Journal Update: September 4, 2014

This update should be fairly short. I've been busy working all last week and the one day I had off, I had to go into Bangkok. So, overall, not a lot of time online playing and advancing my toons.

I did get Sartori up to vet 2 as I raided vet solo dungeons looking for 9 skyshards so he could get to 3/3 hireling in provisioning. I got him up to Provisioning 50 the previous week but didn't have the skillpoints for the hirelings. I think that puts me at 5 toons with 3/3 provisioning hirelings now. Haven't really put much interest into provisioning but I may in the future if/when provisioning gets revamped and stuff like using food and drink together is possible. Then we'll see drink recipes and drinks for sale more often and commanding higher prices. I'll be another path to revenue for me. Just stockpiling provisioning mats now and I got tons of the stuff clogging up my bank.

Montador got up to level 39 and is almost finished with Malabol Tor. I had fun playing him, especially on Saturday night. I was in Greenshade at the time and heard a shout to join a fight against one of the world bosses. I needed that world boss (the crocodile one... forget the name) so I grouped up. Just Montador and another nightblade. Did the job, thanked the NB, left the group and went back questing. Then I heard another shout to group up for the dolmen southeast of that crocodile. I needed that anchor as well so I grouped up again. We got 4 people in the group, including that same NB. Did the job, thanked the group, left and continued questing.

Then it was my turn to look for a group. I shouted in zone chat if anyone wanted to do the public dungeon. That same NB replied "Sure, we've already two things together already". So she joined (can't remember the name but it was a female character) and got two others as well, a templar healer and a sorcerer dps. We kicked the public dungeon's ass and the healer guy had some addon that showed the location of each boss in the public dungeon so we cleared it completely... achievement and all.

Then we said, let's continue. Want to do the group dungeon? I was a bit concerned because it was 3 dps and a healer; we had no tank but it ended up being great. We did the group dungeon in Greenshade and then went on to do the dungeons in EP and CD as well (Crypt of Hearts and Arx something). Several hours with that group and it was a lot of fun. Great group, lots of talking and joking around. Everyone did their jobs well. I've had such horrible experiences with pickup groups in the past that this was really a breath of fresh air. It made me see how fun dungeons can be if you got a good group.

The healer and Montador hooked up again on Sunday and we did some POIs in Malabol Tor and the public dungeon there as well... just the two of us. Again, getting the full achievement. And last night, being more open to grouping and dungeons, I joined another PUG and did Tempest Island and Darkshade Caverns as well. Not as fun or communicative a group as on the weekend but still ok. We had a vet 6 leading the charge so it was pretty easy. And Montador actually ending up getting some dungeon achievement and I'm fairly sure that I've never gotten a dungeon achievement before... Dungeon Marauder or something like that. Even Kuratla has only just reached rank 3 in Undaunted and there's a ton of dungeons (normal and vet) that he hasn't done.

Been thinking that once I get Montador to vet 1, I'll work on Heals-Your-Pain and get him as perfect a healer as possible. As a devoted healer, shouldn't be too difficult getting groups and I'll aim to do every single dungeon (public and group) with him. The other idea is to go pvp as a healer. My main problem about pvp is that my home life makes using teamspeak and other such programs impossible and groups want (or usually require) some kind of verbal communication program. That fact of life has burned me in EVE Online, in SWTOR and now in ESO. But it is what it is and play around that restriction.

Montador is becoming a lot of fun to play. I made him a Night's Silence set and he always has Concealed Weapon slotted so he is stealth moving about the same speed as he would while running. He's got all the medium armor passives to improve sneaking and 2/3 in the Bosmer racial passive for sneaking as well. So he moves very fast and he can literally walk right up in front of a mob before they see him. Montador isn't vampire 9 yet but I've been working on it and eagerly awaiting adding the vampire passive to make him move as fast as a horse. I even took the Alliance skill "Rapid Maneuvers" but that uses up a ton of stamina and I'm thinking about changing my Thief mundus stone to the Steed.

It's just really fun. Moving around a high speeds, pretty much unseen. I can avoid a lot of the mobs if I don't want to fight them and get to the quest objectives faster and ultimately complete quests faster this way. Montador has been using stealthed mark target + snipe attacks to almost one shot a mob and then finish him off with a venom arrow. Then concentrate on bringing down the other mob or two before they close to me. The other thing I found out about the nightblade is that stealth attacking with a weapon and sneak attacking with a nightblade class skill like Concealed Weapon is not at all the same thing. The damage modifier for the sneak attack with a NB class skill is much higher than stealthed bow attacks, for example.

I found that out when I was sneaking around, turned a corner and almost walked right into the back of someone. Since I was close, I attacked with Concealed Weapon. Bam! 1000+ damage. I was confused. Stealthed mark target + snipe does around 800 damage right now for Montador. The base damage listed for Concealed Weapon in the skill description is two hundred and something while it's close to 400 for the Snipe. Yet Concealed Weapon is doing 20% more damage. So the damage modifier for sneak attacks with NB class skills is much higher than your standard stealth attack with a weapon.

So now Montador is sneaking around and one shoting everything he can. Now that I think on it... the assassination ultimate, which does close to 300 damage but up to 275% more if you have the ultimate charged up more should work the same way. I'll test it out and begin boss fights with a sneak ultimate, if possible, doing.... what?... 2000+ damage? One shot a boss? Well, we'll see.

So, yeah, having fun with Montador. I'm still not understanding all the complaining you see on the forums about the NB being the worst class. Sure, they don't have the sustained attack of a sorcerer but they don't need it in many situations. They seem to be all about the burst damage. Bide your time, get into the right position and rain death. Makes total sense... they are supposed to be rogues/assassins/sneaky types anyway. If you play the nightblade that way, they'll perform better and it'll be a lot more fun. Kinda makes me want to level up Mordeus now since he's a dual wield NB... all melee, no ranged. Alas, so many characters to level, so little time.

I've continued along with the guild trader and making gold. I try to keep at 30 items listed at all times. I'm using a Storekeeper addon that shows me what gets sold so I can replace items at the same cost almost immediately if I am online. Otherwise, I check my guild store for other items of the same type that I want to sell and I undercut by 1 gold (usually) and post my own. I would feel bad about undercutting my guild mates but they do the same thing to me. It's pure competition. When I left for work this morning, I was at 1.75 million gold. I didn't keep track of my hireling loot last week but it still must be pretty good as I'm always able to post more gold improvements for sale once the ones already posted sells.

At least I'll have the gold to buy nirnhoned traits when they come out in patch 1.4 and whatever new motif books drop (in whatever new patch down the road). Or, who knows, maybe I'll be grinding and find that stuff myself. Eventually, I'm going to get all of my 8 toons to vet 1 (or, I guess level 50 when they kill vet levels) and endgame stuff will be the only thing I can do. At which point, I'll need to learn to love the endgame or.... end the game (i.e, quit playing). But that's still a long way off. Wildstar has been out a while. I didn't leave ESO. Archeage is launching in a couple weeks. I won't leave ESO for that. Who knows what's coming....

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading. I'll tell you all about sneaking around fast as a horse next week. Take care.

Journal Update: September 11, 2014

Hi again. A couple things to write about today - Montador almost getting to level 50, sneak speed insanity, and guild bank robbery.

I didn't attempt to do every quest in the Dominion with Montador. Rather, I just tried to do all the major quests (a lot of which gave skillpoints as rewards) and tried to keep my quests yellow (in other words, doing quests at my current level instead of doing green or greyed out quests and get a lot less exp). So basically trying to fast track Montador's exp.

He finished off the main quests in Reaper's March and went off to Coldharbor. Coldharbor, as it turns out, is a really a nice play to grind levels. There's a few areas with lots of fast respawning mobs and you see people grinding on them. I did it just a bit myself and noticed a good amount of exp. And doing the Village of the Lost and the other POIs in Coldharbor are also good for fast leveling. Montador has only completed a couple of the quests there (included the main one of the eastern side.... saving that arrogant "Protect me while I cast this amazingly complex and impressive spell" mage and destroying the Great Shackle) but he has still reached level 49. In doing the stuff on the western side, Montador will get to level 50 (aka, Vet 1) pretty quickly... probably on Saturday.

Then I'll make him some new gear for vet 1 and send him off to explore Craglorn a bit and get access to the Arena crafting station. Currently, that's the only one he doesn't have access to. So, once that gets done, I'll be able to (over 3 different) make all 8 trait gear in Woodworking, 5 items in Light Armor (currently researching 3 items in Medium armor at 8th trait), 5 items in Heavy Armor and one handed sword (and currently researching 3 other weapons in 8th trait as well). So lots of crafting potential. I'll be looking for nirnhoned gear (the upcoming 9th trait) as soon as it's released and I'll start 9th traits as soon as I can.

I currently have no idea if 9 trait gear is going to be craftable in the next patch or if they are going to wait till patch 1.5 but, either way, I'll work on 9 traits asap. If 9 trait craftable gear is going to be released (and it's good gear), then being one of the first players on the server able to make the gear bodes well financially. People will want new set gear and will pay well for them (especially if said 9 trait set gear give awesome stats).

Montador did get rank 9 in Vampire (and later rank 10) and I bought the Dark Stalker passive right away. That used in conjunction with the Night's Silence gear and Concealed Weapon slotted is crazy fast. People say it's stealth moving as fast as a horse but it seemed to be faster than a horse.. at least my horses. It was so much fun zooming around and, with every possible passives taken in stealth, Montador could literally run inches away from an enemy and they wouldn't see him. Even if they did, he was gone before they could react.

It basically meant that he could quest a lot faster. Didn't need to fight his way through tons of mobs to get to whatever quest objective. He could just circumvent a lot of that fighting. Saved a lot of time as the big exp in questing is in turning in the quest itself, rather than the fights along the way. So Montador enjoyed that super sneaky speeds for a while.

However, when he got to level 44 and it was time for me to craft new gear for him, I opted not to make another Night's Silence set because I didn't want to get used to the sneak speed because it's being nerfed. Instead I went with Hunding's Rage and Ashen Grip for the weapon damage boosts. Actually put him into soft cap for weapon damage at level 44. I found out melee NB class skills, like Concealed Weapon, even though they use the magicka resource, do damage based on your weapon damage, not spell damage. And weapon crit, not spell crit.

I thought that was rather nice because Montador is built for weapon crit and weapon damage. I was doing something like 1350 damage with a sneak concealed weapon attack. That attack generally one shot standard mobs until the mobs I came up against had 1359 health. It was funny. They were left with 9 health after the attack so I had to put an arrow into them to finish them off. I remembered that number... 9 being a lucky number and all... well, at least here in Thailand.

However, when I upgraded my old level 30ish jewelry to level 45+ jewelry and added strong weapon damage glyphs, then my concealed weapon damage went up by 100 points. Then I figured out that weapon damage is the determining factor in NB melee attacks. So now Montador is back to one-shotting standard mobs again. Generally, he just sneaks right up the enemy, Concealed Weapon one shot, back up and light bow attack + venom attack on a second mob. That guy is dead by the time the 3rd mob reaches me and then it's a couple bow shots followed by Drain Essence to finish off the guy and restore health and stamina.

Once Montador reaches vet 1, I'll gear him up in mostly purple gear, probably the same set gear as he's using now but I won't immediately finish off Coldharbor and kill Molag Bal with him. I've been itching to use my pure healer: Heals-Your-Pain. Even though I have a couple of toons who use restro staff, it's always as a back up and I really don't have much experience in healing. So it'll be interesting to put most of my skillpoints in restro staff actives and passives and the Templar healing skill line as well. He'll, of course, need to put some points into dps as well. I can't heal enemies to death. Heals-Your-Pain will most likely do a lot of dungeons, group and public, as a dedicated healer. Shouldn't be too hard to find groups as a healer and I'll be able to do full clears of the public dungeons with the APB (All Public Bosses) add on that I downloaded and installed the other day. Montador needed a couple bosses in 2 public dungeons in AD to get the Conquerer achievement and a new dye so I got the add on for that purpose.

I'll eventually use Ignisia (in EP) and Heals-Your-Pain (in DC) to complete all public dungeons for the other two achievements and dyes as well.

And on to the last topic of today - guild bank robbery. So, a few days ago, our guildmaster said in guild chat that one of our guild mates removed the entirety of the guild banked items. 490 items in all. Then he quit the guild. I hadn't noticed myself because I don't use the guild bank... for putting stuff in or taking stuff out. There are ranks in the guild, the lower ranks don't have permission to withdraw so the guy had to have been in the guild long enough to gain ranks in gain guild bank withdrawal privileges. I took the issue to the forum and posted his name, what happened and a general warning to watch out for him. Within 10 minutes of posting that, 2 people replied that I needed to be careful and should read the forum's code of conduct about naming people. Apparently, I could have gotten myself banned because I write the guy's name in the post. Naming and shaming? Smear campaign? Ruining people's good name?

So, the issue wasn't that great that I would risk a ban so I immediately deleted the title of the post and the content of the post as well. I'm disappointed that it is this way though I do understand the reasons why the forum has those rules. To prevent against slander... fair enough. Us in the guild don't expect to get anything back. That's not the issue. I just wanted to warn the community about a guild bank thief but the rules of the forum prevented me from doing so. Oh well, I tried. "No good deed..." bah, you know the rest.

Financially, I have been buying a lot of ores for Kuratla to refine. Not because I'm interested in getting rich from alloys and grain solvents but because he needs to refine 3000 times to get an achievement dye. Normally, if you were doing all crafts on one toon, then that would basically be 1000 ores, 1000 woods, 1000 clothes but I do those 3 crafts on 3 different toons so it has to be 3000 ores because I don't refine wood or cloth on Kuratla. I do this zone pitch a lot "WTB all ores. Paying 1500 gold per iron ore stack. And an extra 50 gold per tier above iron ore." A guy yesterday wanted 3000 gold per stack of voidstone (which would be worth 1900 by my system above). I just said "no" instead of getting into an argument about how voidstone doesn't refine any better than any other ore. The increase in price by 50 gold increments is only because I can sell higher tier ingots slightly better than lower tier ingots in the guild store (they all vendor at the same 400g per stack though). And, even then, you aren't getting tons of gold selling voidstone ingots... certainly nothing to warrents 3000 gold per ore stack. At least, not in my opinion.

Sometimes I get no replies. Sometimes I get a guy selling a ton of ore. It has certainly cost me a lot of gold and, upon leaving for work this morning, my gold total was just over 2 million. Which is really good to have 2 million but it wasn't as much as a weekly increase as I've usually been getting. And, I do believe that that gold total is going to drop a lot because I'm pretty sure that I'm going to buy my 8th draft horse for Heals-Your-Pain and max out my bank space. It's like 55k to go from 170 to 180 and I think the max is 240 with 5k increments so.... 490,000 to get to 240? That's fine. May as well get everything maxed space because there doesn't seem to be much value to the gold that I have. Can't really buy anything. I believe that the gear you get from trials (which I've never done) was changed a while ago to be auto-bound so I don't see much advertising for dropped gear. As a crafter, I generally don't pay much attention to dropped gear anyway. So I don't really know what's out there.

Well, that's about it for today. Thanks for reading. Catch ya next time.

Journal Update: September 25, 2014

Welcome back. So, when I got back online on Friday, I had the same issue... blacked out log in screen. I went to the forums and asked for help. And, quite quickly, someone gave me some advice concerning changing my UserSetting.txt file. Following that advice, I was able to get to log in and have had no issues at all since then. So that's all good and excellent to get quick replies and help from my fellow forum users.

I'm gonna talk about three things in this update: 1) nirnhoned stuff, 2) animation canceling (AKA clipping) guild debate, and 3) experiences with Heals-Your-Pain over the last week.

Once I got back online on Friday evening, I asked around about the prices of nirnhoned gear and was told that people were selling them in Craglorn for another 50k each. Apparently, upon completing those upper Crag quests and getting a piece of nirnhoned gear, people would decon it with a secondary alt (so needing like 6 hours to get the trait learned) and then they would farm harvest nodes in upper Craglorn to get the nirncrux trait stones, and make and sell nirnhoned items for 50k. Fair enough.

I went over with Kuratla and asked around and ended up buying 3 woodcrafting items (bow, shield and resto staff) at 50k each and immediately started learning those 9 traits on my woodcrafter, Montador. I wasn't interested in researching the trait on a different toon and then farming for trait stones. I avoid farming or grinding as much as possible. Later on, I ended up buying a greatsword, one handed sword and light robe as well. Pretty much, every time a research item is up on Kuratla, Montador or Incantratrix, I will look to buy a nirnhoned item I don't have and get the 9th trait started. At worst, I'll need to buy 3 per month per craft so I don't mind the prices being expensive (and the prices are going to drop anyway... they gone down from 50k to 30k in a few days already).

Of course, right now, there are no 9 trait crafted gear in the game so there's no current good reason to learn the 9th traits on item. But, given that they have put a 9th trait into the game, it is only logical to assume that 9 trait crafted gear will be put into the game at some future point. Putting them into the game now isn't necessary because no one will have a 9th trait learned not until around 3 weeks from now anyway. I'm guessing that the next new zone (whatever that will be) will have a crafting station which needs 9 traits to use. Or maybe the Thieves' Guild or Dark Brotherhood's crafting stations (assuming they will have one) will be 9 traits as well. Since the Mage's and Fighter's Guild have crafting stations, it makes sense that the Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood will as well.

The next topic today is animation canceling... clipping. So, here's the story. Monday's patch added a change in heavy attacks where completed heavy attacks restore a certain amount of stamina or magicka, depending on which weapon you are using. We were talking about it in guild chat and everyone agreed that it was a great change and all were happy to see it. Well, all but one. One guy said that he wasn't happy to see this new change because it was a nerf to his dps. Several of us, including myself, typing in "How so?"

And then the conversation of clipping began. So, what's clipping? I'm sure a lot of MMO users already know but I didn't myself. While I do play a lot of games, I don't consider myself a hardcore player and nor do I (nor will I) use every trick and tactic in the book to squeeze out every extra point of damage I can. I am simply not competitive in that way. I play to enjoy the game, enjoy the storyline, enjoy the exploring and adventure, enjoy developing my character, etc. Clipping (I was told) is animation canceling where you do a heavy attack but you don't follow through with the heavy until it completes. Instead, you use a spell to cancel out the animation of the heavy attack. I don't know how much damage you get from the heavy attack (is it the full damage? is it partial damage?) but it's certainly added to the damage from whatever spell you are casting. In other words, you are increasing your dps by clipping.

Apparently, clipping is the thing to do for dps users. I said in guild chat that it sounded like an exploit to me and I was told that I had no clue what I was talking about. I agreed on that point because I had never heard of clipping before but upon being told what clipping was, it did sound like an exploit to me (and after learning more about it, it still does sound like an exploit). Whether it is an exploit or not, whether ZoS considers it an exploit or not, doesn't matter to my feeling that it seems like an exploit to me. But on with the guild debate. The guy explained clipping said that this heavy attack restoring stam or magicka change was nerfing his dps because if you clip, you are not completing a full heavy attack and thereby not getting the resource restored.

Not a single person in the guild chatting at that time agreed with him that it was a dps nerf. He tried to explain several times but the rest of us still didn't agree. He can continue to clip, as he did before, and he will not benefit from the resource restoring. In other words, absolutely nothing has changed for him, his dps and his playstyle. If he stops clipping, does full heavy attacks and gets the resource restore, then his dps will drop... but he doesn't have to do the full attacks. He can still clip as he's always done. So, basically, ZoS created an alternative option to clipping. You can do either one. If you continue clipping as you always have, where's the nerf to your dps? He failed to explain this point and several people pointed out he didn't need to do full attacks and he'd be in the exact position as he was before the patch (i.e., no nerf at all) but he then got aggressive and called us stupid and uneducated for not understanding how his dps had been nerfed. I guess I'm a moron because I still don't know how his dps has dropped.

The interesting thing is that that guy seems like a nice guy, is very knowledgeable about the game and is generally helpful with advice in guild chat. The debate did end peacefully enough and we were talking about other topics later on without any hard feelings.

Lastly, my experiences with Heals-Your-Pain. I put in a lot of time with him and he fully completed Stormhaven and fully completed Rivenspire and partly done with Alik'r (sp?) Desert as well. He's currently at level 38. Heals-Your-Pain turns out to be an absolute powerhouse and easily the most powerful character I have... even at his low level. Against mobs, he pumps out AOE damage to around 1000 - 1200 damage per sound... and that at levels in the low 30s. I think a few things came together here that makes Heals-Your-Pains completely owning the PVE experiences I've been facing. 1) Heals is my 8th character so I've had a lot of experience in playing the game. 2) Top quality gear - I always gear up Heals in high quality gear. 3) Improved game performance in patch 1.4 where the game moves and reacts a lot more fluidly so I can heal or dodge or block or whatever to avoid disaster.

Heals-Your-Path has been doing very well in dungeons, public and group. I soloed both public dungeons in Rivenspire and Alki'r Desert. The desert one was really interesting. There were a couple of really tough fights and Heals performed amazingly well. One of the bosses was a gargoyle with 12k health. Immune to all CCs, a ton of health and hit like a truck. In public dungeons, I take an AOE skillbar and a solo target skillbar and switch back and forth depending on if I'm fighting a trash mob group or harder targets like gargoyles, trolls, or bosses. It took quite a while to kill that gargoyle boss because I used up so much magicka healing myself... only attacking when I got a bit of a break from its attacks. So often, I got down to 5 or 10% health but managed to heal up before death and took the beast down without dying. After such a long fight, I probably wouldn't have tried again if I died but didn't need to re-try.

The other fight in that dungeon was a humanoid boss who constantly shield bashed me, requiring me to break CC and use up a ton of stamina so I could block or dodge roll. He had 10k health. Another long fight but easier than the gargoyle because he didn't hit as well. I did need to leave the dungeon and look for help for the group challenge because it literally needed two people. There were symbols on the floor that we had to step on in the right order to activate the group challenge boss. That done, Heals left the dungeon with a full clear. I just need the 5th zone's public dungeon now for the DC conqueror achievement and a new dye. Heals is also working on DC exploration and quest achievements as well. So far he's got all the quests done in previous zones and all those cave or delve or whatever explorer achievements.

The group dungeons have been all good as well. Did the three ones from the 3rd zone and Tempest Island and Direfrost Keep last night. Just need Volenfall (sp?) to complete all the group dungeons up to his level. Generally I've been getting good groups and we blaze through the dungeons without issue. Deaths are rare and usually only happen when the tank gets one shot or dps guys are standing on AOE damage circles and don't move. Then they take a huge amount of damage and I can't heal them fast enough. Practiced Incantation ultimate has saved my group from wipes a couple times as, with some bosses, they go nuclear just before they die and just spread out huge amount of AOE damage. I pop my ultimate then to counter that damage and the dps / tank finishes off the boss. The last storm atronauch boss in Tempest Island is a perfect example of that.

Around every 5 levels, I make new gear for Heals. I do it every 5 or levels so I can update the glyphs I'm using for him as well as higher tier set gear. So each time I get new gear, his magicka and health go up, his spell damage and magicka regen goes up. It keeps him in top form and makes questing at his level a piece of cake and helps him handle difficult content like public dungeons solo. I recall the group that did the 3rd faction dungeons with me. We were around level 26 - 27. One of the Nightblades was poorly geared and only had around 600 health (while I was around 1000 at the time). He probably wasn't using food either. He died several times to heavy attacks. I can't heal and save people when they die to one attack. Proper gear (and food) makes a huge difference in ESO. The difference between death or success and the difference between content being easy or difficult.

Heals got all skills in Restoration Staff taken and morphed. I really like the last skill where you siphon life and magicka off a single target. It's great for the boss fights because the group are healing every time they attack and that takes some of the healing strain off of me. And you get back some magicka too so they helps improve dps as well. Great spell.

Heals is in the high 30s in the three templar class skills so he hasn't gotten the last skills in each yet. Looking forward to them because I either didn't get them or didn't rank them up enough to morph with Incantratrix so there are some templar skills that I'm still unaware of.

Last thing to talk about today is ESO live. An email came the other day about the first ESO live video on Twitch. I watched it and enjoyed seeing how tuned in the community devs are to the community. They talked with other devs and some players of the game and had lots of different topics to talk about. It will be a bi-weekly thing so that's something to look forward to with the game. They gave some teasers about patch 1.5 and, unfortunately, it seems like patch 1.5 will be another filler patch. From what they said, they mentioned a new vet dungeon, werewolf changes and that NPC facial improvements they mentioned at QuakeCon. Nothing was said about spellcrafting or Justice System or Champion system or a new zone. Unless they are keep some stuff secret for now, I am not currently optimistic about the new content coming in patch 15.

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for reading (as always).

Journal Update: October 9, 2014

Not much of an update today. I got a lot of work to do today so I'm not going to sit here at my computer for an hour or so trying to think of some content to write about for last week.

Just quickly: I finished off Coldharbour with Heals-Your-Pain and killed Molag Bal. It was a complete piece of cake with Heals. Then I went back to the Anchorage and talked to Cadwell and started Cadwell's Silver... which was vet zone Aldmeri Dominion. Now, I've done AD a bunch of times because most of my toons are AD so I knew exactly what was coming. Only difference was the level of the mobs and the world bosses and the dark anchors are definitely more difficult than non-vet levels but still doable solo.

Heals did all of Auridon (still being completist and doing everything) and also did all of the POIs in Grahtwood and currently doing the quests there. Probably a day or two to finish all the quests in Grahtwood and then on to Greenshade. Heals is at vet 3 currently and he's been experimenting with different weapon types. I figure that I may as well train up other weapons (other than my standard restoration).

It's actually very easy to get to at least rank 40 in a weapon once you are in vet zones and doing quests. I just put whatever weapon and skills from that weapon into my secondary slot and switch to that weapon once I turn in a quest and it zooms up in level. I've already got to around rank 40 in One Hand and Shield and got all 5 skills taken and all morphed except the last one. I did that in case of future desires to tank with Heals. I also added one piece of heavy and medium armor so he can slowly rank up the other armor types as well (he's been rank 50 in light armor for a long time now).

Once One Hand and Shield was around 40, I got a destruction staff made and now he's around rank 35 in that and most of the skills taken and morphed. The difference between One Hand and Shield and the Destruction staff is that Heals is actually using the destruction staff and skills in his normal skill bar. I'll leave Restoration Staff for when he is healing in dungeons.

Ah dungeons. Heals did attempt one vet dungeon (Fungal Grotto) but it went badly. I had lag and our group didn't mesh well anyway. We tried, and died, against the first major boss a couple times before one of the guys got fed up and disbanded. One of the attempts, my skill bar was completely greyed out. It was weird... never seen that before. I couldn't heal or use any spells... only light or heavy attacks.

So, before I get back into trying vet dungeons (and I really do want to do them for the achievements, skillpoints and Undaunted exp), I need to make sure that my connection is solid and I'm not experiencing any delay or lag. Back in the non-vet dungeons, sometimes I would experience some lag but it wasn't fatal. It seems that in vet dungeons, it is. Things need to be done pretty much perfectly there.

No official news from the forum about what's coming in patch 1.5 nor a time expectation for that. I'll certainly write about my thoughts on patch 1.5 when I get some solid info.

Last thing, before I go, is that I think I've figured out the Enchanting hireling issue. A couple of things are important in getting consistent Rekutas or Kutas from the hirelings. First, being vet 1 or higher is important. Second, having 3/3 in Runestone Extraction is crucial. My off enchanters like Montador, Sartori, Incantratrix (and now Heals-Your-Pain) have been getting the occasional Kuta from the hirelings once I put 3 skillpoints into Runestone Extraction. All of those toons are vet 1 or higher.

Heals-Your-Pain also has Aspect Potency 4/4 (which those other 3 toons don't) so I'll give it a week or two and see if Heals consistently gets better hireling drops than the rest. If he does, then I'll know that Aspect Potency is also a strong factor. Right now, with 6 toons at 3/3 enchanting hireling (all with 3/3 Runestone Extraction and 2 of them maxed in everything for enchanting), I'm getting around 2 - 3 kutas per day from the hirelings. And an equal amount or more of Rekutas.

Mordeus has been using those kutas to make a lot of vet 14 gold glyphs and I've been selling them for around 5300 gold each (depending on current prices) on my guild stores so a nice bit of consistent income from that. Mordeus is maxed in Enchanter but only level 11. He still gets some Kutas so being vet 1 isn't the only issue in the hireling drops. However, given that a lot of my vets with a lot less skillpoints put into enchanting than Mordeus get kutas with around the same frequency as he does, it is not a bad idea to think about leveling up Mordeus now. But I still want to work on Heals... still want to get him to vet 14 and for him to be my primary character.

That's it for today. I need to get some work done... given as I'm at work and everything. Catch ya next time.

Hi Kuratia,

Care to help me out getting into Iron Bank of Bravos guild?
I'm into 3 trading guilds but one is a very very slow mover and I'm in search of a good guild to be able to sell all the pretty things I loot here and there. My guilds aren't able to keep up with the amount of loot I pick.

No update today

October 23 is a holiday in Thailand (something about one of their previous kings) so I did not go to work today therefore no time to write an update.

I'll have too much work to catch up on tomorrow so no time then either so cancelling this week's update (sorry to leave my readers hanging... like all 10 of you or whatever... lol) and back again next week on the 30th.

Kuratla out.

Journal Update: November 6, 2014

Hi dear readers (both of you...) Well, Patch 1.5 came on Monday so that will be a focus of this journal update. Plus I did some stuff in the Alliance War (which is a total first for me) and finally got my last toon to 3/3 hireling in Enchanting. That puts me at 8 toons with 3/3 hireling in all 5 crafts each. 40 hireling mails every 12 hours. Given that, I've started recording the purple and gold mats I've been getting and I'll release the findings after a sufficiently long period (maybe 50 hireling events... which'll take about a month) and see what kind of averages we get.

Let's talk a bit about Cyrodiil first. On Saturday, I decided to take a break from questing in EP and work on the Cyrodiil PVE quests. I need to get them done eventually for Tamriel Hero so I went over to Heals' home campaign (err... can't remember the name but it's dominated by the Blues). I figured that since it was dominated by DC, that it would be quiet PVP-wise and I could quest in peace.

So, I was surprised when, taking a quest in Chey, I saw a red guy... also taking a quest from the same quest-giver. We looked at each other and seeing that he was vet 12 (compared to my vet 8) and the fact that I have zero experience in PVP, I did not attack him and went on my way. He must have had similar ideas because he backed off and immediately stealthed so I lost track of him. I was concerned that he was going to track me and go for a quick kill so I horsed up and left the area.

I continued on with the quests in Chey but I ran across that same guy again... in a cave delve. I knew that someone was in there ahead of me because all the mobs were dead on the floor... but didn't know if it was a friendly or an enemy doing the killing. I followed the bodies and saw the same red guy fighting some skeletons. He saw me too and stealthed again after killing them and he hid around a corner.

His unwillingness to fight (AKA cowardice) emboldened me and I tracked him down. I walked right up to him and he walked through me and headed towards the exit of the cave. Do I let him go or take my chances on 1vs1 combat to the death? A split second to decide: I attacked. Turns out he was a Dragonknight and his Standard of Might ended up killing me but the funny thing is, his ultimate killed me after he was already dead.

Heals went full on psycho on him and dps-ed like a madman. He died quickly but not before getting in some strong hits on me and dropping his ultimate. When he died, Heals was very low on health and I... stupidly but perhaps understandably because that was the first time I ever killed someone in PVP... didn't leave the area of the Standard of Might. 2 tics later and I was dead. Being a PVE player, I'm used to stuff (like spells) disappearing once the enemy dies but it's clearly different in PVP. He died, I looked at his body and savored my first PVP kill but then fell to the Standard of Might. I guess he got credit for killing me too.

I respawned and continued on questing but didn't run across him again. On Sunday, while questing again, I saw two Reds on horseback heading towards a cave delve that I recently came from. I gave a shout out in zone chat about them because nothing was going on PVP-wise and maybe some gankers would be interested in the kill. I lost track of them and went to the cave. They were not around so I went into the cave to see if they were there (just recon for the potential gankers). However, both of them were just inside the cave entrance. Crazily, I attacked. 2 on 1. And, believe it or not, I actually killed one of them before the other one took me down. Granted, they were both only vet 3s but still... two vet 3s should be able to handle one vet 8.

I respawned and headed straight back to the same cave because I wanted to get there before the dead guy returned and kill the other guy. If I could kill one of them 2 on 1, then 1 on 1 should be simple. And it was. The other guy was actually stealthed outside the cave and surprised attacked me as I was approaching the entrance but I still beat the crap out of him. He should have waited for his friend.

So enjoying Cyrodiil more, I ended up finishing all of the Cyrodiil PVE quests and joined in some of the alliance war stuff over the week. Took a keep for the first time. Took some resources. Defended keep. Killed one more guy in the chaos of battle. Healed a ton of damage on allies. And died more than a few times. Got up to rank 3 in Alliance War.

All of this might be meh for you readers but it was all new stuff for me. I've been 100% PVE in ESO since April so it is reassuring to me that I can contribute in PVP and actually get some kills in. Frankly, it was fun. In defending a keep, it was sometime like 10 on 10 (EP where trying to take back one of their keeps in Eastern Cyrodiil) so it was balanced and the fighting was fierce. I'm sure other PVP encounters where one side is zerging the other sucks balls (for both sides) but I didn't have that experience. So despite completing the Cyrodiil quests, I think I'll be taking Heals into Cyrodiil a few times a week and see what's going on. May as well get more ranks in Alliance War. There are a bunch of Alliance War skills that I'd like to try out.

So, on to Patch 1.5. It came on Monday and it didn't finish patching for me until 2 a.m. (my time). I really wanted to check out the crafting writs so I stayed up, instead of going to bed earlier. The certification stuff ended up being simple and so are the writs. I got quite lucky at the beginning because I got around 5 surveys out of the first 7 writs I completed (all from maxed crafters) so I was under the impression that the % chance to get a survey is really high but since the first day, I've been getting surveys less and less so the % chance is under 50% from my experience so far.

The first writ I completed was Blacksmithing with Kuratla which yielded a survey in Craglorn and I got a total of 5 nirncrux from that. Again, I thought that nirncrux was now going to be ridiculously easy to get and the prices would plummet but my first impression was misleading. Montador, with a Woodworking survey only got 1 nirncrux and Incantatrix, with a Clothing survey got none. Further woodworking and clothing survey in later days yielded zero nirncrux and I haven't gotten another Blacksmithing one yet. I've gotten several Enchanting surveys but the best thing I've gotten is Denatas from them. My provisioner is only level 12 so his Provisioning survey was low level and Alchemy is currently bugged so no good info to report on those crafts.

For maxed crafters of Blacksmithing, Clothing and Woodcrafting, you put in more mats than you get out, even if you do get a survey. No survey and it's as total waste except a bit of exp, I guess. With a survey, you got a chance to find nirncrux and that's profit so, for now, I'm only going to do Blacksmithing and Enchanting writs daily (on Kuratla and Heals as they are both maxed) until they confirm (or change) that the nirncrux drops rates for Clothing and Woodworking are almost zero.

Even if the benefits to crafting writs were strongly, I still wouldn't do them all with my toons. I can do 48 writs per day over all my toons (well, minus the bugged Alchemy ones) and that's way too much time and resources used. So I'll limit myself to the ones that I feel with get the most benefit.

I have not... as yet... tried the Undaunted Pledges and I will probably hold off until I get my new computer (which'll hopefully be before the next journal update) to make sure that my system is performing perfectly and mess ups are my fault, not the fault of shoddy technology.

I scouted out and wrote down several Dwemer delve locations but I wasn't the only one. Pretty much every delve I found, there was already 1 or 2 or 3 people already inside and the urns and jars and such already all empty. I took me a long time to finally find lootable urns and I did get one Dwemer motif chapter: Shields. I later bought Bows and Staves to complete Montador's Woodcrafting with Dwemer and someone in guild chat was selling Swords for 16 wax (and I got wax coming out of my ears.... pun intended) so why not? I did make a Dwemer bow for someone and it looks really really good. Easily the best bow animation. The swords look very wide in the link animation but I am loathe to use a frame to make a sword just to see how it looks.

Beyond this initial rush to get Dwemer motifs, I think I'm going to slow down and wait for people to grind the crap out of them and drop the prices to reasonable before I buy more... unless people want crafting mats and then I'm happy to trade.

Heals took the 3 new Werewolf skills and I got them in my secondary skill bar and always switch bars before turning in quests so they are ranking up. Unfortunately, I haven't had enough time to get to see what morphs are possible. He's rank 4 in all three so hopefully Friday or Saturday will see the morphs. I'll write down the choices and let you know next update. They reduced the werewolf timer so it ticks down rather fast but made Devour easier to use so you really need to kill, eat, kill, eat, etc... almost like a rabid monster (oh wait...). But, luckily, with the new skills and especially the heal, you can mow through mobs in PVE. I actually got the WW ultimate up and transform often... mostly because I want to test of the WW's new strengths and weaknesses. Before I would never do that because being in WW mode wasn't viable... you'd die more often than not, especially against 2 or more mobs. Now, you'll be fine.

So... Patch 1.5.. writs, WW, Undaunted Pledges, what else? Vet levels changing from vet points to exp and needing a base 1.4 million exp to level. People have been complaining that this is making it lower to level up now (not faster as ZOS said it would be) because we are getting a lot lower exp for POIs, quests, etc than we used to get VPs. Well, my two cents. Heals was just over vet 8 before the patch. After the patch, he was vet 8 and 600k exp (for some reason). So just 800k to reach 1.4 million and vet 9. I had two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) after the patch and I did some Dwemer grinding, completed the Cyrodiil quests and some alliance war stuff and maybe around 10 - 15 quests in Deshaan. He got that 800k and is vet 9. Seems pretty fast to me. By the old system, he would not be vet 9 now... not even close.

I haven't looked into the stamina changes yet because Heals is a magicka-user. I'll have something to say about them once I get back onto Kuratla, Montador or Incantratrix. Toying with the idea of sending Montador in Cyrodiil for some sneaky PVP-goodness. We'll see.

But, for now, still want to max out Heals. He's vet 9 so he's getting close. And he just needs to complete the EP quests now to get Tamriel Hero (which I will wear proudly). As my new computer should be ready soon, that will potentially change a lot of things as well so we'll need to see how it goes.

Thanks for reading and catch ya next time.

Journal Update (kinda): November 20, 2014

Hi all. I'm kinda in a fight on Facebook with a friend over #ShirtStorm right now so my attention is divided. It's ok because I really don't have much to write about in this update anyway.

Heals is up to vet 12 now. He's got about 15 more quests to do in the Rift and he'll be done with Cadwell Gold. Looking forward to getting the Tamriel Hero achievement. Unforunately, a dolmen bug prevented me from getting another achievement "Savior of Nirn" yesterday. After doing the last dark anchor in the Rift, I looked at my achievements and saw that I only needed 3 or 4 dolmens from Cyrodiil for the Savior of Nirn achievement so I headed over to do it but dolmens are bugged all over the place after patch 1.5.5 and mobs and pinions are sinking into the ground. Can't complete... no achievement.

Only news to talk about today is the patch 1.5.5 changes to survey rewards in Craglorn. Previously, BS surveys gave 5 nirncrux stones. Woodcrafting 99% of the time would give 0 (1% for 1) and Cloth always gave zero. The patch notes said that they would balance that. Some people thought (pessimistically) that would mean that BS would be nerfed down to the same level of Wood and Cloth but I was optimistic in my last journal update and thought that each Wood, Cloth or BS would give 2 - 3 nirncrux each. Boy, was I wrong.

After a week of doing crafting writs (6 per day on Heals because I'm after the 250 achievement) plus the 3 main crafts on Kuratla and 2 with Incantratrix, here's my conclusion. Each and every Wood and Cloth surveys in Craglorn gave 0 nirncrux... so, no change from pre-patch 1.5.5. I got 3 Blacksmith surveys and I got 0 nirncrux, then 2, and then 1. So, let's average that out of 1 nirncrux.

Basically, BS surveys got nerfed down to an average of 1 nirncrux per survey while Wood and Cloth remain at zero. Conclusion, I'll get the 250 achievement with Heals doing 6 writs per day and then stop doing them altogether. I won't do anymore with Kuratla or any other toon because it using up materials and, more importantly, my time in return for no gain.

Well, back to Facebook.

Sorry for the short update but, as I said, really not much going on in ESO for me last week anyway.

Catch ya next time.

Journal Update: December 4, 2014

Hi all. So it turns out that this will be my last month at my job and I'll need to find a new job in January. I'll be looking for a new job in Bangkok (for several different reasons). This will affect my ESO gameplay as my work schedule will change and, as I'll be moving, there will be some amount of time (perhaps a long amount of time) when I'll be offline. I need to move into a new place and get internet installed and that will probably take time in 3rd world Thailand... ok, maybe not 3rd world but close enough.

Perhaps a break from ESO will be a good thing and I can jump back into the game after some time off with vigor. We shall see.

So, enough about that. In the last week, I've had limited time online due to dreaded RLPs (Real Life Problems). But I did get Heals-Your-Pain to vet 14, for my first vet 14 character ever. I specifically made Heals a set of gold Seducer v14 gear and upgraded a set of gold Healer v13-14 gear before he was vet 14 so that it would motivate me to continue the grind to maxing out.

Heals added one more title, Explorer, to his list. It was a pain but I did it in combination of making his v14 gear. I parked Heals in whatever Cyrodiil delve where I needed to kill some boss and logged out to a crafter who was making some gear for the v14 set. Log back to Heals and catch for the boss? If it spawned, kill it. If not, log out again and go to a different crafter for a different piece of gear needed. Repeat until gear is done and the bosses have been killed and Explorer title obtained.

It was the only way for me to do it because I simply can't just stare at the spawn space for a boss for 10, 20, 30 mintues, etc, I get bored way too easily. If I'm doing things with other toons, it makes it easier and I'd recommend that way if you are trying to complete the delves in Cyrodiil.

After getting Explorer, Heals was around 1/4 of a level shy of v14 so I ended up going to Craglorn and hooked up with another guy (only a vet 3 but he played and fought amazingly well) and the two of us grinded Spellscar. It only took around an hour for Heals to get the level he needed. At v14, I immediately quit Craglorn and equipped his new gear. I've always enjoyed getting to whatever new level and trying out new gear sets. In addition to the 5 piece Seducer and 5 piece Healer, Heals has 1 gold armor glyph put onto the neck slot. That, along with 2 heavy pieces and 5 light pieces of armor, puts him into soft cap for armor and soft cap for spell resistance (around 2050 for both). He's at around 2550 health, 2550 magicka and 1450 stamina (which food running). In Cyrodiil, health jumps to 3000+ but all other stats drop a bit (by around 50 - 100 each).

I'm quite happy with those stats and feel that Heals himself is more than capable of handling endgame group content. My own lack of tactics and knowledge of endgame content and an iffy internet connection, however, will limit Heals' potential. I did spend a couple nights doing Craglorn quests and delves and it was good fun.

Additionally, I did my first daily Undaunted Pledges with Heals on Tuesday night with a group from a new Aussie guild I got in with. 3 v14s (Heals-Your-Pain healing, DK tank and DPS... forget if he was NB or Sorcerer) and 1 v5 dps. The v5 was set as leader to make the dungeons v5. The dailies were Darkshade normal and Banished Cells vet. We did both. Darkshade was really easy (even at vet 5 difficulty) but Banished Cells was tough. We were just shy of getting the gold key. Rilis died with 2 daedra alive but we needed 3 for the gold key. Heals performed very well healing-wise but I still feel that I need more practice so I can get the perfect skill bar.

We wiped a few times on the last boss, mainly because of the blue fire AOE he drops on the ground and people out of stamina and unable to roll away. That fire did huge amounts of damage and whenever people got caught in it, I had to spam Breath of Life to keep them alive and would run out of magicka and then need to use heavy attacks and potions to get my magicka back up, continue healing all the way trying to stay alive myself. The group complimented me on a job well done healing and the tank said "The main issue with tanking is finding a good healer." So I appreciate their praise.

I need to go through all the vet dungeons (BC is the only one I've ever done) so there will be learning pains along the way but once I've gone through them all and learned the boss patterns and strategies needed, then I'll be a lot more confident with Heals. I got the news about my job yesterday so I didn't do the daily pledges on Wednesday as I was not in the right mind but I did want to go through the pledges with Heals... both to get the skillpoints for the vet dungeons and the achievement points. Maybe once they are all done, I'll either slow down or stop doing them altogether... or continue until I get whatever rank in Undaunted I want.

Last thing to look at today is the 50 hireling event mails is done. So compiled all the data of gold and purple mats received after getting 50 hireling events (which took around 1 month to complete). This is with 8 toons, each toon with 3/3 hireling passive in all crafts (including enchanting and passives to improve hireling drop chances). So, here's the results:

Enchanting: 59 purple, 95 gold (approximately 1.2 rekutas and 2 kutas every 12 hours)

Blacksmithing: 110 purple, 38 gold (approximately 2.2 solvents and 0.8 alloys every 12 hours)

Clothing: 186 purple, 86 gold (approximately 3.7 mastics and 1.7 rosins every 12 hours)

Woodcrafting: 85 purple, 62 gold (approximately 1.7 linings and 1.2 waxes every 12 hours)

Getting tons of elegant linings and waxes are not surprising but getting more kutas than waxes was surprising. The smallest amount being tempered alloys and that's not surprising either.

So, let's see what the (admittedly approximate) value of all this is. From MC and Iron Bank guild stores, I have a good idea what the values of these are.

Rekuta: 900 - 1000, Kuta: 3000 - 3200, Solvent: 800 - 1000, Alloy: 3000, Lining: 500 - 600, Wax: 2500, Mastic: 700 - 800, Rosin: 2800 - 3000

So, taking averages, rekuta x59 x 950 (56,050) + kuta x 95 x 3100 (294,500) + solvents x110 x 900 (99,000) + alloys x38 x3000 (114,000) + linings x186 x550 (102,300) + wax x86 x2500 (215,000) + mastic x85 x750 (63,750) + rosin x62 x2900 (179,800) = 1,124,400. Let's round it down to 1 million then.

So, 1 million value in raw mats per month in free stuff given by hirelings which requires around 15 minutes every 12 hours of logging into 8 different toons and collecting it all. Pretty damned good income for doing basically nothing.

Granted, my bank account isn't increasing by 1 million per month. A couple of reasons for being I don't actually sell all of the raw mats I get (but I do keep my guild stores well stocked) and I use quite a bit of those raw mats for my own use. Heals is wearing full gold gear now with all gold glyphs. That's a lot of money in mats but all the mats were free so I guess it was free. A non-crafter (if any exist) would have to pay hundreds of thousands of gold to get the gear Heals is using.

All in all, crafting is a key to money. Both by getting free (and highly valuable stuff) every day and also by saving a lot of gold because you make and upgrade your own gear.

If you aren't a crafter, why not?

Thanks for reading. Catch ya next time.

Well then. I'm unsubbed to the game. The reason being a combination of boredom from the game (though patch 1.6 would solve that issue) and the fact that I am now offline 5 out of 7 days per week due to work commitments. Seems silly to continue to pay money for a game that I hardly ever get the chance to play anymore.

Hopefully, down the road, my offline problems will get resolved and I'll return to ESO. However, I do have a horrible habit of once I quit a game, I never return to it (I'm looking at you EVE Online, SWTOR and WoW). Guess that really depends on if any other interesting new MMOs come out in the first half of 2015 or not.

So, this is most likely the end of my little blog. Adios all.