Author’s Note: I will just aim to relate true funny stories that happened to me and my guildmates in this game. Funny is a subjective term but hopefully you’ll find them enjoyable nonetheless. Most of the stories here feature not very skilled players, as the title indicates, but keep in mind that this is not a name-and-shame post. I won’t name guilds or players or anything like that, just share ridiculous episodes from a scrub’s perspective. Also, I do tend to go overboard with my writing and slip into purple prose, so bear with me, these stories are going to be long.

Episode #1: Humble beginnings of a scrub who started this game one year too late

I started playing ESO on July 7, 2015, which was more than a year after its release. Having all summer free, and being a TES franchise player, I decided to give it a shot. ESO was my first MMO, and given that my friends in real life seem to think that Skyrim is a first-person shooter game, you can imagine that I had no clue about anything whatsoever.
I rolled a sorcerer, because I thought that sorcs were the healer class and I wanted to feel useful in dungeons. I had no idea how guilds worked, and so I just wanted to be the MVP for randoms. So yes, I was a DC sorcerer with double restoration staff and pets, because I liked the idea of having a small army at my command. Then someone told in zone chat that sorcs were better suited for DPS, and so I decided to become the best *** DPS there ever was (without switching my skills though).


best DPS bar ever

I spent most of my life questing in DC zones and scamming players even more clueless than me from their hard-earned gold by selling blue quality motifs over 2k each. This is actually how I joined my first guild, a new French-speaking PVE oriented one, being invited by a Breton stamblade who thought 2k for a Redguard Motif was a good deal, and that I was an experienced player obviously knowing what she was doing.
It took me over 45 minutes and two attempts to kill Molag Bal in the main quest with my double-resto pet bars, and it is only due to the might of my clannfear, whom I was healing with mutagen, that I finally succeeded. Also, it is worth noting that I had no keys assigned to “attack” and “block” skills, because I didn’t see the point of using light and heavy attacks, and didn’t even know that weaving or potions existed.
But hey, everything was well and good in the best of worlds. I had a PVE-guild, I had reached V1 by the end of July, which for me was synonym of reaching end-game content (*how foolish was I*), and I was being called to DPS veteran level dungeons with other scrubs who clearly had no clue about how bad I was. My greatest enemy this summer was Bogdan the Nightflame, end boss of Veteran Elden Hollow. I was a vampire sorcerer, because I thought vampires were cool (*team Edward till the end*), and for the love of Talos I could not finish that dungeon, no matter what pug teams I rolled with, or how hard we tried. And being a presumptuous and childish person, naturally I refused the recognise that the problem might lie in my DPS output.


Our intense PVE-hero training regiment consisted of drunk naked dungeon runs.

After two weeks of trying to kill that Daedric foul beast in between questing sessions, I gave up, cleansed myself of vampirism (and damn, 600g seemed like a big amount for me, who barely had enough to level up my horse), and tried again. And… failed again because being a vampire was not the problem ><’.
Of course, during this sunny month of August, which I remember even more fondly that Proust does his madeleine, I wore no set gear. I thought the set crafting stations were for some exclusive high ranked players since the first time I stumbled upon the Death Wind station in Glenumbra, I couldn’t craft those items. And not having thought of asking for help or information in zone/guild chat, I just bought my armour and staves from NPC vendors. Again, many of us might have been through this, but keep in mind that I have started playing not at release, but in summer 2015, when many players already knew what they were doing. After cleansing my vampirism however, I decided to give set items a shot. I saw the Seducer station in Stormhaven, and asked for a crafter in zone chat. Somebody crafted me a full Bosmer set, which I paid over 7k gold for since I thought the crafter was doing me a huge favour, and so it was that I wore those v1 8 pieces Seducer proudly. Yes, 8 pieces Seducer, staves included, because I didn’t think of combining it with any other set, but hey, I was on a roll to be the best DPS, I didn’t have time to stop and think about such petty things as properly gearing myself.


Just check out that bosmer hat


Episode #2: Summer PvP and the art of stealth

I’ve heard stories about ESO PvP. Dreadful stories about people dying, lag, and hate whispers that would make one drink bleach in real life. Still, I decided to give it a shot, just as with anything else. Also, I wanted the Legionary title, because how cool would I be, a proud DC legionnaire standing tall on the battlefield, or as tall as a Breton could be at any rate. It was at that time that my PVE guildmaster decided to form an alliance with a PVP-oriented French guild to organise raids in Cyrodiil. And so it was, that we volunteering tributes, joined those PVP-professionals on their raids, having no clue as to what we were doing, packing on crown like mindless sheep and being grateful for the opportunity to do so.

The best highlight by far from my summer ventures in Cyrodiil, is that we always stealthed. We literally stealthed our way from fort Glademist to the Ash gate, with small breaks in between for magicka builds to have time to recover stamina. Just picture this, a 24-man group stealthing around in the Cyrodiil wilds, and panicking on TS everytime one of them was detected due to a mob, because of course, it would be a despicable AD ambush at the troll place in between Glade and Ash. And nobody felt the need to question our glorious PVP-leader, me for lack of knowledge about how PVP worked, and the others.. well I don’t know. He seemed to know what he was doing, and he sounded very professional.
Very rarely have I ventured out in PVP-land without my smallscaling 24-man group (not that I knew what smallscaling meant). By then with the bars that I had, as you can imagine, I understood that I stood no chance against another player. I didn’t think that sorcs needed shields, so I had none on me (which I guess changed from your regular shieldstacking sorc but didn’t make me any less of a scrub). I didn’t have streak on, because come on, who needs an escape route. I was a sorc in body, but a Templar in mind, defending this house till the very end.
So yeah, stealthing in random places around the map, and reconciling myself with the knowledge of my imminent death if I was caught unawares without my squad pretty much summed up my PVP adventures in my humble beginnings.




Episode #3: The Phoenix rises over the Imperial City

By the release of the Imperial City DLC, I was v13. You can imagine my disappointment when all of my v14 friends were instantly promoted to v15, and I realised that I still had to get 2,550,000exp points to finally get to that long-awaited praised end-game gear and content. Up until then, I didn’t grind. I earned all of my xp by doing quests and dungeons (which is probably why it took me almost two months to get to v13 on one single char). But I was so eager to wear the new v16 sets that I put my morals aside and grinded my way through those ranks in IC sewers. I grinded them in random places with 5+ people, because otherwise we died to mobs. Deaths for my part resulted in me using only Bound Armor and the op physical resistance it brought for protection, because once again, shields on a sorc are overrated.


Those bars xD

I had kept all my gold and silver keys from the Undaunted quests since a guildie wisely suggested that doing so would bring me v16 shoulder pieces once the DLC came live. However, being impatient, I opened them once I reached v15, because after all, what difference could there possibly be between v15 and v16. I got lucky though, and was rewarded with a Kena divines epaulet on my first gold key chest. A v15 Kena divines epaulet… Also, having finally realised that spell damage might be a useful thing to have for a DPS, I decided to switch my gear, and upgraded from Seducer to Phoenix and finally started levelling up my Destruction staff. And so it was, that I continued my glorious PVE exploits as an incredible DPS with Phoenix, 1 Nerieneth and 1 Kena.
I loved the Phoenix set. Being able to look Death in its steely eyes, and proudly exclaim “Hasta la vista, baby!”, well what wouldn’t I give for that. In the end, I gave up 5k tel vars for a v15 Phoenix set, not having enough stones for a v16 one, and wore that lion crest proudly. It was by that time that I started using buff food. Well it was a blue magicka/health regen drink, because I didn’t see the correlation between max magicka and spell damage, but hey, it was better than nothing. There was only downside of Phoenix in PVE (since I mostly stuck to PVE these days, my pro-PVP squad having fallen apart by that time due to internal discord and people finally standing up to the raid leader). This downside was exactly the inability to die whenever your group wiped, and wasting everyone’s time while they waited for you to drop to 0 HP, burn out in a fiery explosion of utter doom and destruction, scorching the mobs around you, and being reborn.
Sometimes, I went into the Imperial City with my guildies to get more tel vars and generally pass some time. We were usually 12+ people, for fear of getting ambushed by enemies and deprived of all of our hard-zerged stones. By that time, I was already thinking of quitting the game. I had done all the quests, most of the veteran dungeons (as you can imagine, with my skillset, vCOA, vWGT and vICP seemed like a distant dream, though I didn’t QQ about them being too hard. I just acknowledged that they were out of my DPS range and blamed it all on the tank. But this thread isn’t about upcoming nerfs, it’s about life, and death, and scrubs).
And then, one day, salvation came. Well salvation in the form of 3 AD guys in wedding dresses who killed our 14+ pug group with several healers in sewers. As someone with no smallscaling experience, I didn’t even know such a thing was possible, and man was I impressed. So I whispered one of them and expressed my utter admiration of his skills. He whispered back, saying I was the first one who didn’t insult him or mourned the loss of her 3k tel vars. Well, what can I say, at that time, I was a nice person.
So we started talking, and he actually took the time of teaching me how to PVP and play the game in general. I slotted shields, streak, dawnbreaker, and generally tried to get a grasp of my skill rotation and weaving and all these things that casuals ignore. I watched videos, went on forums to search for working builds, deconstructed my Phoenix set, and got progressively better at this game. Hell, I even unslotted my clannfear, affectionately named Claws, which was a very big step for me. My time as a clueless prey was over!



After some time of playing with these guys though we were on different factions, they offered me to join their wedding squad as a healbot. And so I did. Rerolled AD, made a tanky Templar, and actually had some decent 4-man action with my friends on Trueflame in before it became the zergfest that it is nowadays. You would think that with me becoming better, this novel-long post would be over, but you would be wrong! I still partook in the daily life of my humble casual PVE-guild, and what a scrubfest it was.


Yes, quality and skillz suck, but I was a v4 templar trying to level up everything xD And playing on TF meant decreasing texture quality.

Episode #4: Dealing with failure

By that time, we were in December, and I was actually on the fast lane to becoming a decent player, dealing 25k DPS in dungeons (which seemed like a big amount without 2 kena) and scoring some nice 2vX videos on my AD healbot in PVP. However, I only PVE’d with my French guild, the first one I ever joined, by lack of motivation to find another and sheer nostalgia for my humble beginnings. And to say that our dungeon runs kept being less than stellar would be an understatement. A dead DPS isn’t a good DPS, and that was the state in which I spent most of my time in dungeons with slightly more difficult content. Sometimes, I felt a tinge of regret thinking about my deconstructed Phoenix set and the few ancestor silks it brought, but then I remembered how far I’d come DPS-wise and that regret was immediately quashed.
My guild also started raiding, or well attempting raids for all it was worth. Funny story from one of said raids, which also pretty much sums up all of them: Hel Ra Hard Mode.
So, we decided to do Hel Ra Hard Mode. At that point, I wasn’t actively participating in guild activities that much, always finding various excuses to go PVP instead, and playing in offline mode, because I still clung to the idea that I was a nice and adorable person that didn’t want to offend the people I played over 5 months with. Still, my greed for achievement brownie points surpassed my urge to decline the raid, and so I attempted Hel Ra Hard Mode with them. So in our awesome group, most of the DDs were doing 5k+ damage on bosses, and 8k+ in AOE, so it took us a bit of time to get to the end boss, but we made it. Our tank dude also lived in a lighthouse in Normandy (and yes, this is relevant).
At the end boss, despite several people less than eager to take on a challenge, we broke the statues, and so the trial became hard. It is worth noting that our tank dude had no distance taunt (aka inner fire), and so he had to go out of the buff circle, taunt the boss in melee, and bring it back to us. For those unfamiliar with Hel Ra, it just means that you waste at least 8 seconds waiting for the tank to bring the boss to you, instead of starting dealing distance damage immediately, which I always did. I got violently reprimanded for it by the raid leader, and every distance DPS was forbidden from launching any single attack in before the tank pulled the boss to melee range.
After wiping several times mostly due to lack of DPS, I tried to gently remark to the tank dude that maybe slotting a distance taunt too would help us, seen as we would gain an entire 8 seconds of damage. (And that war horn would be useful too). What ensued was an elderly French man yelling and insulting me for over two minutes. And this is the part where him living in a lighthouse becomes relevant. Just imagine an elderly French man screaming at you to “stfu because he knows what he’s doing. And he’s the PVE player there, not you, so go back to your sieges and sand castles, you little childish…” to the sound of wind howling and waves crashing every time he pushed-to-talk. Nuff said, it was a beautiful moment, which I will cherish for the rest of my ESO life.


Episode #5: Anecdotes and aesops

While after several failed trials such as the aforementioned one, I did not attempt to PVE with my guild again, I still tried to provide as much guidance and counsel to them as I could, still under the delusion that it actually served any purpose and I was being nice for doing so.
A Stamina DK guildie tried doing the Veteran Maelstrom Arena. After a few hours, it seemed he was stuck, and he asked for my help in the guild chat for the second room (3 Dwemer Centurions boss). As it turned out, he was playing with no dots whatsoever, 5 pieces hunding’s reinforced with serpent stone, and double two-handed swords (one weighted, one defending on the buff bar). While he still did better than me in my humble beginnings seen as at least he wore set gear and already had the CP cap, I still tried to gently reason with him and urge him to switch to dual wield and bow, or dual wield and 2h, and stop DPSing with Dizzying Swing and Cleave. The answer I got was “my gear and skills are fine, I only want to know the mechanics.” Oh well, at least I tried.
It was slowly but surely happening. I didn’t want to go down in the basement and face the monsters, and so the basement came to me instead, and I found myself leading my guildies in an attempt to PVP. So, just to put things into perspective, our healer had the wrong morph of repentance (which is useless since it doesn’t stack with the potions’ effects), the wrong morph of Breath of Life (which made his heals unreliable and unpredictable), the wrong morph of barrier (the one with the health regen), the wrong morph of Healing Springs, the wrong morph of Purifying Ritual, the wrong morph of Combat Prayer, and he used force siphon on enemies in PVP.
Most of my guildies had no clue that you could use potions, and at any rate they had none on them, even though I took several days to try to pass on all the knowledge I absorbed on to them, because beyond their DPS abilities, inadequate gear, and laughable attempts at completing end-game content, they weren’t bad people. I spent since July 2015 playing with them, being on TS with them, and it generally was a bit disheartening to see my advice being disregarded and being told to “stfu”. I had even crafted legendary nirnhorned swords for PVP for a mana nb friend of mine for free, because I understood she had less time to play (and hence get gold and mats) than I did, and it didn’t bother me. What bothered me was seeing them deconstructed and her keeping on playing with weighted swords because argonian swords just weren’t cute enough xD
Among more recent funny stories, are magicka nightblades playing without cloak (and yes, I know you can manage it successfully, but when you’re yelling on TS for an escape route other than shade and cloak, and “goddamit whomever said NBs are easy mode is obviously blind”, then clearly something is wrong). Oh well, a mana nb with elemental drain, soul trap, and pulsar, no shields, no cloak, no scope, and refusing to rethink his build despite wiping over and over again, was still quite entertaining.
Unfortunately, all good and funny things have an end, and what caused the rift between my guildies and me (in case you missed the subtle resentment that laces my words in my last paragraphs) was an incompatibility of playstyle and ideals. You see, most of us started playing in July of last year, and overall, they spent only a bit less time on the game than I did. The problem lay in the fact, that having spent a lot of time on the game, they wanted to successfully complete the end-game content available (putting things into perspective yet again, stamina nightblade guildies slotting harness magicka for Molag Kena out of desperation and still failing the dungeon). At that point, my guild note was “walking encyclopedia”, and so they started asking questions about builds, gear, and playstyle to me. And promptly proceeded to disregard anything I said, because they didn’t like my solutions, and in the end, they knew better.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t complete end-game content while still having useless skills and gear and badly attributed CP, just because you prefer their looks. What made our beginnings in ESO great was the sufficient self-mockery and derision to understand that we sucked but still having fun attempting things and laughing at our failures.
While generally, trying to PVP alone since most of my smallscaling friends quit, has turned me from a nice person congratulating enemy players on their awesome performance to a QQing mess, trying to be on par with PVE-heroes while lacking their skills, gear, knowledge of the mechanics, and willingness to improve, has turned my guildies into irritable Frenchies who would lash out on me whenever they failed.

While this might seem like quite a depressing note to end things with compared to the general uplifting tone of the post, sadly it’s true. Nonetheless, funny scrub moments still happen, and I try to upload videos of them whenever they do, but given that smallscale is harder and harder to find nowadays, and getting zerged and teabagged is redundant after some point, prospects in this game seem darker than ever for a person with no PVE guild, who only wants to laugh a bit. For most part nowadays, I just kill level 9 mudcrabs with camo hunter to get the Monster Slayer achievement, make impromptu and unwanted cameos in other people’s roleplay by narrating it, or otherwise swaying their script into uncharted waters, though even that became lackluster after getting insulted a few times. My latest notable performance was actually recruiting several people for an erotic werewolf roleplaying guild, which was a harmless troll, and pretty please don’t ban me


I was eager for many changes that Dark Brotherhood would bring up until reading up on poisons. While I’m a hopeless optimistic and willing to believe the best about this game, I don’t think poisons will work well with smallscale. And personally, I do not enjoy raiding as much as playing in small groups. I mean being the rapid maneuver and bombard-spam prostitute can tiring after a certain point, but that seems the only way to get decent action nowadays. Still, hopefully everything will turn out fine, and I will have some more scrub stories to tell. If you actually read, all the way up to this point, well thank you, and hopefully you have enjoyed it.