Elder Scrolls Online, or ESO, is a long time active title that has an enthusiastic following. I recently saw a complete history of “The Elder Scrolls Franchise”, but oddly, this video leaves out any mention of The Elder Scrolls Online.
I recently saw that one of the Youtubers that I follow for FFXIV, also plays ESO, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Once you approach level 50, your job gets a couple of quests that given them better gear. A quest at level 45 gives all the major armor pieces except the chest and the job quest at level 50 gives the chest piece.
At level 50, the Main Scenario Duty Roulette gives you access to a repeatable quest that gives Tomestones of Poetics, usually referred to as simply Poetics. These Poetics are exchanged in Revenant’s Toll for Ironworks Gear, which is item level 120, and is the most easily attainable powerful gear at this level. Each run takes about a 30 minute wait followed by 30-45 minutes for the run. The cutscenes cannot be skipped. Also each run gives a large amount of XP – usually enough to grant a level – and either 200 or an additional 200 if any member is doing the duty for the first time.
But what about the Main Scenario Quests – Heavensward expansion quests- beyond level 50? Don’t those help level? As it turns out, no, not at all.
Tera just released an update that adds “Apex” skills – and flashy fireworks animations – to the end game for some classes. There are a few problems:
Only 7 out of the 13 Classes get new skills. Gee… Let’s PVP, and you have the new skills and I don’t. I’m toast. Presumably these new skills do more damage, not just have better fireworks.
If you had a choice in a Fantasy Life, would you choose to be Ugly?
Would you choose to grow old and die of old age? In a few years?
Well, if that’s your dream, you may soon will be able to do that.
Today I tripped across a character creation video posted by the developers of this game on Youtube. See below. I think they missed the memo that says that “This is a fantasy world where you can be the way you want to be, rather than putting up with Real-Life.”
Maybe this idea will get traction, but no other popular MMO that I’m aware of makes this choice. All other MMOs that I’ve played have made it easy to be attractive. Yes, there is usually a race or two that are, shall we say, Dramatic in their appearance, But they are usually not designed to be ugly. Apparently all the tribes of Elyria are designed to be, what I’ll call here, Dramatic, and all look similarly so. That is, all the Races, or Tribes, look like variations on a single or two similar looks. For me this is a turn off. An interesting take, but still a turn off. Here are some choices that they showcased in the character creation video. I don’t mind a dramatic choice, but there don’t look like there are any “Attractive” or “Fantasy” choices.
I’m not into “Body Shaming” or criticizing folks looks. Personally, I’m not that handsome. But I don’t seek out ways to identify myself with an Avatar that looks worse than I do. At least not all the time.
I admit that there is novelty here. But I’m not clear that this is going to be popular, especially since these are the Only Choices in the game. Looks like a turn off and bad choice for the game. This is a screenshot of the Concept Art from the website. Is this the fantasy life you would choose?
Ok. You’ll see that this is my RANT on Professions in FFXIV. I don’t claim to be an expert and maybe I got something wrong. So what? I’ve played a lot of MMOs and if it’s so opaque and so difficult then stuff it. RANT ON.
A couple of days ago I spent most of the day leveling mining and only put 3 levels on my miner. What a waste of time. There are 70 levels in each profession. How is this not a colossal waste of time and effort for so little payoff? Just a reminder of what we are facing in professions. [Cuts from other websites are done to avoid the images disappearing when other sites change. All cuts are done with the sites name to give them credit.]
Eight Crafting and three Gathering professions. And all level to 70, presumably.
Lets start with gathering. What’s wrong?
The Elin Gunner was released Nov 2017, and I logged in and made one, but didn’t finish leveling it to 65. You know, been busy with FFXIV. So now that I have my male Brawler up to 65, I’m spending evenings leveling the Gunner.
Once you reach level 59, you head to the Tirkai Forest to fight the Argons. You’ve seen them as you’ve leveled, but this is the first time you see what devastation they bring to the land as they invade. The whole area has a creepy blue glow and is covered with their growing pollution.
Charlie has reached level 65, got the new gear and flight before finishing the story quests.
The key to doing this is doing dungeons along with Story Quests. At level 61, Charlie did Sabex Armory twice. Both were good runs and that pressed him up to 63 while he was doing the stories. He was using a 50% level post bonus at the time.
Continue reading “Brawler Reaches Level 65”
Here are some tricks I’ve learned while leveling professions:
First, set up a cool toolbar to switch professions. I saw this one in a youtube video. Go to character options / hot bars and choose bar 7. You may like another one, but this is the one I saw used and it’s the most convenient for me.
Once you have the hotbar, then drag the items from your gear list into the hotbar and you can switch instantly between professions / jobs.
So you already have a high level job with gathering gear, right? That’s the best way to gather mats of course. And you’ll see that apparently you have to kill a few of whatever mobs before anything drops, so be patient. Odd. Never seen that described, but I didn’t get Yellow Yarzon Legs for about a dozen kills before they started dropping.
While leveling my Alchemist above level 20, I ran out of things to do. But then I found some “Housing” items.
I haven’t yet worked out how to get Guildleves which apparently are special quests for your profession. These are referenced in some guides I’ve seen, but the guy that was supposed to have them wouldn’t talk to me. More research required there.
But these items require mats that you’ve seen before except for the Dungeon Seedling from The Thousand Maws of Toko-Rak so sometime I’ll have to watch for those. Given the strangled state of housing in FFXIV, I’m not sure how these items will sell on the Market, but you get decent experience from crafting them anyway.
Oh, final tip. Use Stealth when fishing, even if you don’t think you need it.
I was fishing at Fools Falls and after a while the level 25 Fate Monster snuck up on me and killed me. Once something attacks, of course, you can’t change to your level 50 whatever and kill it since you are “In Battle”. Luckily some nice person responded to my shout and came by for a rez.
Happy Trails,
:ww
Charlie Nash, named after a Street Fighter character as I’ve said, has now made it to 60. So he’s started the climb to 65 in Savage Reach.
Above are some of the armors I’ve had along the way starting at about level 36 and continuing to the last one at level 60 as I’m ready to board the Airship for the new area. Notice how the previous armor looks a lot better than the new, much more powerful level 60 armor. It’s a Style Reset if you will, in preparation for the new climb to better things in the end-game. More later, but I digress.
To get to level 60, I’ve followed the Story quests with a few dungeons along the way. Near the end, the wait times for the Dungeons near Habere were not worth the wait, so I moved onto Pathfinder Post even though I was 58 and the quest was marked 59. Of course that was no problem for the still overpowered Brawler class.
Windy Weather 