"Yer a lizard, Harry!" (TESO updates)
I had one blessedly free weekend to myself, and I spent a lot of it playing TESO. (Don't judge me; I wrote and exercised too). This may have been partially inspired by the fact that Matt got me a plush pony guar with accompanying in-game pet.
Matt's and my Dunmer--his Dragon Knight Brelyna and my Templar Falanu--are level 27 and have just reached Shadowfen, which is the third full zone in Ebonheart Pact. Some notes about skills:
- Back at the beginning of Stonefalls, I decided that my dual wield style wasn't working so well, so I switched to restoration staff as my primary weapon, as heavy attacks with it restore magicka. Suddenly, I didn't have magicka problems any more!
- I've focused on Alchemy and Clothing as my trade skills. Still researching a ton of things.
- Still focusing on Light Armor with two Heavy pieces
- I've been investing in the Mages' Guild line, too
- My usual "adventuring in the wild, no need for heavy healing" bar has Inner Light (Mages' Guild), Reflective Light (Templar - Dawn's Wrath), Binding Javelin (Templar - Aedric Spear), Breath of Life (Templar - Restoring Light) and Rapid Regeneration (Resto Staff) on it. My healing bar swaps out Restoring Aura, for Inner Light and Healing Ritual for Binding Javelin, both Restoring Light skills. I've also been experimenting with Entropy, a DoT from the Mage's Guild line, but I'm not sure I like it.
Anyway, I had fun finishing up Deshaan. Probably my favorite quests were the Shad Astula series, which is basically a... let's go with homage, to Harry Potter. Shad Astula is a college of magic that you need a special invitation to (you trick yours out of someone), and as soon as you arrive, the headmaster, a Dunmer with fabulous hair, tells you that you have a destiny (tm), and as part of the destiny, you have to help these three students pass their entrance exams, because they too are fated (tm). You do a series of quests to help them do so, and then the inevitable Maulborn attack happens (because this is Deshaan), and you have to save the headmaster and the school.
The quests you do to help the students--who are two young men and a young woman, natch--are fun because they're not just "kill X" quests. For Lena, the Dunmer girl, you have to help her find a key by exploding shadow chickens. Hadmar the Thin-Boned, the one Nord, and an obvious Harry analog, has lost one of the student rats on a cliff, but is too afraid of heights to fetch it, so he uses this totem to toss you up there. He then thanks you by saying something like, "Now they won't beat me with rakes. Like at home!" Poor magical Nords. Tedras, the Dunmer guy, hates puzzles as much as I do, so you help him figure one out and then defeat a giant crocodile, all in order to restore fish to the Shad Astula pond. He's also, of course, the one who's good at alchemy ;)
This questline inspired several entertaining quotes from Matt and me:
"And now we have to play the giant wizard chess game..."
"I guess this quest was written by Harmony shippers."
"You're a lizard, Harry!"
"Great, now I have to make an Argonian sorcerer named 'Scars Like Lightning'."
"This is reaching Dumbledore levels of child endangerment!" (which is itself a callback from the RiffTrax Live of Santa Claus vs. the Martians)
I also enjoyed the public dungeon Sanguine's Demesne, which is right by the entrance to Shadowfen. We didn't even know it was a public dungeon, and thus balanced for four; all we knew is that there were large pulls and on one boss fight, we died more than normal. Guess we must have been terribly overleveled, as usual. Anyway, it featured quests like "get these Altmer spies to drink so that they'll be bound here" and "pour wine on these bodies to bring them back to life, because we need a bartender! And musicians! And dancers!"
(Ain't no party like a Sanguine party, cuz a Sanguine party don't stop).
Also, they added in a dye system with this last update. I wasn't excited about this, until I found out that a) mostly you get dyes by getting achievements, b) the dyeing tool is rather like image editing tools, and c) you get three dye colors per item slot. This already makes the dye system a lot better than SWTOR's was.
So now my goofy fishing achievements won't just get me nifty titles, they'll also get me colors like "Pact Fisherman Red" and "Salmon Pink."
Other than that, fishing is still basically useless. They have fixed a lot of the bugs, but the fish you catch still don't do anything. Would be nice to be able to use them in Provisioning.
Matt's and my Dunmer--his Dragon Knight Brelyna and my Templar Falanu--are level 27 and have just reached Shadowfen, which is the third full zone in Ebonheart Pact. Some notes about skills:
- Back at the beginning of Stonefalls, I decided that my dual wield style wasn't working so well, so I switched to restoration staff as my primary weapon, as heavy attacks with it restore magicka. Suddenly, I didn't have magicka problems any more!
- I've focused on Alchemy and Clothing as my trade skills. Still researching a ton of things.
- Still focusing on Light Armor with two Heavy pieces
- I've been investing in the Mages' Guild line, too
- My usual "adventuring in the wild, no need for heavy healing" bar has Inner Light (Mages' Guild), Reflective Light (Templar - Dawn's Wrath), Binding Javelin (Templar - Aedric Spear), Breath of Life (Templar - Restoring Light) and Rapid Regeneration (Resto Staff) on it. My healing bar swaps out Restoring Aura, for Inner Light and Healing Ritual for Binding Javelin, both Restoring Light skills. I've also been experimenting with Entropy, a DoT from the Mage's Guild line, but I'm not sure I like it.
Anyway, I had fun finishing up Deshaan. Probably my favorite quests were the Shad Astula series, which is basically a... let's go with homage, to Harry Potter. Shad Astula is a college of magic that you need a special invitation to (you trick yours out of someone), and as soon as you arrive, the headmaster, a Dunmer with fabulous hair, tells you that you have a destiny (tm), and as part of the destiny, you have to help these three students pass their entrance exams, because they too are fated (tm). You do a series of quests to help them do so, and then the inevitable Maulborn attack happens (because this is Deshaan), and you have to save the headmaster and the school.
The quests you do to help the students--who are two young men and a young woman, natch--are fun because they're not just "kill X" quests. For Lena, the Dunmer girl, you have to help her find a key by exploding shadow chickens. Hadmar the Thin-Boned, the one Nord, and an obvious Harry analog, has lost one of the student rats on a cliff, but is too afraid of heights to fetch it, so he uses this totem to toss you up there. He then thanks you by saying something like, "Now they won't beat me with rakes. Like at home!" Poor magical Nords. Tedras, the Dunmer guy, hates puzzles as much as I do, so you help him figure one out and then defeat a giant crocodile, all in order to restore fish to the Shad Astula pond. He's also, of course, the one who's good at alchemy ;)
This questline inspired several entertaining quotes from Matt and me:
"And now we have to play the giant wizard chess game..."
"I guess this quest was written by Harmony shippers."
"You're a lizard, Harry!"
"Great, now I have to make an Argonian sorcerer named 'Scars Like Lightning'."
"This is reaching Dumbledore levels of child endangerment!" (which is itself a callback from the RiffTrax Live of Santa Claus vs. the Martians)
I also enjoyed the public dungeon Sanguine's Demesne, which is right by the entrance to Shadowfen. We didn't even know it was a public dungeon, and thus balanced for four; all we knew is that there were large pulls and on one boss fight, we died more than normal. Guess we must have been terribly overleveled, as usual. Anyway, it featured quests like "get these Altmer spies to drink so that they'll be bound here" and "pour wine on these bodies to bring them back to life, because we need a bartender! And musicians! And dancers!"
(Ain't no party like a Sanguine party, cuz a Sanguine party don't stop).
Also, they added in a dye system with this last update. I wasn't excited about this, until I found out that a) mostly you get dyes by getting achievements, b) the dyeing tool is rather like image editing tools, and c) you get three dye colors per item slot. This already makes the dye system a lot better than SWTOR's was.
So now my goofy fishing achievements won't just get me nifty titles, they'll also get me colors like "Pact Fisherman Red" and "Salmon Pink."
Other than that, fishing is still basically useless. They have fixed a lot of the bugs, but the fish you catch still don't do anything. Would be nice to be able to use them in Provisioning.