Back after 4 years - Screwed!?

Vuron · September 2018

A little backstory...

I was one of the closed beta testers and played and tested the game for almost a year prior to launch. I continued to play for about 9 months after launch until I had to suddenly stop playing due to a RL job change. At the time I left, I was one of the best geared characters around. AA, Hel-Ra, and the first arena had just launched and I spent hours every day running PUG groups through, teaching the mechanics, and getting people the gear that they wanted. I ran these things so many times that I was geared to the teeth and had tons more sets sitting in my bank. I spent tons of time farming for rare mats, rare motifs, and items. I had more gold than I needed and was giving large amounts of it away.

Fast forward 4 years. I was on Twitch and one of the suggested streamers was playing ESO. I watched for a bit and thought it might be fun to give it another chance.

After spending an entire day working with support to get my account straightened out and downloading the game, I logged on for the first time in 4 years. I set through the hundreds of messages of respecs, achievements, bank messages, guild messages, and everything else you can think of to see my old familiar main character on the screen. I jumped in game and to say things were different would be the understatement of the year. The last time I had logged in I was at the max level of VR14. CP didn't exist, 1T didn't exist, the Crown store didn't exist, scaling was unheard of, and the list goes on and on.

Not wanting to screw up one of my existing characters, I bought Summerset and created an alt. I played for a few days to get the hang of the game again, ran him up to mid 20's while reading about builds, mechanics, CP, etc. before deciding to log in with one of my old mains. I started by assigning my 140 CP, attributes, and picking my skills again since he had been fully respec'd. I ran around in Summerset doing the quests and gained about 30 more CP levels while getting the hang of playing again.

It was at this point that I realized I'm in serious trouble. What used to be one of the best geared characters in the game is running around in outdated CP120 gear, the mats that I need to create new armor and weapons didn't exist when I left, so I have 0. What used to be considered gold rich, now couldn't buy more than a few stacks of mats. I can't make potions because the water and mats that I need didn't exist and I have 0. I don't want to start farming group dungeons because I'd feel like I was handicapping a group with my undergeared character. I read that people make money from doing Writs, but same problem - no mats.

So, the main question would be... If you were to start the game with a fresh CP170 character with CP120 gear, 0 gold, 0 mats, what would you do? At this point, I can't think of anything other than spending weeks turning ESO into farming simulator in order to get the gold and mats that I would need to craft gear.

SirAndy · September 2018

Farm treasure chests and dolmens for overland sets, pick mats while you are at it. (Get the CP perks that give you a chance of finding more mats and collect mats faster).

With a few exceptions dropped gear (both overland and dungeons) is better than anything you can craft anyways.

Heck, at your CP level i'd go to a starter zone like Kenarthi's Roost and get myself a full set of the Trainee, the extra XP from kills makes leveling a breeze, combine that with XP pots and you'll be rolling in CP in no time.

A good measuring stick to see if you are ready for dungeons again is Fungal Grotto I, it's probably the easiest of the group dungeons to solo.

Once you can confidently solo it in veteran mode (try normal first), you should be ready for pretty much any group content in the game.

susmitds · September 2018

It is far easier than those days to get working gear. Most BiS is dropped gear and crafted gear also works almost as good and is pretty darn cheap too. You can get a fully working gear setup for PvE under 120k gold cost.

keevil111 · September 2018

Plus there are some insanely good craftable sets out there. A friend or guildee could help you with gear. Some people have 10's of thousands of mats just sitting in their bags.

I assume you are PC? I would hook you up if you were PS4.

Fast track would be to get in a free trading guild and sell the gear you farm that you don't need. That can escalate your gold very fast. Thousands a day! Or more depending on the items. Flame staffs like necropotence, spinners, and mother's sorrow sets can go for a LOT in a guild trader!

Taleof2Cities · September 2018

keevil111 wrote: »

Plus there are some insanely good craftable sets out there. A friend or guildee could help you with gear. Some people have 10's of thousands of mats just sitting in their bags.

Pretty much this.

A fellow friend or guild or should be able to whip up a CP160 gear set pretty quickly for you. Then you’d already be at the gear cap.

rumple9 · September 2018

Run vet dungeons is your best bet and join trading guild. You will be up to par on a few hours

Vuron · September 2018

Thanks. I didn't really want to rely on charity but it seems that's what I might have to do unless I want to run away for weeks farming thousands of mats.

I am running around in Summerset harvesting and running everything that I can. I guess I need to do some market research to see what it worth selling and try to scrape together enough money to get going.

Thanks for the advice.

DarcyMardin · September 2018

With a full set of training gear, you can also do a few rounds of the Alikr dolmen circuit (the train runs 24/7 on PC NA) for quick CP points. Pop an experience-gaining scroll and it will go even faster. The dolmens also drop green, blue and sometimes purple jewelry that you can either break down yourself to level the jeweler craft (if you care...it’s a nasty grind) or sell for far more than their listed price to people who are leveling that craft.

SydneyGrey · September 2018

Farm and do writs, and anything else you can think of to make gold, then buy some of the cheaper or mid-priced armor sets from the guild traders.
Two major festivals are coming up that will get you a lot of gold, the Witches Festival in October, and then the New Life Festival in December. Both are super useful to make lots of cash. At the very least, you'll get a lot of purple-quality motif pages that you'll be able to sell.

RavenSworn · September 2018

It's actually much easier now to get gear than previously. A few days of running the normal pledges should get you up to speed, and gear will drop like rain.

Also, for mats, I suggest focusing on one type of playstyle. For eg if you want to just do pve stam based chat, decon/sell all other gear that won't have any impact on your char. Gears like Viper, automaton, spriggans, Briarheart, sheer venom are good startups. You wouldn't guess it but hundings is still bis for some builds, even after all these time so you won't be too far behind in terms of gear.

Get into a guild too! Lots of helpful people around that can help out with crafted gear.

Hostee · September 2018

Git gud scrub

Vuron · October 2018

Hostee wrote: »

Git gud scrub

Crap. I thought this might be my problem.

Iselin · October 2018

You're already over CP160 so you can start farming permanent gear. With level scaling that means you can target any overland zone that has the gear you want/need to gear up with drops (chests, Psijic portals, quests, public dungeon, dolmen, world bosses, delve bosses) and run the specific dungeons you want (even in normal mode) for the same gearing reason.

Target also the specific dungeon you might want for your monster set head piece and pray to the RNG gods that you get the matching shoulder drop from the undaunted daily quests.

That's most of it right there. The rest is just playing whatever content you want or just grind to get your CP up to scratch.

At your level the only part of that where you might legitimately need to worry about being carried and being a burden to your group is the vet dungeon runs for the monster mask. It'd be best if you join an active friendly guild for that and just let people know that you're just back and want to farm your monster mask.

You can get the undaunted keys for the shoulder pugging normal dungeons - no need to do vet for those.

Wealth and CP will just take time. No shortcuts for that.

Luthid · October 2018

I can speak to this. After amassing over 1200 cp and a few million gold, I recently moved to the EU server where I started over with nothing.

STEALING
Easiest path to gold for you right now is stealing. Pickpocket in Vvardenfell or Summerset, and fence to your limit each day. Doing it in these locations will also give you furnishing plans and motif pages to launder and sell to players. If you don’t have pickpocket perks, get the Blade of Woe and just kill and loot people, save yourself the potential bounty.

CRAFTING WRITS
Yes, writs are a great source. They don’t need to be max level writs, if you invest no skill points into a craft, that character’s writs will use the lowest tier mats (iron, maple, jute) but will give the same gold as the highest ones (assuming a level 50 character). You will also pick Surveys which are maps to crafting mat caches. These will be half character level and half crafting level, so a wood survey on a level 50 char with no ww points would give half maple and half ruby ash, which helps your max mat situation.

NORMAL DUNGEONS
While you’re doing these things, you can also build up CP, gold, gear, and mats by doing random normal dungeons. Over and over. Don’t worry about gimping your team. The fact that you know and can respect mechanics, and that you even care about holding your group back, makes you an order of magnitude better than most pugs.

GEAR
But you do want to be semi-appropriately geared for your role. This won’t require the best gear, only adequate. Cp150 crafted Will hold you over for a normal content, until you’re ready to step up into the harder stuff. P.m. me, tell me what class and roll, and I’ll craft you a set on either server.

While the best sets are BoP, there are some OK bind on equip sets fat sell for really cheap in guild traders. People here can give suggestions.

These methods are how I made my way to 450 CP, 800k gold, and a few thousand achievement points without grinding, while wearing full Mad Tinkerer and cp150 Julianos

Most of my runs were no-death and fast (because normal) so it’s not like I was dead weight on my team. I’ve done most normal trials in this setup too, and just this weekend put together my very first CP 160 end game kit on that account

Vuron · October 2018

@Iselin @Luthid

Thanks for the great replies. Live and learn, I guess, but I've already screwed up a few times, it seems.

I had 2 characters that had all maxed crafting skills and I went ahead and assigned all the skill points thinking that the hirelings would start providing me some mats. I didn't know this would screw me on the writs because i wouldn't have enough mats to complete them. I might have to respec again back to 0.

I did some research and decided to go ahead and craft some Julianos as a quick replacement to some of my CP120 armor. I accidentally created CP150 instead of 160 because i didn't know about the little plus sign. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because i wouldn't have even had enough mats to create a single piece of 160. At 150, I'm not completely sure that Julianos is better than the Wise Mage set that im wearing from the old days.

I spent the entire time I've been back in Summerset doing all the quest content, dolmens, delves, etc. I turned my map white and am sitting at CP180.

I think that I'm just going to have to live with the fact that I'm not going to be able to jump back in where I left.

I created another alt and have run him up to level 30. At least I've been able to deconstruct or sell everything that I've gotten so I will start to build up a little at a time. I jump on one of CP characters just to farm mats and do the occasional delve for extra gear.

Btw, I'm on PC NA if anybody gets bored and wants to run something. I've been playing mostly from about 10pm - 2am eastern.

Iselin · October 2018

Vuron wrote: »

@Iselin @Luthid

Thanks for the great replies. Live and learn, I guess, but I've already screwed up a few times, it seems.

I had 2 characters that had all maxed crafting skills and I went ahead and assigned all the skill points thinking that the hirelings would start providing me some mats. I didn't know this would screw me on the writs because i wouldn't have enough mats to complete them. I might have to respec again back to 0.

I did some research and decided to go ahead and craft some Julianos as a quick replacement to some of my CP120 armor. I accidentally created CP150 instead of 160 because i didn't know about the little plus sign. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because i wouldn't have even had enough mats to create a single piece of 160. At 150, I'm not completely sure that Julianos is better than the Wise Mage set that im wearing from the old days.

I spent the entire time I've been back in Summerset doing all the quest content, dolmens, delves, etc. I turned my map white and am sitting at CP180.

I think that I'm just going to have to live with the fact that I'm not going to be able to jump back in where I left.

I created another alt and have run him up to level 30. At least I've been able to deconstruct or sell everything that I've gotten so I will start to build up a little at a time. I jump on one of CP characters just to farm mats and do the occasional delve for extra gear.

Btw, I'm on PC NA if anybody gets bored and wants to run something. I've been playing mostly from about 10pm - 2am eastern.

The 10X CP160 mats requirement over 150 is the main reason I suggested gearing through drops instead of crafting as I assumed you would be mats poor. The One Tamriel update added a humongous number of sets to the game. All those drops for you will be CP160 now that you're above that.

Back when you played (I was there too... been here since beta) dropped set gear was kind of rare but 1T changed that and dropped sets for every build and occasion drop like candy.

I'll suggest one simple add-on for you that has up-to-date info on all sets you can craft or get from drops: Itemization Browser. It's very helpful in letting you compare things and where to go to get what you want.

Donny_Vito · October 2018

Vuron wrote: »

@Iselin @Luthid

I think that I'm just going to have to live with the fact that I'm not going to be able to jump back in where I left.

This is the biggest point. You probably still have some of the knowledge from your previous time in Tamriel, so that will serve you well. But the fact that you realize you're pretty much starting fresh is crucial.

El_Borracho · October 2018

Depending on your build, there are plenty of very good sets out there that are easy to get or craft. I've found the Summerset gear is garbage for PVE but it drops in abundance, so its great for vendoring or deconning. And run some trials in the Craglorn 3. You can get plenty of gear there from drops and from the group.

hakan · October 2018

ill say these just to be supportive for you.

ive never grinded in this game and this is the most laid back/ relaxed game style ever. and i dont even have PC, i use my friends PC so my playtime ( even tho i played hundreds or even thousands of hour) is kinda scarce. just took my time and level my chars thru quests and dungeons.

and im in a very good shape. i do lots of pvp and endgame pve easily. so youll get there in no time.

there are even players ingame or in forums that can craft you everything you need for free lol. so no worries.

Marcusito · October 2018

I came back from about two years. I’m now able to get any overland set that was out of reach. It seems so much easier now. Plenty of cheap gear in the stores as well.

GreenhaloX · October 2018

You're not screwed. Just a lot of new contents to install. As far as actual playtime, it is nearly not as bad as going over to the other server and starting a brand new spanking toon from scratch without any mats or cash or CP. You're literally starting back at ground level zero. Ha ha. ESO has improved so much with the last few years. Just have fun and enjoy the enhanced graphics and gameplay.

moonio · October 2018

TBH most players have too much mats that are just sitting around in craft bags unused, If I were you I would explain the situation in zone chat and ask for donated mats, or even someone to craft for you.

Once people realise that you are old skool and actually helped to make the game for us then I think they will be falling over themselves to help.

Also join a guild and explain situation to guild master, they will allow you to raid the bank (so to speak)
And it isn't charity, these people will be so happy to have you in the guild or on friends list because of your knowledge and experience.. so its more of a transaction...

yodased · October 2018

Hit me up in game tonight, I'll get you sorted.

Vuron · October 2018

yodased wrote: »

Hit me up in game tonight, I'll get you sorted.

I appreciate it, but I was hoping to do this without handouts.

I created an alt so that I could run through and get a feel for all the changes and it took some getting used to. I took a break with my alt and decided to mess with my old main for a while. After assigning my 140 CP points, picking my skills, I took off wearing my CP120 equipment. I did Summerset and ended up at almost CP190.

Unfortunately, I'm still pretty much in the same situation as I was before. I farmed enough mats to make 1 piece of CP160 armor. I have managed to do about 6 writs, but just don't have the mats to do them.

On the plus side, I went back to my alt and got him to 50 last night. The funny thing is that the game has gotten so much easier that I got all the way to 50 wearing a mix of dropped green armor that was between level 20-32. Overland PvE is a faceroll even with the 140 CP points I had.

But, I know that if I want to do anything more than normal dungeons than I'm going to need to farm. I think I'm going to start farming Deshaan and City of Ash for armor and see if I can pick up some decent sets.

Something else I didn't realize was that the great food recipe I had when I left is only CP50. It works, but isn't ideal.

I think it actually would have been easier to just start from the beginning and forget about everything before.

yodased · October 2018

not a handout, consider it a loan if that makes you feel better.

Just offering to give you the help you need to put you on the path to not being confused and leave again

Reverb · October 2018

Vuron wrote: »

yodased wrote: »

Hit me up in game tonight, I'll get you sorted.

I appreciate it, but I was hoping to do this without handouts.

I created an alt so that I could run through and get a feel for all the changes and it took some getting used to. I took a break with my alt and decided to mess with my old main for a while. After assigning my 140 CP points, picking my skills, I took off wearing my CP120 equipment. I did Summerset and ended up at almost CP190.

Unfortunately, I'm still pretty much in the same situation as I was before. I farmed enough mats to make 1 piece of CP160 armor. I have managed to do about 6 writs, but just don't have the mats to do them.

On the plus side, I went back to my alt and got him to 50 last night. The funny thing is that the game has gotten so much easier that I got all the way to 50 wearing a mix of dropped green armor that was between level 20-32. Overland PvE is a faceroll even with the 140 CP points I had.

But, I know that if I want to do anything more than normal dungeons than I'm going to need to farm. I think I'm going to start farming Deshaan and City of Ash for armor and see if I can pick up some decent sets.

Something else I didn't realize was that the great food recipe I had when I left is only CP50. It works, but isn't ideal.

I think it actually would have been easier to just start from the beginning and forget about everything before.

The old Consumate and Fortified Sweetrolls that you practically had to sell your soul for oats and tomato to get?

I get wanting to make your way on your own, and the game is so easy now that you won’t have a problem. But many of us who’ve been here from the beginning have lots Of extra stuff laying around and would be happy to share the wealth, not as a handout but as a “welcome back, old warrior”.

Especially for recipes, motifs and provisioning mats, just say the word and they’re yours.

But if you want to be fully self sufficient while also not reliant on the crown store you can get decent multi-stat food from the siege merchants in Cyrodiil. Maybe potions too, I don’t remember (I always scroll past the consumables and don’t even see them anymore).

Ashtaris · October 2018

You are not screwed. Yes, it will take you a bit of time to get caught up again, but it’s certainly doable. Just for the heck of it, I started a character on the EU server (I’m on the NA server normally) where I had 0 CP, 0 gold, and 0 mats. By the time I finished with him he had 400CP, about a million in gold, and enough mats where I could make my own gear, potions, etc. Guildies helped me with new gear when I first started, but the rest I did on my own. It was different starting a new character from scratch again

It looks like you have plenty of volunteers to help you out, and if you need more help with getting geared up, just give me a shout in game @Ashtaris.