Guild Wars 2 has recently released a chapter called “What Lies Beneath” in the End of Dragons Expansion. I decided to start to play through the chapter and later join on another character with my friend so that we could play though. All went well for a couple of story segments and I reached a new area of the map.
Here you can see where the new map zones are and you can see that my character is max level [which is required for End of Dragons expansion] and you can see that I have a full set of Exotic Armor with the last available Elite Spec for the Guardian class which is WillBender. Which is to say that I’m not new to this game or new to the class.
Within Elder Scrolls Online, fast travel can be expensive. When you use a Wayshrine the price goes up dramatically for a while. And the base price is never all that cheap for a lower level player. The cost scales with level and for a level 20 player is around 80 gold to anywhere in the world to a wayshrine that you have visited before, but as soon as you travel, the cost is about 6 times that for your next trip and the cost begins to count down every second until it reaches that base cost. However, there are free ways to travel – coaches, wagons and boats.
BenevolentBowd has made a very nice map showing the routes for free travel. However, given the way boat captains and wagon masters talk about their destinations, this map can be confusing. This map reports the destination cities, but leaves out the zones. And the travel vendors report the zones they travel to. I’ve taken BenevolentBowd’s map and added the zone names so that it can be more easily used by the novice adventurer. To use the full size map, right click and “Save Image As” to your hard drive. Enjoy. :ww
However I recently came back, after about 3 years with Final Fantasy XIV, with some Guild Wars 2 along the way and found the experience with ESO very different. I’m sure that I’ve changed, but the ESO game has changed too.
I recall that in 2018, as I started, the quests seemed very disconnected and hard to find. Also, they sent me off to do things that were Killing Me quite often. I did get a starter pack with a nice mount and some other goodies. Not sure if I bought it or if it was a gift.
ESO Economic Model
The ESO economic model is a lot like Guild Wars 2, which is Buy-Cheap-To-Play and then Pay-For-DLC [Download Content] and Cosmetic items in the store.
ESO appears to be Free to Play, with Pay-For-DLC and Cosmetic rewards, and an Optional Subscription with Perks. ESO does not appear to be Pay-To-Win. As I have come back, I find things in my account wide collection – Four Nice Outfits – light, medium and heavy armor and a fancy dress up armor, among other things – that I didn’t think were there four years ago.
Not Dying As Much
As I have returned, quests were never life threatening. At least I have not died all the time. A few times. And one quest even has death as part of the story line. But repair of gear is required not only after death, but after fighting for a while. One of my playing rewards was a stack of repair kits tho. So there is that.
I have a level 8 character, with a companion who is level 2, and we were just in High Isles, a zone from the recent DLC. We came across lots of mobs on the road and as part of quests that had bright red names – as if they were much higher level, but we dispatched them in two’s and three’s with no problem. I’m not sure what the Bright Red Names are meant to signify. Those mobs didn’t seem any stronger than the ones I’ve seen in Summerset for example, which is a “Starter Zone”. Looks like ESO scales so you can deal with any of the zones or quest content that you will see.
A lot more fun
I’m having a lot more fun now with ESO than I did four years ago. This is not a detailed review. Just take this as an advertisement [unpaid of course] to encourage you to go try ESO for yourself if you’re interested in an MMO and haven’t played Elder Scrolls Online in a while or have never played it.
In a few days we are going to get a new feature in Final Fantasy XIV – Island Sanctuaries. These are “Instanced Housing” in the form of a large island for every player. Here’s the FFXIV official page and here’s an article with some details.
How disappointing. I had assumed that they would be available at, oh say, 30 or 50. So I could take my friends who are new to the game and show them my Island Sanctuaries. Or as an alternative activity for my 2 dozen alts. But no. The Island Sanctuaries are locked behind a tall, tall ladder of level 90 and Endwalker. Current housing is locked behind scarcity and high cost in Gil and Island Sanctuaries are “End Game Content” at least now. In a couple of years it won’t seem like End Game any more.
And of course the other obvious question would be why can’t the whole account share the same Island? All the alts could work to progress the same island.
All of my Alts are 50+ and about half have completed Heavenward that’s 3.0. And my friend started more recently and of their half dozen alts they only have a couple beyond Heavensward and one at Endwalker which is 6.0. Are you seeing a theme here?
I played FFXIV on 25 July 2022 from 4:30 – 5:30am in Praetorium Dungeon for Moogle Tomes as part of the event. Later on, shortly after playing, I tried to log into the forums and got the following screen.
I tried both Firefox latest of that date, and Chrome latest of that date and both failed the same way. I am running an updated Windows release. And clearly FFXIV was updated as I started to play.
Not sure what the problem is but I can’t access the forums.
I’d like the gorilla mount for my Lalafel characters. Nothing is cuter than a Lalafel carried around by a gorilla. BUT.
It’s too boring to get these rewards. It requires 7 RUNS of Praetorium, which takes about 40 minutes each, and a run of something else. After running this dungeon dozens of times it is Soooooo Boring. I can’t stand it. I have several Lalafel characters, but I guess they will have to do without their mounts.
I saw a Youtube video talking about a new controller that solves the Joystick Stick Drift problem with game controllers. But then I got to searching around and found that Hall effect joysticks have been around for a dozen years.
So APEM was making Hall effect joysticks back before 2010. There’s a youtube video from Digikey showing that.
But the Hall Effect Joysticks are Going to be More Expensive
Oh, by the way, before we talk about the Hall Effect versions costing more, look at this:
So, yes there are cheap controllers that plug in for $30 or so. But the wireless ones are about the same price as the Hall Effect ones from Gulikit. No excuse for Microsoft and Sony to not use Hall Effect joysticks. :ww
World of Warcraft has been accused of copying Guild Wars 2 mounts for the upcoming Dragonflight expansion. Let’s review Guild Wars 2 mounts for those who don’t know. Mounts were added to Guild Wars 2 in Path of Fire. Before that travel was limited to Teleporting to Waypoints, and Gliding. There were some other things like mushrooms and lava tubes in some limited zones.
Guild Wars 2 Mounts
There are a few mounts in Guild Wars 2 and they each have their special abilities that are increased with Masteries in the game. All mounts and mount skins are account wide in GW2, just like Wow.
I just found some outfits from a vendor in Rata Sum. There are other vendors like this around I’m sure, but I tripped across this one and was looking through his wares. Outfits. And they cost “Endless Tonics”. Endless Tonics are “dress up” novelties that last only a limited time and not in combat. But this vendor will upgrade those Tonics to “Outfits” which work all the time, in combat or not. Here is the vendor and the outfit. And outfits are account wide so here it is on one of my girls. Not fancy. But more “Comfortable” than the armor.
The thing is that most of these “Endless Tonics” are very expensive on the market board. But one of them is very cheap. 10 SILVER. Search for “Endless Common” on the market board. It’s only 10 silver as I’m looking. Others are very expensive as you can see. Then swap the “Endless Tonic” at the vendor for the “Outfit”, which you can wear on all your characters all the time if you like.
Windy Weather 