1000 archival fortunes

Tayra_Evenstar · November 13

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

sarahthes · November 13

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

The endeavor is to complete Arc 1. Which takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on ability level and some rng.

I don't think that's terrible? If you were going to do the daily, do the daily. If not, don't.

BXR_Lonestar · November 13

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

I feel like this on some days, and others they are much easier to do. So take my advice. Do the ones you want to do, and don't do the ones you don't want to do. At the end of the day, doing 3x daily endeavors yields you anywhere between 30-60 seals of endeavor. So not doing the endeavors on one particular day is not going to make or break you.

AzuraFan · November 13

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

The daily endeavors seem to be up and down in terms of grindiness. Some can be done in 30 seconds. Others can take an hour. It's all over the place.

I can see how it's a problem for completionists, which will only get worse when Golden Pursuits are released. I think players will have to choose what they really care about because there are too many hamster wheels now, and I'm sure more are on the way.

Tayra_Evenstar · November 13

After that bad rng roll, I decided on don't and complain on the forum for a bit. See if anyone else had as terrible luck (or needs to git gud).

Sarannah · November 13

Though the endeavours have been much more grindy this week(excluding today luckily), the 1000 fortunes one is easy. As I always complete the two IA dailies anyways, this is just an extra reason to go in there.

If you have problems with the IA, just queue in the group finder for the dailies. Many players do this. (Note: Some players aren't doing this right now, due to leveling the new companions and their rapport in the IA)

Necrotech_Master · November 13

i usually like doing the archive ones because most of them are pretty easy

even some of the weekly ones like 9 bosses in the archive can be done in a single run

AzuraFan wrote: »

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

The daily endeavors seem to be up and down in terms of grindiness. Some can be done in 30 seconds. Others can take an hour. It's all over the place.

I can see how it's a problem for completionists, which will only get worse when Golden Pursuits are released. I think players will have to choose what they really care about because there are too many hamster wheels now, and I'm sure more are on the way.

this is how i see it

especially considering some of them can be like super cheesed

read lore books - can just spam click the same bookshelf however many times
place furnishings - pick up a furnishing and then undo/redo as many times as needed
kill X enemies with weapon or class skills - kill 1 hp critters
inflict poisons on enemies - equip one of the 1000s of crown poisons we get from logins and just attack a target dummy till it finishes
emotes - pick any and just interrupt the animation
memento - just pick any with a really short cooldown

other ones though like healing 60k hp with scribing abilities is highly annoying, i havent tested if overhealing counts, but having to slot a scribed ability is kind of annoying, especially if you dont want a scribed ability on your current build (not to mention this one is completely inaccessible for anyone who does not own gold road), this kind of goes for any other daily endeavor related to DLC specific content (antiquities, tribute, scribing, zones, dungeons)

other ones which require more time would be like "complete a trial" which even a pug normal trial could still take 30+ minutes between the group forming and actually running it, or pvp related ones like the battlegrounds

SeaGtGruff · November 13

I had a rough time with this endeavor myself last night, but got it done by resetting the hourglass.

If (like me) your character isn't super powerful and you don't have previous experience with certain mobs and bosses, rezzing back at the Index Hall and resetting the hourglass is very helpful if you're just trying to earn Archival Fortunes and don't care about your score, since you'll get different random bosses to fight on your second trip into the Archive.

But if (like me) you occasionally get killed by a trash mob, just rez and keep going. You'll need to redo the cycle from the start, but the random trash mobs will be different so you won't need to keep fighting the same mob that just killed you.

SeaGtGruff · November 13

sarahthes wrote: »

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

The endeavor is to complete Arc 1. Which takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on ability level and some rng.

I don't think that's terrible? If you were going to do the daily, do the daily. If not, don't.

No, the endeavor is to earn 1000 Archival Fortunes. (And the endeavor the day before was to defeat 3 cycle bosses.)

I'm not trying to quibble over semantics, just pointing out that you don't actually need to complete arc 1 (otherwise I might not be able to complete this endeavor).

You might be able to earn 1000 AF before having to go up against Tho'at, if you receive and complete one or more side quests during the arc.

And if you don't receive any side quests, you can reset the hourglass as many times as needed until you're able to kill enough arc 1 cycle bosses to complete the endeavor's specific requirement.

Jaimeh · November 13

If you see the progress of endeavours over time they have been nerfed in two ways: a) objectives are either more numerous, so that 'do X number of things' objectives now require more of those things to be completed, and b) the seal yield has been nerfed so that we get less seals for things than we did in the beginning. They do this with a lot of systems in the game, in that they are introduced and slowly over time they become less beneficial to the player (a very obvious example is crown crates: they got introduced, after a while we got radiant apex, then we got gem exclusive things, then the gem yield for extraction was nerfed significantly, then certain item categories, like costumes and skins, started to cost x3 times more gems than before, and so on). Anyway, on days that endeavours include IA, a lot of people are keen to run it, so you can try asking in your guilds, or if that's not an option, you can make a group listing on the finder, as it's much easier and faster to run it with another player.

Necrotech_Master · November 13

Jaimeh wrote: »

If you see the progress of endeavours over time they have been nerfed in two ways: a) objectives are either more numerous, so that 'do X number of things' objectives now require more of those things to be completed, and b) the seal yield has been nerfed so that we get less seals for things than we did in the beginning. They do this with a lot of systems in the game, in that they are introduced and slowly over time they become less beneficial to the player (a very obvious example is crown crates: they got introduced, after a while we got radiant apex, then we got gem exclusive things, then the gem yield for extraction was nerfed significantly, then certain item categories, like costumes and skins, started to cost x3 times more gems than before, and so on). Anyway, on days that endeavours include IA, a lot of people are keen to run it, so you can try asking in your guilds, or if that's not an option, you can make a group listing on the finder, as it's much easier and faster to run it with another player.

the quantity of endeavors was stabilized pretty early on, we used to get them in quantities ranging from 10 to 25 for dailies, but for the last like year at least its been 15 endeavors for dailies

the individual effort of the endeavors has also varied significantly, some days there are still near trivial ones (refine materials, lorebooks, deconstruct items) which havent really changed in the amount of the required activity, and then some others like kill X enemies, which has varied between like 30 and 100 (100 is a fairly new value but its nearly twice as much as it avg'd before)

Jaimeh · November 13

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

If you see the progress of endeavours over time they have been nerfed in two ways: a) objectives are either more numerous, so that 'do X number of things' objectives now require more of those things to be completed, and b) the seal yield has been nerfed so that we get less seals for things than we did in the beginning. They do this with a lot of systems in the game, in that they are introduced and slowly over time they become less beneficial to the player (a very obvious example is crown crates: they got introduced, after a while we got radiant apex, then we got gem exclusive things, then the gem yield for extraction was nerfed significantly, then certain item categories, like costumes and skins, started to cost x3 times more gems than before, and so on). Anyway, on days that endeavours include IA, a lot of people are keen to run it, so you can try asking in your guilds, or if that's not an option, you can make a group listing on the finder, as it's much easier and faster to run it with another player.

the quantity of endeavors was stabilized pretty early on, we used to get them in quantities ranging from 10 to 25 for dailies, but for the last like year at least its been 15 endeavors for dailies

the individual effort of the endeavors has also varied significantly, some days there are still near trivial ones (refine materials, lorebooks, deconstruct items) which havent really changed in the amount of the required activity, and then some others like kill X enemies, which has varied between like 30 and 100 (100 is a fairly new value but its nearly twice as much as it avg'd before)

It wasn't very early on, it was around the year mark iirc, and regardless of whether the tasks are trivial or not, the number of objectives is much higher now (or they are otherwise more time consuming). It happens very slowly over time, so players get used to it and adapt to the new standard, but it has indisputably been made worse over the years

Dagoth_Rac · November 13

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately? I got started on getting 1000 archival fortunes at 220 per stage. Then stage 3 came around and gave me a boss that was probably from a trial I have never done or something, I could not kill it and gave up after it killed me twice. All in all, that was 15+ minutes to get 440 fortunes. I usually have no trouble soloing base game dungeons or world bosses either. It feels unbalanced vs for example getting 1000 tel var stones.

Overall, I haven't been progressing in any story content for a long time because most of my time playing is spent trying to complete the endeavours. At this point I almost feel like they detract from the game rather than add to it.

If I try to do a Thieves Guild heist in my normal PvE gear, it will seem absolutely impossible. If I put on the right stealth and speed gear, and have the appropriate passives from CP and Legerdemain/Thieves Guild skill lines, a heist takes like 3 minutes.

IA requires more health, more passive healing, and more mitigation than most solo content. You get limited lives. The entire design is more about survival than damage. If you build for survival, you can just ignore the mechanics, stand in stupid, and treat everything in Arc 1 like a test dummy and just parse. Now that I have seen everything in IA a million times, I do use a more typical PvE build to speed it up a bit. But for starting out, a tankier build than normal will make it a lot easier. And, between ignoring everything but attacking and the buffs from offensive verses/visions, you'd be surprised how little DPS you lose.

But if you don't want an IA-EZ-Mode build sitting around just for the occasional endeavor, it's understandable.

MidniteOwl1913 · November 14

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

Jaimeh wrote: »

If you see the progress of endeavours over time they have been nerfed in two ways: a) objectives are either more numerous, so that 'do X number of things' objectives now require more of those things to be completed, and b) the seal yield has been nerfed so that we get less seals for things than we did in the beginning. They do this with a lot of systems in the game, in that they are introduced and slowly over time they become less beneficial to the player (a very obvious example is crown crates: they got introduced, after a while we got radiant apex, then we got gem exclusive things, then the gem yield for extraction was nerfed significantly, then certain item categories, like costumes and skins, started to cost x3 times more gems than before, and so on). Anyway, on days that endeavours include IA, a lot of people are keen to run it, so you can try asking in your guilds, or if that's not an option, you can make a group listing on the finder, as it's much easier and faster to run it with another player.

the quantity of endeavors was stabilized pretty early on, we used to get them in quantities ranging from 10 to 25 for dailies, but for the last like year at least its been 15 endeavors for dailies

the individual effort of the endeavors has also varied significantly, some days there are still near trivial ones (refine materials, lorebooks, deconstruct items) which havent really changed in the amount of the required activity, and then some others like kill X enemies, which has varied between like 30 and 100 (100 is a fairly new value but its nearly twice as much as it avg'd before)

There more 15s but the 10 still happen, just not as frequently. Just recently I remember looking at one endeavor and thinking for 10 seals it just wasn't worth it.

Orbital78 · November 14

Did you try to find a guild partner or use a companion? It takes my Arcanist about 15-20 min to get 1k. Some of the bosses are harder, I had issues with the big deadlands wb from blackwood until someone mentioned staying to the outside on here. There are no damage telegraphs to make it obvious.

MidniteOwl1913 · November 14

The 4th cycle bosses are often harder than Tho'at in Arc 1. It's a totally separate pool as far as I can tell. Try a companion with a taunt for the boss fight that can help.

LatentBuzzard · November 14

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

Is it me or are the daily endeavours getting more grindy lately?

It's not just you as in the past few weeks ZOS has made a noticeable effort to increase the requirements for earning endeavours.

JaxontheUnfortunate · November 14

I really think dlc trial bosses should never be selected within the first arc some of them can be tricky to deal with.

Tayra_Evenstar · November 16

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

I really think dlc trial bosses should never be selected within the first arc some of them can be tricky to deal with.

I don't know if it was a trial or a DLC dungeon boss. One of those big skeleton types who summoned a lot of small ones and one blue burning skeleton which he would use as a projectile. I could keep up for a good while but every time I got him under 40% health he would start oneshotting me. I have a pretty survivable build normally but some of the mechanics get me. In the past I've also had a lot of trouble with the Maw of Lorkaj boss where the mechanic of hiding behind the crystals just didn't work.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I didn't know about resetting the hourglass. I'll try that next time.

Still think 1000 is a bit much for the tiny reward so I suppose it's more there for the people who were going to do IA anyway. As I said, wanting to keep up with daily endeavours has made it so that this is the only thing left I do in the game most days. Maybe I should indeed just do the quick ones and let it be.

Orbital78 · November 16

I'm guessing they are trying to get more people to try the Archive. It does teach some mechs, but I have done most vet dlcs even on hard mode.

IA incentivizes using more builds or at least tankier ones. Most solo arenas traditional dps builds felt good enough.

You can get a lot of good rewards in there too, so it isn't like those 1000 fortunes are not useful. 2000 netted me a 250k gold reward.

Ingenon · November 16

OP, I think it is good that you tried IA.

I do IA occasionally with a companion, and a few times with another player. There are bosses that will one-shot you in IA, even in Arc 1. What I do to avoid the one-shot is keep this web page open. When I reach a boss round, I immediately crouch, and search on the page for the boss name. I want to know before I start the fight, what kind of "one shot" mechanics am I dealing with here. And then the boss fight usually goes smoothly.

I know folks will post that they know all the mechanics for all of the 70+ bosses that ZOS picks from for the boss rounds in IA. Sorry, I don't remember all of them and their one-shot mechanics perfectly. So I look them up when I get to them.

Another "feature" of IA that I don't know if ZOS has ever fixed is that tank companions lose taunt on some bosses. I find that Azander with his scathing rune taunt does a better job at not losing taunt.

tom6143346 · November 16

But to be fair arc one is basically some kind of a story mode you can complete it even on a bad build , I think it’s even specifically designed that way

tom6143346 · November 16

BTW as a general rule , when a boss starts to sparkle during a attack ,you should at least block , doge or run away, ist always surprising how much of the players just take this attacks without doing anything. The sparks should make you aware of incoming heavy attacks and / or one shots . Hope that helps someone every now and then .

SeaGtGruff · November 16

tom6143346 wrote: »

BTW as a general rule , when a boss starts to sparkle during a attack ,you should at least block , doge or run away, ist always surprising how much of the players just take this attacks without doing anything. The sparks should make you aware of incoming heavy attacks and / or one shots . Hope that helps someone every now and then .

I hadn't realized until someone mentioned it a few weeks ago that bosses have a "white" attack and a "red" attack, indicated by the color of those radiating lines when they're getting ready to attack. I forget which is which, but one can be interrupted, whereas the other cannot be interrupted but can be blocked. I'm not sure about that "can be blocked" part, because it seems like I sometimes get knocked back even though I'm bracing, so whether the block is successful may depend on a few things.

katanagirl1 · November 18

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tom6143346 wrote: »

BTW as a general rule , when a boss starts to sparkle during a attack ,you should at least block , doge or run away, ist always surprising how much of the players just take this attacks without doing anything. The sparks should make you aware of incoming heavy attacks and / or one shots . Hope that helps someone every now and then .

I hadn't realized until someone mentioned it a few weeks ago that bosses have a "white" attack and a "red" attack, indicated by the color of those radiating lines when they're getting ready to attack. I forget which is which, but one can be interrupted, whereas the other cannot be interrupted but can be blocked. I'm not sure about that "can be blocked" part, because it seems like I sometimes get knocked back even though I'm bracing, so whether the block is successful may depend on a few things.

The red lines mean you can interrupt but the white lines apparently cannot. I don’t know about blocking since Bastian is tanking when I see them.

tomofhyrule · November 18

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tom6143346 wrote: »

BTW as a general rule , when a boss starts to sparkle during a attack ,you should at least block , doge or run away, ist always surprising how much of the players just take this attacks without doing anything. The sparks should make you aware of incoming heavy attacks and / or one shots . Hope that helps someone every now and then .

I hadn't realized until someone mentioned it a few weeks ago that bosses have a "white" attack and a "red" attack, indicated by the color of those radiating lines when they're getting ready to attack. I forget which is which, but one can be interrupted, whereas the other cannot be interrupted but can be blocked. I'm not sure about that "can be blocked" part, because it seems like I sometimes get knocked back even though I'm bracing, so whether the block is successful may depend on a few things.

This is one of the things they show in the tutorial.

Red sparks means the attack is interruptible. White sparks means it's a boss heavy and should be blocked (and if it is, it sets the enemy off balance)

Of course, you can block all of them, but that's the meaning of the sparks.

MidniteOwl1913 · November 18

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

I really think dlc trial bosses should never be selected within the first arc some of them can be tricky to deal with.

I don't know if it was a trial or a DLC dungeon boss. One of those big skeleton types who summoned a lot of small ones and one blue burning skeleton which he would use as a projectile. I could keep up for a good while but every time I got him under 40% health he would start oneshotting me. I have a pretty survivable build normally but some of the mechanics get me. In the past I've also had a lot of trouble with the Maw of Lorkaj boss where the mechanic of hiding behind the crystals just didn't work.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I didn't know about resetting the hourglass. I'll try that next time.

Still think 1000 is a bit much for the tiny reward so I suppose it's more there for the people who were going to do IA anyway. As I said, wanting to keep up with daily endeavours has made it so that this is the only thing left I do in the game most days. Maybe I should indeed just do the quick ones and let it be.

Yes The Forgotten is still broken. If you don't manage to kill him the first run every time after that the pillars don't work. So just quit the run if you get this boss and can't kill him without losing a thread.

SeaGtGruff · November 18

tomofhyrule wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

tom6143346 wrote: »

BTW as a general rule , when a boss starts to sparkle during a attack ,you should at least block , doge or run away, ist always surprising how much of the players just take this attacks without doing anything. The sparks should make you aware of incoming heavy attacks and / or one shots . Hope that helps someone every now and then .

I hadn't realized until someone mentioned it a few weeks ago that bosses have a "white" attack and a "red" attack, indicated by the color of those radiating lines when they're getting ready to attack. I forget which is which, but one can be interrupted, whereas the other cannot be interrupted but can be blocked. I'm not sure about that "can be blocked" part, because it seems like I sometimes get knocked back even though I'm bracing, so whether the block is successful may depend on a few things.

This is one of the things they show in the tutorial.

Red sparks means the attack is interruptible. White sparks means it's a boss heavy and should be blocked (and if it is, it sets the enemy off balance)

Of course, you can block all of them, but that's the meaning of the sparks.

I take it you mean in the revamped tutorial? I haven't created any new characters lately, and don't remember the details of the previous tutorials. I of course knew about blocking, interrupting, and following up an interrupt with a heavy attack. It's the part about red lines versus white lines that I had never realized until a month or two ago when someone mentioned it.

Necrotech_Master · November 18

MidniteOwl1913 wrote: »

Tayra_Evenstar wrote: »

JaxontheUnfortunate wrote: »

I really think dlc trial bosses should never be selected within the first arc some of them can be tricky to deal with.

I don't know if it was a trial or a DLC dungeon boss. One of those big skeleton types who summoned a lot of small ones and one blue burning skeleton which he would use as a projectile. I could keep up for a good while but every time I got him under 40% health he would start oneshotting me. I have a pretty survivable build normally but some of the mechanics get me. In the past I've also had a lot of trouble with the Maw of Lorkaj boss where the mechanic of hiding behind the crystals just didn't work.

Thanks for the replies everyone. I didn't know about resetting the hourglass. I'll try that next time.

Still think 1000 is a bit much for the tiny reward so I suppose it's more there for the people who were going to do IA anyway. As I said, wanting to keep up with daily endeavours has made it so that this is the only thing left I do in the game most days. Maybe I should indeed just do the quick ones and let it be.

Yes The Forgotten is still broken. If you don't manage to kill him the first run every time after that the pillars don't work. So just quit the run if you get this boss and can't kill him without losing a thread.

i think ive only had a bugged encounter with this boss maybe 2-3 times out of the probably 50+ times ive fought that one in the archive (and those bugged times when the pillars would spawn incorrectly only happened maybe 6 months ago)

i think a lot of people dont understand the mechanics of that fight, it is one of the most mechanic heavy bosses in there and a lot of 1 shots (namely curse, the explosion is survivable with enough hp even if its bugged, but you cannot ignore the curse)