I have a feeling tht the amount of absorbed souls required for the pins to be able to interacted with depends on the amount of players near the dolmen. I've soloed all the Cyrodiil dolmens as a VR10 sorc and every pin takes like something in the range of 5-10 souls, which is alot less than what is required in large groups.

I could be completely wrong but that is just my experience with it!

wenxue2222b16_ESO wrote: »

I don't know if there is some mechanism where you need to be part of the group that starts if off or something. I have done quite a few on level and done more than my fair share of the kills but I never get any loot at the end.

From my experience the loot seems to be totally randomized. I have done more than one of them late at night with a group of friends and we get maybe 2-3 lootable corpses period. The only one to drop anything significant seems to be the last major boss, and we have never seen anything better than a blue and were all over level 40. The other thing that I found was the experience is much lower than it was in beta. Again with just our group of four doing a dolmen we all got about 4 kills worth of xp and an achievement from closing the thing. Very underwhelming, I tend to avoid them now.

I'd also like to see these scale in difficulty depending on the number of players present. As it is now, each spawn is dead so fast to the AOE that there's no way to even tell if a named boss spawned. I just wait to see if I got an achievement after.

"...It seems to me that the pinions correspond to the markings on the ground around the anchor point. At times it is random but a pattern seems to emerge between certain pinions activating before others. When an enemy with a soul composed of daedric energy is defeated near the pinion, it's essence is absorbed into the device. Upon further powering of the device, the pinion can be physically set in motion to release all charged energy and open a seal upon a final pinion. This pinion, with it's heightened security levels, appears to directly relate to the large anchor hooks used to hold the portal open.
The hooks are still unknown to what degree they are needed, whether purely cosmetic (as Molag Bal is known for his show) or needed to maintain a portal of such massive size (that is without without some device to power it; see notes on Sigil Stones). We are certain at this point that the Daedric Prince aims to "merge" his realm of Coldharbour with the plane of Nirn, and the hooks may serve a much more direct purpose then I give them credit for.
... Further investigation of the anchor hooks are underway, but one thing is clear; without the constant vigil of the pinions the portal will become unstable and overload. This is the most ideal and best known method for releasing the hold the anchor has into Nirn."
- excerpts from the notes of Raivan Klutch (<-- me, not from the game)

tl;dr;dc
pinions appear to charge from daedric souls, which come from the things pouring out of the portal over head. Activating pinions release the seal on the Massive Hooks, which in turn close the portal.

In my opinion the system loot is crap too much random especially when you closed a hard one and you told to yourself >>>>
whaou it was hard oh i'm excited to see my r..... What the [snip] no reward It's often like that after you closed an anchor a small or a big one

Moderator Edit: removed cursing

Anyone else get a kick out of the face-plant that happens when the anchor goes to close and the residual Daedra are just kind of spit out?

It's like a mildly failed attempt at a grand entrance...would find it equally funny if I was rushing in to save the day and tripped on a rock...

I've been in desolate places when anchors have opened (There is one in Auridon on the beach that's a pain to get to, so it doesn't see the usual rush of assistance the others do)... Even after all pinyons 'open,' nothing really new seems to take place.
Kind of kills the initial sense of urgency in destroying them after you figure that out. I would have thought the would have coded it so the longer it stayed open, the uglier it potentially got...

Kind of difficult to say who (if one, or more than one) gets credit for closing the pinions, too... I've done several anchors and my "Throwing off the Chains" count seems low...

They really should have stolen Warhammer Online's public quest system for these. Great possibilities, poor execution.

What is not clear about anchors is, who actually thought that repeating the same event through 15 or so zones is a good idea..!