Companions levels, frends, and more questions.

SpiralStorm4

Salutations to everyone here!

I am Zanzyrox, an advanced Sorcerer and intrepid adventurer. But I do have my fair share of concerns...To kick off my list of such, I'd like to ask about the recently-introduced Companions. First and foremost, are they worth going the extra mile to obtain and have active? Secondly, are there still only two Companions to select from? Next, of their equipment, which companion-centric equipment traits are the best for companions to use, overall? Also, is there anything I need to know about leveling their skills? If I can make the most of my companions, then I'm sure I can do well in a Trial-group.

Next off, speaking of Trials, I notice many folks in Tamriel, whose levels are in the upper-1,000s, 2,000s, and above! Meanwhile, my level is not even close to the previous maximum of 810, yet! And I've been completing countless quests ever since the new Champion System was introduced on March 8, 2021. And yet, it seems the experience I've been gaining up to this point is minuscule in comparison to most, if not all other players. Oh yesh...I've tried contacting those pesky devs about a solution. They told me to follow some rather complicated steps, which included repairing my game with all of my addons removed or...Some such. I still haven't seen any faster experience-gains on my main OC. Thus, let me ask you all this: How many levels do you all typically gain when completing quests, killing off monsters, and so on? Do you use any bonus-experience-giving items? If so, which ones, and how often? Is there some untold secret for "power-leveling" which this one does not yet know about? He is timing ALL of his attacks and abilities perfectly, and even Light Attack Weaving whenever possible!

Last, but certainly not least of all, why is the number of buddies AKA frends one can have in Tamriel 100? It is even true for ESO-Plus users, like Zanzyrox! =o_o= Why is this? Even in an old, worn-out game like RuinScape (Formerly RuneScape), the frends-limit for free players is set at 200 and 400 for members, if Khajiit is not mistaken. Surely there must be a reason for such a low limit in ESO, no?

At any rate, these are all the troubles which this one has to concern himself with. For obvious reasons, the lack of my faster level gains is the most concerning for Zanzyrox. Do get back to him soon, yesh?

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Well met and good morrow! Welcome!
First off, companions.
Some love em, some hate em. Maxing them is a REAL grind, but I enjoy them, especially since I do most of my gaming solo.

As far as "power leveling", most all here will yell you to take it slow. You will miss SO much if you speed thru.
As far as the "high levels" you see, I am at 1750CP, but that is 11,500hrs in game.

Use XP scrolls, potions, etc. Find a good social guild with peeps to help. Use training armor. Do main quest lines.
As far as friends list, yes it is 100, but you can be in up to 5 guilds with max of 500 in each, so that is a possible 2500 other friends.
Just my 2 drakes. Let us know what platform you play on and someone will offer help and guild invites.
Again, Welcome and Good Luck.
Huzzah!

El_Borracho

Companions: Quickened is the best trait for gear. After that I'd say Aggressive or Augmented until you unlock their ultimate

Trials: Your rotation and knowing mechanics is more important than your level. However, low level players will struggle in trials more than someone who has 1000+ CP. I'd say a CP 600 could probably fare okay in normal Aetherian Archive, Hel Ra Citadel, and even Cloudrest as long as you allot your CP accordingly. Make sure you have appropriate gear to run these things. If you are a magsorc, I would advise running Mother's Sorrow as one of your sets in a trial. Check out a site like Alcast or others for gear, CP, and advisable skills and rotations for group play.

Levelling: My preference is running group dungeons, specifically the random daily normal. You get a ton of XP, plus learning how to do your rotation in a group setting with mechanics. Then overland content to get all those skill points and skyshards.

Danikat

The first thing to know about high CP players is that the game is 7 years old so some people will have spent years playing it, spending thousands of hours in-game and even if they were levelling slowly they'd have gotten quite a long way by now.

Having said that there are ways to gain XP more quickly, but it's got absolutely nothing to do with your build or attack timing or anything like that. The game doesn't care if you use a perfect rotation with flawless animation cancelling and weaving on one of the most popular meta builds or spam light attacks the entire fight, the XP you get from the enemy will be the same either way. It's the same with quests, it doesn't matter how you complete them, the reward is pre-determined.

What does matter is firstly whether or not you use XP boosts like scrolls or the Witches Festival buff that increase your XP gain and secondly what activities you do. Questing is generally one of the slowest ways to get XP because you'll spend a lot of time going to and from locations, talking to NPCs and doing other things which don't give any XP on their own for a relatively small final reward.

Faster options include finding 'grind spots' where lots of enemies spawn and using a specialist build (usually lots of area effect skills) to kill lots of them quickly over and over again, running dolmens, again killing as many of the enemies as you can and completing each one as quickly as possible then immediately going onto another one (there are groups which will coordinate this in some maps) or doing random dungeons for the extra XP - which is why you'll often find random dungeon groups rushing through without any time to do the quest or explore the dungeon, they want to finish and get out again as soon as possible so they spend as little time as necessary between starting and getting the XP and other rewards.

You might notice all those methods have something in common: they involve a lot of rushing between sources of XP and not a lot else (in fact ideally they'd involve nothing else at all) which doesn't sound very enjoyable for a lot of people. It's not supposed to be, it's a chore to be done because it seems necessary but gotten out of the way as quickly as possible. Personally I wouldn't recommend it unless you actually need to reach a specific CP level quickly (for example you want to join a trials group but you're a bit short of their minimum requirement) or you find the XP bar filling up and CP notifications popping up more enjoyable than the actual activities.

SpiralStorm4

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Well met and good morrow! Welcome!
First off, companions.
Some love em, some hate em. Maxing them is a REAL grind, but I enjoy them, especially since I do most of my gaming solo.

As far as "power leveling", most all here will yell you to take it slow. You will miss SO much if you speed thru.
As far as the "high levels" you see, I am at 1750CP, but that is 11,500hrs in game.

Use XP scrolls, potions, etc. Find a good social guild with peeps to help. Use training armor. Do main quest lines.
As far as friends list, yes it is 100, but you can be in up to 5 guilds with max of 500 in each, so that is a possible 2500 other friends.
Just my 2 drakes. Let us know what platform you play on and someone will offer help and guild invites.
Again, Welcome and Good Luck.
Huzzah!

Hail once more and good morrow and my thanks to you and all others who have taken the time to reply here to me. First off, I offer my most sincere apologies for not responding back to this thread in days. Khajiit has just been so darn busy!

On this note, in response to wenchmore420b14_ESO, I play on the PC platform, though if your guild is comprised at least partially of Reachfolk or at least of Nords, then I may be inclined to join if you'll have a cat. ;-3

And now, back to my questions and follow-up comments regarding Companions...

El_Borracho quoted: "Companions: Quickened is the best trait for gear. After that I'd say Aggressive or Augmented until you unlock their ultimate." My response: Okay, so once I unlock their ultimate, then which armor/weapon traits of theirs ought I need to focus on handing off to them? Furthermore, my question of 'are there still only two Companions to select from?' ...Has not yet been answered by anyone here, yet.

My next issue of "power leveling", has been a perfect rotation with flawless animation canceling and weaving has been satisfactorily answered by all replies herein this thread.

This leads me to ask an additional question: Are there any trials groups, who have minimum CP-level requirements? In response to El_Borracho, I am a Stam-Sorc, not a magsorc. Is being a Stam-Sorc good or bad?

Finally, returning to my friendship question(s), is there a reason for such a low frends list limit in ESO?

Do let Khajiit know soon, alright? Until then, may the Bright Moons guide all your steps! =^_^=

El_Borracho

@SpiralStorm4 I still think Quickened is the best, but arguably Prolific can be a close second once you unlock the ultimate. A lot depends on how you are using your companion, a tank, healer, or another DD. Prolific is nice, though.

As for power leveling, most people who power level do the dolmen farm loop in Alik'r with an XP scroll during an double XP event. Throw in the main line quest and the daily random dungeon and that is a good amount of daily XP. But, as you said, a strong rotation is better than a ton of CP without knowing how to use it.

There are trials guilds who have DPS requirements for trials. While I have not heard of a CP requirement, they are related. Kind of like the power leveling thing, a CP 800 might be able to crank out more DPS than a CP 1000 by virtue of their rotation. Most of the guilds that require a DPS test will tell you what they want and how the test can be accomplished. However, this is the minority of PVE endgame guilds. Most just want you to know the mechanics and to have completed it on normal before jumping into a vet run. Best bet is to find a guild that is fun and does what is called a "prog" run, meaning they are runs to teach players the trial. You can also hang around Craglorn looking for pug groups in zone chat.

As of now, a stam sorc is middle of the pack, around where stamblades, stamplars, and DKs are, just below a stam necro. But its not a massive gulf. Don't get hung up too much on your DPS numbers or parses right now. Most players would rather run with someone who can stay alive, put out solid DPS, and know mechanics than show me he can hit 105K on a dummy.

AcadianPaladin

Still only two companions to choose from. The devs definitely plan more but they want to take their time to refine how companions work, then gradually add more features and more companions.

SpiralStorm4

El_Borracho wrote: »

@SpiralStorm4 I still think Quickened is the best, but arguably Prolific can be a close second once you unlock the ultimate. A lot depends on how you are using your companion, a tank, healer, or another DD. Prolific is nice, though.

As for power leveling, most people who power level do the dolmen farm loop in Alik'r with an XP scroll during an double XP event. Throw in the main line quest and the daily random dungeon and that is a good amount of daily XP. But, as you said, a strong rotation is better than a ton of CP without knowing how to use it.

There are trials guilds who have DPS requirements for trials. While I have not heard of a CP requirement, they are related. Kind of like the power leveling thing, a CP 800 might be able to crank out more DPS than a CP 1000 by virtue of their rotation. Most of the guilds that require a DPS test will tell you what they want and how the test can be accomplished. However, this is the minority of PVE endgame guilds. Most just want you to know the mechanics and to have completed it on normal before jumping into a vet run. Best bet is to find a guild that is fun and does what is called a "prog" run, meaning they are runs to teach players the trial. You can also hang around Craglorn looking for pug groups in zone chat.

As of now, a stam sorc is middle of the pack, around where stamblades, stamplars, and DKs are, just below a stam necro. But its not a massive gulf. Don't get hung up too much on your DPS numbers or parses right now. Most players would rather run with someone who can stay alive, put out solid DPS, and know mechanics than show me he can hit 105K on a dummy.

Hail once more, fellow adventurers!

First of all, I'd like to apologize for the lateness of my response here, if I haven't already. As you can all probably guess, the real world has a tendency to get in my way more often than I'd like it to.

With this being said, I thank El_Borracho for the tips on Companions' traits, guilds, and OC/stam sorc builds. The last part, about where a stam sorc stands was especially helpful. But when you say 'it's not a massive gulf', what do you mean? Though I have run Trials before, since the new Champion System was recently introduced, I feel I would benefit most from finding a "prog" run guild, even though I recently tested my DPS using my latest build, saved to my new Armory furnishing. My new maximum DPS is around 42 and a half-K, up from being 34 and a half-K, 1 or 2 weeks ago. As of today, is this DPS good, bad, or just meh? I honestly don't care about having top-notch survival/tank or DPS skills. Just as long as I can be told: "You have what it takes to do a vet run. Good job!" ...Or words to this effect.

Other than this, it's good to know I didn't miss out on obtaining any secret companions between the latest Deadlands update and the one when those initial 2 companions were first released. And @wenchmore420b14_ESO please let me know if you still want to connect with me in-game. I might learn a new thing or two I never knew before.

Lixiviant

I was just curious if everyone does the companion(s) quests so that they are available for all of your toons or not?

El_Borracho

@SpiralStorm4 when I say massive gulf, there was once a time when Stamina DK and later Stamden were way behind other stamina DDs by 10K DPS. That doesn't happen much anymore as the new CP 2.0 system has pushed everyone towards the middle.

As for 42K, its not bad. Should get you through all normal trials and vet dungeons. As for vet trials, most guilds want your DPS to be at 60K for the veteran Craglorn trials, 65K-70K for MOL, Sunspire, and Cloudrest, and maybe 75K-80K for HOF, AS+, KA and Rockgrove. But that's more for competitive/score runs and keeping the amount of time in the trial to a minimum. 42K can get it done if you are in a decent group and is fine for vet Hel Ra and AA. But you'll get to 60K in no time if you keep working on your rotation. For me, I ran those trials a lot on normal before jumping into a vet run because the mechanics are really the most important thing. MOL is probably the best example of knowing mechanics being more important than DPS, however, good DPS is required too.

The new hybrid gear system will also help tremendously, however, it seems to benefit magicka characters more than stamina.

Check out the guild recruitment boards on this site if you want. I found the guilds I am in by running pugs in Craglorn and falling in with players I like playing with. There is a lot of trial and error in the process but I think that is the best way to find a guild that works for you. Good luck, and remember its a game, so have fun.

Ilsabet

Lixiviant wrote: »

I was just curious if everyone does the companion(s) quests so that they are available for all of your toons or not?

I got both companions for my main character, and fully leveled their rapport and all the achievement trappings for her. Beyond that, I've only gotten Mirri for one alt character that I do a lot of questing on with a friend. For me, since I don't use most of my alts enough to say so, it wouldn't be worth doing the quests to unlock companions for them unless I decided I wanted to use them for something substantial enough to be worth the time.

Necrotech_Master

Lixiviant wrote: »

I was just curious if everyone does the companion(s) quests so that they are available for all of your toons or not?

companion quests are tied to rapport, which is tracked separately per character (the only thing with companions tracked separately, everything else is account based)

realistically you only need 1 character to max rapport to get the quests to finish the achievements for the keepsakes (account unlocks) that allow all of your characters to benefit from the passive companion bonuses without companions present (mirris chance to get bonus treasure from chests, bastions chance to get better generic pots)