In Which Gyllerah Hunts Dragons and Gains an Assistant

Some of this is pretty standard running writs action, but the last couple of days a new event kicked in on ESO, so I’ve been trying to engage with that a bit! So I got some dragon hunting action in, and some pretty nifty loot.

Play by play

Play dates: 1/23-1/27/2023
Session numbers in this run: 105-109

Monday the 23rd

Ran writs
Didn’t have enough materials for everything, so boinged to Western Skyrim for a woodworking writ
Boinged back to Alinor and bought a few alchemical ingredients from guild traders
Returned to inn room for the night

Tuesday the 24th

Ran writs, no other significant action

Wednesday the 25th

Ran writs
Went to Stormhaven to get blacksmithing materials; this was another scenario where I ran the same survey twice because i had two copies

Thursday the 26th

Main item of interest: I spent money on crowns because I got a gift card from work, so I chucked the whole balance at Steam, plus some funds from my Paypal
Ran some writs first but also got free Event Quest off the Crown Store for the dragon-related event that kicked in
Boinged to Northern Elsweyr and got first two phases of the Dragonguard recruiting quest done, which required me to:
- Get a tablet of dragonkilling knowledge
- Go into a dangerous location and get a Dragonguard standard
- Kill a dragon
Doing the second of these in particular overlapped with a couple of side quests
Chose a little poorly for my location to get the standard: Rimmen Necropolis, which, as a public dungeon, was full of hostiles that handed me my ass repeatedly
This overlapped with a quest called Relatively Speaking, where I helped a lazy Khajiit by accepting the urn of his ancestor’s ashes and finding the correct place in the necropolis to put the urn back
The spirit turned out to be a former Mane, and told me to tell his descendant he’d have actually shown him treasure if he’d have bothered to do the job himself, snerk
Also ran the quest In Sickness and In Health, investigating why the Anequina aqueduct isn’t working, and helping a young Khajiit adept learn mysteries of her past; that was a good one 😀
Kept hunting around for a dragon combat but never did catch up with one
Other notable thing: partway through searching through Northern Elsweyr, got maxed out on inventory, so spent some of my new crowns balance on Ezabi the Banker 😀
Boinged back to Alinor after deciding not to try to tackle a dragon

Friday the 27th

Ran writs
Boinged back to Northern Elsweyr for more dragon action
Ran all over the place gathering ingredients
Hit two Psijic portals
Got a fair number of Elsweyr coffers with good loot in them, including pages for armor and weapons styles, fuck yeah
Killed assorted critters
Cleared some skyshards and got another skill point; dropped that on Blacksmithing so i can use quicksilver ore now
Finally caught up with a dragon
Came in on the very tail end of the battle, had barely enough time to throw off heals on everybody and maybe get in one shot, but that was apparently enough to let me loot the dragon and conclude the quest to kill one
Returned to Rimmen and reported in to the captain to conclude the quest
Also got pinged by messenger Anais Davaux again, who wanted me to go talk to Abnur Tharn again, and hang on, didn’t you already ask me to go talk to him about dragons?
Boinged back to Alinor
Sold a bunch of treasure items I’d acquired
Did other inventory management, crafted some things to clear out backlogged materials
Hung a painting I’d found in my inn room
Logged off for the night

Ezabi the Banker

So as I noted above, I got a recognition award at work, which resulted in them giving me a fifty dollar gift card. I threw the entire balance of this at Steam, and then combined it with some funds out of my Paypal to buy myself 14,500 crowns!

And partway through the session on Thursday, I got maxed out on inventory in Northern Elsweyr. Which prompted me to go ahead and spend some of those crowns on Ezabi the Banker, so that I could have myself a summonable banker assistant.

Mind you, I do find her voice kind of twee. But on the other hand, I also kind of adore having a summonable chonky kitty. One who will let me chuck a bunch of my random assorted crap at her if I’m out adventuring! Presumably she squirrels it away courtesy of Alfiq magic. 😉

And I find it just so super helpful having a banker assistant now. It ups the likelihood I’ll play for longer, if I can periodically pause and chuck stuff into my bank account without having to worry about returning to a city to physically visit a bank. That does throw you out of the adventuring groove.

Relatedly: it’s interesting to me to think about Alfiq and how they’re treated both inside and outside of Khajiit culture. Apparently inside the culture, all furstocks are treated the same and with the same respect, but outside it, it’s another matter entirely. It’s documented that it pisses off Alfiq to be treated like housecats, and it pisses off the Senche and Senche-raht to be treated like steeds or beasts of burden.

What this suggests to me is that at least inside Khajiit culture, one furstock is not favored over another, and that any given family would be prepared to treat all of its children the same no matter what shape they’re born in.

But that’s at the cultural/familial level. I do wonder at the individual level if it ever makes an Alfiq cranky to be born in that shape? Even aside from the question of avoiding traveling outside Elsweyr to avoid being treated like housecats, does it just irritate Alfiq when they learn that they’ve been born into a world designed for bipedal creatures with thumbs, in which category they do not qualify?

And what do Alfiq think about actual housecats? Thinking about this if nothing else in the context of, it’d probably be best for Gyllerah to not summon Ezabi around her pet cat?

Also thinking about whether Gyllerah has any trouble resisting the urge to pet Ezabi! I’m thinking not, just because this can be another thing about Gyllerah’s memories of her earlier life coming back a bit. I figure if she spent a fair chunk of her childhood and adolescence in Elsweyr, she’d know not to treat an Alfiq like a common housecat. She’ll just have to get any petting urges taken care of with her actual housecat. 😉

Questing for the current dragon event

So far I’ve played with this for a couple of days, and I definitely enjoy the aspects of wandering around Northern Elsweyr and getting in a surprising amount of good loot just off of harvesting ingredients.

I was also pleased with the two side quests I picked up, which were Relatively Speaking and In Sickness and In Health.

Relatively Speaking was the lighter-weight of the two, and it was a good thing it was kind of hilarious, because I figured out fast that choosing Rimmen Necropolis as my spot to go hunting for a Dragonguard standard was… ill-advised. There were a bunch of hostiles in there in large groups that handed me my ass pretty quickly!

But I kept at it, just because I was amused by the lazy Khajiit who recruited me to place his ancestor’s urn in the proper place, and by the spirit urging me on to try to find the right place to put it. I was a little piqued that it took three tries, because apparently the spirit couldn’t just take me to the right place the first time?

But I didn’t see coming that the dead ancestor was in fact royalty, and once that reveal dropped, I was pretty amused by how the spirit was salty at his descendant. He told me to go tell him that if he’d been arsed to actually do this himself, he would have shared treasure with him!

(Though I note with some asperity that he didn’t share all that much treasure with me. What am I? Chopped liver?)

In Sickness and In Health was a good solid story, and I liked the character Vazbi a lot. I also liked that it let you end with a choice as to how you answered Vazbi’s indecision about how to move forward from the events of the plot.

Last but not least, there was the whole aspect of trying to hunt down a dragon to kill. This is challenging, given that dragons move when they spawn in Northern Elsweyr, so I had to do a lot of monitoring of the map and try to get to a dragon battle before it ended. I did finally come in on the tail end of one battle, though, and got in enough participation that it let me loot the corpse. But I feel like I barely did anything, and I kinda want another round!

So I’ll be poking a bit more at this event as long as it’s running.

Abnur Tharn apparently really, really wants to see me

I saw the messenger Anais Davaux again in Rimmen, and stopped to see what she wanted when she hailed me. I discovered to my surprise that she had another message for me from Abnur Tharn.

So apparently Tharn really, really wants to talk to me about dragon-related goings on? I should probably get a move on on the rest of the Main Quest, I guess, just because I’m queueing up quite the backlog of messages from this guy. Heh.