Please Explain "One Tamriel" For A Returning Player

KerinKor · January 2017

I've played the game since beta, have raised 10 characters to 50+ and completed the main story on most of them .. I say that in no way trying to brag but simply to indicate I saw all of the game (up to Craglorn at least) several times .. and I've also read ESO's info on "One Tamriel".

With that said, I'm confused how to approach the game now.

To state the obvious, before U12, you had to play one faction zone-by-zone in a traditional them-park fashion in order to unlock access to Coldharbour and eventually complete the main story. "One Tamriel" is described as basically "go anywhere, do anything" which is fine .. BUT .. the main story still seems to be on tramlines through a single faction, until of course they all converge on the Coldharbour quest chain, even though Coldharbour itself I read is accessible at any time.

I was one who actually liked the "Silver" and "Gold" mechanic of playing the other factions' stories, what benefit is there doing it the "new" way? Has the "Silver" and "Gold" mechanic gone?

Cross-faction grouping clearly was a great improvement, I always felt the factions had no place in the PCE game and were there simply to justify PVP and separating players into three isolated segments seriously affected the ability to make groups, etc. but I don't see what this "free for all" access to all zones has achieved when the core story still seems to be a linear progression though a prescribed seuqence of zones .. clearly you can't mix-and-match faction story lines on the way to the Coldharbour merger.

So, with all that in mind, can some tell me (or else link to a discussion) of how the game is played now? If I have to follow the original railroad tracks through the story of a single faction what point is there in my being able to go play somewhere else?

Cheers

davey1107 · January 2017

One Tam is designed to accomplish a few things:

1. I want to play, but I don't want to be stuck in stinking Stonefalls for three months as a low level character.
2. My friends play, and I'd like to play with them, but they're vets so I need to spend three months leveling before I join them.
3. Vets can enjoy going back to older zones to play content they skipped. Auridon is no longer a boring zone where everyone is level 6 and plowed over by my vets.

In terms of quest lines, you're confusing them. They are:

- the main storyline. This is opened as you level to 50, with each quest being doled out by the prophet in the harborage. This line culminates with a confrontstion with molag bal. One Tam does not speed these up...they're granted as your main character level increases.

- Faction storylines. These start in your starter city and proceed through all five zones within a faction. They award many skill points and tell a single complete tale. Under the old system, once you defeated Molag Bol you were invited to start the faction storyline in a second faction (Caldwells Silver). When you competed this, you moved to the third (Caldwells gold). In One Tam, you can start them whenever. You can run all three simultaneously. They refer to one another, but they aren't connected, so order isn't imperative. For players who like the stories, i recommend playing one faction at a time to minimize confusion.

As a vet player, the benefits to One Tam should be pretty obvious. I'm not sure what the issue is. If you love the old progression, you're free to play that way. If you don't...then, no, you aren't on a track through a whole faction. You can pick up the faction quest line at the beginning of each zone. I personally hate Deshan's faction storyline. I can go right past it with a level 7 Aldmeri toon and pick up the shadowfen faction storyline.

Are the stories still linear? Sure. But this isn't a track game, it's a sandbox. You can skip any quest you want and be perfectly fine.

SirAndy · January 2017

davey1107 wrote: »

You can skip any quest you want and be perfectly fine.

One should probably mention that the faction main quests reward quite a few skill-points. You won't get those if you're skipping those quests.

Part of the initial Silver and Gold implementation was to give you guidance through the other faction main quests and ensure you're getting those skill points.

And another thing that came with 1T is a boatload of overland armor sets that now drop from mobs, treasure chests, dolmens and world bosses.

KerinKor · January 2017

davey1107 wrote: »

One Tam is designed to accomplish a few things:

Many thanks for the comments.

I don't think I'm confusing the Main Story and the Faction Story, though maybe my comments about "tramlines" clearly implied I was linking them: that comment was referring to what I'm pretty was the case that access to Coldharbour was locked until you'd completed the faction story (or used a "Travel to" cheat IIRC) .. I'm pretty sure of this because I was one of the many who suffered the repeated breakage of one of the Reaper's March instanced quests with the two Khajiiti sisters and until that was fixed I was unable to get to Coldharbour.

This was the reason I was questioning the benefit one One Tamriel's free-form exploration and questing, since I was still thinking that access to Coldharbour needed that factions story completion .. that being the case then completing the main story is actually gated by the faction story even though the main quest chain is independent.

However, on reflection the point is moot given that I believe Coldharbour is now freely accessible.

@SirAndy, yes I recall the SPs one got in Silver and Gold and was wondering about those, so now they can be acquired far more quickly if one wants to .. I always ran my characters through the faction zones when they hit around 10 or so to give them a pool of SPs to be able to unlock crafting skills as well as battle skills more quickly, seems I can now take them through all their faction's zones to get an even bigger pool.

Thanks both.

KerinKor · January 2017

Can you clarify one more thing for me: XP gains

Would I be right in thinking that gone are the days where quests and mobs went from orange to grey reflecting their level relative to yours? If everything is now level-synced then I would expect that everything is yellow and so working through the content now will get you a lot more XP per zone than before: it used to be the case that I'd start a zone maybe on yellow but by the end quests would be green or often grey meaning little to no XP for quests or mob kills for the rest of the zone.

Danikat · January 2017

Basically One Tamriel gives players a lot more choice about what they do.

If you want to follow the main quest and the faction storyline for your starting Alliance, then move onto one other alliance, then do the 3rd one you can do that. But if you wanted to you could also do all 3 faction quest lines at once (or rather do a quest in DC, then one in AD, then one in EP, then one in DC and so on).

Or if for example you want to make an AD character but you absolutely can't stand Auridon and want to skip straight to the mainland you can do that. Or you could do all 3 alliances starting islands before going anywhere else. If you really wanted to you could play the zones in reverse order. It's entirely up to you where you play and when.

(In my case I'm mostly sticking to the intended order, but my crafter is going around all the starter islands to get extra skill points while fighting mobs balanced around people with very few combat skills unlocked and I have one character who is going to do the starter islands then skip straight to Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood.)

KerinKor wrote: »

Can you clarify one more thing for me: XP gains

Would I be right in thinking that gone are the days where quests and mobs went from orange to grey reflecting their level relative to yours? If everything is now level-synced then I would expect that everything is yellow and so working through the content now will get you a lot more XP per zone than before: it used to be the case that I'd start a zone maybe on yellow but by the end quests would be green or often grey meaning little to no XP for quests or mob kills for the rest of the zone.

Yes you're right. This to me is one of the major benefits of One Tamriel. There were always far more quests than you needed to level up through a zone, so your options were to do all of them and be permanently over-leveled for what you were doing or to skip some of the content in order to keep up with your level.

Now everything is always at your level, no matter where you are. You also get drops at your level instead of the level of the content, so no more being awarded a blue item that's worse than the white one you're already wearing.

KerinKor · January 2017

Thanks for the comments @Danikat while I was happy with the Silver and Gold method of seeing all factions I think it's likely to be more satisfying doing them in a less pre-defined sequence.

Tell me. how exactly do you get from your start faction's zones to the others, I assume there's a quest NPC much like those used to get you to the beta starting places from the opening cities .. of course, pre-OT it was Cadwell that effectively 'teleported' you to the other cities.

Danikat · January 2017

I think Cadwell's Silver and Gold are still in the game, so you can do it that way.

But you also get 1 wayshrine in each alliance unlocked right away (this was added retroactively for existing characters), and the docks in most major cities include boats that will take you to the other alliances areas.

davey1107 · January 2017

@KerinKor I think as originally designed Coldharbour unlocked when you completed a main faction quest line...through the five zones, OR after quest 5 or 6 in the Harborage main quest line. But honestly that is hazy...after my first vet I used the guild roster to open wayshrines and go wherever I liked.

Xp: One Tam is a mixed bag to me in this regard. You are correct - no mob kill or quest is "red," meaning possibly too hard for you. This kinda stinks because I liked playing harder stuff...and this was a good way to power level. If I was level 20, I might go take on level 35 mobs in Vile Manse with a buddy and earn xp way fast. Now those mobs reward the same as a level 20 zone...meh.

However, you now never outlevel anything and zero out the xp. Before, if I was lvl 30 and needed to go back to auridon the whole zone was a zero xp waste of time. So this offsets it. Also, before there was a cap on any xp gain that limited any single gain to 10% of your current level. So if my whole level was 1,000 xp and I did a quest that rewarded 140 xp, 40 was "thrown in the trash." This is gone, so you can do big quests at any time, particularly on psijic, and not worry about wasted xp.

Opening zones: in One Tam, any toon gets the first wayshrine in all three factions and can start the faction quest lines there. If you follow the "traditional" method the quests will take to the zones in sequence, opening shrines as you go. If you are a knowledgeable player and want to enjoy the sandbox (get off the rails), use the guild system to travel to online members of your guilds and open Shrines. I don't see this as a cheat...I walked Tamriel on my first toon, there's no way I'm playing through a hundred hours of quests on my tenth.

KerinKor · January 2017

Thanks guys, I hadn't actually logged in my old characters, after seeing your comments about Wayshrines I found them on the map, so I'm good to go.

Appreciate the information, really helped me get my head round the main aspects of the 'new' ESO I was still confused about after reading ZOS' OT blog from last year.

Cheers.

leeux · January 2017

One Tamriel added a boatload (sorry for the pun

) of ship travel options to most cities with docks. If you look at the map and mouse over docks you'll see that are some new NPCs and the map list their routes.

Alliance capital zones are all linked by boat that leaves you somewhere in the zone. Also, when you first enter one zone in which you don't have any wayshrines unlocked, the game automatically gives you the first (default) wayshrine that you'd have got if you were to travel there normally following the quest line... For example, entering to Rift would unlock the wayshrine in the north near the border road to Eastmarch.

EDIT: typos

Easily_Lost · January 2017

It looks like you are on PC. If you are using the AddOn Skyshards. What I do is start on the starter island,then collect all the Skyshards in that zone then move on the next zone and collect all Skyshard. Once finished I will got back and do Quests. I will do quests when getting Skyshards.

KerinKor · January 2017

Sorry, I'm back with another question: Coldharbour access.

I notice that on my brand new character this isn't available, so, is it still the case you have to complete a faction's story-line to unlock it or with the 'go anywhere, do anything' change OT brought is access to Coldharbour now done by the main story quests?

@hagermanj, indeed one of the things I always enjoyed before was running a level 10+ around the faction zones collecting shards, OT now means I can get a lot more of them before embarking on my journey.