PTS Update 34 - Feedback Thread for Zeal of Zenithar

ZOS_GinaBruno

This is the official feedback thread for the Zeal of Zenithar event on the PTS. Specific feedback that the team is looking for includes the following:

• Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?
• Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?
• Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!
• Do you have any other general feedback?

Cerulione

(snip)

probably a non-existent issue, I'll check with more people before reposting.

PeacefulAnarchy

Cerulione wrote: »

Do you have any other general feedback?

Since we are bringing indriks back, it seems that our collection of indrik fragments (berries & feathers) disappears in live server, including previously partial collection of nascent indrik fragments & evolution fragments previously collected. Is this intentional and is there no way to recover the parts we previously obtained please, @ZOS_GinaBruno? Some guildsmate also note the same that previously collected & unassembled berries and feathers disappeared. Each guildies I spoke with and myself, we are sure we do have the odds berries and feathers leftover after the end of indrik event reward season.

This will mean we actually lose progression over tickets we spent in the previous years, if possible it's nice to get back the partial progression fragments.

My previously collected berries did not disappear, in fact I created a new indrik today from saved berries. The listing for empty fragment collections did disappear, though.

TPishek

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?
Being unable to break free from the werewolf wasn't fun, basically forces you to have a friend or a random person break you free, despite there being other aspects of the event that can be done solo (writs, leveling dailies, etc).

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?
No, didn't have anyone to group with.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!
There was a lot on unnamed NPCs; I didn't see anyone I knew despite being on my main quester. It was also a bit crowded and claustrophobic.
EDIT: Resetting the zone a few times I found 3 different encounters. Didn't seem to be any more than that, though.

Do you have any other general feedback?
Not really, just remove the unbreakable stun on the wolf.

MafiaCat115

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

I completed both the introductory quest and the daily. I like how the introductory quest gave me such a detailed introduction to the worshipping practices that Zenithar's followers perform. It does feel much longer than usual holiday introductory quests, but that could easily be part of the hard working beliefs of his followers. I like the daily quest and how it gives us a handful of different ways to complete it, though!

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?

Unfortunately, not yet. Though it sounds like a great way to encourage people teaming up and working together.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!

I have seen an NPC both times I've gone looking. So glad to see that a fan-favorite Dunmer made it to the happenings!

Do you have any other general feedback?

This event might challenge the Anniversary Event as my new favorite. I've gotten good loot so far, and I love the discounts across so many activities in the game!

On a different note, I am excited to see that the Indriks will be purchasable again! I missed out on them when they were initially around, and the feathers being cheaper is an amazing plus! However, looking at the cost of the berries alone may seem discouraging when one considers that there is current content being featured in the Impresario's inventory at the same time. With 8 Indrik evolutions, each requiring 40 berries just to evolve, the event ticket costs seem too high. This is with considering that many events give around 42 event tickets. With having to buy feathers after each evolution, berries for each evolution, and buying the current year's collectible all at the same time, the event ticket costs get to be overwhelming.

One suggestion I've seen here on the forums is to add an "Indrik Grab Bag", which could be 2 event tickets and could have a random feather, berry, or pet, in addition to having the fragments you can buy directly for a higher price. This way players could get Indrik fragments for cheaper, but at the cost of it being random. Conversely, making the berries 5 event tickets each could also work, since then it would be 160 tickets to get all of the berries compared to 320.

Overall, I like the event and will be looking forward to it!

chessalavakia_ESO

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

Yeah.

Baked Apples did not appear under the quest only option for cooking.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!

I saw Arbitrator Gavos and Daluion on the char that did Zenithar's Abbey. My other characters that visited didn't recognize anyone.

Do you have any other general feedback?

It's nice that the dogs can be interacted with in the event area. It feels a little odd that many of the other npcs can't be interacted with such as some of the npcs that look like they cold be vendors.

I pickpocketed around 70 items in High Isle and I didn't get anything Zenithar related. Assuming that's the intended rarity and not a bug, I'd suggest not documenting that pickpocketing can give you the Zenithar stuff. If it's not documented, finding on is a nice surprise rather than a why is this taking so long.

Opening a gold item to get another gold item then opening that gold item to get 500 gold kinda felt like a letdown.

mistpeak

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

I did complete it, but the end boss should be easy to solo or remove it altogether. I don't want to have to worry about grouping for an intro quest.

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?

No


Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!

I saw Gwendis there which was nice. But I've done most of the main quest lines, so I was surprised no one else showed up.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Where is Zanil Theran the Luxury Furniture seller? He's listed as one of the merchants on the map, but he's the only one who didn't show up. Will he only be there on the weekend, or are you letting him sell during the week just for this event? (the latter would be awesome)

I'm glad you've included plenty of options for solo play, but please change that intro quest and remove/nerf that boss so anyone can do that quest.

acastanza_ESO

WRT the Zeal of Zenithar event specifically; I'm not a huge fan of needing to group specifically with guild members. It's fine if you want to have a grouping aspect to the event but specifically forcing people to join guilds to participate is pretty uncool. It should work with any group.

Also, the thieving aspects of a Zenithar event is super out of place from a lore perspective.

Finally, not strictly Zeal of Zenithar feedback but since it was included in the same section and is happening at the same time; I'm so happy you're finally bringing back the Indriks (and pets!), I missed them by a few months when I started playing again and missing out on that has been my #1 ESO regret. Thrilled to finally be able to fill that gap (and have Indriks other than the Evergloam one to match other outfits!)

Contraptions

Not liking how you need to force people to group up with guild members. I also agree that being in any group at all should work. If not, I foresee myself just grouping with random people from my guild in another zone just so I can flag myself as eligible for the parcels when I go dolmen farming in alikr for example.

I also hope that the limit on daily writ boxes is removed. Zenithar is about craft and toil and nothing fits this more than daily writs.

The rest of the event seems fine. The discounts on vendors and the return of the indriks is a pleasant surprise.

almzau

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

Intro quest worked fine.

Daily quest - I am unable to get it to complete when trying to "trade with the local vendors" I have tried:

• Buying from a guild trader in Belkarth
• Listing an item for sale on my guild trader
• Buying an item from the guild store via the Bank interface

LonePirate

I completed the introductory quest which I thought would serve new players very well as it provided an instruction screen for joining groups. I suspect new players have no idea how to do this so educating them on this process was a pleasant surprise.

However, when I completed the Honest Toil quest and I received my gold Zenithar reward box, it contained perhaps the absolute worst special reward I have ever received from any event gift box - an Impresario Group Repair Kit. This is a HORRIBLE item to put in a gold reward box that is supposed to serve as the premier gold or purple reward within the box. These repair kits are unwanted trash for most players as repairs are cheap anyway and even more so during this event when repair costs have been reduced. These group repair kits might be an acceptable filler item in a green, blue or purple reward box; but they should never, ever under any circumstances take the place of a style page or motif page or some high end item that makes the gold reward box golden in quality. This reward was an insult. They should be removed from gold reward boxes and replaced with an appropriate quality item. These group repair kits are trash items.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

Yes I completed it. Feedback is as follows:

• For the step to make Baked Apples, my character already knew the recipe but was being directed to the chef anyway - I was expecting something more like the Writ certifiers, where you tell them you already have the thing and they go ‘Ah, so you do! Moving on!’
• The Maple wood step doesn’t specify Raw or Sanded, and the wood you’re supposed to harvest doesn’t appear to actually be the normal crafting wood - I had a bunch of both Maple types in my craft bag and thought for a moment the quest was broken because it wasn’t updating to reflect that I already had the wood. Turns out there’s a quest generated node of Maple I had to harvest from. This is unintuitive and frustrating, and I consider this problematic if your goal is for this to be a tutorial for newer players.

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?

No, not yet.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!

No I just saw event NPCs.

Do you have any other general feedback?

• My character already had the Luminous Indrik but the berries for same were still available to buy - to my knowledge there’s no way to use duplicates so those should be disabled in the interface if I already have the mount.
• Second that having all those vendors and no way to actually buy from them is unfortunate.
• My Star-Gazer character was giving Mr. Varo the stink-eye for the constant bad-mouthing of thieves while he and his associates were camped out on The Thief’s doorstep. Please pass along to the Temple of Zenithar that if he wants more attention he should have showed up to help fight the Serpent.

Quasi-related, thank you for adding the word ‘guarjillion’ to my vocabulary.

Kesstryl

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?

Yes I did them. I'm not a fan of the boss you have to get the awl from as he is self healing and soloing on my tank made him impossible to defeat. Not many people were around to help take him down.

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?

No one in any of my guilds is on PTS at the same time I am. Forcing grouping with guildmates might backfire if it's impossible to find people on who want to participate. It might be better to just let strangers group up. Sometimes that becomes a way to make new friends too.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!

I went there on 5 different alts that completed a variety of content, the only one I saw was Gwendis on my alt that finished the Dark Heart of Skyrim story arc. I loved seeing her again and getting an update on House Ravenwatch, but was also saddened by it because I imagined that alt as having gone with them when they returned to Castle Ravenwatch to join their crusades. This update makes me have to imagine going separate ways from them for a time. I wished I could have helped Gwendis gather gifts for the other members of House Ravenwatch. I imagine you're going to have a lot of fans wishing they could have seen Fennorian too, even though that was explained.

Do you have any other general feedback?

I like that attention is being given to one of the good Deities. We have so much content with the Daedra that it's refreshing to give attention to one of the Aedra, though the content is tiny compared with Daedra.


Edited to bold the questions

Uncle_Sheo

The Grand Repair kits from the event reward boxes do not stack with other Grand Repair kits. Why?

shadyjane62

Went back today and did another round of event. The rewards are inappropriate for a level 50 as the mats for crafting are for low level chars.
Was given keys for something I don't know anything about.
Was given 400 tel var stones but as I only use them to get waxed parcels were probably appreciated by others.

In real time I would have done event once as I only buy repair kits with the tickets.

James-Wayne

Did you complete the introductory quest and the daily? Do you have feedback on the activities or how it tries to onramp you into the event?
Completed both. Quests are good, different, choices, unique to other events so no qualms except for lack of rewards.

Did you get an opportunity to group up with guildmates to get boxes from world bosses/events? What are your feelings on that experience?
PTS population is so low there is next to no one on PTS so no. Defeat a group boss or world event while grouped with someone who is a member of one of your guilds, wow that is super specific... great idea to get guilds working together but if your like me in Oz, you might be lucky to have 5 people on when your on which reduces the chances of getting someone. I can see the event is geared towards working in guilds but I think the logistics of that working in the real world is low, I could be wrong.

Did you happen to see anyone you recognize hanging around the Belkarth festival grounds? They show up sometimes depending on content you've completed!
I was on my main character and have done every quest in the game so no, who was I suppose to see? Were they hiding? Do they say anything when walking near them so you know who they are? HOLY SMOKE, is Abnur Tharn back?!?

Do you have any other general feedback?
All I can say here is just the rewards in general are really underwhelming! I did about 60 odd master writs just to check volume of rewards and the tempers, mats are nice but the drop rate is so very low to get those it's just not worth doing master writs for this event. Master writs are pricey as it is to craft (especially with the way the market is currently going) so having a event for writs is amazing dont get me wrong but it needs to be worth our time/grind. If the current low drop rate is kept perhaps offer double writ vouchers for the event, it might actually make it worthwhile. As it stands doing master writs during double XP event is a much better grind because its guaranteed (no RNG chance) of getting something that progresses your character.

Daily crafting writs are once per day so I'll probably do that for the tickets seeing I do them anyway.

EDIT: I personally dont care about the Indriks as I collected them all during the events over the years but bringing Indriks back is a nice surprise for those that never had the chance, there should be more vendors in future that allow you to buy items where the grind is unbearable especially seeing the current market with guild traders, items are WAY too pricey but if you could introduce a currency (that isnt exploitable) which you then use that currency to buy in game items, motifs, mats, you need from vendors, that is the way.

WhiteCoatSyndrome

@Kesstryl @James-Wayne When are you two usually on? I think I have invite permissions on one of my guilds, I’ll throw you a line on PTS.

@shadyjane62 I got a few of those too; the keys are for the Imperial City vaults.

shadyjane62

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

@Kesstryl @James-Wayne When are you two usually on? I think I have invite permissions on one of my guilds, I’ll throw you a line on PTS.

@shadyjane62 I got a few of those too; the keys are for the Imperial City vaults.

Tyvm for info on Keys. I never go into Imperial City due to an unfortunate incident there in my youth.

Heartrage

I don’t play on pts so this is only based on the forum post.

Do you have any other general feedback?

Overall, I think it’s really great that crafters/traders get an event. I also like the guild commendations and the indrik return.

I think it would also be nice to include a boost to ressource nodes to fit the theme. It would also be thematic if we had to travel to other cities and use the wayshrine cost reduction to trade with different special merchants to buy some event rewards. Alternatively, these merchants could sell existing furnishing plans, provisioning recipes or motifs pages with, maybe, a daily rotation à la golden vendor. This would also help making the event feel different from the anniversary gameplay wise.

Other than that, I’m just happy that events are made to include different play styles.

Epona222

The boss werewolf during the intro quest is way way overtuned for an event intro quest - I solo base game dungeons and world bosses no problem and had to run from that thing.

No-one wants to be grouping up for a boss that tough for an INTRO quest for an event.

Please rethink that.

Epona222

Also - are you sure the servers are going to cope with everyone being in Craglorn at the same time?

Like really sure?

I love the festival area you've done' but it's not going to be any fun if everything seizes up and we can't load into the zone.

(I missed the last day of the Anniversary event because I stupidly left my characters in Vivec crafting area and couldn't load any of them on the last day, hence my concern about the population in Craglorn for this event).

Kesstryl

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

@Kesstryl @James-Wayne When are you two usually on? I think I have invite permissions on one of my guilds, I’ll throw you a line on PTS.

@shadyjane62 I got a few of those too; the keys are for the Imperial City vaults.

Sounds good, I'm usually on evenings EST. I'll leave one of my guilds on PTS (I'm NA so all my account data is on PTS this week).

WhiteCoatSyndrome

Kesstryl wrote: »

Sounds good, I'm usually on evenings EST. I'll leave one of my guilds on PTS (I'm NA so all my account data is on PTS this week).

Okay let me know when you have a slot free, it won’t let me send you an invite now because you’re at capacity.

Incidentally did you have any interest in testing the Trial? I checked and it looks like I have invite permissions for my Trial guild, and we’ve been consistently undermanned on the PTS so I doubt anyone will mind. No pressure; if you’re not interested I can invite to a different one and we can still test the event.

Aliyavana

Do you have any other general feedback?

This event feels the most alive compared to any other event. I hope the other events get a similar overhaul with the amount of revelers added. I would love to know how ESO's cast is celebrating New Life for example, or maybe decorations in a city for Witches Festival would also be great

Kesstryl

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

Kesstryl wrote: »

Sounds good, I'm usually on evenings EST. I'll leave one of my guilds on PTS (I'm NA so all my account data is on PTS this week).

Okay let me know when you have a slot free, it won’t let me send you an invite now because you’re at capacity.

Incidentally did you have any interest in testing the Trial? I checked and it looks like I have invite permissions for my Trial guild, and we’ve been consistently undermanned on the PTS so I doubt anyone will mind. No pressure; if you’re not interested I can invite to a different one and we can still test the event.

Sorry, I didn't log in yesterday, I've been feeling sick. I did free up a guild slot. I should be good to go. I'm on the tail end of a carpal tunnel flare so I might not be in good shape for the trial. Last week all I could manage was questing. I could see how I feel by the weekend. Otherwise I would say yes. My progression guild fell apart a couple years ago, and my job takes up most of my weekday time so I never bothered to join another one.

RiverBrian

The keys you get should not be character bound. Please make these acct bount instead.

Kelinmiriel

Still working through this, although I agree with others about it being obviously intended for beginning characters, which makes it a bit confusing for a maxed crafter - being pointed to purchase a recipe for Baked Apples, when I've known that recipe and had provisioning maxed for 5 years, for example. And being told to harvest Maple, when I haven't been able to harvest anything below Ruby Ash in years? And have maple in my craft bag, in both Rough and Sanded. I took both of them out of my craft bag, but that wasn't good enough. Those things were confusing. (I also had some Baked Apple already made, but it was at my house, so I didn't try that.)

Anyway - might post more later, but the important point is this.



The voice dialogue correctly says "barring", but the typo in the written version - you might want to fix that. The meaning is kinda totally different.

Arttea

Hello!

I have been defeating some world bosses with a guildie on the PTS to check out what kind of loot we can expect to receive from the zenithar reward parcels! I've noticed that a handful of items that come from these reward parcels (that are usually tradeable) are appearing as "bind-on-pickup" instead. This means that items such as recipes, furnishing plans, research scrolls, and the new style pages are bound and likewise not tradeable. I was wondering if this was done intentionally, and these rewards are indeed going to be bound (save for items such as materials), or if this is just a bug, and we can expect unbound, completely tradeable rewards when this event hits the live server.

Furthermore, upon defeating world bosses with my friend (who is a guildie), I have occasionally not received a reward parcel despite dishing out a similar amount of dps. We were the only two players attacking the world bosses when this would occur. I'm not sure if this is working as intended either.

SilentRaven1972

I did the main intro a couple days ago. If you have high enough stealth, you can grab the item and run before the boss triggers. At least, that's what I did, since I have no friends or guildies on PTS.

ZOS_Kevin

Hey @Arttea. Thanks for the info here. Would you be able to provide any additional info on what bosses you were facing where you didn't get Zenithar's Delightful Parcels when grouped with a guildmate? This would help in narrowing down the potential issue. Thanks so much.

Arttea

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Hey @Arttea. Thanks for the info here. Would you be able to provide any additional info on what bosses you were facing where you didn't get Zenithar's Delightful Parcels when grouped with a guildmate? This would help in narrowing down the potential issue. Thanks so much.

Hello! Yeah absolutely!

I first noticed that something was up when I defeated a dolmen world event with a guildie. I am interested in putting together a guide on this event for my YouTube channel, so I told my friend to go ahead and attack the daedra spawning in while I took some footage of him to include in the video. After all the minor daedra had been defeated and the final boss was about to spawn, I stopped worrying about taking "nice" shots and joined him for that final fight in dpsing the boss down. Upon doing so and looting the reward chest that spawns at the end of the dolmen encounter, my friend received a zenither parcel and I did not.

I instantly figured that I must not have received a parcel because I had not contributed enough dps in the fight, seeing as I spent a majority of it filming him and not actively fighting myself until the very last boss, so I didn't think much of it.

However, the next day, we returned to the PTS and fought some more world bosses to gather more footage and information about the kinds of drop rates that we can expect from the different kinds of rewards that drop from these parcels. The werewolf bosses at "Hordrek's Hunting Grounds" and the dwarven colossus boss at the "Colossus Charging Station" both did not drop parcels for me upon defeating them. It might be worth noting that for both of these encounters, I briefly filmed some more "cinematic" (UI off, weapons away and only filming my friend in first-person mode) footage for my video before promptly joining the fight for fear of losing out on a parcel reward again - and lo and behold, exactly that occurred :')

I would film for about 5 seconds before joining in on those fights. Him and I duo world bosses on the live server all the time and our dps is usually split around 60(him)/40(me), which is why I ruled out that I simply hadn't done enough damage in those fights on the PTS. I was able to receive the regular loot from the bosses/dolmen chest, but no parcel. We were the only two defeating all of these world bosses and events. The only correlation I can see now between the bosses that I fought that dropped parcels vs the encounters that did not drop them is that I did not spend the first moments of the aforementioned encounters actively fighting the bosses (I was filming instead). I would join in a few seconds later; after my friend had already started the fight. I'm not sure if this is directly related to what the problem may be, but I figured it could be worth mentioning.

I hope that this helps!