Elder Scrolls: Online

[Epona]

Glyphs go into the 'Misc' inventory tab, so have a look there. I have no idea what controller buttons are used for the console versions, but on PC to use a glyph I would do it by right clicking a weapon or piece of armour which brings up a little box of actions such as "Destroy", "Enchant" etc. and then pick the enchant option and choose a glyph from the box that pops up.

Runes do not make a noise, but they are easy to spot as they have quite a bright glow - if you're having trouble spotting them, try to go rune hunting when it is night in-game as the glow is quite easy to see in the dark

 

[Epona]

One thing I forgot to say about the Fighters and Mages guild skill lines - the Fighters Guild one has an "Intimidate" passive that you can put a skillpoint into, and Mages has a "Persuade" passive - these alone are well worth joining the guilds for, as they sometimes give you different options in quests.

 

[moon]

I think I just have one more question (before dipping in tonight at least ) The onscreen dialogue text is really distracting, it takes up a huge part of the screen and is all blocked off in black.
Is there any way to make it smaller or more transparent? as it's hard to focus on the NPC when huge bold text is up in your face etc etc..

 

[Vintage Paw]

You definitely do want to be filling a few soul gems along the way because your enchantments on weapons will slowly drain away as you use them, and a level-appropriate soul gem is how you recharge them.

Rune nodes don't make a sound when you're close, you just have to keep an eye out for them. If you're considering levelling up enchanting, think about a point or two in the keen eye passive. I don't find it necessarily for everything, I don't bother for clothier, blacksmithing, or woodworking for example because I find it pretty easy to have a surplus of those materials just from stopping and collecting while questing, but it's very useful for enchanting and alchemy - alchemy in particular I used to think there weren't many nodes around until I took keen eye and now I see them everywhere.

When you make glyphs, they go to the misc section of your inventory, and you can either use them or sell them from there.

In terms of deconstruction, in any of the craft lines, you get more craft XP (which is called inspiration) from deconstructing things someone else crafted (inc. things you find in drops/steal) than you do from deconstructing things you craft yourself. So if you're crafting glyphs just to learn the rune name (which is a good way to get inspiration), either use them in your weapons/armour, send them to one of your alts so they can decon it, or sell it. I mean, you could decon it for the chance of getting back materials, which might help you for enchanting more so than for the other crafts, but you'll get very little inspiration for it.

Once you start doing crafting writs (it opens up at level 6, you get two npcs - one at the fighters guild one at the mages guild - who will give you the initial quests) you'll get bonus inspiration for handing completed ones in. You can take all 6 specialisations, regardless of the npc saying you can only specialise in 1, which because you get a reward of materials for completing a writ means even if you're doing say woodworking writs on your enchanter, you then have those materials should you make another character who will be a woodworker in the future.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Dialogue text generally fills the right hand side of the screen, yes? Do you have a screenshot of how it looks on PS4? I'm not aware of a way to change it, unless there's a mod but that's useless for consoles. You can resize the UI but I don't know if that a) is available on PS4 or b) changes the dialogue overlay.

 

[moon]

I reached level 10 last night.. whohoo.
This is what my dialogue screen looks like...horrendous.. who designed that?

 

[Buddy Bradley]

Once you start doing crafting writs (it opens up at level 6, you get two npcs - one at the fighters guild one at the mages guild - who will give you the initial quests)

Is there a way to turn off the crafter quest markers? They always make me think there's something new to do until I get there and realise it's them again.

 

[moon]

Will it ever stop raining?

 

[Epona]

Is there a way to turn off the crafter quest markers? They always make me think there's something new to do until I get there and realise it's them again.

No, but you will eventually get used to where they are and stop thinking it's new quests!

Will it ever stop raining?

Let me guess - are you in Glenumbra? If so, then the answer is probably no

 

[Epona]

Buddy Bradley - actually you could try this addon, I haven't used it myself, but in the description it says that you can use it to just turn off writ board quest markers.

PinKiller

 

[Vintage Paw]

I reached level 10 last night.. whohoo.
This is what my dialogue screen looks like...horrendous.. who designed that?
View attachment 83301

It's more obtrusive than the PC version, which is more transparent and doesn't fill the entire right side in a block. It still covers a decent amount of screen, but it's not as obnoxious as that. No idea if there's a way to change it I'm afraid

Edit: Oh wait, yours is transparent too, just couldn't tell because it's night. But still, PC isn't as blocky. But it's still the same idea, you end up with the NPC on the left, dialogue on the right.

 

[Epona]

I do think the PC one looks a lot nicer tbh, here is an example:

I guess that some of the design decisions taken for console UI is that they are expecting the player to be sitting a few feet away from a TV screen rather than up close to a monitor, and is designed differently for that reason - but not sure why they had to make it so blocky. The same as PC but with bigger text by default would have worked.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

btw Epona - did you invite moon to the Urban guild? I noticed that I'm still a member, although I don't seem to be able to deposit anything in the guild bank.

 

[Epona]

btw Epona - did you invite moon to the Urban guild? I noticed that I'm still a member, although I don't seem to be able to deposit anything in the guild bank.

moon is on PS4, different server.
Need 10 members to have a guild bank I could join on my 2nd account which would take it up to 6...

 

[Buddy Bradley]

That's okay, I was only looking for somewhere to stash my food components...

 

[moon]

Yeah, I'm on the PS4 EU server, I've been invited to join 3 guilds and have grouped a few times, mainly by walking past tough areas or upon arrival in Cyrodil there have been people gathered at the entrance who have added me to a group.
I'm guessing the social gaming aspect of ESO is easier on PC?
The PS4 has voice and mail but I don't think it's as integrated as the PC version.
I'll be doing my first dungeon for the undaunted soon, I also got a bear for gathering trips and a cute palomino horse for speed.
I'm mostly getting killed in Cyrodil but that's only to be expected, I think the travel situation there is a bit odd as you easily get separated from your group if you die and it's hard to regroup over long distances.
I haven't yet seen any major battles, there have been none on my map, but I think I've picked random campaigns rather than checking to see if anything is actually happening in them. I'm also still working out how the campaigns are structured in terns of setting home, guest, 7 day, 30 day etc etc. For ages I couldnt travel because of the 2 different shrines? And I inadvertantly skipped the training because it's not clearly marked..

 

[Epona]

moon - text chat is coming to consoles (not sure when, but they've indicated this year sometime), which should make the social side of things a bit easier. I honestly don't know how I'd manage without it, I mean myself and my friends have use of a teamspeak server which we use when we group up, but most interaction when people are looking for a group or guild or a crafter or just general chit chat is done in the chat box on PC.

 

[moon]

it's good to hear that text is coming to consoles but it will still be tricky without a keyboard imo.
The area voice chat is interesting if a bit bizarre I haven't yet used group or guild voice chat but will see how well it works once I'm doing more dungeons and Cyrodil battles.
Btw what are the battles like? Anything similar to Angry Joe's?

 

[Vintage Paw]

I haven't done any proper Cyrodiil stuff for a while, and it was still early on in the release that I got stuck in, but it was a LOT of fun.

You need to find a group. I mean, you don't need to, but it's best to. Then you follow the leader, go where they say, do what they want you to do. It really is like having little phalanxes of an army rallying to the next battle. You'll see in chat that X is being attacked by EP, get there NOW. So you'll all go there. You'll attack their trebs try to kill their healers and they'll be trying to get through your walls. It can be manic as hell, and you find yourself working out whether it's worth attempting being strategic or just rushing in because it's so crazy.

Or you'll be the ones trying to take a resource or a fort. So you'll decide your tactics. Maybe your group will go for the lumbermill. You'll sneak up, go round the tower, and take out their casters as quickly as possible, then you'll all rush in after the guards, then run to the middle until the flag changes to yours. Then your own guards will populate, and off you go to the next target (as long as there aren't any roving packs of the other side looking to take it back).

This is all dependent on the population of the server, and whether there are any decent battles going on. Certainly on PC, the best campaign is Blackwater Blade, for non-vet characters. I hear that the vet campaigns are pretty shit, and you have to be V14-16 or you'll die as soon as you get in there. You're scaled up when you go in the non-vet campaign, so everyone is ostensibly equal apart from skills available and player skill. But once you hit 50 they don't scale you anymore, so you go into one of the vet campaigns at V1 and there's a HELL of a difference between a V1 and a V14. It seems to be a big bone of contention atm and people want there to be more campaigns with more equality so it's all about player skill rather than grinding for hours or days or weeks to get to max level before you can pvp again. There used to be many more campaigns, but they got rid of a majority of them. I get the impression pvp really isn't all it used to be, which is a damn shame because I thought it was bloody excellent.

 

[Epona]

Huh? You're battle-leveled to VR15 in all vet campaigns.

The complaints are about Champion Points, and to address that they are introducing a no-CP campaign (where champion points will be disabled whilst in Cyro).

 

[moon]

I had a fun time riding around Cyrodil with another player yesterday, we visited the place where our scroll was held, found some sky shards, and a mine which opened up a quest.
Then he took me to what I think were the gates to the Imperial City?
That was a sight to behold, we couldn't get close because the guards held us back.. For good reason

 

[Vintage Paw]

Huh? You're battle-leveled to VR15 in all vet campaigns.

The complaints are about Champion Points, and to address that they are introducing a no-CP campaign (where champion points will be disabled whilst in Cyro).

Are you? Then I must have been reading complaints from before they introduced that. I was trying to find out stuff about whether you can switch campaigns or drop campaigns, and came across loads of people complaining about it, no recent discussions at all.

 

[Epona]

Are you? Then I must have been reading complaints from before they introduced that. I was trying to find out stuff about whether you can switch campaigns or drop campaigns, and came across loads of people complaining about it, no recent discussions at all.

Must be, it is only within the last few months that they've properly sorted out battle-levelling! The CP issue is kind of related but it is now partially sorted with a seasonal CP cap and catch-up mechanism, and there will be a new campaign soon which will suit those with low CP better than the current vet campaigns.

Unfortunately you cannot drop campaigns which is tbh fucking annoying if you have a lot of characters, but you can switch - on the campaigns screen, select a new campaign as home and then a box comes up, you can select either "change now" or "change at end of current campaign" - but it costs a lot of AP. First change is free though.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Does it cost to switch at the end of a campaign, or only when it's still ongoing? It really should be free at the end of a campaign.

 

[moon]

I took part in my first battle, set up a catapult on the walls of Fort Nikel and stopped the Aldmeri Dominion from breaking them down. They still managed to take it though and I noticed that our scroll has gone missing
I'm going to level up the speed of my horse, however my comrades kept adding things to me to give me speed as we rode into battle Was really thrilling!
I died so many times and think that although you are leveled in Cyrodil, if you don't have powerful spells or skills you are screwed.

 

[Vintage Paw]

People who play pvp regularly or exclusively will min-max their builds, so even if you're the same real level as them unless you're l337 you'll likely die a lot. Combat strategy is different in pvp than in pve and for levelling, and people will have different builds often times.

For the most part, gear set bonuses don't count in Cyrodiil (I think there are a couple of exceptions). Vampires do really well, werewolves not so much. Nightblades and Sorcs seem to be where it's at, and specific builds at that.

Magelight is very useful to have in Cyrodiil. When morphed to Radiant Magelight it shows people in stealth, and reduces the damage you and allies take from stealth attacks.

Honestly though, you will die. That's what pvp is. Even the best will die a lot, because there are a lot of the best and they can't all win against each other all the time; someone has to lose. But the more you play, the more you'll learn a few strategies, the best places to stand in big battles, how to decide whether it's worth attacking someone or stealthing and trying to just sneak by, and so on. And yes, of course, the more morphs and passives you unlock the more impact you'll have, but it's not necessary to be lvl 48 in order to do well in there.

Spend some time exploring your own faction region (especially if you're currently in control of it). There are loads of dungeons and little towns, loads of hostile npcs to kill, shards to collect, lore books, etc. Be careful going into dungeons in enemy faction territory, because you're more likely to encounter enemy players there, and there are few places to hide.

I hear they're talking about bringing back forward camps (or have they already done it?). They were a thing you purchased from a vendor in your faction area, and you could set it up out in the field allowing anyone from your faction to travel to there (and I think rez there too, but not sure). Enemy players could destroy your forward camps. Not sure why they got rid of them, presumably a balance issue.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I remember a great experience in Cyrodiil. I was still in the reddit guild at the time, and we went in a big group, did a load of battle things, and then we went off skyshard hunting, got loads of them across the whole map. After a couple of hours or so we decided to call it a day. I wandered off to do some exploring nearby, lots of stealth, and someone else from the group seemed to be doing similar, but we weren't grouped anymore. We both ended up in this little town, and there was an enemy faction player somewhere. We couldn't see them, and they kept sniping at us. We ended up in this little run down house, where you could see out the top from the broken down wall. They couldn't see us anymore because we'd stealthed and gone behind various buildings to find this vantage point. We spent ages trying to spot them, and they were trying to find us. We eventually spotted them, and we snuck all the way to them (they were in another little house right across the road from us), made our way up the stairs without them knowing we were there, and then murdered them mercilessly.

Probably doesn't sound like much, but it was such a rush.

 

[Epona]

Forward camps are coming back in the next update (probably, unless testing shows up major issues), but there are restrictions on placing and using them, can't recall the exact details as I haven't done any PvP on the PTS so it doesn't really stick in my mind. Something to do with preventing people from using them to port people in from the other side of the map probably? I'll look it up.

I am not so much into the big battles, I get a fair bit of lag during them tbh, but I do love going and doing city quests and delves, and having 1 on 1 fights with people from enemy factions doing the same. Of course if I win, they tend to come back and bring their mates, but it's still really good fun. As Vintage Paw says, expect to die frequently and when you don't it's a pleasant surprise! The good news is if you die to another player your armour doesn't degrade at all, so there aren't any repair costs for dying in combat with another player.

EDIT: Oh and Magelight is changing in the next update to providing a lot of "when slotted" buffs rather than a toggle, which makes it more useful and more powerful. If playing a magicka character, probably worth leveling the skill now in readiness for the change.

 

[Epona]

Here it is, forward camps info from the PTS patch notes:

Forward Camps, an item that allows you to respawn anywhere without relying on Keep ownership or respawning at your home base, have returned with the following changes:

• You may only respawn within a Forward Camp radius if you die within it.
• The radius for Forward Camps has been greatly reduced from how it was originally.
• There is a global respawn time of 2 minutes when you respawn at a Forward Camp, which will limit you from respawning at another Forward Camp while within the cooldown period.
• Forward Camps are once again purchasable from Siege merchants for 20,000 AP.
• You must be Alliance Rank 6 or higher to purchase or deploy a Forward Camp.
• Any ally from your alliance will be able to use a Forward Camp once deployed

PTS Patch Notes v2.3.0

PTS Patch Notes v2.3.1

These changes are due to go live with the Thieves Guild dlc (but not as part of the dlc, this is the base game patch) which is 7/8 March for PC/Mac and I think 22/23 March for consoles.

 

[Epona]

I just had a very stupid death whilst questing - at Seaside Sanctuary in Greenshade, enemies there are packed pretty close. Must have run past some and had them chasing me but not noticed - engaged a group of 3 ahead of me. It's all going OK, then the 3 that were following me caught up and joined in. OK, not bad, I can handle this. Then roll-dodged the wrong way and managed to pull another 3 into the fight. It still might have gone OK if I'd used my ultimate instead of going "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit" and stabbing my fingers at random keys