In Which Gyllerah Explores Auridon

This is all solo stuff on my part, mostly exploring the northern part of Auridon as I attempted to use a few of the survey and treasure maps I’ve been getting as writ rewards. And I hit some geysers and got some belated event loot.

Highlights

• Play dates: 10/30-11/1/2022
• Session numbers in this run: 29-31

Sunday’s play

• Went over to Auridon to explore and see if I could spend a couple of these survey maps I’ve been accumulating in my writ loot
• Successfully landed on Auridon via wayshrine, since Paul and I had discovered the Greenwater one near Olyve’s Brewery, and conveniently the treasure map I was using wanted me right near there anyway
• Discovered the entrance to Mehrunes’ Spite delve but did not enter, wanted to save that for Paul
• Found the treasure which turned out to be a Glenmoril staff which taught me the style for my collections
• Then went looking for the alchemist survey location; did not find that; this was over towards the northeastern corner of the island, near Dawnbreak
• Found Dawnbreak and also the College of Aldmeri Propriety
• Also found a boatload of Daedra wandering loose around the place and killed a bunch of them
• Thought maybe the locale for the survey was up on a plateau I could not climb, so I tried investigating an abandoned mine near Dawnbreak
• This didn’t get me up to the top of the plateau but did let me kill several more Daedra and flame atronachs, and a boss that let me get a plunder skull; there must surely be plot here but I didn’t trigger it
• Got into it with a trio of vampires that were a hard fight, and killing them got me event loot
• Finally got full up on inventory and had to wayshrine back to Summerset
• At which point I ran daily writs
• Spent my current set of event tickets for the third piece of the Soulfire Dragon Illusion, so now I can conjure that as a pet, awesome
• Spent remaining writ tickets on a Hollowjack lantern for my room
• Yoinked several assorted recipes and patterns and things out of the Guild Bank to learn them, and a bunch of Witchmother Writs and ingredients to run them, which let me stock up on on some more Writ Vouchers, and a couple more things I can make now in the Hollowjack style
• Returned to my room for the night and placed the lantern, which adds some neat light to my room!

Monday’s play

• Burned through almost all of my ingredients backlog
• Returned to Auridon to try to find the alchemy hoard
• Took forever and I finally had to look for hints on the wiki
• Leveled up to 28 while running the search
• Scouted through a large area near Wansalen full of “Pact” hostiles
• Also killed a few Daedra and atronachs near Dawnbreak again
• Found the buried treasure on the east coast of the island, near Skywatch
• Returned to Summerset for loot management

Tuesday’s play

• Ran writs
• Had to go out of the city to hunt for alchemy ingredients
• Hit Rellenthil and Corgrad geysers
• Took a daily quest to hit Tor-Hame-Khard again
• Also hit Archon’s Grove to kill the one remaining delve boss monster I hadn’t killed yet
• Got a bunch of loot from chests and Psijic portals and shifted over to wearing some of the Grace of Gloom set, which I thought looked pretty neat and Templar-like

My and Paul’s current play patterns

Paul does not always play at the same time I do, and he’s also not always up for major playing on weeknights either. So we’re kind of falling into a pattern of individual exploring on weeknights, and saving the bigger, more adventurous stuff like delves or big bosses or plot action for Fridays and Saturdays when we both have better cycles for it.

Hence these sessions being all solo action. Narrative-wise I take this as Gyllerah and K’sragi not always traveling together. Each of them has their own business to attend to, but they semi-regularly come back into contact with each other! And pursue adventures together as it’s proven profitable. I figure Gyllerah is always glad to see him, as he’s the first person she locked onto after coming out of the experience on Balfiera. And he’s arguably her best ally since then.

Paul took to exploring more widely across the map than I’ve done, tracking down the various locations on the maps we’ve been getting as writ loot. So I started following his example, though I’ve so far been more cautious in my explorations. And I chose to focus on Auridon first, since a) it’s right to the east of Summerset, and b) seemed fairly reasonable a destination to get to in character.

Auridon bits I’ve seen so far, and what wayshrines I have

Since Erin had expressed interest in this in comments on an earlier post, let me note out of the gate here that this, I think, counts a bit more as a “real” visit to Auridon for Gyllerah. Even if she didn’t do it with K’sragi specifically. For narrative purposes I’m comfortable with calling this exactly what it was: i.e., Gyllerah venturing over there more or less for ingredients-gathering purposes.

But there’s probably also some measure of interest in the back of her mind here about expanding her exploration of the world past Summerset. She may be amnesiac, but she hasn’t forgotten what Norianwe said to her about maybe being able to help solve troubles in the world. And she’s starting to want to get an idea of what troubles there are in the world once she looks outside of Summerset. Which she’s starting to want to do, because of not being content with the attitude most of the Altmer on Summerset express about “newcomers”.

This round of explorations were all more or less on the northern half of the island. I’ve so far located the following wayshrines:

• College
• Greenwater
• Quendeluun
• Skywatch
• Vukhel Guard

I think I had Vukhel Guard by default, since Cync had advised me that the game does give you some of the wayshrines in various locations for free, to help you get started in exploring in various places. I’m pretty sure Paul and I didn’t actively ride past that place when we hit Auridon the last time–the NPC that brought us over from Grahtwood dropped us in Skywatch.

General Auridon locations discovered, and what I did

Basically all of the exploring on Auridon, both on Sunday and Monday, was my trying to use two treasure maps and a survey for alchemical ingredients. The treasure maps were a lot easier than the survey, but for the survey and the second treasure map, I wound up having to resort to the wiki to get hints about where to look.

The survey in particular led me on a wild goose chase. I found the general rough area where it wanted me to go, but it was not clear from the map where I actually needed to be. There was a very large symbol in the general area, and I couldn’t tell just by looking whether I was supposed to be at the top of that symbol, or the bottom, or the middle, or what. For quite a bit of Sunday’s and Monday’s sessions, I thought it might mean I needed to be up on a plateau immediately south of a body of water marked on the map. But for the life of me, I could not figure out a way to get up there.

I circled that plateau multiple times, to no avail. Tricks I’m used to using to climb steep slopes in Skyrim didn’t work here. An abandoned mine set in the side of the plateau didn’t take me up to where I thought it would. And a large area near the Wansalen delve, to the immediate east of that plateau, also didn’t seem to give me a good way to get up there (and I didn’t want to try to run Wansalen for reals yet, so I didn’t poke at that further).

And boy did I feel sheepish when I finally learned from the wiki that the spot with the ingredients was literally right on the edge of that body of water I was supposed to be south of. THANKS, MAP!

The treasure maps, at any rate, were easier. The first of them was easiest just because it was an actual map, with an X marking the general area I needed to be in, which I could compare against the actual in-game map. The second one was less useful, as it was not actually a map–it was a sketch of the rough area I needed to be in, similar to treasure maps from Skyrim. So I had to consult the wiki for that one, too.

Through all of this running around, I located the following places without exploring them in depth:

• Mehrunes’ Spite
• College of Aldmeri Propriety
• Dawnbreak
• Wansalen
• Ezduiin
• Heretic’s Summons
• The Lover Stone

And mostly, aside from hunting for treasure and ingredients, I engaged a bunch of Daedra, some Spirit Warriors, and some hostiles tagged as “Pact” near Wansalen. But when possible, I tried to sneak, since my goal was not to actually run any plots yet. I just wanted to follow the maps.

But I certainly saw interesting potential for when Paul and I explore this place in more depth!

OH YES and I also fought a trio of vampires. They were a good hard challenging fight.

And there were normal wolves, as opposed to the dire wolves that populate Summerset, and bears!

I found the Lover Stone, the first Mundus Stone I’ve encountered in the game so far. I know this is essentially ESO’s version of the Standing Stones in Skyrim, and most of them appear to have the same names. I’ll have to decide which of those Stone bonuses I want to have active.

Other action

Besides exploring Auridon, I did more geyser and delve action on Summerset. But none of that was too different from prior sessions.

Next time

Paul is recommending I do the Psijic plot with gathering cursed artifacts for them, so I think I’ll start poking at that. That’ll give me more side stuff to do until Paul and I can sync up on running more of the main Summerset plot.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/24/2023: Restored missing gallery.