I’ve been hesitating to start the Elder Scrolls Online for a couple of years now. Always thought I won’t be able to invest the time needed for the end game.
Turns out I was wrong. I’ve been playing ESO for 10 weeks now and despite limited time available, I still managed to find some nice builds and play styles for me.
Probably nothing a hardcore ESO gamer would consider worth grinding for, but I’m feeling good about it.
My chars
I’m currently playing two chars, a dragonknight tank and a magicka templar damage dealer. For the tank, I use ‘Lord Warden’, ‘Ebon Armory’ and ‘Torug’s Pact’ with a sword/shield and lighting staff.
The dragonknight was my 1st char and wasn’t really supposed to be a tank. For some reason though, I heavily grinded the ‘Crypt of hearts’ and got the pieces rather quickly.
I continued the dungeon grind besides finishing the main story and was able to upgrade everything to epic in the first couple of weeks.
Along the way, I maxed out my crafting skills, did the required research and was finally able to craft ‘Torug’s pact’.
As my dragonknight had morphed into this tank, I needed something with way more dps to enjoy going solo a lot more. After reading some articles on builds, I decided to go for the magicka templar.
I am running ‘Mother’s Sorrow’, ‘Law of Julianos’ and ‘Iceheart’ on this. Luckily, as my dragonknight is with the ‘Ebonheart Pact’, I was already grinding in Deshaan and had multiple items of ‘Mother’s sorrow’ available.
As stated before, my dragonknight is also my crafter, and I was able to craft some of ‘Law of Julianos’ myself. I had no luck finding the proper waists and hands to research though, so I bought these relatively cheap from a guild store.
‘Iceheart’ was way easier to get than ‘Lord Warden’. I ran the ‘Direfrost Keep’ on veteran at CP200 with my templar and the shoulder dropped in the first undaunted chest I opened. I only completed the ‘Lord Warden’ set yesterday, as I reached CP400 and felt comfortable to run the ‘Imperial city prison’ on veteran difficulty with my damage dealer. I also had to open about 20 undaunted chests for the shoulders.
What I did not enjoy so far
PvP – obviously
Technical issues, although I feel a bit cocky talking about this, as millions of players had to deal with those for years.
The lag is sometimes quite disturbing and frustrating. Especially during a boss fight when you are overrun by mobs. You need to stick to your light attacks when abilities are just not recognized. But to be fair, it happens but not as often to make it unplayable.
Same with the loading screens. I played dungeons where I only joined at the first boss, despite being the first to accept the activity.
But again, disturbing – yes, game breaking – no.
Why it feels right for me
What I most enjoyed so far are the story quests and dungeons. I don’t do PvP and I’m not planning to. I tried battlefields and some Cyrodiil, did not enjoy it at all. Maybe due to the fact that I’m not using anything that could be remotely called a PvP set.
The story quests are really well made. Each faction has unique places, stories and characters which makes this really entertaining. It sometimes just feels like a monstrous DLC to Skyrim, not an MMO. I completed the main story, Caldwell’s silver and gold and Orsinium. I like to stick as much as possible to the chronological order of releases, although I’m sure any other order would be enjoyable as well.
Looking at the number of available sets, dungeons and remaining story quests, I only scratched the surface of what ESO has to offer.
My next steps are to upgrade everything to legendary, without spending too much gold in the guild stores, and then to run all the dungeons on veteran as I increase my CPs.
Probably will join a guild at some point in the future and work my way up in order to run trials as well.