ESO is 10 years old and Zenimax is celebrating for 15 months, which was the time interval between the PC launch and the console launch. There should be more stuff coming but for now there is extra loot during the Anniversary Jubilee. Every year in April they have an in-game festival that grants Jubilee Boxes for various activities – completing a daily quest, killing looting the final boss in a dungeon/trial/delve/ etc. During this period there is a 2x multiplier on experience, so it’s also a good time to level an alt or two. On top of the usual Anniversary content, they’ve released a few “styl ..read more

Well I’ve been quite the slacker, not posting in almost a year! Part of that is I’ve settled into the “endgame” of ESO, that is, pursuing hard mode clears and attempting trifectas. Progress along these lines is slow so not much to say… An explanation for folks not familiar with ESO… there are 3 difficulty levels of dungeons and trials: normal, veteran, and hard mode. Technically hard mode is an optional difficulty within veteran – bosses will have a way to crank the difficulty up before the fight starts. For base game trials, once you start hard mode, you can’t toggle back down without restart ..read more

Fans of EVE Online will tell you that one of the many unique features the game offers is… being able to join the endgame, immediately. As in: create a character, join a corporation, and fly into a nullsec battle. Such a character might be cannon fodder, but the point is you can be there without needing to level up, without grinding gear, etc. You can immediately experience end game content (perhaps via a limited role available to low skill-point characters). I would like to add ESO to this list. My guild started a low-level trials group, for levels 3-14 characters. Yes, level 3 to 14! This is ..read more

A few weeks/months ago, I was shopping around for 3rd, 4th, and 5th guilds to join. ESO let’s you join 5, no reason to not do it! Lots of players join a trading guild, one that is dedicated to obtaining/maintaining a public trader – the kind that sells stuff to other players not in your guild. (Every guild lets you sell stuff to other guild members. This system works differently than every other MMO, except EVE Online come to think of it, so it isn’t intuitive). I however, was after more chances to do vet content. So I joined more guilds, and ironically, my own guild reorganized a bit, and now ..read more

MMO players are familiar with damage meters and measuring DPS. In ESO, if you use a target dummy, the game will report your DPS after the fight is over. This method is essentially the same as the player using a stopwatch and dividing afterwards, except the dummy reports in-game. I never fought a dummy in WoW but it’s probably the same there. Many MMOs allow add-ons and DPS meters are some of the most popular downloaded/installed add-ons available. WoW has many (and probably more), LoTRO has DPS Meter, ESO has CMX, etc. FF14 has them too! In FF14, as I understand it, using DPS meters to shame o ..read more

Well I feel a bit silly… I got my Ring of the Pale Order and realize I was farming in the wrong place. That’s why it was taking so long. I already had the lead that dropped from the dungeon. In my defense, I was going off the list from UESP, which shows the leads in a certain order… alphabetical. However, that is not the order the game shows them. I was missing lead #1 and #4, which made me think it was the Aurmine Ancestral Signet (from treasure chests in Bangkorai) and Order-Etched Gallery Rail (mobs in Bad Man Hallows). I was actually missing Direnni Elegy Loop (delve boss in Coldrock Diggi ..read more

Well it’s been a while. I’ve been playing ESO and FF14 of course, more ESO than FF14, but I’ve mostly been taking a break from blogging. ESO Things are going well in ESO. My two friends and I decided to try our first Veteran Dungeon – Fungal Grotto 1. There’s a symmetry there; one friend and I tried when we were newbies – as I recall I was level 40 and she was just over 45 (high enough to get the Undaunted Pledge which is why we picked Fungal Grotto 1 in the first place) – and it was rough. We were attempting to duo and while we did finish we died a lot. Still it was extremely satisfying to be ..read more

Well I’ve been slacking since Blaugust. Sometimes I only have time to play games rather than write about playing games, you know? I finally got my Dagonic Quasigriff mount, so I can ride around in style. Probably like thousands of other players, who also will obtain the mount… but I don’t care, I like the looks of it. This mount is obtained by participating in various celebrations/events this year – collect event tickets, trade into the Impresario for one item towards the mount. First you need to get the Unstable Morpholith, which in turn required Deadlands Flint, Rune-etched Striker, and Smo ..read more

It took me a while to figure out the squadron system. What helped a lot was the extremely informative post from Late to the Party Finder. Read it, heck read it twice if you want to know something. I’ve been pecking away at the missions and reached First Storm Lieutenant. Huzzah! But there is so much more to explore with the system. For one, I’ve only done squadron missions, to promote my team, and of course the flagged squadron mission I had to pass to get my promotion to First Lieutenant. There are also priority missions to try out, when I level them up more. Both of these types are somewhat ..read more

Woohoo, I joined the Silver Club 2021, collecting the silver medal. It was… tough. Major kudos to folks who could join Gold or Rainbow Diamond. I’m not sure I could do 31 tweets a month, much less blog posts! Since I decided to rotate among games, it did “force” (in scare quotes because playing games isn’t exactly onerous. It’s one way I relax, haha) me to log in and spend some time in various games. Where my natural tendency is to binge a game until I reach some natural break, pause, then go to another game and repeat. I’m gonna try my hand at balancing playtime in game better going forward ..read more