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I get the frustration of having to re-farm keys for the dungeons, but without that, is it possible that over time NM will just be people dungeon running?
At least having to re-farm the keys means the NM is constantly occupied.
That's why ideas like stacking keys, or a limited use greater than one, were brought up: Players generally understood the reason for the key system. But the current implementation caused a lot of friction and frustration, and actively prevented people from running the dungeons or trial.
So the hope is that there will be some other implementation that tries to take both goals into account: keep the NM busy, and allow players to do the content without throwing stones in their way.
I genuinely think they need to nerf at the very least the trash packs to some degree.
Everyone wants people in there to do stuff with, yes? Everyone would want there to be actual engagement with the Zone so that ZOS has reason to implement it permanently, I assume? Because they've stated that the NM might become a permanent thing if it does well enough. What strikes me as a bit odd is that we got a whole thread literally one week in to tell us "Hey the NM is getting a bunch of activity!" when like...yeah, ANY new content is still swarmed with activity one week in. Yet we haven't gotten a single peep about how the engagement was for the last week or so.
It would not make things so trivial if the mobs were tuned down some. I tried the NM on a couple of different builds and none of them were able to take down a single trash pack. They all did better than the first attempt I made on my Oakensorc before I did some tweaks, and my WW lasted the longest because of Rip and Tear spam + blocking, but even when blocking and dodging and not standing in red I only managed to make it like ten or so fifteen seconds before I was dead.
ZOS could 100% tune down the trash packs some so people still have to work and be smart and actually play, or group with other people to make it easier, but are more capable of actually beating that trash. They can also leave all the Bosses the same they were, it makes sense those require groups. Same with the Trial. Making it more accessible to more people doesn't mean trivializing the content. It means making it so you can get to a group farther in without dying. It means if you do die and get separated from your group, you aren't SOL in getting back to them. It means more engagement, which in turn means a higher likelihood for it to become a permanent thing for those who enjoy it.
Also more people being in there if they can at least get around to quest more reliably is more people in there who might group up to do those Bosses or whatever. More people in = fuller instances = more people to run with. And I know someone will go "well if people were down to group why not just group to begin with", but that's not always how people work. You can 'group' without actually being in a group, like when there's a bunch of people at a Dolmen. It ties back to people being able to actually get to each other rather than being stranded because there are trash packs they genuinely cannot get around.
Edited by Arunei on June 20, 2026 4:06AM
PC-NA | Been around since closed beta | Alt account: Arunei PC-NA
Avid RPer. Hit me up in-game @Ras_Lei if you're interested in getting together for some arr-pee shenanigans!
RP Characters:
Sarah Lacroix: Breton Vampire who really really REALLY likes likes learning Magick and also her Altmer husbando
Kaalhil Swiftstrike: Tiny shapeshifting monster hunter Bosmeri lady with enough sass to kill a dragon or ten
Gwendolyn Jenelle: Friendly healer with a coffee addiction and her own medical practice
Krisiel: Literally crazy Werewolf, no like legit insane. She nuts
Kiju Veran: Ex-Fighters Guild Suthay who likes to punch things and is also a spy and ALSO a Werewolf
Niralae Elsinal: Young Altmeri woman with way too much Magicka and Vampire husbando
Slondor: TESified Slenderman, except lazier and has more of a thing for deals than Clavicus Vile does
Marius Vastino: Sarah's Imperial apathetic sire who likes to monologue
Lirawyn Calatare: Traveling performer and bard who's 101% vanilla bean
Soliril Larethian: Blind alchemist who uses animals to see and brews plagues in his spare time
Unfortunately, recently, my apartment building was scheduled for being demolished, and I had to move to a new apartment without immediate Internet access; consequently, I wasn't able to log on between approximately April 22 and May 30.
As a result, I didn't have sufficient time to acquire the capstone reward: the Night Market Curator skin.
In addition, I wasn't able to participate in the "Prepare for the Night Market" campaign, either, and wasn't able to acquire any of the following collectible rewards from that campaign, either; namely:
* the Golden Riften Rogue Face Markings
* the Golden Riften Rogue Body Markings
* the Not My Coins! emote
* the Whale Shark Pangrit Nymphling non-combat pet
I was especially looking forward to acquiring the Night Market Curator skin, which I had planned to equip on my participating Arcanist character.
Could you please make that skin available in the next occurrence of the Night Market event zone, and if possible, provide some means of acquiring the other Golden Pursuit rewards that I was forced to miss as a result of the moving — perhaps either in the Crown Store, or at least in a Crown Crate?
This kind of content is overall not my interest, but I took part because I wanted some of the rewards. And I just want to say, THANK YOU for letting everyone in a battle get loot, rather than just the top few damage-dealers or whatever!
—PC/NA, never Steam—
Getting lost in TESO Tamriel and beyond since Beta 2013!
Alliance agnostic: all factions should chill the fetch out and party together.
If you ever wonder why certain official fandom spaces are so often toxic and awful, remember: corruption starts from the top. ^^v
The NM is fun when there are a lot of people and a waste of time when there aren't. I play off times and my experiance was more frustration than fun.
THe keys are a problem. I only was able to complete each of the dungeons once due to the lack of people not having the keys, not having the right keys, not understanding that you have to get the new keys *every dang time!* The time to complete the dungeon is a small fraction of the time needed to get the keys.
And the wait time to find 4 people who have the all the right keys and the interest was often as much as a half an hour.
I really enjoyed the Night Market. Now that it is gone, I am missing it.
For me the difficulty was spot on - near impossible solo, doable with a small group of experienced players, needing a 12-person PUG team for most bosses, two 12-person PUG teams for skirmishes (just so it goes smoothly).
I normally play solo, even completing some vet dungeons solo. Having to group with other players to clear content was a nice change of pace.
Especially enjoyed the trial. I really liked that the trial was the epitome of teamwork and not all about dps. Getting teams together and teaching everyone what was expected of them, while frustrating at times, was very rewarding when the team actually got the clear. I was lucky enough to get it cleared about 10 times, including a "No Death" run. First time I proudly displayed a trial title - "Pathwalker".
I'm looking forward to seeing it again in the future - but I would hope that its next iteration isn't exactly identical to what we just had. I think the overall format was good but would like to see the 3 sections swapped out for different content.
PC NA. Arrived in Tamriel April 2017. CP2925+. 14 Characters. Housing Addict.
How do you feel about the distribution of rewards during this event zone?
The house was great, a really fun addition. I love the dynamic vault that is as full of gold as your actual balance that you have in your bank. It was second only to the Ruckus Rust dye in terms of rewards. But other than the house and the dye? Lacklustre, at best. I hardly kept any rewards; most just got deconned. And they certainly were nowhere near proportional to the difficulty. The gear should have been better, the gold should have been more, and the furnishings more commonly awarded.
How have you found the difficulty of the Night Market? Please provide any additional context to the difficulty ratings below.
Too difficult - relative to the rewards, 12-man raid difficulty, and solo overland rewards.
Did you play Night Market solo, with a random group, or an organised group (friends/guild members)?
It's not realistically doable solo; all of my friends and family have stopped playing ESO for other games, so it was PUGs for me.
How did you enjoy the Event Zone? As this is a new event type, we would like to get any positives and negatives.
Sucked. Hard. All grind, no fun. Respawns were so fast, and quest starter placements were so inexplicably poor, usually right in the middle of infinitely respawning "trash mobs" with WB health, that you couldn't actually read and enjoy anything to do with any of the flavour text. The faction reward for the quest turn-ins was so abysmally low that I was logging in and playing ESO more in the past two months than I had in the past two years. And I only hit 10K for the Achievement on my main account. Normally, for an event like this, in six weeks, logging in once a day for just event dailies, I would have hit 10K with all three of our accounts with no trouble and had fun doing it. Instead, I was still on my main account the night before the end and stressed out because I wasn't sure if I'd make 10K in time. I stayed up an hour later than I should have, but I made it. I was only able to do it because, on the last weekend, I gave up on doing it on my dedicated Night Market character and started running alts through to do the dailies for the boss and the slayer. And it was a pain having to open up your journal to look at the 10K achievement to see where you were; your points should have been on the Leaderboard.
Did you try the different activities? If so, did you like them? Please let us know whatever you think worked and what missed the mark.
I liked none of them. Not one. The rewards were so utterly unrewarding that there wasn't a single one worth doing.
I tried the dailies. I got all the bronze keys, and I think the silver keys, but since the higher-tier bosses result in your keys disappearing, I didn't even attempt them. Not worth it, not even a little bit. Once I realised what the keys were for I stopped paying attention to them. The "overland" stuff was such an unfun slog that I had no desire to even attempt the Dungeon(s?) or Trial(s?).
The werewolf boss was the worst. The phase where everything went dark was just a boring, uninteresting slog that would not have been worth the effort even if rewards were bumped 10x. If I were in a PUG and someone triggered that fight, I would just slap the boss once, then run to a corner and go AFK to watch YT or something in another window. Not even remotely worth my time to stay and fight.
The Skirmishes were, at best, frustrating. Each Skirmish only popping up once every 90 minutes, was in no way adequate. The gap between skirmishes was way, way, waaay too long, it should have been 10 minutes at most.
The Oddities were inconsistent. The spider one was clear and achievable on a daily basis. The laser light one was a pain and I think I saw it completed once the entire event. The boulder one was trash. It wasn't clear what to do, how to do it, and I didn't see it completed even a single time ever.
The Races were absolute garbage. Only the Parch was worth doing. There was no in-game explanation to how to do any of them, and only the Parch was worth figuring out.
There was not a single quest or achievement that I liked, everything was purely a chore to be endured for the sake of the 10K Achievement, and none of them were fun. Most of the quests, I don't even know what I was doing or why, it was just:
"click blue arrow",
"spam 1" to get the quest accepted before the trashmobs kill you,
"respawn"
"sneak to nearest white arrow"
"click on white arrow",
"repeat"
"death run to turn in location when finished"
"Hand in"
How do you like the new Patrons?
They were fun, interesting to talk to.
Did anything not function to your expectations?
I expect games to be fun, so absolutely nothing in the Night Market functioned to my expectations. Everything was a janky grind but it was all just poorly designed and indicative of poor decision-making, I didn't encounter any bugs, so there's that.
Do you have any other general feedback?
There was a lot of great flavour text. The NPCs chatting in the background was cute. The Daedra, even the Ogrim all having names was great. The visual style of the zone in general and the individual areas themselves was really well done.
Favour with your faction was gained far too slowly. Either, the favour needed for the first stage (Trade Bars, Golden Tickets, housing unlock, etc.) should have been 2k favour, with the end stage (the dye) being at 4-5k Favour. Or the favour for quest turn-ins should have been tripled and gained for every mob killed.
The Ruckus Red Dye is the best dye added to the game since the Rank 10 Materials red dye and the Veridian Venom green dye.
The Night Market was such a horrible, unfun, boring, repetitive, narratively void grind that I think it broke ESO for me. I hit 10K, checked to see that I had the Achievement and the related dye and logged of. The next day, I logged in, tweaked the outfits on my characters who had red elements where Ruckus Rust would look better than Rank 10 Materials or Khenarthi's Roost Red, and logged out. I've only logged in once a week since then to keep from being kicked from my Trade Guilds, but haven't actually played since. Nor has my wife or our son. And, for the first time since the Beta, I haven't had any desire to play.
”Fusozay Var Var”: ”Enjoy Life”
Life is short. If you have not made love recently, please, put down this book, and take care of that with all haste. Find a wanton lass or a frisky lad, or several, in whatever combination your wise loins direct, and do not under any circumstances play hard to get. Our struggle against the colossal forces of oppression can wait.
Good. Welcome back.
We Khajiit live and fight together, and our struggles will not end very soon, likely not in our lifetimes. In the time we have, we do not want our closest comrades to be dour, dull, colorless, sober, and virginal. If we did, we would have joined the Thalmor.
Do not begrudge us our lewd jokes, our bawdy, drunken nights, our moonsugar. They are the pleasures often denied to us, and so we take our good humor very seriously.
Outfit slots are, no longer disgustingly expensive. A bit on the high side, but at least they are account wide now. So now, this one, my mate, and our cub all have at least two outfits.