Update 12: One Tamriel

[manavortex]

What's new?

Faction limits have been ditched. People from all factions will share the same zones, lag prevention measures such as phasing are still active.

Also, Zenimax was so kind to set our default server to US. Here's how to fix it.

Motifs

You'll find my source here.

Yokudan:

The chapters of the style can be rarely obtained by completing repeatable quests in Craglorn.
The style item, Ferrous Salts, can also be obtained from these quests.

Celestial: 

The weekly quest for each Craglorn Trial will always award one chapter from a subset of chapters specific to that Trial:

Aetherian Archive	Axes, Boots, Helmets, Shoulders, and Staves.
Sanctum Ophidia	Bows, Daggers, Gloves, Legs, and Swords.
Hel Ra Citadel	Belts, Chests, Maces, and Shields.

All three quests have a very small chance for the complete motif book.
Style Item: Star Sapphires, dropping from trial bosses, with a greatly increased chance on Veteran and Hard Mode.

Draugr:

Chapters: Rarely obtained by completing the new Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, and Undaunted Delve dailies.
Style Item: Pristine Shrouds can also be obtained from these quests

 

What's going to come?

More intel on Housing that was already announced for early 2017.

• a small house will be free
• better houses will be sold for in-game gold
• the crown store was not mentioned
• houses will be account-wide

[Aethelwolfe]

I love that Mana always, ALWAYS notes her sources 

Most fun bit of this update has been dueling....well....for me. Most folks are, oddly for ESO, gracious about it too, exchanging "good fight" or "gf" after each battle, winners and losers alike.

My kills to deaths ratio thus far has not been wonderful....50/50 but many of those fights were LONG. Only got my clocked cleaned once, and only cleaned someone else's clock once. This on Erana, my level 32 Imperial gal.

The battle-leveling feature really helps here, though the veteran players have complained about that. This is silly because that hefty boost in stats is no substitute for all the skills, passives and morphs the veteran players have. 

Might be worth trying RP again on the NA server if, and only if, they use the dueling system rather than the pen and paper dice roll combat outcome system. These are fine for pen and paper games but created long, LONG pauses in ESO that I found truly tedious. Part of that, though, was the obsession most of the NA players have an imaginary skill they someone believe they possess: multi-tasking. They'd be texting, messaging folks though various venues, and role playing together. They were actually sequentially tasking and the latency was unbearable.

Another change with with Update 12 is the RAPID advancing of the main story. Erana was just wrapping up the Wilderking quest chain in Greenshade (Dominion story line) when the Prophet began showing up everywhere, telling her to report to the Harborage. Hell, she was still admiring that simple but nice red dress you only get to wear, briefly, during that quest chain...

Then all the story quests seem to be thrown at you in order without pause....Valley of Blades, Sacre Tor, and the penultimate 5 Companions chat quest...

She left that and found Vanus Galerion waiting for her just outside....yep, time for Coldharbor....she just had time to change out of her level 14 gear for a level 30 outfit....

Then, suddenly, that familiar scene....

Nice part is that another feature of Update 12 is that those former push over World Bosses now require groups in most cases, much like Wrothgar. She did them all today as part of a pick up group of 4.

The best part, thus far, had nothing to do with the update though. I always hated kissing up to those shadow walker Bosmers who kill off many fighter guild members due to some deal they made long ago with Molag Bal. Finally discovered that if you decline their help and side with the snake ladies you can ANNIHILATE those wood elves.

Well...when you decide to side with the snake gals, Faraniel pleads with you to do their quest (steal stolen eggs from the Bosmer camps) without harming her people. Nope, killed as many of them as I could. 

Then, if you kill some more and take some crystals from them, you can unleash the Lamia's into their den of elders, who kill...them....all.

Only wish I could have killed Faraniel, but I digress.

Back to the subject, this acceleration of the story comes at a price. If you were to do the rest of the alliance story line parts of it will cease to make sense. Then again, the silver and gold segments didn't make sense either because you were still the soulless one and dark anchors were still falling.

Still I hope this isn't a one-size-fits-all thing and that new players will have the option to proceed with at least the basic story if they want to. 

[Mallepele]

Awesome Mana, especially that Housing is going to come! \o/

I also really like the One Tamriel Update, because the freedom to choose whereever I want to go, whatever questline I want to do first is what I loved at TES games ever since Morrowind (well in Morrowind I first kinda screwed up on that concept and had to learn how to play these kind of games, but thats another story)

Of Course there are some minor issues that not all alliance story lines make total sense in whatever order you might want to do them, but I guess thats a price I'm willing to pay
Well, whatever the long-term consequences of OT will be I might not say, but for me this way where the game is going encourages me to continue playing and support the game

And I'm really excited about that housing is going to come \o/, well it seems that the dunmer houses will be "Indoril-sytle" referring to the video, I personally would have preferred a Telvanni Fungal-Tower or the shell of a giant insect like the Redoran tend to have it, but it hard to critisize any of that, because I know that dunmer lore is just a little part (the best of course) in the big universe of TES

(Its not Morrowind online, I'd preferred that ;) but at least Vvardenfell-DLC, Clockwork-City, Sotha-Sil shall be going to come, which encourages me even more that this is still the right game for me)

Of course I think the houses will be instances so like everybody will theoretically own the same house/place in game, but it shall nevertheless give great RP possibilities, and ofc we need a big one for our guild, I wonder how much all this will cost (if its really in game gold, I shall start saving up money by now :) )

 

[Aethelwolfe]

Mallepele wrote:

Of course I think the houses will be instances so like everybody will theoretically own the same house/place in game, but it shall nevertheless give great RP possibilities, and ofc we need a big one for our guild, I wonder how much all this will cost (if its really in game gold, I shall start saving up money by now :) )

 Yes, it looks like there will be landscape housing but you'll have many invisible roommates....or some such. I thought they'd have guild halls but it's wise to avoid that given the ephemeral nature and essential polygamy of guilds in this game.

After five or six years of Lord of the Rings Online, for example, most veteran players owned a guild hall. All you had to do was be the last one left in a guild, though they were called Kinships in that game. Same would be true of guild banks in ESO were it not for the 10 member minimum....though lots of people have guild banks of their own anyway. Just so long as they have 10 on the roster. There's no account activity requirement.

But I digress....

As far as the logic of the single player ES game rolled into this one, they didn't do much, alas. Razum Dar greets you when you accept Vanus Galerion's summons with, "I know it seems like we just saw each other in Dune, but..." No....we were about to see each other at Seaside Sanctuary in Greenshade...

Still, I still enjoy the Coldharbor quest chain. Though I began to wonder, after Erana had gathered all the folks you can gather, what was going to happen after it all. It was amusing watching Rommel, the mini mammoth, land in Gabriel Benele's lap during King Dynar's speech in the chapel in the Hollow City...

As an aside, yes, the Lamia do show up to help you if you choose them and, thus, choose to slaughter those twisted wood elves before you rescue the king.

More to the point, I was wondering if they were going to drop the whole Cadwell silver and gold thing as Erana was getting the last briefing from this last Ayleid king...

Again, she has finished no alliance story and she was not yet level 30 when first summoned to the Coldharbor campaign.

Another aside, pertaining to true interactivity. During the final battle before that Light of Merida nuke goes off, Erana was pulling everything off of both Dynar and Darien, using chains. As she triggered the nuke, neither of them were fighting anything and should not have died. Sorry, but it's an old gripe of mine. You can't save Tovissa's sight, or the lives of either the King or Darien. There should be a blazing penis ready to penetrate the backsides of whomever made that call in game developer hell.

Well...that's a bit harsh. But the mind wanders when you've played the same quest, between two servers, nine times.

I began to imagine the King and Erana having a brief relationship before the big battle as often happens in war....and in peace  And her finding herself, weeks after the fight, pregnant with a most interesting child.

And Meridia allows the King to die because she learns of the liaison before the battle, having been lovers with Dynar herself prior to his imprisonment. 

Dynar would, of course, have to make an appearance later as a spirit....

And Erana's next bitter Daedric foe would be Meridia who seeks to take the child....that complex envy Daedra have for mortals and their ability only to mimic, not create...

Whoh!!! *Damn it, Jonathan, get back here!!*

Returning to what really happened, Erana does the maul Bol thing...

And, sure enough, Cadwell is waiting at the Harborage with the offer of more adventure! Erana next finds herself chatting with Captain Rana in Bleakrock.

Short version - for the likes of us veterans of this game, Mallepele, we will certainly be able to navigate the expanded options offered to build characters. And find much freedom in it. But, for new players, I wonder....