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.
Back in March 2019 I completed modification of an Alienware Aurora R2 case for LED lighting that does not require OS drivers or support. Here is a link to that post from that time.
Recently this modification has developed an intermittent failure. The lights on the right side of the case aren’t working properly.
Here’s a video describing the problem and showing the fix.
I finally started the repair of the RV Gate Casters.
The left side caster is tilted and looks like it will break off soon. As you can see the casters are held on with short pieces of 2 by 6 which are then screwed with lag screws into the bottom 2 by 4 of the gate. On the left side the 2 by 4 is twisting under the load of the caster.
The fix I’ll try is to use a long 2×6 rather than a short piece and extend the 2×6 under the the vertical piece at the center to prevent twisting. I’ll bolt the long 2×6 to the 2×4 so their held tightly together to stiffen them. I had some used treated 2 by 6 left over from tearing off a partially rotted deck.
The hardware is all stainless since I live on the coast of Oregon. Also the 3/8″ bolt heads holding the casters on are recessed and covered with silicon to slow down the rot of the 2 x 6 since the recess goes through the treatment.
The bolts all have small washers under the heads and large washers under the nylon lock nuts. Looks like that is working. The caster is held straight under the weight of the gate. No twist. I’ll fix the right side another day.
Cheers, :ww
Update – Fix the other side of the gate
I finished the gate repair. Here are pictures of the process.
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.
Windy Weather 