Harrowstorms problem

Rackiera

20 + people at 3 different locations waiting for spawn, I don't want to waste 2 hours a day on this , needs a fix

MopeyHat

For anyone looking to do them in the current state, I highly recommend grouping up with folks and spreading out to the various spawns. We had little issue getting them done in a reasonable amount of time with 3-4 people bouncing between two ritual sites each. Hopefully they see the sense in what they did with the dragons in Elsweyr and bring back some kind of active map indicator for the Harrowstorms.

FierceSam

They seem to be doubling down on everything that was badly designed with the Northern Elsweyr dragons... spawning points are too isolated, meaning there are certain spawn points which almost no one goes to and with no clear indication of either which one is up or which one might be next, players are left camping sites to avoid spending all their time rushing from one already completed one to another.

In short they are tedious grindswork for little significant reward and like the Northern Elsweyr dragons they will shortly simply sit there spawned like cheap lightshows waiting desperately for adventurers who simply can't be bother to waste their time on them.

Compare them with the dragons in Southern Elsweyr, which spawn regularly and are close to weyshrines and are being perpetually engaged...

ZOS_Finn

The rate at which Harrowstorms activate is pretty quick but we are looking into reports of "stuck" Harrowstorm locations though thankfully, this is a rare occurrence.

We do appreciate the feedback regarding the Harrowstorms as we want the experience to be rewarding and fun. We use this type of feedback internally for review of these features so it is appreciated.

Flaminir

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

The rate at which Harrowstorms activate is pretty quick but we are looking into reports of "stuck" Harrowstorm locations though thankfully, this is a rare occurrence.

We do appreciate the feedback regarding the Harrowstorms as we want the experience to be rewarding and fun. We use this type of feedback internally for review of these features so it is appreciated.

Cheers Finn.

My experience is that it's taken well over an hour each day to just get 1 simple harrowstorm daily done. 1 day it was 2hours.
That's not rewarding or fun sadly, so have stopped running them now to concentrate on other stuff.

Fingers crossed they improve a bit, as they do look spectacular! 👍

Thoragaal

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

The rate at which Harrowstorms activate is pretty quick but we are looking into reports of "stuck" Harrowstorm locations though thankfully, this is a rare occurrence.

We do appreciate the feedback regarding the Harrowstorms as we want the experience to be rewarding and fun. We use this type of feedback internally for review of these features so it is appreciated.

Thank you Finn for keeping us updated. Much appreciated!

Veinblood1965

Are the rewards better than normal dailies?

dhboy123

Veinblood1965 wrote: »

Are the rewards better than normal dailies?

no.

Marcusorion1

Rewards could be better considering the effort ( actually for all the dailies in Western Skyrim, single item rewards for WB killing and delve exploration is a lackluster incentive )

Also came across a "stalled" storm in Blackreach last night..storm appeared, lightning came down but no further action occurred - is this normal?

b101uk

came across a stalled Harrowstorm at Chilblain peak ritual site today, was like that for ~30mins as I was going back and forth past it doing other things.

dhboy123

Whole chapter just seems rushed and the devs seem to have ignored PTS comments.

Integral1900

The rewards are very little, I am just doing it for the spectacle, including selling the drops it’s 4 or 500 absolutele most, just junk items

Prrasha

The rewards are quite bad, especially compared to dragons.

The one I would like to point out is that the "document pouch" rewards from harrowstorms don't seem to contain recipes. I've gotten at least 5 of them, and all have had only a single pardon edict in them. Dragon document pouches contained recipes AND edicts.

Hurbster

The inconvenience/reward factor does seem to be skewed in favour of the inconvenience here. Wayshrine placement is pretty bad in Western Skyrim to be honest. It's bad enough with a max speed horse with raps, what about new characters on basic mounts and no raps ?

lucky_Sage

Hurbster wrote: »

The inconvenience/reward factor does seem to be skewed in favour of the inconvenience here. Wayshrine placement is pretty bad in Western Skyrim to be honest. It's bad enough with a max speed horse with raps, what about new characters on basic mounts and no raps ?

The worse are the 2 on the western part where there’s to way shrines not far from each other but to harrowstorms that you have run from south end to northern and to get to that side have to run through a mountain range. Also should not take more than 30 min or so to complete 3 daily quest in a zone it took me over 1.5 hours to do them way to long for dailies

Varana

Prrasha wrote: »

The rewards are quite bad, especially compared to dragons.

The one I would like to point out is that the "document pouch" rewards from harrowstorms don't seem to contain recipes. I've gotten at least 5 of them, and all have had only a single pardon edict in them. Dragon document pouches contained recipes AND edicts.

Might be an idea to file a bug report about that, that doesn't sound intended.

Marcusorion1

NA server Friday nite , as expected campers at Blackreach destroy the storms well before a player has a hope of getting to them from the closest wayshrine. Only option is to sit and join them and hope to do enough damage to count..if you die you will not likely rez in time to be counted for loot/daily .

We saw this early on with the original dragons in North Els and it does drop off as people get the achieves and/or lose interest entirely ( so much so that often North Els dragons have no groups hunting after them ).

Overland storms were very scarce and had far less players in attendance - although the battles were more fun/challenging it was certainly less incentive to try and complete 3 for the daily and the lackluster rewards.

Considering it was the first Friday night from the release the absence of players at overland storms was surprising to me. Apparently the mind set of "camp it in Blackreach" has prevailed.

BlueRaven

There are many issues with harrowstorms at the moment. With the difficulty in doing them, added with some inconvenient placing, and no map icons, means a few of them are just not going to get large (or possibly any) groups.

In addition the rewards are just not there. Dragons dropped a ring and a chance at furniture designs. Current drops appear to have little more then low level vendor-able items.

I am doing them on my main for the achievements, but they are very “skippable” for my alts. There is just little reason to do them.

Nemesis7884

i had a really long time none and then all 3 i needed in a row .. so

phileunderx2

The loot rewards are not worth the effort. So I only complete these if I happen to be near one that is active

Jaraal

We were discussing this in Blackreach last night. People were waiting at all the ritual sites, but there were no active storms. Someone theorized that they were probably occurring in different instances. In the same manner that people can be in the same group but not see their groupmates until they port to their instance, it's possible that these storms are spawning in different instances than where the players are, therefore they are not being defeated to spawn the next successive storm.

One curious clue I had was that my Votan's minimap kept flickering off and on. When you are in combat, the map conveniently minimizes itself so it's not on your screen while fighting. But once you lose aggro.... by distance, LOS, or mob death... the map reappears. It's a useful visual tool in that regard.

I was /sitchair-ing around the campfire with the three travelers and some other players, waiting for a storm. I looked at my minimap, it said "Gloomforest Ritual Site". The map would disappear, I thought, Yay, a storm is coming.... but then it would pop back on. And it did this several times.

I never left that spawn point, but after a few minutes I noticed my minimap said I was at "Dwarf's Bane Ritual Site." How could this be? I haven't moved. But then the NPCs started talking to my mind, the sky turned red, and the storm began.

(Yes, I understand that addons can be bugged, I had just updated it the same day, that's not the point. The question is, why would it say I was in two different places at the same time? It's just another clue that it could be an instance bug.)

Prrasha wrote: »

The rewards are quite bad, especially compared to dragons.

The one I would like to point out is that the "document pouch" rewards from harrowstorms don't seem to contain recipes. I've gotten at least 5 of them, and all have had only a single pardon edict in them. Dragon document pouches contained recipes AND edicts.

Agree with this. I've only ever gotten pardon edicts from storms. I've also only found one green zone specific furnishing plan in hours of stealing/fighting/looting, but found several green and blue old world furnishing plans. The drop rate for new recipes is horrendous compared to when Elsweyr dropped.

lucky_Sage

Jaraal wrote: »

We were discussing this in Blackreach last night. People were waiting at all the ritual sites, but there were no active storms. Someone theorized that they were probably occurring in different instances. In the same manner that people can be in the same group but not see their groupmates until they port to their instance, it's possible that these storms are spawning in different instances than where the players are, therefore they are not being defeated to spawn the next successive storm.

One curious clue I had was that my Votan's minimap kept flickering off and on. When you are in combat, the map conveniently minimizes itself so it's not on your screen while fighting. But once you lose aggro.... by distance, LOS, or mob death... the map reappears. It's a useful visual tool in that regard.

I was /sitchair-ing around the campfire with the three travelers and some other players, waiting for a storm. I looked at my minimap, it said "Gloomforest Ritual Site". The map would disappear, I thought, Yay, a storm is coming.... but then it would pop back on. And it did this several times.

I never left that spawn point, but after a few minutes I noticed my minimap said I was at "Dwarf's Bane Ritual Site." How could this be? I haven't moved. But then the NPCs started talking to my mind, the sky turned red, and the storm began.

(Yes, I understand that addons can be bugged, I had just updated it the same day, that's not the point. The question is, why would it say I was in two different places at the same time? It's just another clue that it could be an instance bug.)

Prrasha wrote: »

The rewards are quite bad, especially compared to dragons.

The one I would like to point out is that the "document pouch" rewards from harrowstorms don't seem to contain recipes. I've gotten at least 5 of them, and all have had only a single pardon edict in them. Dragon document pouches contained recipes AND edicts.

Agree with this. I've only ever gotten pardon edicts from storms. I've also only found one green zone specific furnishing plan in hours of stealing/fighting/looting, but found several green and blue old world furnishing plans. The drop rate for new recipes is horrendous compared to when Elsweyr dropped.

My first day I got like 15 furnishing recipes second day zero so don’t know if it’s bad rng or bug. But there is definitely something wrong with the storms if they are suppose to be just as active as anchors

Jaraal

lucky_Sage wrote: »

My first day I got like 15 furnishing recipes second day zero so don’t know if it’s bad rng or bug. But there is definitely something wrong with the storms if they are suppose to be just as active as anchors

While doing Nchuthnkarst public dungeon last night I noticed that the Dwemer pots, jugs, urns, and other containers were about as populated as normal in other dungeons, but in certain sections I could go 50 or more containers before I found a full one.... they were all empty. And it was my first time there.... it's not like I had looted them earlier and they just hadn't respawned with items.

So there is definitely something wacky going on with the RNG or container/pocket loot in Greymoor and Blackreach.

Sarannah

Right now almost everyone is in Skyrim/Blackreach doing harrowstorms.... and there are barely any people at a harrowstorm when one is active. This is because we do not know where they spawn/have spawned. And if you wait at a specific location for one to spawn, you will wait for over an hour. And if you don't wait at a specific location, you will always arrive too late if anyone announces a spawn in chat.

I have waited at dolmens and geysers before, but never ever this long(like 10-15 min max). And there would always be more people rushing in before it finished.

Can't imagine how anyone will ever get harrowstorms done when the Skyrim hype is over, as there will be barely anyone going to them. As right now, there are only 5-6 people tops doing an active harrowstorm(while they need more). Everyone else either arrives too late, or doesn't bother as they are so inconvenient.

This is also another major advantage geysers and dolmens have over harrowstorms: They are alot easier to do, with 1-3 people even. Which keeps the respawns going, even if barely anyone is online. So those waiting at an inactive site, won't have to wait for too long.

PS: The first harrowstorm site I found, I figured their spawning worked like dolmens and geysers. So eagerly to see how they worked, I decided to wait at that site. After waiting for an hour and 20 minutes, I decided log off in disappointment. *There were about 40 people there, expecting the same thing! While chat was filled with "When is the spawn?"*

biovitalb16_ESO

Been standing at the Giant's Coast Ritual Site for 1.5 hours now and it still has not spawned.

[Snip]

[Edited for thread bumping]

Hurbster

The rewards just are not worth it. Heck, might go back to doing dragons. At least you get the occasional useful reward.

Chryseia

@Sarannah, you do not need to wait at a site to see it will spawn. I know I said this all earlier in this thread, but a lot of the comments are about this same issue, so repeating it here with more detail:

You can see 4 out of 6 of the harrowstorms in western skyrim without ever moving away from a wayshrine. I am not sure if you can see them at low draw distances, but at high draw distances you definitely can.

Note, it takes 2-3 mins for a storm to form enough to be visible from a distance after the last storm dies. No one typically calls them until they are visible from a distance though, and in fact you cant even start attacking them until they have been visible for a minute or so anyways, so you won't miss anything by waiting for this.

from morthal wayshrine, without moving anywhere, you can see:

• black morass
• old karth
• hailstone
• chillblain (when the weather is clear)

from dragon bridge wayshrine, without moving anywhere, you can see:

• chillblain
• old karth
• black morass

from kilkreath wayshrine you can see:

• northern watch (you have to do a short run away from the wayshrine to see it. JUST to the top of the cliff. you do NOT need to go down the cliff to see this)
• chillblain (when the weather is clear)
• possibly others - I haven't checked to confirm.

The only tricky one to check is giant coast, because while you CAN see it after a short run from deepwood wayshrine, from a couple of very small, specific vantage points, it is very faint and difficult to see in bad weather. I usually only check this one if I have confirmed the other 5 haven't spawned after 5 minutes have passed since the last died.

Thus, in about a minute, you can easily check 5 out of 6 sites to see if they are active. It is very easy to do. There is no reason to camp one site, unless you want to frustrate and bore yourself.

That being said, ZoS, please add a map icon to identify the active storm. I am very tired of typing this long explanation in zone chat. Most people do not call storms, which can be frustrating. And having had map icons last year, this feels like an unnecessarily frustrating and annoying step backwards.

16BitForestCat

ZOS_Finn wrote: »

Harrowstorms are, by nature, chaotic events and the forces controlling them are not as predictable as one might think. If a Harrowstorm has not shown up at a designated location recently, it may behoove you to seek them elsewhere.

In short, Harrowstorms are more random than say... Dark Anchors. They are not a set pattern and there is no guarantee that not seeing one at a specific location for any given time will result in it showing up soon.

Welllllll, Old Karth Ritual Site is apparently taking "random" to a new level. For the past three days that I've been in Western Skyrim, chat has been full of people complaining that it almost never spawns. Out of curiosity, and since it's the only storm I haven't completed, I camped that site myself for an hour and a half yesterday. Every other storm but that one spawned multiple times. Old Karth? Not even once.

Today, the exact same thing. I popped a two-hour food buff to help kill a world boss, then ran to Old Karth immediately afterward and haven't left. (I'm working in the background out of game, so no big deal lurking.)

My two-hour food buff wore off over twenty minutes ago with no appearance from Old Karth. Meanwhile, the two nearest harrowstorms have come and gone multiple times, and zone chat has been full of people announcing all the others are up from time to time. I've got time to kill since I'm working, but I feel so sorry for people who don't have a lot of time and are wasting it at a harrowstorm that seems to spawn only very rarely.

Holy crap! As I was typing this, Old Karth finally spawned! That was 2.5 hours of waiting for me. Others who got there before me had been waiting even longer. That definitely seems more like a bug than a feature.

Czeri

Based on my current experience I don't believe Dwarf's Bane is ever active...

Recent

Yea im running our of time to do dailies cos of so muchh delay between harrow storms, turns something fun into a frustrating activity i now kinda resent. Please fix this ty cos i do love Greymoor.