling Daedra or just trying to get to the next objective i am mobbed by 2 or more enemy players if I am not simply killed from behind before I even know someone is there.

So my question is this. Is it just nearly impossible to do the Story Zone missions unless a player can figure out how to avoid every other player? Are these story missions I just wasted money on? I am just trying to see if I am missing something that would make it possible to just complete the solo components of this DLC.

Thank you for any information.

FierceSam

On the plus side, Imperial City is part of the base game, so you haven’t spent any additional money on it.

On the minus side, the PvE elements of Imperial City take place alongside the PvP elements and are inseparable from them. It’s possible to finish them, as many players have, but to do so you’re likely to want to be a little PvP focussed.

Despite spending 10 hours a day in the game, there is still a huge amount of PvE content for you to explore. I’d put Imperial City on the back burner while you explore other elements of the stories in the game. Once you’ve done them you might feel more inclined to revisit Imperial City. I’d really recommend doing it with others, when it can be really enjoyable.

Good luck and have fun.

indigorune

I've had success doing IC on my nightblade and with invisibility pots. i just pay attention to my surroundings, scope out the area near the quest pointer first, then stealth into the shadows to move to the next objective. I still have a lot of unfinished achievements down there though.

CMDR_Un1k0rn

My advice is to use a PvP build.

A well-rounded build too.

You might want to look at the Dragonknight class. It's a very survivable class with a lot of features that lend well to the hostile environment of PvP zones.

It's also particularly good for solo-PvP players.

doomette

Doing those missions on your own can be a huge pain, which is unfortunate because I rather liked the story and thought the ending in particular was good. Sometimes you get lucky and either your alliance is dominating the district you need, or you’ll encounter awesome enemy players who won’t mess with you when they see you’re doing the quests. If you’re in a guild or otherwise have in-game friends, you can try asking them to back you up. You could also try asking zone, but be warned, I’ve seen players do this and just get insults for being a PVE-er in response. 🙄
For me, PVP gear (just crafted impen stuff on all except my main), situational awareness, some PVP experience from semi-regular trips to Cyro, and invisibility potions for emergencies got me through it several times solo. Oh and perseverance. Lots of that. Dropping off my remaining TV in the bank and going back until I finished. Fighting back if I was in a mood, because players who try for low-hanging fruit are often not particularly good.

Oh, and when you’re doing the quest that involves defending the garrison, if you’re in the middle of defending the door and get killed by players, stick around and don’t rez. You’ll probably get credit for that quest objective once they finish off the NPCs.
Also be warned that the big district bosses have an anti-stealth aura around them, so if you’re hiding from other players and see one approach, make sure you’re not within that aura.

Starlock

I did the quest line back before IC was it’s own campaign, so there were few players to bother with. What I would suggest now is roll up a nightblade and build around stealth and speed. You’ll be able to avoid virtually any engagement you don’t want to deal with and focus on the story.

ArchMikem

The only way I managed to finish the Questline was to play as a Nightblade making extensive use of Cloak, and playing in the middle of the night when most everyone else was logged off. A nearly empty Imperial City makes for stress free questing, and if I did run across enemy players, I spammed cloak and ran off into hiding.

For other character classes, all I could say is invest in some invisibility potions and chug one whenever you come across another player.

geonsocal

you're going to have to work hard and smart to complete those missions...

you'll also need to get lucky on your timing - you're going to need help finishing: arena, temple, and which ever district has the guard the doors mission...

they can be soloed, but, it's challenging...

especially when somebody or somebodies comes along to kill you while you're fighting...

of all the different types of pvp: IC requires your best build...that's where some of the very best pvpers in the game like to hang out...

however you do it (blade of woe helps), stay in stealth as much as possible if you're rolling through there solo...

Major_Lag

CMDR_Un1k0rn wrote: »

My advice is to use a PvP build.

A well-rounded build too.

Very "helpful", really - considering what the OP has said:

jfgribbin wrote: »

But I am big believer in solo single player aspects of games; no PVP at all; no hate; just not my thing.

No PvP build will do the OP any good if they don't know how to PvP and do not wish to do so.
There is just no comparing between PvE and PvP, it's like a completely different game.

If the OP is not interested in PvP at all, then there's no point in using a PvP build - it wouldn't do any good, and the PvP-only Impen trait is worthless for pure PvE.
Use a solid, survivable "solo PvE" build - for example, the 1 bar vMA build on a magSorc. You will be totally wrecked by any enemy players - but if you never intend to fight them anyway, then it doesn't matter in the end anyhow.

In any case, using a Nightblade character is a good idea, as others have suggested. Preferably a magicka NB, since they can use invisibility much more heavily than stamina builds can afford to.

I've done the IC questline on all of my characters, and I was blown away by how much more convenient it was on my magNB. Especially in the sewers, where I ran past dozens of enemy players who were never aware that they were not alone in the dark
Of course eventually you will run into a magSorc in one of the narrow corridors, and then the party's over. Oh well.
Still, the overall success rate was very high - much higher than what I expected, given the sheer availability of hard counters to Cloak.

If you absolutely want/need to do the IC questline on a class other than NB, bring a stack of invisibility potions and be mindful of the potion cooldown.
You can enchant your jewelry with 3x potion duration enchantment - with that you can get about 22-25 seconds out of a single potion, which is over 50% uptime. But your build will become weaker overall, since you lose out on 3 stat-providing glyphs.
Preferably, use a separate set of such jewelry only for moving around, then change back to your normal "combat jewelry" just before engaging in the more difficult quest fights.

Ever since IC was made into its own campaign, that reduced the number of available IC instances from 6 (8 if you also counted the below lvl 50 campaign) to just 2.
Ostensibly, this was done in an attempt to consolidate the already tiny PvP player population IC had at the time - much to the chagrin of telvar farmers and PvE questers, as the OP has found out the hard way.

Personally, I found that the best time to do the quests in relative peace is around 2...4AM GMT (on PCEU) - ideally on workdays. Avoid Fridays and weekends, as that's when player populations tend to spike in general.

If you find yourself getting killed by the same player more than twice in the same area within a short span of time, it means that they have realized you are a quester, and they are now farming you for free AP and telvar.
When/if this happens, just go somewhere else for several minutes, then try again. In extreme cases, just forget it and try again on another night.
This can be a problem especially with the Arena quest, as there's an achievement for killing enemy players in the arena. But it can also happen quite frequently in the Nobles district, since the quest there involves fairly protracted fights out in the open.

geonsocal

good stuff major lag...

thankfully not to many folks use magelight or detect pots...

I've tried using invisibility potions with my non nightblades without a whole lot of success...with all the NPCs there it seemed easy to get pulled out of stealth...

I end up needing more stam pots than anything for my magicka toons in IC...lots and lots of crouching when moving around...

Major_Lag

geonsocal wrote: »

good stuff major lag...

thankfully not to many folks use magelight or detect pots...

I've tried using invisibility potions with my non nightblades without a whole lot of success...with all the NPCs there it seemed easy to get pulled out of stealth...

I end up needing more stam pots than anything for my magicka toons in IC...lots and lots of crouching when moving around...

For moving around, it helps to use the same kind of build you'd use for the Dark Brotherhood sacraments.
IIRC it's something like 3pc Night Terror, 4pc Darloc's, 5pc Night's Silence.
This works great even on magicka characters, if you put some stam regen enchants on jewelry. Your offensive stats wil be garbage, but that's not a build for fighting with.
With such a setup, you need to be closer than approx. 2 or 3 meters to an NPC to get detected - it's like they are deaf and blind

And yeah, in my experience very few players use any form of stealth detection unless actively provoked (for example if they see you drop Cloak).
The major exception here being Sorcs (esp. magSorcs), who frequently keep up Boundless/Hurricane for the speed buff even when out of combat. In the open it's easy to avoid - but in the sewer passageways you are generally screwed, especially if they are sprinting.

doomette

Even if I plan on just doing PVE stuff, the thought of not using impen makes me uneasy. Frankly, there are also a good number of really awful wannabe gankers that can be foiled with just impen gear alone (not even changing CP around). But if people find it works, that’s cool, you’re braver than me, heh. I just prefer that little extra protection and the trash mobs encountered during the quests die fast even without divines, faster than regular overland trash mobs it seems (are they debuffed or something?)

Major_Lag

doomette wrote: »

trash mobs encountered during the quests die fast even without divines

The problem isn't with the trashmobs, they are roughly the same as generic Craglorn trash in terms of amount of HP and difficulty. Which is to say, a complete joke when using any halfway viable PvE build (or any viable PvP build, for that matter.
District quest bosses, now that's where the main difficulty lies.

Generally speaking, there are 3 encounters that are actually challenging to solo:
1. Arena district arena. The last boss has a mechanic which hits for insane damage if you get caught in the (well telegraphed) AoE, and there is a lot of incoming damage due to the adds. Also because of the achievement tied to it, the arena is a magnet for gankers in general.
2. Temple district (?) Daedric Titan boss. He leaves lingering, very damaging fire trails on the ground, and it's quite possible to get "boxed in" by the fire if you don't plan your movements carefully. On top of that he also has some pretty hard-hitting attacks which need to be dodged - and you really don't want to be dodging into the fire.
3. Nobles district door defense. The enemies are mostly just trash, only the final boss is mildly challenging but no big deal. But the real issue here is that you are fighting completely out in the open, and so you will be spotted from a mile away if there are any enemy players around.

Overall I really like the IC quest line design, IMO one of the best quest lines in all of ESO.
But I also like to keep my PvE and PvP gameplay strictly separated, which is why I did these quests at times when I knew I would be highly unlikely to run into any enemy players.

And just for the lolz, I tried clearing the Arena quest boss during the IC event last year. As expected, it was impossible - even when I got a few friends to help, we got repeatedly wiped by a 24 man yellow zerg cruising around the district, fun times

driosketch

I did these when it first came out.

Temple boss, I got wiped by a group of yellows but stayed on the ground while they wiped the Titan and got credit.

Arena, I logged out, while stealthed in the arena, waiting on the boss to spawn. When I came back, a group of enemy players were finishing off the boss, and I somehow got credit.

Nobles, nor sure how I beat it. I might have had some allies with me. In any case, I think this might be the hardest currently with regards to other players being around because it has multiple waves at multiple doors and it'll reset on you.

Dagoth_Rac

Major_Lag wrote: »

For moving around, it helps to use the same kind of build you'd use for the Dark Brotherhood sacraments.
IIRC it's something like 3pc Night Terror, 4pc Darloc's, 5pc Night's Silence.
This works great even on magicka characters, if you put some stam regen enchants on jewelry. Your offensive stats wil be garbage, but that's not a build for fighting with.
With such a setup, you need to be closer than approx. 2 or 3 meters to an NPC to get detected - it's like they are deaf and blind

If you do those 3 sets on a Khajiit, will your detection radius be so small that you basically can't be detected short of bumping into the enemy?

Major_Lag

driosketch wrote: »

Nobles, nor sure how I beat it. I might have had some allies with me. In any case, I think this might be the hardest currently with regards to other players being around because it has multiple waves at multiple doors and it'll reset on you.

Actually, the quest progression is extremely lenient - clearing any single door permanently marks it as cleared, so even if you die you never have to redo it again.

In that sense, the Arena quest is the most unforgiving - the game does not keep track of which bosses you have already cleared, so if you wipe (or get ganked) on the last boss you have to redo ALL of them again. Unless you get lucky and manage to join someone else who's currently on the last boss.

EDIT:

Dagoth_Rac wrote: »

Major_Lag wrote: »

For moving around, it helps to use the same kind of build you'd use for the Dark Brotherhood sacraments.
IIRC it's something like 3pc Night Terror, 4pc Darloc's, 5pc Night's Silence.
This works great even on magicka characters, if you put some stam regen enchants on jewelry. Your offensive stats wil be garbage, but that's not a build for fighting with.
With such a setup, you need to be closer than approx. 2 or 3 meters to an NPC to get detected - it's like they are deaf and blind

If you do those 3 sets on a Khajiit, will your detection radius be so small that you basically can't be detected short of bumping into the enemy?

Pretty much, yes.
On a non-Khajiit, this lets you run up past enemies' sides almost touching them, the detection distance on enemy sides is like 1m or 0m even on a non-Khajiit.
I don't have any Khajiit characters, but with their racial bonus you should be able to almost touch the enemies from any direction without being detected.
If you have the vampire sneak passive then you can drop Night's Silence for another set with a bonus to detection radius, fun times.

daemonor

Are u queing for nocp or cp campaign? Since you just started and you have no cp to benefit you, you should que for the no CP one cause its emptier. Ignore the nonsense about pvp builds and all, you dont even have acess to proper gear let alone stand a chance to make sense of what is happening with esos fast paced pvp if this is your first week playing.

Me personally, I always do the whole story starting level 10 on the cp campaign on my fresh char cause i find it enjoyable. It can be rough at prime times, but doing it earlier in the morning or later in the evening increases your chances of not getting killed. Im not sold on all that jazz about sneaking and nightblades, its tedious takes forever and every half decent player will probably pull you out of cloack instantly aswell.

If ur on PC EU u can message me and i'll help you out with decent gear so you can kill mobs fast and keep moving to decrease your chance of getting ganked

RaddlemanNumber7

I've completed these quests a few times as a solo PvE player, on most classes. I used a build suitable for soloing the quest bosses (they're tough), never a PvP build.

The key to survival was stealth. Crouched stealth where possible, lots of invis pots for when it's not. Never deliberately break stealth unless the quests require it. Be patient. If you spot a hazard ahead, just wait out of the way 'til it's gone.

If you have started to attack a quest boss or bunch of mobs, such as the ones in the Arena, Temple or Nobles' Districts, and an enemy player(s) comes along and kills you, wait to see what happens. Don't respawn immediately. If the player(s) that killed you goes on to kill the boss/mobs you were fighting you may be credited with the kill as well, even tho you're just lying there dead.

Go in off-peak hours where possible.

Don't expect to end up with much Tel Var. Expect to die.

Dojohoda

Since you are new, I recommend saving IC for later. I could be overstating, but I consider IC an advanced zone because of the potential PVP.

JumpmanLane

jfgribbin wrote: »

I am very new to Elder Scrolls Online but have played it for some 10+ a day on average due to being otherwise stuck at home long before all of this virus nonsense. I have previously spent years playing Fallout 4 and Skyrim using mods but recently decided to try ESO. I went all in; bought everything. But I am big believer in solo single player aspects of games; no PVP at all; no hate; just not my thing. But the Imperial City has Zone Story like all the other zones. But it can only be entered via Campaign and I can’t seem to get through any significant mission battles because as soon as I am battling Daedra or just trying to get to the next objective i am mobbed by 2 or more enemy players if I am not simply killed from behind before I even know someone is there.

So my question is this. Is it just nearly impossible to do the Story Zone missions unless a player can figure out how to avoid every other player? Are these story missions I just wasted money on? I am just trying to see if I am missing something that would make it possible to just complete the solo components of this DLC.

Thank you for any information.

Uhhhhh...try PvPing. Go down there with the mind set "I'm gonna KILL somebody! I hope they show up while I'm doing these quests." I did those quests. They weren't all THAT interesting.

See, I started in Cyro at level 10. I got the invite and thought it was just another facet of the game. I was like if the devs put PvP in the game and invite you at level 10; then you're supposed to be PvPing at LEVEL TEN. You know, it's the game. I didn't have all the wonderful advice you're receiving on this forum to AVOID something that is PART of the game because I didn't know what the forum was.

Anyway you paid for the game. You want to do the quests in IC. Then, do what is necessary to be able to go there and do them. Learn to PvP and get good at it. Drop some dummies down in that hole! Some fool want to interrupt your questing? KILL' EM and take their telvar. And tbag em! Send 'em a hate tell.

Taking a year and "doing other things" aint gonna help ya. Taking a year and learning to PvP MIGHT. Now, for my bona fides: We pulling stripes! I'm a Grade 2 Grand Overlord. And I got mine like 3 the hard way! Not Pvdooring empty keeps, or farming noobs, or ANY of that nonsense; but, methodically killing any fools that showed up, HOWEVER they showed up_ 1v1, 1vX, Xv1. Like I said, I've been lurking around in full cp Cyro when I didn't even HAVE any CP, when the only gear I had was 3 pieces of under level 50 Twin Sister's jewelry I picked up at a dolmen.

When I naturally got killed in Cyro back then I didnt think, "Oh my, what am I to do?" I thought, "What's it gonna take to KILL some of these fools around here?" And I set about doing it. Aint nobody gonna give you nothing in this world. And aint nobody gonna cut you no breaks. You want something in this world? You gotta TAKE it!