[ESO] Time in “One Tamriel”

My VR2 sorcerer before I re-learned how to turn off the UI. And before I disabled the FTC add-on too.

I finally gave in and popped in to ESO to check out how it all works now that it’s “One Tamriel.”  1st logging in was a little interesting since I really didn’t recall much of how to play or how crafting worked or anything, but it came back to me fairly quickly.  This was helped by the fact that only half of my characters had had background changes to the point that an automatic re-spec was given.  The others still have their old builds in place, so I didn’t have to try to remember which morphs I’d chosen for them and such.

The thing I found most interesting is that while “everything scales” this actually makes it so that in practice “nothing scales.”  I’ve got several characters at level 50.  They used to be “veteran rank” but now are simply shown with the number of champion points that they have.  Which are account wide, so when I created a new character it already had the 66 CP that every other character that I logged in had as well.  But anyway… level 1 character starts with about 16,000 HP, Magicka, and Stamina.  And my (formerly VR6) 66 CP end-game Templar has about 16,000 HP, Magicka, and Stamina.  Mobs I’m fighting at level 1 have about 32K HP, and mobs I’m fighting at (formerly VR2) with my sorcerer have about 34K HP.

The new Khajit Nightblade I made to finally “go rogue.” Though this shot was more to see the anchor in the sky than to show him off. He was maybe level 6 in this pic, and I’ve got him to level 11 now.

Gear doesn’t really change as you level.  The amount of protection given depends solely on whether it’s light, medium, or heavy, but even there the differences aren’t very large, so it’s mostly “light for magicka, medium for stamina, and heavy for health.”  Alternately, it’s light for magicka damage, medium for weapon damage, and heavy for tanks.

Enchantments scale a little bit as you level, but it’s a very shallow curve.  The procs from crafted sets also changes a little, but again…. shallow curve.  So yeah, other than not having a bunch of skills to pick and choose from, nor weapon swapping unlocked yet… level 1 and endgame “CP 66” really didn’t feel much different when fighting.  So becuz everything scales, nothing scales.  Knowing as I do that eventually you have skill points coming out your ears (I seriously have 20+ unused points on all of my level 50+ characters becuz I just have no place I care to put them) the low-level choices don’t even feel very interesting as a result.

On the other hand, I’m completely hooked again and pretty much played all day on Saturday and Sunday, so there is that…..  and I am used to the control scheme enough that I kept messing myself up in FFXIV’s expert dungeon run this morning and missing dodges.  Gotta love it, no?  I still haven’t even logged in to all of my alts to try to remember all of their concepts.  But I’ll get there eventually.

Happy gaming out there!

[FFXIV] [ESO] My Daughter Has Her Fairy Pet (Finally!)

Unlocking scholar. I’m impressed at the facial expression the animators pulled off too.

I played my daughter’s character enough to hit 30 and finally get her the fairy pet she’s been wanting.  Now I need to figure out a way to pass gil to her character since she’s endlessly teleporting around all the time and spending all of her gil doing so….

For my own character, I’ve been doing leves and FATE grinding in Coerthas and now have the Warrior to 35 and the Paladin to 36, so there’ve been some gear upgrades and new abilities, but all my roulettes since my last post have been in pre-30 dungeons, so I can’t really say for sure if it still feels like the Paladin has a hard time in the 30’s.  And at the rate I’m going, I’ll be 40 soon anyway and then I’m told it won’t be a concern anymore anyway, so… take that for what you will.

***

My screenshots for ESO all seem to be appearing as blank black screens for some reason, so….no screenies for this part, sorry 😦  I’ve jumped back in to ESO a bit more.  Took a bit to get used to the action-style controls again, but I was able to bang out a workable build for my VR2 sorcerer.  And she was able to solo through the public dungeon in Auridon just fine.  For 3 or fewer mobs I can actually simply use single-target abilities if I so desire.  For more than that… between Shattering Prison, Unstable Elemental Wall, Liquid Lightning, and Elemental Ring spam while under the effects of Crit Surge… sure I’ll be low on magicka at the end of the fight, but I’ll also be at full health and surrounded by dead enemies.  I was also able to solo all the dungeon mini-bosses I came across without trouble either.  Degeneration and Crit Surge were able to keep me healed up well enough and since heavy attacks with a staff now regenerate your magicka pool, it really wasn’t a big deal to do either.

My daughter’s also become enamored of this game, but I really can’t let her run around in it unsupervised due to the justice system that’s in place now.  She accidentally picked up something or maybe attacked a guard or something — I don’t know what, but she’s got a bounty on one of my characters in a lowbie zone that I thought she’d be invulnerable to the mobs in (and she is — light attacks do 1800 damage, mobs have 1200 hp) and so the guards all kill her on sight now.  I know I can mail some gold to the character to pay off the bounty once I go through my list and remember which character I’m using as my bank, but it was still annoying to have that happen.  I’ve made sure to turn off the ability to attack innocents in the settings, but she can still steal things easily enough, so…. she’s going to have to simply play FFXIV and no more of “the red hair in the snow.”

Happy gaming out there!

[FFXIV] [ESO] More Tanking, and Briefly Back in ESO

Warrior unlocked! Does this mean I’m a real tank since I have both jobs now?

I’m continuing to work on the tanking classes in FFXIV.  Something I found interesting was that by level 32 I’d managed to complete my “Difficulty 4” hunting log.  Between being a tank and my chocobo companion, I was taking on level 39 and 40 mobs just fine.  There’d be downtime between fights and I’d be popping cooldowns during the fights, but they were doable, so that was nice.  I’ve got Paladin to 34 and Warrior to 33 now.

Everything I’ve read says that Paladin has a hard time tanking in the 30-40 range, due to dps classes beginning to get their advanced damage skills in the 30’s but Paladin doesn’t get its Shield Oath tanking stance until level 40.  I’ve only tanked Haukke Manor as my highest dungeon so far as Paladin but I did it both at 28 and sync’d down to 31.  In both cases I was able to hold aggro vs a sync’d melee dps who looked to be in i130 gear, so it didn’t seem to be too big an issue.  Of course, I’m not averse to using my mana bar like most Paladins seem to be as they’re leveling.

I have no idea what that mount is, but I’m going to have to find out becuz I want one!

For my tanking I have a marking macro, so I can instantly mark targets.  People have seemed to be more likely to follow that marks as I’m getting higher in levels too, so that’s been helpful.  As a Paladin I pretty much target a mob, hit the marking macro, run in with a Shield Lob, then hit Flash 3x to get initial aggro lock.  Then I’ll hit #1 with Fast Blade and Savage Blade, swap to target 2 and hit Rage of Halone.  Back to 1 and Fast/Savage again, then swap to 3 and Rage of Halone again.  If I seem to be having aggro trouble I’ll add in a Flash after each RoH, but so far I’m not finding that to be necessary.  After #3 is hit with RoH, usually #1 is now dead, so I swap to 2 and do the Fast/Savage/RoH combo on it until it’s about 10% health, then I move to #3 while the dps finish it off, so I can get a jump on #3’s aggro before they switch.  For bosses I Shield Lob as I run in, Flash x2 and then Fast/Savage/RoH until it’s dead, popping CD’s as necessary, picking up adds with Shield Lob, Flash, and/or Provoke as needed.  It’s generally been pretty chill.

For the Warrior, it’s not really that much different.  Skill names are different, and I like to hit Overpower 3x instead of Flash for the Paladin, but since I also have Flash as a cross-class skill…. Tomahawk, OP x3, Flash, and then do the 3-hit combo, with the mob swapping to be sure to be applying aggro all around.  What makes warrior a little more interesting is that you need to weave in Maim every 18 seconds for the damage boost, since doing more damage = building more aggro.  Other than having to weave that in and watch my TP bar a bit since Overpower uses a lot of TP, it’s really feeling functionally identical.  But with that said, doing Brayflox for the 1st time as a Warrior, even the sync’d Dragoon never seemed to have higher than 25% aggro, where on the Paladin, the sync’d melee dps seemed to always be 85-90%.  So yeah…. Warrior seems to have an easier time of it right now, but the Paladin still holds the aggro.  As they say in sports… 1 point is as good as a million……  And FWIW, I let the group know before the run that it was my 1st time tanking it, and just before the Salamander boss, the sync’d melee told me “You’re really solid” so that was a nice compliment to get.

***

She’s quite adept at moving around anymore, and since she still doesn’t know how to fight, everything for her is roleplay.  She even stabled herself on her chocobo at one point, since “that’s where she’s going to sleep.”

Last night my daughter started becoming pretty insistent that she realllllly wants a fairy pet on her character, so I started working on her Arcanist again.  I had her sitting at level 16 for quite some time, and after last night’s round of leve quests, FATEs and a dungeon run, she’s now at level 25.  I’ll try to bang out those last 5 levels tonight, but it might not be until Saturday.  We shall see.  As it is, she’s become quite adept at getting around anymore.  She really likes the Carpenter’s Guild in Gridania since it’s got a small stage and she’ll hop up there and then turn on the Harvest Dance emote and walk away so that she’s performing for anyone who walks by.  This morning after I got her to 25 and did the class quest for that level, I left her character sitting in the Arcanist’s Guild in Limsa Lominsa while I went to take a shower.  When I got out of the shower she was in the Adventurer’s Guild/Airship area in Gridania.  Once I get her the fairy pet, I’m not sure what she’ll want me to do next.  It will be interesting to see…

***

Add-ons out of date, don’t remember the controls, combat systems’ changed, need to re-jigger my UI again, also need to figure out champion points and re-do my build…. lotta work in going back to a game. But it’s still purty!

ESO went B2P this week, so I popped back in.  Just enough has changed to make me step back and go “Whoa!  I’ll need to do some reading to figure out how to play again.”  But since I’m still extremely enamored of FFXIV right now, well…. I think Syncaine sums up my attitude:

“Playing the relaunch of The Elder Scrolls Online just reinforced how much better FFXIV is at being a thempark MMO. I might still try to get back into ESO at some point, but after spending 15 minutes with it, I’m more than fine waiting a bit longer.”

***

Happy Gaming out there!

[FFXIV] A week with a new game

A particularly impressive story-line cutscene, I thought.

About a week ago I realized that I’ve lost interest in ESO for now (if not forever), so I canceled my sub to it.  Due to being on the 3-month plan, I’ve got about a month left where I can log in, if I so choose, so… time will tell, but for now, I’ve got FFXIV taking up all my gaming oxygen.  I’ve played enough MMO’s that for the most part I don’t really research them anymore before logging in, just go on what I’ve heard and the control schemes are usually the same with a few keybinds here and there being different.  FFXIV is in this vein, but there’s just enough different that I actually have gone out to look a few things up here and there.  Oddly enough, I’m having a hard time finding the answers to many questions though.

I still can’t take the Lalafell seriously. This is supposed to be the ruler of a city, and I just see a small child playing dress-up.

For example, since I bought the CE of the game, I got 2 free mounts in the mail when I started.  But if I try to use them, I am simply told “You aren’t authorized to call a mount.”  The mounts don’t have a tooltip or anything, so I have no idea if there’s a level requirement for them or what.  Add in that I see lower level people than me running around with mounts and it gets a bit confusing.  So off to search the interwebz. . . . . and a plethora of “You have to  do the ‘My Little Chocobo’ quest” answers.  And that’s it.  No mention of how to get that quest, if there’s a level requirement, etc.  Semi-useful answer in that I at least know that I need to do a quest, but useless in that I still have no idea what I need to do in order to obtain said quest.

I found Marvin the Martian!

Except I did finally find a forum thread today that indicates that it’s a story quest that you pick up around level 20-ish.  Only took me 4 days of looking to find that out. . . . . and I figure that people level up enough to get the mount and then since it’s unlocked they can change to a lower-level job and still have the mount, explaining why I see level 7 people running around with them too.

One of my archer outfits

As far as progression goes, I’m more or less locked in on my Roegadyn Thaumaturge as my favorite looking character, and since 1 character can do everything, I’ve only played that one since my last post.  I’ve gotten Archer up to level 15 in order to meet the requirement to become a Black Mage once I get the Thaumaturge class to 30.  Really don’t care for the archer either.  Damage is really low for a supposed dps class.  Though high enough that in any group situation (occasional guildhests and FATE bosses) I tend to be the tank due to having too much damage.  Which is pretty sad since my kill time for an even-level mob is about 18-20 seconds.  Damage avoidance seems to be done by circle-strafe kiting melee mobs, and for ranged mobs you just have a duel until one of you drops.

My height vs a standard human and an elf. Except I think they call them Hyur and Elezen in this game.  Not sure if I spelled those right. . .

Conversely, when playing as a (level 17 now) Thaumaturge, it’s generally 3-4 casts for a kill, so 8-10 seconds.  Of course, you can’t circle-strafe with a THM (unless you use the low-damage Scathe spell after you get it level 15-ish).  But since you can open with a cold spell to snare the mob, then swap your affinity from ice to fire and then launch 2-3 fire blasts and the mob is dead before it even gets to you, you don’t much care.  I can see it being a problem in movement-heavy dungeons in the future, perhaps, but while solo it makes for easy-peasy questing, at least.

Weaving in the forest. Except I’m using a spinning wheel, so I dunno how it’s weaving instead of spinning

I looked up a guide for Black Mage leveling, and it suggested taking Botanist and Weaver as good supporting crafts for the class, so I began looking into that as well.  I went with Botanist 1st, since it seemed to be the class that would gather the plants to use to weave.  Except you start on wood, not plants, so after getting a lot of wood and leveling up to 11 Botanist before finally getting a scythe and the ability to harvest plants, I added Carpenter to me class repertoire.  It worked out since I could make myself a bow for my Archer, wand and shield or a 2H staff for my THM, plus a few interesting pieces, like clogs for my feet to improve my gathering, or a wooden mask for my THM to use as headgear.

The residential zones are all pretty. This is the one in Gridania

Anyway, since I could finally harvest “lush vegetation” I went off looking, but didn’t seem to find anything other than food ingredients, so I headed to the Weaver’s Guild and joined up in order to see what I’d even need to make cloth stuff.  Moko grass, eh?  Back to teh interwebz for a node locations guide and hey, it’s just outside Horizon where I happen to have my home point set.  Nice!  Though since it was so cheap to buy off the NPC vendor, I just bought enough to blast through crafting 1 of everything for the xp boost until I made it up to cotton.  Though over time I have harvested a lot of moko grass and cotton bolls, in addition to lots of maple, ash, and elm logs now. . . . . . I’ve also gotten to level 6 in most of the crafts since there’s a lot of cross-dependency built into them and I like to be self-sufficient.  And since the crafting gear applies to any craft, keeping them all close in level range will let me use a single gear set for all of them (once I catch them up to CRP and WVR, anyway)  instead of having to worry about various sets of the same stuff for each class either.

My current class list.  “Cowl” robe style counts as head also, and I could swear that I’d bought an earring.  Gear management is a pain with all the jobs, even with the nice set list you can create.

All that time spent crafting (which reminded me of Vanguard’s crafting with your skill points, chance of failure, need to improve the item before running out of points, etc so I quite like it) is why I’m still “only” level 17 as a THM.  The plan for this week is to work it up and try to make it to BLM.  I also discovered cross-class skills in the course of my play, so I grabbed a few Arcanist levels in order to get the heal from it so that I can do some limited self-healing to boot, so that should help my survivability on those “duty” missions that you have to solo but that have FATE-strength mobs in them.  And maybe if I end up dps tanking in a group situation too.  We shall see…..

Happy gaming out there!

[Various Games] It’s been a while. . .

Fighting sea serpents is fun. Too bad Daedric light armor always looks like a dress, though.

IRL’s been rather nuts for the past month.  Been putting in a lot of hours at work due to an office move, and my significant other’s got new meds so she’s needed some time to adjust to them and that requires my attention as well, so… gaming time has been reduced and “slow time” at work that I’d typically use to post has been non-existent.  Up until now, anyway…..

On the ESO front, my NB tank is now up to level 32, so he’s gotten 9 or 10 levels since I last reported on him.  Mostly running around in light armor and using the 1H + Shield anymore (as you can see in the screenie), since blocking is the only armor that matters and magicka is the only resource pool that matters for damage, so…. light armor is the only one worth wearing.  Man, I hope they balance that better soon.  I wanna play my melee sorcerer again sometime without feeling gimped.

Did a bit of Civ5 also.  Not really too much to report on that front other than that it’s still insanely addictive with the whole “1 . . . . more. . . . .turn . . . . ” thing going, so when the “Beyond Earth” version comes out I’m thinking I’m going to be losing a lot of sleep for several days after that.

The “Director’s Cut” of Shadowrun Returns was released last week.  The new UI is wonderful.  The customization/upgrade of your companions is very nice.  The enemy AI makes more informed decisions — they focus fire, if you ever bunch up prepare to see some incoming grenades, and they take advantage of cover and don’t leave it unless forced, so it overall feels a lot more tactical.  Armor’s been changed to be straight damage reduction now also, instead of reduced chance to crit.  Overall, combat feels a lot better, though it can take quite a bit longer now as a result of the changes.

Even so, the only time it got a bit frustrating (so far, anyway) is on the mission to retrieve the “MKVI.”  Where before he’d just spray everything with his minigun and it’d all fall down, now everyone’s hiding behind behind cover so he misses a lot and then what does hit takes half damage due to cover, which is then further reduced by their armor, so……. getting out during that mission is, well….. I haven’t succeeded at it yet.  Failed on my only attempt so far becuz I peeked my main character around the corner and every enemy focused on him.  Only had 2 trauma kits for “rez” and used both but couldn’t pull him back far enough, so he went down a couple more times and well… time to reload last save, but that fight had gotten annoying enough that I didn’t feel like it at the time.  And then a car crashed into a power pole just behind my house and it took 11 hours for the power company to get a new pole in and the lines hooked back up, so. .  . . .

I hope all is well in the gaming world.  I’ll eventually dip my toe into the F2P version of ArcheAge once the initial launch rush dies down, but until then. . . . Happy Gaming!