In Which Gyllerah Retrieves Antiquities, Disrupts Rituals, and Gains a Companion

A fair amount of action in this one: moving the Ruthless Competition antiquities plot a bit further along, disrupting some rituals by cultists in Blackwood, and then disrupting some more ritual action on Amenos!

And getting Ember the Khajiit as a Companion. 😀

Play by play

Play dates: 2/24-3/3/2023
Session numbers in this run: 137-144

Friday the 24th

Ran writs
Boinged to Auridon to find the Sunless Hollow and move that Argonian antiquities plot along
Retrieved two antiquities from there
Met an NPC Argonian, Jee-Lar, sent by Concordia
Hoofed it back to Vulkhel Guard to report back to Concordia about what I found
She asked me to return to the Outlaw Refuge to get more information about the significance of the two artifacts; decided to hold that for later
Derped around a little looking for saltwater fishing spots
Saw what might have been a couple of NPCs (or maybe players, I didn’t get close enough to check) sitting on a blanket on the beach; they looked kind of private and cozy so didn’t go over to bother them
Got hailed by a messenger from the Fighters Guild, who asked me to go talk to Sees-All-Colors in Elden Root; decided to hold that for later, too
Boinged back to Cliffshade for the night

Saturday the 25th

Forgot to record what I did that day, but I’ll go out on a limb and say, it was probably running writs. 😉

Sunday the 26th

Ran writs
Ran Woodworking Survey in Alik’r Desert
Also fought a giant, Lonely Papa, a Group Boss
Returned to Alinor to finish writs
Boinged back to Cliffshade and finished making cp100 armor
Logged out for the night

Monday the 27th

Ran writs; no other significant action

Tuesday the 28th

Ran writs
Did Clothier Survey in Northern Elsweyr
Did Woodworker Survey in Malabal Tor
Found another breach to seal right by a dolmen
Boinged back to Alinor to finish writs
Made nightwood bow and shield in Wood Elf style
Logged out for the night

Wednesday the 1st

Ran writs; no other significant action

Thursday the 2nd

Ran writs
Didn’t have quite enough wood on me so went out to explore, since there’s an event going on encouraging exploration!
Boinged to Leyawiin
Ran a daily quest there to hit the Xi-Tsei delve
Talked to Deetum-Jas to get the quest, then also talked to Nalulie, a fisherwoman (who also happened to be Altmer) in the city to get more info on the quest
Headed out to find the place
On the way, found one of those portals to Oblivion, and for giggles, tried that out–and boy howdy did I die fast, so got back out again to try that later
Proceeded to the delve
In addition to the quest I’d already picked up to disrupt rituals by destroying components, also talked to another Argonian, Jela, who needed me to rescue captured friends of hers
Ran the delve with both of those objectives in mind
Reached the final boss who was tough to fight on my own, but a few other players finally showed up and that helped; participated in his takedown
Then resolved quests, and returned to Alinor to finish up the last of the writs
Boinged back to Cliffshade and made cp110 armor
Logged off for the night

Friday the 3rd

Ran writs, but had materials for only three of them: enchanting, jewelry, clothing
So decided to hit up High Isle, for exploratory event, surveys, and another shot at Ember
Boinged to High Isle, and bought the inn room there for easy access
Decided to try to for a daily delve job as well, so got a quest expecting me to go to Amenos to gather magic ritual components from Coral Cliffs
Hit the Jewelry and Woodworker surveys first
Then ran Ember’s quest
Finally figured out that I hadn’t realized before that I had to search the immediate area for the enchanted animals, they wouldn’t just be right there in front of me; when I figured that out, I was able to finish the quest
And yay, now I have Ember as a companion!
Boinged to Amenos to run the delve at Coral Cliffs
Picked up local quest which required me to free prisoners from the druids there who’d been feeding them to coral, yikes?
Brought in Ember to help me fight the boss
Freed all the prisoners and found the ritual components
Then hoofed it out on foot to get to the Blacksmithing survey spot, which I’d been to before
Finally boinged back to report in to satisfy the delve job
Boinged back to Alinor to finish writs; had to buy cheese from guild trader
Boinged back to Cliffshade and began work on cp120 armor
Made a cp120 bow since I’d accidentally destroyed my previous bow not realizing I was short on nightwood , oops
Logged out for the night

Continuing the Ruthless Competition quest

Got in a little bit more action on the Ruthless Competition quest in the set of sessions covered in this post, at least enough to go check out the Sunless Hollow, and recover a couple of antiquities for Concordia.

I now know that this quest is serving as the prologue for the Murkmire DLC. You will note that I do not actually have this DLC. So I don’t know how invested I am in finishing this plot quickly?

But it is at least something to do when I’m not in the mood for major adventuring, yet don’t want to just spend a session running writs and doing surveys. So I’ll still poke my way through finishing it up.

Lonely Papa

Killed my first Group Boss in the Alik’r Desert, the giant called Lonely Papa. Which was a) kind of sad with a name like that, and b) a tough fight. I didn’t actually intend to fight that giant going by there, because I was busy trying to find a survey location.

But I happened to hear another player show up and start fighting him, so I peeked back to see what was happening. And wound up joining that player in the fight. I tried to make a point of throwing regular heals to keep both of us going! It’s important, if you’re healing-capable, I feel.

Exploring Leyawiin

There was an event this past weekend going on on ESO that encouraged exploration. So the tail end of this post features some action inspired by that. I liked the idea of just bonuses to experience and harvesting ingredients in the wild, which seemed like a nice low-key way to get event action without having to worry about running specific quests.

I chose to go check out Leyawiin, because a) haven’t really explored much in Blackwood yet, and b) i’m starting to accumulate sealed master writs. One of them wants Ivory Brigade Style, which seems to be available in Blackwood.

I kind of liked that one of the NPCs I talked to about the daily quest I picked up was an Altmer fisherwoman. As a player running an Altmer who has in fact spent a good amount of time just peacefully fishing in the game, and who’s definitely disenchanted with formal Altmer society, I feel like Gyllerah may well have liked this woman!

The game didn’t give me an opportunity to speak to her much, even in the context of getting more information from her. But I can easily see Gyllerah sitting down for a chat with her after getting back from the quest, just to get a sense of what it’s like for an Altmer in Blackwood. And also, just because fishing is fun!

This daily quest did of course turn out to be a delve. And as I’d done running delves in Northern Elsweyr, I also picked up the immediate quest local to this delve, so I could stack them going on.

This was a nice crunchy delve to run, too. Nice powerful boss to run, which was challenging on my own, but other players showing up finally helped.

Having this delve adventure in general gave me a couple of opportunities to hear a couple of Argonian-style sayings I hadn’t seen before: “I erect the spine of greeting”, and “I erect the spine of fear”. So apparently that’s a common type of greeting amongst Argonians? It’ll be interesting to see how many variations of that I run into as I continue to explore Argonian areas.

Jela, the same Argonian who greeted me with the phrase “I raise the spine of gear”, called me beek-ojel later. Which also stood out to me! I apparently missed a dialogue option where she would have told me that that basically means “friendly outsider”, from what I see on the wiki.

I’m developing a stronger appreciation for ESO peppering these little language tidbits into conversation with NPCs. This is the first I’ve seen this with the Argonians, so it’s standing out for me as particularly cool.

Returning to High Isle

The exploratory event motivated me to go visit High Isle, too. But it wasn’t the only motivator! Because I needed to hit up multiple ingredients surveys (Blacksmithing, Woodworking, and Jewelry), and I wanted another crack at getting Ember as a Companion. So I boinged in with intent to pick up a local daily quest, run those surveys, and try for Ember.

Boinging into High Isle this time, I actually came in via the inn room at the Ancient Anchor Inn, which i sin Gonfalon Bay. I decided to go ahead and purchase it, just to have easy access next time I want to come back to the island.

Which led me to making a discovery that surprised and pleased me: the local bard playing something that was not, in fact, a lute, a flute, or a drum! Which you can see in his pic on the UESP wiki! I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be a nyckelharpa, but I don’t know if that’s what the in-game lore calls it.

I am ridiculously delighted by seeing an instrument like that in ESO. Which now totally makes me want to see a bard in ESO playing the bouzouki. GIVE ME A BOUZOUKI PLAYING BARD, game! Bonus if he’s a Breton that looks like Alan Doyle. 😀

After that wonderful little surprise, I moved on to running the first two of the three surveys I wanted to hit… and then, my next attempt to get Ember as my companion.

This time through, I figured out something: that the section of the quest wherein I was supposed to take Ember’s enchanted spoon and use it to disenchant farm animals was supposed to work similarly to how you use the Augur of the Obscure, or the Antiquarian’s Eye. Namely, that finding your target meant searching in an area rather than just following a quest marker.

Once I realized this, then I was able to actually hunt around and find all of the enchanted animals and finish up the quest.

Which means, now I have Ember as a Companion!

Coral Cliffs quest on Amenos

And I got in a chance to use her in combat, too. I added her to my Allies quick menu, just so I can bring her in fast. But more on this in a minute.

After I got Ember, I did the final stage of my High Isle adventure run: boinging over to the secondary island of Amenos, hitting another survey (this time, one I’d seen before), and then hitting the Coral Cliffs delve.

I really liked this one. The story for it seemed fairly creepy, with a bunch of druids that were apparently capturing creatures and even people, and feeding them to corrupted coral. Yikes?

While running the place, I spotted some examples of “Coraldrift Bears” that seemed to be the result of this, bears that were a fusion of normal bears and coral. Simultaneously kind of cool and very creepy.

The delve boss was challenging and killed me multiple times, before I finally remembered derp, now I can call in backup! So I yelled for Ember, and that actually worked! Very satisfying. 😀

Next time

Got a session with some RP done already that won’t be included in this post, just because I want to get this one up. Expect that one to feature some more Fighters Guild action, notably, visiting my first ESO Dwemer ruin!