Skyrim, 1000 years apart

The new chapter in Elder Scrolls Online launched a few days ago and it has introduced a bit more of Skyrim into the game. A small part of Eastern Skyrim, made up of Eastmarch and The Rift were already in the game but the new patch has brought in parts of Western Skyrim:  the Imperial capital city Solitude and its close surrounds.

I’ve spent a bit of time running around and comparing and I think the ESO team have done an awesome job of making it feel like you are really visting the same city, just a millennia apart.

Solitude itself

Out and about

Looking up to Solitude

Not much change in 1000 years

ESO

Skyrim

It hasn’t lost its roof in ESO

Solitude Lighthouse

Dragon Bridge -looking new

Dragon Bridge – Still standing

I can’t wait to dive in and start the quests and see a bit more of this place in a brand new time.

A lucky night for an unscrupulous Elf

In ESO, I’m playing a High Elf, so for this play through in Skyrim, I thought I’d make a High Elf as well.

High Elves belong to the Aldmeri Dominion; in Skyrim times, the Aldmeri Dominion are the bad guys who have launched a war against the Empire, including Skyrim, to take over the entire place under Aldmeri rule. So far, my race hasn’t really affected anything in Skrirm, though when NPCs are telling me how bad the Aldmeri Dominion are, I wonder if they think I’ve defected or something?

I was wandering through the countryside heading towards a city I hadn’t explored yet, when some Thalmor, a branch of the Aldmeri Dominion, came across my path. I was going to keep going on my way but something I said to them angered them and they attacked me.  I managed to walk away with a gorgeous shiny set of Elven Armor after killing all the wicked elves.

Then just a few metres down the road, I found a NPC who had got off their horse to investigate something, which meant the horse was free to “borrow” and I got to finish the rest of my long journey, riding in style.
Btw, this photo is lacking colour as it’s night time in the game (not a filter)

 The only issue when you steal horses is they tend to try to walk back to their owners when you dismount them so it’s a very temporary borrow, unless you refuse to get off the horse.

I would think about buying a horse to keep for myself, but I remember last time playing this game,  I had a lot of trouble with horses either getting killed or lost and being a rather large waste of gold. Much more fun to borrow them when the opportunity presents.

New armor and a free horse made for a very lucky Elf.

Returning to Skyrim after months of Elder Scrolls Online

I’ve had a bug to buy a new house in Elder Scrolls Online lately so over the Easter holiday weekend just past, I gave in and bought a lovely little Nord race themed house. I spent a good weekend crafting up all the Nord themed furniture and decorations I could make.

Immersing myself in Nord zones and crafting Nord items sparked a craving to go back and play a bit of the actual Skyrim game. I decided to start a fresh game as it’s been a year or two since I last played.

ESO is set 1000 years before Skyrim so while the story itself doesn’t overlap, the lore does. Wandering around getting back into the swing of the Skyrim, I found that multitudes of the history books scattered around refer to the events and timeline of ESO, events I’ve just played through!

It didn’t take too long of playing before I started to remember how rich this game is. The story and quests are really engaging and there is just so much to the game. So many quests, crafting, exploring, and house buying/building and decorating!

I think I’ll put a bit of time back into this game and remind myself where my love for ESO was sparked.

 

A home.. decorated at last!

Oh Boy it’s been a while… I’m still here, still playing games, though not quite as much as I have been due to real life but it’s still been all good.

ESO is still going well. Its the Halloween festival again which was on when I started playing a year ago! Happy anniversary to me. I can’t believe it’s been a year!! ESO has worked it’s way into my heart.

I’m still working my way through the many many quests on offer. I’ve finished the base game and got my Cadwell’s gold achievement for completing all 3 faction’s base game quests (still love that faction choice only matters in PVP, not PVE faction) and am now off in the snowy lands of Wrothgar, home of the Tamriel Orcs.

In the meantime between questing, I’ve been working on finishing decorating the Snowglobe house. It has a housing limit of 600 items and I’ve put in 400 so still a bit of room to go but I’m really not sure if it needs much more, so I feel it’s finished (for now).

I entered it into my housing guilds weekly challenge this week. The theme is cozy home and I think it’s so cozy!

Luckily doing a lot of questing rewards a fair bit of gold because decorating this house has not been cheap.

I’ve already got my eye on the next house though, I’m just waiting for inspiration to strike and then I’ll be off on another decorating journey.

Stay Tuned!

 

Darkshore Warfront: First and Last time

With 8.2 dropping and seeing lots of blog posts and hearing friends talk about the new content, I thought I’d resub for a month and have a look at what’s new.

I started out by catching up on the older war campagin story I hadn’t finished and and went along to see what the Darkshore Warfront had in it as I hadn’t seen it before.

That was the first and only time I’ll be stepping foot into that place. It was non stop killing of Druids and Druid grove protectors.

Not for me at all.

Hopefully I’ll be able to skip the rest of the 8.1 campagin content and jump straight into 8.2 where hopefully it won’t be so focused on the faction war and more us against the big bad again.

I dont’ always link my twitch account but it’s mounts when I do!

Bethesda was at E3 this past week and ESO had a promotion to receive a mount if you linked your twitch account and watch the Bethesda special annoucements.  Since I was going to watch anyway, a free and pretty mount thrown in was a bonus!

Isn’t my new regal Senche Tiger gorgeous!!

Snugpod.. a new house!

One of the guilds I’m in in ESO is focused on housing and holds regular design challenge with different themes. This month’s challenge is to decorate a house in the Wood Elf style.

I haven’t quite finished decorating my snow globe house as I’m about out of ideas of how I want to finish it.  so decorating had stalled for a few weeks until I read the new challenge theme and got all motivated to decorate (and finish) a Wood Elf house.

There aren’t that many Wood Elf themed houses in the game but one of them is Snugpod,  a very small little egg shaped tree pod,  I’ve been thinking about buying for ages.  It’s in a great location, you can step out the door and you’re right next to a way shrine (teleportation portal), crafting station and the daily dungeon quest giver and it’s super cute to boot.

Snugpod has quite a small floor base but stretches vertically for quite a while so I decided to work across 3 levels, and go up.

The base house very empty!

In ESO, Wood Elves, or Bosmer as their official name, are forest dwellers who have chosen to live by the “green pact”. This means they won’t harm living  plants or trees or eat anything plant based. Meat eaters only, they’re  vegans in reverse essentially. Their furnishings mostly relies on stone, leather and bone.

I created two mini forests on the ground floor and set the rest of the bottom space aside for a cooking and dining area.

 

I’m thinking the Bosmers must have great night vision because I can’t find too many lighting options in their style, so the entire house is a little dark. I might look into some other options for lighting that doesn’t break the Bosmer style, like hiding candles in the garden.

The second floor I set aside for a small bedroom; furs under a leather tent to keep the traditional Bosmer house feel. While Wood Elves won’t cut living wood, they have been known to trade with races who do use wood, so I’m using that as  technicality to explain the  wooden flooors on the two levels. I can’t find a decent subsitute in stone for the platforms, so wooden planks it is.

I’ve set it aside the very top level for a storage area but so far it doesn’t really hold too much.

 

 

The house has space for 200 furnishing items and so far I’ve only used 81 so I have tons of room to add more pieces if I’d like but I’m pretty happy with my little house as it is for now.

 

Is ESO about to be inundated with toxicity?

A massive point in ESOs favour, aside from the gameplay, is how lovely as a whole the community is. Each zone has their own chat equivalent to WoWs single trade chat with a very obvious difference, toxicity and trolling are almost non existent in ESO compared  to WoW which is a hot toxic mess. Over the past months I’ve found ESO a lovely atmosphere  to play in.

It’s not the first time I’ve  come across this difference in games before, during my long break in Legion to go play FFXIV I was surprised by how friendly the community was compared to WoW. Its often made me feel the very game design of WoW must inspire and promote the general rudeness that prevails in chat or random dungeons.

Over the past few weeks I’ve noticed a change in the tone of zone chats and more posts on the ESO forums of players calling themselves WoW refugees but often with the same mindset of WoW players, making suggestions of how ESO could recreate features from WoW.

The beauty of ESO is it’s  more than just  the gear game that WOW is now about. The quests are so well done with distinct stories as opposed to mindless kill for x item, that it’s a real shame seeing people asking for the fastest way to get to max level on their first toon or ways to min max before even reaching the first milestone in the combat power/champion points level.

Today I read on the forums that Asmongold, a huge WoW streamer is trying out ESO. His streams arent to my taste, aggressive and argumentative in my opinon but he undeniably commands a massive WoW audience and influence. Reading posts his followers have made on the WoW forums generally cements in my mind they belong in what I term the Toxic WoW camp.

I so hope that doesnt mean ESO is about to face an influx of toxicity from a large wave of WoW refugees. The two games have a vastly different feel in community and I dread the thought of ESO being ruined and becoming a cresspit of rude disgruntled people.

Hopefully either the game isn’t to their taste and they leave before spoiling the world or the general niceness rubs off on them.

Interesting times.

A bit (lot!) more decorating.. just don’t ask me how much I’ve spent!

After my last post about decorating, I really got bit by the home-making bug and I decided the slow route of as I learnt the patterns was, well just too slow.

My ESO gold had mounted up fairly significantly during all the questing, so I decided why not go for a bit of splurge and went on a shopping spree for my little house.

I settled on a mostly Redguard theme which is vibrant reds and golds and opulent desert themes and started out visting guild traders to see what was on sale.

ESO doesn’t have one joint Auction house like WoW. but instead each guild (if they have a trader) can offer their items to the public though NPC traders spread around the world.

I have a long way to go yet but I’m starting to be quite happy with how it’s turning out. Lighting in ESO doesn’t seem to be the brightest so I really need to invest in a lot more candles and lamps as it’s rather dark inside.

I’m utterly in love with this sideboard and knickknacks. Not a big fan of the lights on the railing behind though, they’re bigger than I was expecting. I think I’ll move them outside later when I find a better lighting solution for inside.

The kitchen is looking a little more kitchen-like; the solitary apple has been joined by hanging beets and kebabs. Don’t laugh too much, it’ll get there eventually!

Downstairs has had a major makeover. I decided to make the awkward little chambers into their own distinct rooms through adding in some extra walls and drapes.

The bedroom hasn’t changed too much so far, though it’s missing a few homely touches to make it feel more like a bedroom.

I’ve set aside this room to be a bathroom. (The  wooden tub gives it away right??)

There’s a gorgeous bath you get from the crown store that I’ve got my eye on. I want a super luxurious spa room my toons can go to and make me jealous (I don’t have a house with a bath, only a shower and I’d love one).

My play time has become really limited again as I’ve started work again. Yay!! I was only out of work for 2 weeks but it felt like it was forever so I’m very glad the forced holiday is over. The new job is less than a block from my old job but slightly longer hours so I’m still adjusting to the difference.

And on that note.. I’m off to bed.

More housing adventures soon.

Decorating my House… slowly

I’m still having the best time decorating my house in ESO. I’m doing it very slowly as I’m making the pieces myself when I pick up a new furnishing pattern that I have the materials and skill for.

The house itself is so gorgeous. The outside is set in a  frozen wonderland of snow and glittery chilly rivers

When you go through the front door, you enter into the main floor space with a cozy fireplace. I’ve added small touches like a rug and a cabinet to start storing some of the smaller pieces I’ve collected and crafted. Every month or so there are free statues to collect for your house and they’re starting to mount up. I’m planning to make a long shelf to store them all in one place but for now I’ve got them dotted around the house.

 

You can go up into the tower and look out over the grounds. I’m not sure what the fire is meant to be at the top of the tower but it is quite pretty.

There’s a downstairs part which I’m starting to decorate as different themed rooms. Eventually I’ll find a pattern for curtains or a nice room divider and then I can make each alcove into seperate rooms. I’m in love with the bedroom I’ve made. I think I’d be happy sleeping in it for real!

I’ve set aside a space for a kitchen but I don’t have very many kitcheny pieces yet.. the apple is about it at the moment.

Having a space to decorate, and being able to make the pieces myself is utterly awesome. Everytime I loot a new pattern or furnishing I get really excited. I can also buy patterns or pre-made furniture from other players off the guild stores but to be honest, making it myself is a big part of the fun at the moment.

I can’t decide yet on what style I want to make my house. All the architecture styles for the different races in Tamriel are represented in the 1000s of patterns you can find and all the different styles are really distinct. Because I don’t have that many patterns yet, I’ve just been making whatever appeals to me but eventually I’ll sit down and decide on which particular style I like the most. At the moment I’m leaning towards either Redguard or High Elf but we’ll see what I eventually settle on. I’m sure I’ll be posting pictures when the house is finally finished.