Thanks for that news, ghastley. Since I don't buy crates, this will be welcome - and I like that there is no cap on the currency. But, yes, the variety of game 'currencies' seems too high.

I played around on the PTS a bit this morning. The Companion system is very straightforward once you try it. Without spoilers, here’s what I found with Mirri.

Jerric befriended her first and took her on an adventure. Then Abiene went and found her.

She is the same Mirri for the whole account, meaning that when Abiene met her, she had already leveled a bit and gained some skills with Jerric. She was wearing the pants (equipment) that he gave her and had her skill bar set up by him. Her Outfit is the same, so when Abiene gave her an Outfit, it was the same when Mirri returned to Jerric.

However the Collectables that she used were by character. So for Abiene she rode the mount that Abiene gave her, not the one that Jerric had given her. When Abiene dyed a dress for Mirri, the dress had the same dye for Abiene (twins). Swapping back to Jerric, the same dress model was undyed when he gave it to Mirri.

I think of it as the equipment, skills, and most importantly Outfit are hers, but she can borrow whatever Collectibles the character gives her.

Also this is my favorite part – Companions do not displace Non-Combat Pets! Jerric was conflicted over having an elf or his dog trailing along with him. Turns out he doesn’t have to choose!

Oh, and I predict that my crew will forever be searching for Companion equipment. They only carry what they are wearing. So Jerric is still holding Mirri’s original pants.

Here’s a bit more. I made a new character on the PTS, and she could summon Mirri right away. That’s neat, I guess once one character meets her, she knows the whole crew. I suspect that her relationship status is per character, though. I haven’t tested that.

Also the new tutorial is awesome.

Thanks, Grits! Buffy is really looking forward to the companions.

Not on PTS but I did read the patch notes for it and it seems when you make a master writ your active quest, there will be a quest arrow pointing to the proper crafting table (among the guild hall's sea of tables). If that works, I expect those who do lotsa master writs will appreciate it.

I hadn't noticed the dye effect with my Mirri, as we did it the other way round. Unna recruited her to the Bear Riders, and we copied Unna's outfit as Mirri's (and gave her a white bear to ride). We swapped her armour to medium, nut left her using the bow, as Unna likes some ranged support.

The companion leveling was weird - probably bugged. When she filled her bar at level 4, I got the "companion leveled" notification, but I looked at her stats, and saw the bar still full, and showing level 4. The next half dozen or so kills repeated the same message, and the bar didn't move. After a while (probably after a way-shrine hop) the notifications stopped, and her bar now showed 5, but completely empty, Then a kill that registered 75 xp for her took it from zero to over 2,000. It may be that the count is good, and it's just the display that's messed up, with the notifications triggering off that.

We finished the zone story together in just two evenings play. But we didn't do any side quests. We almost did one when our quest took us to a delve that had its own, but that one was bugged, with a quest item inaccessible, and we couldn't complete it.

I have not figured out the Rapport system. It went down when Unna took her pants away, but it seems to be back up again, without any notification. Talking to her gives what might be clues, but I can't work out how to use them. She says she doesn't like snakes, for example, but happily fights them without blaming Unna for finding one.

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On related topics. Leyawin is reasonably Oblivion-like and many local points of interest, such as a White Stallion Inn where the lodge will be, are just where you'd expect to find them. The map goes further East, so it includes Gideon and points beyond. Gideon uses the same building style as Leyawin, which makes sense. Land gets swampier as you go East.

I found a gate through to Elsweyr, but didn't go through and see where it connects. I recalled doing that during the Reach tests, and not being able to go back the way I'd come from Western Skyrim. There should be a border link with Murkmire, but I haven't been that far yet.

Well we would if it worked. No sign of a quest arrow in the guld hall, so I went to the original station out in the wild, and there isn't one there either. And yes, it was my active quest, and I was on the PTS server.

At least they're intending for it to work, so if they fix it, life will be much easier. Laurie has being trying to reduce her vast backlog of master writs recently, and this would have saved so much time.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 23 2021, 07:59 PM

More from the PTS. A companion can have an outfit and mount just like the player.

Pair of Bears

I couldn't find any way to change her hairstyle or give her a eye-patch. And she has a hat that is always hidden.

And in other news: we met the Adoring Admirer.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 25 2021, 02:43 AM

A pair of bear riders- how fun! And there's Fanador's ancestor Adorimir!

I am really looking forward to the companions! So wait; does the "Adoring Admirer" offer backrubs like the "Adoring Fan" did?

Midyear Mayhem PvP event runs June 24 - July 6. More info here: https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/60293

Buffy's going into the event with 5 scouting missions and two Cropsford dailies ready for turn-in.

An unexpected bonus with the new update. You can now reply to Mail!

Another small thing I'm liking about Update 31 is that the soul magic perk to fill an empty soul gem is changed from 10% from weapon skill killing blows to 10% from any killing blow. Already I see that makes a noticeable difference.

Smart Loot and Armory System coming in Update 32! The first thing I want to do is go into Vaults of Madness and see ghastley finally get that resto staff!!

Looking forward to the smart loot system. Don't care about the armory. Buffy just changes class/spec as casually as she changes hairstyles by logging in as different variant. That said, what I would dearly love to see is some love applied toward allowing changing gear for companions in the field. Some sort of armory system would be perfect but even some simple, partial solutions would be most welcome such as:
- Give the companion a dozen or so 'inventory' slots so they could carry (only) companion gear to facilitate in the field changes.
- With only 5 skills, changing those manually is easy enough so I don't really care about that.
- Absent some companion inventory slots for their gear, at least let us indentify/seoparte their alternate gear in the bank via allowing us to lock companion gear. Heck, even being able to identify unused companion gear as 'junk' to separate it would be helpful. I was chagrined to realize you can neither lock nor junk label companion gear.

You may not be the only one.

That is a much needed change!

Upcoming event (Sep 30-Oct 12) will be in Blackwood. The Impresario will be offering the last fragment of the mount morph - that means beginning to gather fragments for the final (house) morph will start with the next event after Blackwood.

Event tickets this time are a max of 2 / day. You get both from the first daily Blackwood quest you do each day including the daily delve / daily WB quests.

One thing that occurs is that the event runs through our next guild meeting so sharing and doing a bunch of delve/WB dailies might be fun.

Does anyone recall what “guaranteed to include attuneable crafting stations” meant last time it happened? That could be two or a complete set. I didn’t get them before as it required a chapter I hadn’t bought yet. And could you claim on each server, or just once per account?

So today's news is...
...I am fully immersed in TESO, with a cheeky Khajiit.

Why a Khajiit?
Because they are fun and mostly as mad as a box of frogs and this? This one is no different. She will be my comic relief after the rather more angsty adventures of Kaia in Skyrim.

I've played about 6 hours on and off today and more or less figured out the mechanics.

I should also probably sort out my PS+ subscription as I only went for monthly to start with.

Welcome to ESO! The +subscription really is helpful. If you play ESO a lot it works out to be a pretty good value I think. If you bounce among games a lot though, it becomes more questionable.