Yeah sometimes the RNG seems really crappy.

treydog, a warm welcome to Sorcerer Psmith! I always have to turn the volume down when I’m adventuring with a sorc. Great fun. Enjoy!

ghastley, I will look at the metallic dyes, but I don’t remember which ones came early. I recall there’s a nice bronze color for the Dwarven automaton killer achievement that leads to Monster Hunter. Lildereth spent some time underground specifically for that color. I think that weapon and armor trait drops are not entirely random, and the game assumes that you will get trait items to study from the Guild stores and from other players. I joined my first guild on the PS4 just for crafting. Making trait items for friends is the great joy of finally having the research done. Elke stands ready to help her fellow Nord crafter, just give a whisper with what she needs next.

Jerric met with Sir Cadwell this morning and got a new hat. I can never be sure what he’ll do next until he does it, but I think he’s heading to Vvardenfell. I’m pretty excited to go there!

“What’s this? A pot with no stew in it?! Oh well guess I’ll just wear it on my head.�- Jerric probably

I've seen that hat with some really inappropriate dyes, too. Too shiny!

I'm hoping that one of the crew has learned a different trait for helms and can make a piece for research. I don't have an off-line spreadsheet keeping track of that, so it's a laborious process of loading them up to see what they know. I forgot to do so when I did the rounds of their inventories, but now I'll know better the next time this comes up.

And as soon as I make one, I know the RNG gods will switch over to a fresh fixation, and I'll get all Infused for the next few days (or whatever it is I find).

The same effect probably accounts for why Laurie Craft is getting a lot of furnishing plans requiring Woodworking rank 4, but can't find enough beech to get there. At least not as fast as I want her to. I was expecting Unna to keep her supplied, but since she decided to concentrate on her Blacksmithing, she's been finding more Orichalcum than she can use, and next to no wood or fibre at any level. Her set stuff is all steel, for the look, and we hope to recreate that as an Outfit, hiding higher-level gear, soon.

In other news, we saw another snow bear yesterday. That needs to come back soon.

Khajiit was shocked it wasn’t in the December/January Crown Crate season.

Also, this one has said this before, but Flame Atronach’s in the Winter Crown Crate season? Not generally the Atronach Khajiit would associate with winter but maybe one would summon a Flame Atronach to warm up in the cold of winter?

Ooh! Also Feng saw a Frost Atronach being put to creative use in Malabal Tor. They stuck him in a small cave and were using him as a freezer! It worked great, until the mage that was binding him went rogue and had to be put down...

They don't seem to vary the content of the Crown Crates, just the schedule. And Unna wants some certainty of obtaining one, when it does return. The Crown Crate gamble is not what she wants to see. It was a couple of years since it last appeared, isn't that long enough?

Yay! Jerric can finally carry his cooking pot and lunchbox around with him.

Today Feng finished up the Dominion campaign in Malabal Tor but will be sticking around for the Malabal Tor Adventurer achievement before moving on to Reaper’s March. He is closing in on lvl50 with only 5 more levels to go.

On a side note, Khajiit is strongly considering buying the Cyrodiilic Jungle House at Baandari Trading Post. It’s neat for a little house!

My favorite thing about the dog is that it always seems like it's posing with Jerric

@ghastley - It's honestly a little worrying hearing how the current system colors The Crafter Experience compared to what I went through when leveling the Squad. Now it's less about whether the zone spawns enough of the material needed and more on individual character skill. and whether the zone spawns enough if the character level and crafting level don't match up I sort of miss gathering high-level materials with a low level and unskilled crafter.

Anyways, I think I've made enough vouchers for full storage when the update drops. Y'know, assuming they don't increase the price by the time the update goes live. I got 3 lucky drops recently for high voucher yield writs. I guess that's the research done on the Squad doing its thing. (Never mind the other terrible ones i've gotten that i tossed. I don't even look at writs that call for Perfect Roe or Hakeijo)

They did two things at the same time that each "fixed" the same problem, so created the opposite one. One was matching the mat gathering to the character level (skill or overall), and the other was the return from the writs. Now the low-level folks can only gather low-level mats, and the higher-level ones are likely to get even more of the low-level mats back in the "reward".

The first of those was reasonable, as everyone can gather what they'll individually use, but it meant that your crafting chars would have to wait for the main to gather for them. I assume this was a by-product of One Tamriel, as mat levels couldn't depend on zone any more. Feeding back lower-level mats than the writ used was supposed to allow the higher-levelled crafters to supply the others, making the assumption that the crafter would be of higher level than the recipients, when it would usually be the opposite.

So now there's a glut of the base stuff, and a shortage of the matching level for the mains. They should have let the writs return the mat level they used more of the time.

I should note that I expected the down-levelling of the returned mats to be more biased to one level down than to level 1. I.e. a level 4 writ would most likely return level 3 mats. It turns out to bias towards level 1, instead.

Yeah, it's pretty nasty, even at higher levels. The only good thing that came from it is that you'll always get more materials than you put in at the base skill level.

Anyways, the Squad finished Apostle/Ebonshadow motifs today because...idk buying motifs gave me purpose before lol Probably the only motifs I'll touch unless a writ calls for it tbh. (Except for the nasty 2 introduced in Morrowind)

Which are you talking about?

-Buoyant Armiger (worst droprate ever even after completely clearing Vvardenfell, extremely expensive)

-Militant Ordinator (bought with AP, very expensive)

Oh ja, those do sound nasty

Feng reached lvl48 today. Still not finished with Malabal Tor Adventurer, though we did get the Malabal Tor Master Explorer achievement and a promising looking green color (Silvenar Green). Hopefully tomorrow we can finish up Malabal Tor and move on to Reaper’s March, and lvl50.

Feng finished up the Malabal Tor Adventurer achievement and moved on to Reaper’s March where he hit lvl50! Feng is now the same lvl as Mira and Brenna!

So because Laurie was complaining about the shortage of Beech in our craft bag, I ran all the characters who could gather some through the achievements that would get us more dyes to choose from. It sort of worked. Laurie is still short of Beech, but the Oak, Steel, Orichalcum, Flax, and Cotton stockpiles have improved markedly.

And naturally, we have more Iron, Maple and Jute than we could ever use, as every writ we turn in gives us more. I may try just making things, and passing them along for deconstruction experience. Bank space may become an issue, as mine is rapidly filling with surveys and treasure maps for regions nobody has yet reached. I already have Laurie learning every new recipe or furnishing plan that's found, rather than having them sit in the bank until usable.

And of course, the benefits from the skyshards, achievements etc. are all still there.

---

Unna went back to Coldharbour to use up the survey and treasure map we had for there. She gathered another bunch of lost mages in the process of reaching the sites, as well as a skyshard, or was it two? No Beech, that's for sure.

Recently I've been thinking of joining an RP guild again, but with the fact that I'm not on at a consistent rate and that my mind tends to go blank on its own more often than I'd like to (I suspect it's a symptom of not really being into the spirit of things) I feel like I should probably forget about it.

There's also the fact that RP guilds tend to be...well full of drama. One of my favorite experiences was when I was in an Argonian guild and one of the Pact guilds had a meeting with the guildmasters. A voice meeting. Where they got one of their members, apparently some kind of police officer OOG, to try and intimidate us into giving them some kind of position of authority. (This was before One Tamriel, and there seemed to be some sort of agreement between all these RP guilds, most likely to determine where their base of operations is, both OOC and IC)

Also a friend's experience with another big guild makes me wary of interacting with any ESO RPers. I guess I'll just continue plodding along with the occasional daily until the next big content update.

^
Khajiit saw on zone chat the other day (sometimes it’s good for a laugh) someone was advertising for an all female guild. It was unclear if they meant female characters or all the players had to be female. When asked to confirm, the person said “players�. How would you even be able to police that?!

Should you, treydog and monkey form an all-animal guild? "Oook!" <== quote from the Librarian in Discworld.

Police their chat to see if they get britchy one week out of the month?

Bahahaha!


This is a good idea, tbh. No homo (sapiens) allowed!

I like this idea. We could even include mALX, since she is a squirrel!

Khajiit, I highly recommend the Cyrodilic Jungle House (“The Love Shack� in Jerric’s world. ) Easy to decorate and great location. Congrats to Feng on hitting the Champ levels!


I confess I take multiple shots so I have a better chance of getting one with the pup looking cute!

The RP invitations I’ve seen have all looked very controlling. As if they planned to tell you what to say and do to act out whatever scenario they had already cooked up. RP seems like it could be fun, but not if you’re expected to be one of the puppets or worse, just an audience.


Voice check. It’s easy on the consoles where they have built-in voice channels. I suspect that would work for a non-sapien guild as well.


Jerric has called a halt to his crew leveling until the bonus goodies arrive, so I have spent a blissful amount of time with him and with Elke. Jerric has gotten Necrotic Orbs, which he uses (sometimes accidentally) as sort of a long-distance taunt. He is not a tank, so results are often hilarious. Elke is a quiet joy to adventure with. She has been updating me on her love life as we go Skyshard hunting. Unlike Jerric, Elke can pass any number of quest-givers and stay on task. They are both map hounds (Elke does the surveys), so I’ve visited some nooks and crannies of Tamriel that I hadn’t seen for a while.

Thanks for the congrats for Feng! This one was glad to finally show him the attention he deserves and get him to lvl50. Your recommendation regarding the Cyrodillic Jungle House has been noted. Thanks for that!

As for doing a voice check this seems like a bad way of doing this. Khajiit has heard many people who sound like a member of the opposite gender.

I am imagining the fun Jerric can have with orbs! They absolutely mes-mer-ize Buffy and she feels compelled to chase after them like chasing butterflies.

They have to stop taunting me!

Want one!

She's not even riding it right. Take those pants off!

Lol, well hopefully they bring it back soon. Be prepared to play the Crown Crate game though, as Khajiit believes it is more likely to show up as a “lesser� reward from those, sadly.

Today Brenna was hunting the last skyshards she needed in Stormhaven and learned that her last one was in a public dungeon. Bonesnap Ruins. Now, Brenna was doing the Mages Guild dailies fairly regularly a while back and this one came up as a location once. She was able to complete her objective there because of the randos running around and clearing a path for her, but she died a few times due to being overwhelmed by the goblins. Well this time, she absolutely destroyed every mob of goblins that came at her and was able to retrieve that last Stormhaven skyshard. It’s nice when you can see how far your character has come.

I think I know which one you mean and based on the guild name I got the feeling it wasn't exactly sincere. At the very least, it seemed tongue-in-cheek. That said, even with voice it would be tricky knowing who's really a woman.



My recent experience with zone advertisements is that the most common guilds are:

• Vampire/Werewolf
• Criminal
• Dunmer House

Personal experiences with these guilds, particularly a Noble House originally established in at-Tura estate, more or less hint at the puppet/audience angle. At the very least, it seems to be the case for the less...let's say ambitious players. That guild seemed to give the impression that you were free to interact as much as you wanted with whomever you wanted so long as you were "up to date" to the ongoing plots. In other words, you knew the "right" way to do it.

Personally, I preferred to chat with the rest of the help instead of getting too entrenched in whatever the nobles were up to. I signed up as a guard, after all. (Managed to befriend a sickly Khajiit mage's apprentice before I decided I wasn't ready for this sort of thing)

On the other hand, the friend I mentioned ran into the nasty "my way or the highway" types that had a very close minded view of how a character could be played. They happened to be part of the game's RP alliance thing so...yeah, these days I only look out for smaller guilds lol (I also recall a story he told me of how in the early days he witnessed a god-mode public execution of a Necromancer character. Geeze)

Oh, right, all aboard the fursona guild!

Anyways, more on topic...
Recently I've been having Fjotreid doing the Morrowind dailies again for Morag Tong/Ashlander motifs. They seem to be really expensive still, at least compared to the Clockwork City ones. Must be the whole Chapter thing? Either way, the Squad had quite a few of them already so I decided to finish those off. Also got a few extras to sell, and the gold's always nice after spending it on the Horns of the Reach motifs a while back.

Oh ghastley, I hope the white bear comes back for Unna!

And Khajiit, please relay a hearty congrats to Brenna - that is a great feeling, yes?

Yes.

Honestly, Khajiit is looking forward to the skill advisor thing. This one has an Argo Templar Tank and a Reduard Dragonknight DPS character waiting in the wings for when the new update drops. Should be interesting to see what the people who make the game think regarding character builds.

I still have a couple of slots available that I'll start when the update drops. The level up "gifts" don't look great, but I want to see how they affect a new character, especially details like getting a decent weapon early on. Some of mine wished they had the skill to make (or use!) better than they found.

Unna is far behind Brenna (and still behind Trey). She's just reached level 38 and has finally arrived in Skyrim - and turned right back around to go back for the skyshards and achievements she missed in Shadowfen. We had to take the first level of Keen Eye for woodworking, as those Hickory logs are just about invisible without it. She can't use them yet, but soon ...

Laurie Craft is thinking the same way for her Alchemy. Between them, the entire crew has found only one Luminous Russula, and so she only knows one trait for it. Wormwood keeps disappearing for the writs (along with Blessed Thistle, and Corn Flower - I think there's a rotation of three for the "random reagent"), and she has one to learn for that. The only other botanical she doesn't have all the traits for is Nirnroot, but she has plenty of that. The one trait she doesn't have on butterfly wings, which just won't drop.

On the other hand, apart from that one dark brown fungus, the others aren't hard to see. Butterflies are very conspicuous, they just don't want to provide wings, only insect parts. Torchbugs, too, but she managed to complete that one. The dyes for the achievements aren't wonderful, but add to the choice pool.

^
@Ghastley- would you like a small shipment of ‘shrooms?

That would solve the shortage, but not the inability to find them. In fact, it might hinder acquiring that ability. So not yet, but hold that thought.

I do believe that looking for things affects the RNG. We were having a cotton shortage until the search target switched to Luminous Russula and Wormwood. Now we're finding cotton. Or rather, Blossom and Laurie are, but Unna's getting almost all spidersilk because she can't use it yet. And if Unna doesn't find spidersilk, she finds flax, because we left Clothier levelling to Blossom. I have a lot still to learn about efficient gathering and crafting.

You pretty much just have to hit every resource node while you are moving around. Try walking/running instead of riding when you are traveling about and always raid any containers you see. Also while moving around zones, try to pay attention to the areas you are in and make note of the concentration of resources and how visible they are. The more concentrated and visible the better.

Congratulations to Brenna! Moving freely through a public dungeon is a real milestone!

Thanks! It felt pretty amazing!

WOO HOO! Congrats to Jerric!!

Ghastley = it really sounds like you are making the crafting a lot more complex than it actually is = overthinking it. You are trying to find intelligence behind it that is at your own brilliant level; but the people who created the crafting in this game are developers way below your level. Keep that in mind and you won't find it such a struggle.

None of your characters need a certain level of wood (like Beech) to bring up their crafting level; crafting levels are best increased by deconstructing weapons/armor/glyphs. And research items are almost always made at the lowest level possible just to preserve the more expensive higher level materials; but most people cull them from the items they picked up throughout their adventuring.

To raise up crafting skill levels: Take your highest level character and have them do whatever they are going to do (questing; adventuring; etc). Have them bring back every weapon/armor/glyph they find while out. Give all those items to whichever character you want to raise the crafting level in; and have that character deconstruct them all.

Any level of items at or above their current skill level will do; but the higher the item is above their skill level = the quicker their level will raise. You can have them jump several levels with just a few very high level items.

If you see "Intricate" items in the Guild bank = they were put in there by members to help those trying to raise crafters up. Pull them from the Guild bank and have the character you want to raise grind them up = they will jump start their leveling extremely well.

I'm sure any of us that aren't currently raising a crafter would be glad to send you high level items to deconstruct.

Also: anytime you want to go skyshard hunting, if you want one of us along to help you get skyshards in harder dungeons I'm sure any one of us would be glad to help.





I like that one for its convenience to the wayshrine, merchants, and Guild traders. (or if nothing else, a quick way to hop to Malabal Tor for the surveys there, etc).







Oh man, so do I! The game was so Awesome then, and it made so much more sense that different materials would spawn in different Provinces!






Exactly right!







Urgh, I don't have a single one of either of these, and the drop rate of Master Writs calling for them is out of balance high. I refuse to spend my Alliance Points or 500,000 on them, if I don't get them in a crate then they won't be gotten.

I have been considering joining that RP guild that I posted the wedding and Witches festival vids of on here; (the guild that plays Clue every week) but have been concerned about the same thing. They have several members that I've known since Morrowind's release, and haven't seen any drama going on so far.

Also, I'm really not sure how deeply they RP. Some of these RP guilds in ESO are extremely serious about their RP; and from what I have heard they will expel you from the guild for not staying in character 24/7 while online. I am not sure if I would want to join a guild that took the RP THAT far.

And I'll never play DiD in ESO, or I wouldn't have a single character left.






Urgh, that doesn't sound good at all! I never realized your character had to follow someone else's script for them; that doesn't sound good at all!






WOO HOO! Congrats!!!






That is so cool! I haven't seen this (or maybe didn't realize what I was seeing if I did) - but that is so creative; I love it!!!

This was also a thing I was self-conscious about while I was in all of these guilds. 99% of the time I defaulted to OOC and honestly found it hard to jump to IC on the fly. Never mind that I have more than one character, finding the energy to channel them all the time can be exhausting. That said, I also find that I tend to pick up verbal tics and speech patterns from characters so sometimes the line gets a little blurry lol. Which kind of leads to when I DO get into character. It's a horribly confusing mess of IC and OOC whenever I'm not seriously RPing. (I think this has been seen in some of our guild meetings)


Anyways, TIL that those storage containers can't come any faster. I already got some storage plans that my bank will thank me for.

Less than a week!

I have trouble reading the chat box (aphasia since the stroke) - so use TeamSpeak and Discord a lot = I couldn't imagine trying to do the voices for my characters, especially Bubba (male) and trying to talk for them.

That said, I do like to have my character kneel before the Queen; Kings; and gods in the game. I have her salute the military male quest givers; and when she is not working she walks instead of running. Many times while riding Puffy she goes at a walk instead of a gallop. She bathes in the nearest lake immediately after dungeon crawling; and won't eat food from a gross place (but may sell it).

My biggest challenge in RP'ing with any of my characters was Bubba. He started out as a thief before the Thieves Guild DLC came out. I don't have a clue how to think as a man; didn't enjoy seeing him walking around (because I play in 3rd person) - it always startled me to hear his male sounds in game because I would jump thinking some (male) enemy was attacking me - was just used to hearing female sounds and seeing a girl character.

So Bubba got shoved into being a bank mule and didn't get out for anything until a year and a half ago when he became a crafting mule instead. All of a sudden I was seeing him daily again, so something had to be done to change him. He is in the process of changing, but I am so happy with the changes I've made so far that I now enjoy pulling him out for his crafting; and the last several costumes, personalities, and wigs have been for him instead of for the girls = so his RP opportunities are growing. Suddenly I find him much more interesting and fun to play with.

And I don't make up personalities for my characters, I play them and see how/who they are, how they come out through a preponderance of seeing their actions and facial expressions. (the Personality Idles add-on I use has a LOT to do with this; for example: Calia getting drunk and rowdy; or vomiting all over Buffy the day they met. They all have the exact same personality package; but she is the only one who has done that! Misa has the package, and you see her praying with it a lot; and sometimes she stands like a commander. Mia begs or points at the sky a lot; etc. They all have the same package, but use different idles out of it regularly. And of course, Bubba uses the duchess idles = pulls out a mirror and looks at himself in it; fans himself; fixes his bangs and hair a lot; etc. So that is how I figure out their personalities).

One time Khajiit was playing Brenna in Daggerfall and a person whispered to us “Would you consider joining an RP Guild?�. Lol

Haute got invited to one in or around Daggerfall too; right about her first week in game. Not sure if she ever joined it or not (I don't think she did) but at the time she was wondering if by walking everywhere instead of running (if it is what caused her to be invited).

There is one that meets all the time in that Inn in Fell's Run = we have run into it a few times when we had Guild Meetings there. (and one at the Sands Inn in Sentinel too)

Khajiit ran into something... odd, today. Brenna was in Glenumbra again in the vicinity of Hags Fen when we saw a horde of folks all dressed in Primal style light armor running around. This one mistook them for a bunch of Bloodthorns maybe chasing someone, but no, they were all players. Any idea what may have been going on with this?

Possibly a Bot pack. They tend to be clones of the same character, hunting for hides. If the account names are all four random letters followed by four random digits, then I've seen them too. I think the crocs there are dense enough, and respawn fast enough for their purpose.

In other news - Laurie found our second ever Luminous Russula today. Near Westtry, but we've gone back looking for more without success. But if anyone needs piles of all the other 'shrooms in the game, we have them.

That’s probably exactly what it was. Glad we weren’t farming that area for hides.

Stonefalls is loaded with Luminous Russula; it is just hard to see because it is normally at the base of tree trunks where it is the same color and blends in too well to be seen easily.

When I began needing plants for Alchemy Writs I finally went ahead and took the "Keen-Eye" for Alchemy and discovered a lot of them I had been missing (as well as several other plants that are hard to see initially). The one for Clothing helps a lot too; because some of the later clothing plants are nearly invisible when hunting for them.