Starting kind of fresh and Oof! (and due apologies for bad thoughts)

DoofusMax

To get the TL;DR out of the way, "ZOS, it's pretty painful for new players," and for all the newer players who have been complaining about this kind of stuff, I take back and apologize for the stray "whiny babies" thoughts that percolated through my brain while reading.

Several years ago and for reasons which probably made sense at the time, I made a character on PC EU. Nord DK and nothing special. I think I didn't know how to use PTS at the time and just went to the other server to experiment. Did the Gates of Adamant tutorial, joined the Fighters and Mages, did crafting certs, and then left him hanging out in Alinor after completing the Jewelry cert. I'd see him every now and then when there was a database switch on PTS, but decided to go check him out again and it was a generally painful experience. Keep in mind that I'm now a reasonably experienced player, so I know how to do all the stuff that he needed to do and it's the doing that was pretty painful. It's the learning and doing which is painful for new players.

"Hero's Return" proc'd as soon as I logged in with him. Not a huge deal and I ran through most of that initial list in pretty short order. I couldn't remember where the Pack Merchant was in Alinor, but got that sorted without much issue other than a couple of extra minutes of running around. I needed to complete "Soul-Shriven in Coldharbour" for something (I think to finish the first "Hero's Return" list), so off to Davon's Watch since he's Pact (and feeling just a bit uneasy in all that Ancient Elven gear from Gates, but he'll get over it). As long as I was going to be there, I picked up daily crafting writs and off to the (very long) crafting loop. Davon's Watch's loop is probably the better of the three alliances for this; it's shorter than Daggerfall's loop and not as chaotic as Vulkhel Guard's. Daggerfall's is simpler, but I think it's the longest of the three in terms of distance. OTOH, you know your character (or mount) is progressing when they can sprint from the docks back to the Bank without running out of Stamina).

Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking? No Corundum, but I had some gold from progress rewards from Hero's Return and NPC craftsmen handy, so no problem. Jewelry? Used up all my Pewter Ounces (a bit of unrefined Pewter for the next time), but otherwise no problem. Enchanting? No Jora, but 30g solved the problem and it was a done deal.

Alchemy? No appropriate reagents for a Sip of Magicka. Not a problem, I thought. Any two of Bugloss, Columbine, or Lady's Smock will do the trick. I thoroughly scour the bits of Stonefalls between the Harborage, Senie, and the Bal Foyen gate and come up empty. Disappointing, but only a minor obstacle since Bal Foyen is usually good for harvesting, but nope on that front, too. Off to Glenumbra where I'm able to get the goodies for the potion somewhere around the Red Rook area. Wayshrine back to Davon's Watch (because I still need to talk to the Hooded Figure after I turn this stuff in), and oops again. Need 3 Wormwood as the add. More scouring to get that. Get the potion and add done, back to Davon's Watch to do Provisioning. Cooking Fire near the drop off, so this should be quick. What do I need? Chicken Breast. How much Poultry do I have? None. Oh well, I know there a few Bantam Guar over behind the Bank (my Nord hero is now a Poultry Assassin, but avoided a bounty). Bog-Iron Ale? I know the recipe from "Gates of Adamant" (I think it was also in one of the Hero's Return rewards), but it turns out I have no Yeast. Off to pillage containers for a while until I find some, complete the Provisioning Writ, and I'm now ready to go talk to the Hooded Figure.

Time from login and starting "Hero's Return" to getting those writs done? About 90 minutes (~30 minutes left on buffs from a Crown Meal and Crown XP scroll that I consumed at login). I know what I'm looking for, know more or less where to find it, and have a craft bag to hold down the inventory clutter, so a new player's experience is going to be worse and somewhat more frustrating. My EU character has no Banker assistant, so a couple of trips to the Bank to unload inventory clutter were necessary. Mount speed is better than it used to be, but sprinting is still faster (even with the 5 speed Riding Lessons) and I already had mounts from a Deluxe collection and a few chapter pre-purchases rather than needing to wait on the freebie at Level 10. There is one of the second group of Hero's Return tasks ("Spells and Swords") which has a problem. "Open the Zone Guide" doesn't work from the map and the "Zone Guide" button; you apparently have to go to the Zone Guide from the Groups and Activities menu.

ESO_player123

I have no doubt that for a completely new player it will be very overwhelming. It's a massive game after all. But, to be fair, I think your experience is tarnished somewhat by the fact that you know where everything should be, you know exactly what you want, and you are frustrated that it takes more time than you are used to. In short, you do not have that sense of exploration/wonder anymore, everything is familiar and becomes a chore at a slower pace. For a new player there is something interesting that can be found around every corner. At least that is how I remember things when I started playing 5 years ago, Was I overwhelmed? You bet. But was it exciting? Yes.

YMMV.

scrappy1342

some helpful tips for new players, which probably would have helped you out...

go ahead and do the coldharbour quest and get the town unlocked. not only is the little town there full of herbs, but also it is full of unowned (ie, no bounty for looting) containers. it's one of the best places for cooking ingredients if you have none. more specifically, there are birds hanging from one of the traders' stalls near the wayshrine, so you can grab some poultry right there and not even have to worry about rng on crates and barrels.

alik'r is also great for herbs. the oases are full of them. you mentioned alinor and jewelry crafting, so i assume you have summerset. artaeum is also really great for mats and there's no mobs to come after you. although i'm pretty sure unlocking artaeum takes a little longer than coldharbour (you might be able to port to a player there or a guild house/player's house and walk out the door though?)

join a starter guild. most guildmates will be willing to give you full stacks of cooking ingredients because they have thousands of each of them collecting dust in their craft bag from years of minion mail. they are also likely to make you a set of training gear to start out with. i didn't see that mentioned in your post, but maybe i missed it.

Grizzbeorn

DoofusMax wrote: »

To get the TL;DR out of the way, "ZOS, it's pretty painful for new players," and for all the newer players who have been complaining about this kind of stuff, I take back and apologize for the stray "whiny babies" thoughts that percolated through my brain while reading.

Several years ago and for reasons which probably made sense at the time, I made a character on PC EU. Nord DK and nothing special. I think I didn't know how to use PTS at the time and just went to the other server to experiment. Did the Gates of Adamant tutorial, joined the Fighters and Mages, did crafting certs, and then left him hanging out in Alinor after completing the Jewelry cert. I'd see him every now and then when there was a database switch on PTS, but decided to go check him out again and it was a generally painful experience. Keep in mind that I'm now a reasonably experienced player, so I know how to do all the stuff that he needed to do and it's the doing that was pretty painful. It's the learning and doing which is painful for new players.

But you aren't a new player.

Just because *you* find it painful to replay certain parts of the game on a low-level character doesn't mean you have the clout to speak for players who actually are new. Let them speak for themselves.
Not everyone finds the experience of coming to a years-long established MMO "painful." A lot of people actually enjoy working their way through the process of learning a dense, multi-faceted game without feeling like they are being led by the hand.

DoofusMax

scrappy1342 wrote: »

some helpful tips for new players, which probably would have helped you out...

go ahead and do the coldharbour quest and get the town unlocked. not only is the little town there full of herbs, but also it is full of unowned (ie, no bounty for looting) containers. it's one of the best places for cooking ingredients if you have none. more specifically, there are birds hanging from one of the traders' stalls near the wayshrine, so you can grab some poultry right there and not even have to worry about rng on crates and barrels.

alik'r is also great for herbs. the oases are full of them. you mentioned alinor and jewelry crafting, so i assume you have summerset. artaeum is also really great for mats and there's no mobs to come after you. although i'm pretty sure unlocking artaeum takes a little longer than coldharbour (you might be able to port to a player there or a guild house/player's house and walk out the door though?)

join a starter guild. most guildmates will be willing to give you full stacks of cooking ingredients because they have thousands of each of them collecting dust in their craft bag from years of minion mail. they are also likely to make you a set of training gear to start out with. i didn't see that mentioned in your post, but maybe i missed it.

There are a few faster ways that I did not use because a new player wouldn't know to do them and ZOS isn't real good about telling players about some of those workarounds. Bleakrock, Khenarthi's Roost, and Stros M'kai are unlocked at the start of the game (plus Vulkhel Guard, Daggerfall, and Davon's Watch), so those are the wayshrines that every starting/returning player is going to be able to use. Arteum doesn't unlock until the first story mission for Summerset is done (if the player even knows to do it or knows how to get a taxi to reach Arteum) and players can't start in Shimerene with the Coldharbour tutorial. I considered just popping back to Summerset to gather ingredients, but consciously decided to stick to the zones a new player would be able to access. Getting to Alik'r requires riding the Navigators to get to Sentinel (or another taxi), although I "cheated" and used a Navigator to get to Wayrest to pick up guild dailies when those pusuits showed up. Wayrest is a shorter pick-up/drop-off loop than Elden Root or Mournhold.

Joining a player guild doesn't crop up until later. "Which Guild is for You?" notices are scattered around (with quest markers), although I think they're all in expansion zones except the one in Belkarth (know how to enter Craglorn through West Weald or southern Bangkorai, how to get/use a taxi to access it, or be playing during a Zeal event). "Use the guild finder" is in the Hero's Return" stuff, but doesn't crop up until "Better Together," which is the last set of pursuits. At least one of my guilds has an EU affiliate, but I wasn't going to ask to chew up one of their member slots (or any other guild's member slots) for a character that I'm not going to be regularly playing. That one's on me rather than on the pursuits or instructions.

To be fair to ZOS, the Hero's Return works pretty well overall. The big headache for this particular character was getting the daily crafting writs done. Except for the Alchemy reagents and the Yeast, I'd either gathered mats when I first started the character or knew where to buy what I needed for those which I hadn't. There was a daily endeavor for harvesting Clothing plants yesterday, but the early zones were pretty much picked clean of Alchemy stuff, too. No idea why, but it took well over an hour to find the reagents to satisfy the writ and I had a good idea of what I needed and where I needed to be looking for them.

The pursuits for "Hero's Return", "Ride Out to Adventure", "Spells and Swords", "Crafting Tomorrow", and "Better Together" cover most of the major mechanics reasonably well (noting the zone guide issue in the first post; I know how to get to it, but the method I use doesn't satisfy for the pursuit). The other stuff has been proc'ing pretty regularly with just a couple of items hanging loose and I'll get to them in due course. The jump from Level 7 (where I left him hanging in Alinor) to Level 14 (where he is now) went pretty smoothly except for those two writs. The only other oddball in there was that I had put joining the Undaunted on my to-do list for after the Cyrodiil tutorial, but forgot to do it until after I'd done and turned in Bolgrul's daily (first set of guild dailies were all in Stonefalls), so I missed out on those 10 reputation points.

katanagirl1

I’m not familiar with this Hero’s Return quest “Crafting Tomorrow”. You can buy recipes for daily writs from Chefs and Brewers for cheap and vegetable food ingredients from Grocers. I guess you are on your own for meat. Poultry can be obtained from sources other than chickens, but new players might not know that.

Were all of the daily writs required, including the jewelry one, or did you just do it because that is one you normally do? I’d be surprised if new players are supposed to know to go to Alinor for that. For the others, a new player would get certification for each of the others and perhaps get credit for everything that way. The clothing one leads them to special nodes to collect and I think the enchanting one does as well. I remember the provisioning certification leads the player right to the recipe needs for that but can’t remember about the white meat for roast pork source.

I tried to find a written guide for these quests but all I could find were some videos and I wasn’t going to go through them to try to find out the details.

DoofusMax

The Hero's Return only asks you to craft 3 items and it doesn't care which items you craft. These were all part of my normal routine of getting the daily crafting writs out of the way before heading off to do other things. Because this is a new-ish character (only been played a few hours total) and it's the only character I have on PC EU, the craft bag is pretty close to empty. Were I to spend some serious time playing that character, then the craft bag would fill up on it's own as I'm a harvest-as-I-go player. For my normal PC NA characters, the only issue with doing Alchemy Writs is Mudcrab Chitin but I have a couple of farming spots that will get me over any immediate shortage (a couple or three writs' worth) and can just be a bit more diligent about nabbing them as I run around. Today's Alchemy add on EU was 3 Corn Flower and the quest to acquire it took me across Gold Coast and out the northern gate, across West Weald to the Craglorn gate, across lower Craglorn to Elinhir, then across Upper Craglorn to the area just west of the Dragonstar wayshrine where I found the third. It wasn't wasted time since I picked up a lot of other mats, another level from trash and exploration, and unlocked a lot of wayshrines in the process, but that was one long haul for three flowers. Plus a few crafting levels from deconning all the junk dropped by the trash.

The tutorial quests (certifications) do point you to some resources for those quests, but you can find that they've already been harvested by the time you get there. Provisioning's tutorial is "there's a recipe over there in that trunk, so snag it and then go find yourself some meat." IIRC, it's about six or ten nodes for the gear stuff, so it's enough to get you through a couple of days of writs with the expectation that you'll see similar nodes as you're running around and harvest them, I suppose.

katanagirl1

If the quest does not care which items are crafted, then I am not sure a complaint about taking so long to do daily crafting writs is appropriate in this case. You went beyond the requirements of the writ, if I am understanding this situation correctly.

scrappy1342

DoofusMax wrote: »

There are a few faster ways that I did not use because a new player wouldn't know to do them and ZOS isn't real good about telling players about some of those workarounds.

that's the beauty of these conversations. it doesn't help you out now, but other ppl reading it will now know that they too could go to coldharbour and find lots of herbs and get their poultry and any cooking ingredients they need. these forum posts will even show up in a google search if they are looking for where to find poultry, etc in eso.

i don't remember having to do a quest to unlock being able to join a guild. new ppl tend to ask about these same issues that you brought up in your original post in zone chat and i have added many of them to the starter guild that i am in.

scrappy1342

katanagirl1 wrote: »

If the quest does not care which items are crafted, then I am not sure a complaint about taking so long to do daily crafting writs is appropriate in this case. You went beyond the requirements of the writ, if I am understanding this situation correctly.

the writs require specific things. they are talking about the welcome back pursuits that asks for just general crafting.

DoofusMax

katanagirl1 wrote: »

If the quest does not care which items are crafted, then I am not sure a complaint about taking so long to do daily crafting writs is appropriate in this case. You went beyond the requirements of the writ, if I am understanding this situation correctly.

The pursuit doesn't care (complete any three crafting quests - they don't even have to be on the same day), but there are seven daily writs and they do kind of care about what you're crafting and turning in. Yes, I could have abandoned all but the three writs needed for the pursuit. But I'd much rather be able to do all the daily writs and get on with getting on (which I was able to do today thanks to all the harvesting I did over the past two days).

katanagirl1

DoofusMax wrote: »

katanagirl1 wrote: »

If the quest does not care which items are crafted, then I am not sure a complaint about taking so long to do daily crafting writs is appropriate in this case. You went beyond the requirements of the writ, if I am understanding this situation correctly.

The pursuit doesn't care (complete any three crafting quests - they don't even have to be on the same day), but there are seven daily writs and they do kind of care about what you're crafting and turning in. Yes, I could have abandoned all but the three writs needed for the pursuit. But I'd much rather be able to do all the daily writs and get on with getting on (which I was able to do today thanks to all the harvesting I did over the past two days).

OK, correction for clarity:

If the quest does not care which items are crafted, then I am not sure a complaint about taking so long to do daily crafting writs is appropriate in this case. You went beyond the requirements of the writ quest, if I am understanding this situation correctly.

You probably could have crafted three of the same recipes, glyphs or potions to finish the GP and done the writs afterward and it would have been done much earlier. I just think your choice made it harder and you shouldn’t blame them for it.

Danikat

ESO_player123 wrote: »

I have no doubt that for a completely new player it will be very overwhelming. It's a massive game after all. But, to be fair, I think your experience is tarnished somewhat by the fact that you know where everything should be, you know exactly what you want, and you are frustrated that it takes more time than you are used to. In short, you do not have that sense of exploration/wonder anymore, everything is familiar and becomes a chore at a slower pace. For a new player there is something interesting that can be found around every corner. At least that is how I remember things when I started playing 5 years ago, Was I overwhelmed? You bet. But was it exciting? Yes.

YMMV.

I agree. When I was a new player the main reason it took me longer than it does now to complete quests isn't because I didn't know exactly where to go and couldn't rush there at top speed - it's because I was stopping to investigate everything along the way. But it also wasn't a problem because I hadn't done it all 10 times before and didn't want to rush to the end.

I was willing to take my time with everything, even things many veteran players probably now see as annoying delays to the checklist of tasks they need to clear to have an acceptable character, like the crafting certification quests. If I couldn't complete something right away I'd leave it and come back to it later when I hopefully had what I needed, but I also wasn't used to having it completed so it didn't bother me.