In Which Gyllerah Saves the King of Daggerfall

A lot of festival-related activity in these sessions, as most of this play was during the Jester’s Festival. But it also saw the beginning of the Anniversary Event for 2023 as well!

Also, I’ve started making progress with Master Writs, and practicing learning how to use a Restoration Staff, with an eventual goal of being a better healer/support type person for group scenarios.

Last but not least, stumbled into a plot that let me save Casimir, the King of Daggerfall, from assassins! And all because of a dog named Giblets.

Play by play

• Play dates: 3/31-4/6/2023
• Session numbers in this run: 168-174

Friday the 31st

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Boinged to Glenumbra for Jester’s Festival action
• Talked to Jester King Emeric for next quest action
• Had to go find ingredients for him to make dazzlers, which involved hitting two different delves, Ilessan Tower and Silumm
• Ilessan Tower had Red Rook Bandits; I took out the boss, Gaetene
• Silumm had Dominion soldiers, and I was all HOLD ON YOU ASSHOLES I’M AN EYE OF THE QUEEN I’M A FUCKING ALTMER STOP ATTACKING ME OKAY FINE I’ll fight you <stab>
• Did not find the boss in Silumm, but I got all the ingredients and that was the important part
• Returned to the Jester King; got his dazzlers and his directive to go fire them off
• I quite liked that part, tiny fireworks, fuck yeah; got an event box out of that
• Returned to Alinor for inventory management and chucked a bunch of things into the bank
• Read a bunch of style pages out of the Guild bank as well
• Boinged back to Cliffshade
• Made an end table to put next to the Khajiit couch I’m letting Ezabi hang out on
• Logged off for the night

Saturday the 1st

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Boinged to Stonefalls to run festival action there and also gather more materials
• Hit Davon’s Watch first to try to find the Glenmoril Wyrd treasure location there and clear that long-pending thing out of my inventory; finally found it and got the style page for Glenmoril Wyrd axes
• Headed from there southward to Othrenis and hit an enchanter survey location there
• Boinged to Ebonheart to do the festival stuff
• This time the Jester King wanted me to steal mudcrab apples, and then steal a pig–which got me in trouble and didn’t really care for that ;P
• I think I should have been sneaking when I fed apples to the pig? It followed me, which pissed off the pig’s owner; got tagged as ‘disreputable’, and caught by a guard, so paid a 46 gold bounty
• Got the Jester’s Festival box anyway
• Headed off to the very western bit of Stonefalls to hit a woodworker survey; had two copies of it, so had to wander around a bit to wait for it to respawn
• Killed a few hostiles while there, which looked like dro-m’Athra, and that piqued my interest as a thing I’ll want to know more about later
• Returned to Cliffshade and made a cp160 bow finally
• Logged out for the night

Sunday the 2nd

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Boinged back to Vulkhel Guard for festival stuff, and that turned out to be a rerun of the first day of the festival, with my running around throwing flower petals all over NPCs

Monday the 3rd

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Finally had a Guild trader have the Orcrest Agony Pale Ale recipe, 12,000+ gold but nabbed it anyway
• Then had to actually find the ingredients for it so I could make it eight times
• Only got two writ vouchers off of it, but now at least it’s done!
• Spent ten event tickets on the event so now I have that passion flower flying pet thing
• Made more things to try to build gold back up and clear out my inventory and my bank
• Parked in Cliffshade for the night

Tuesday the 4th

• Ran writs in Alinor
• Went out hunting for nirnroot and fishing around Alinor
• Hit the Rellenthil geyser just because it fired off when I was nearby
• Started working on a ruby ash shield for a master writ, since it was Argonian style and Divine for trait, and hey I can do that
• Set station for it was in Vvardenfell, not far from Suran
• Boinged over there to find it and fought assorted critters en route, only to discover I didn’t actually have any flint in my inventory or bank, oops ;P
• Checked Suran but couldn’t find an appropriate merchant to buy flint from
• Boinged back to Alinor to buy some since that was faster than trying to search the entire Suran map, or going to Vivec
• Returned to Suran Wayshrine, reached the set station, and made the shield
• Did additional boinging around to look for enough items to improve the shield up to Legendary
• Shopped at Guild traders in Rimmen
• Ran a Northern Elsweyr treasure map to get more items to sell and opportunity to harvest more ingredients
• Realized I’d bought extra mastics when I should have been working on getting rosin, DOH; had 16 rosins and needed 20 to finish the shield
• Parked in Cliffshade for the night

Wednesday the 5th

• Fixed the lack of enough rosins problem by learning how to use a Skill Respecification scroll!
• Which let me go ahead and finish off the shield by improving it up to Legendary
• Left Cliffshade and took Marbruk’s wayshrine over to Elden Root so I could turn in the shield for the Master writ, which got me 50 writ vouchers
• Ran writs in Alinor, but this required me to run off and do some surveys to get all the necessary materials
• Did Alchemy survey in Auridon, the one near the College of Aldmeri Propriety, which also conveniently let me restock on nirnroot
• Ran two copies of the Jewelry survey in the Rift, which stocked me up on electrum and platinum
• Also ran a Jewelry survey in Stormhaven, and the Woodworker survey in Malabal Tor
• Between the surveys, random other harvesting, and looting of containers I passed, I got everything I needed for the writs
• Returned to Alinor to finish those off, then boinged back to Cliffshade
• Made myself a Restoration staff to practice with that and pick up the skill line, since guildmates recommended that for purposes of preparing to be a useful healer type in group activities
• Boinged off to Glenumbra to run the last night of the Jester’s Festival, which meant re-running Jester King Emeric’s dazzlers quest
• Which was a perfect opportunity to practice fighting with the Restoration staff actually, so that was all good
• Hit both of the delves to get the ingredients for the dazzlers and killed assorted hostiles in both places
• This time, found the skyshard in Ilessan Tower that I’d missed the first time through
• Ran the Restoration Staff skill line up to 10, and started getting a feel for what I could do with it
• Returned to the Jester King to get his dazzlers and then go fire them off
• Tried to head back to the wayshrine to return to Alinor–then noticed an extra dog following me alongside the dog I just got from spending Seals of Endeavor
• Extra dog (named Giblets) whined at me when I talked to it, and acted like it wanted me to follow it
• Giblets led me to a dead guy with a mysterious note
• Got objective to go question Daggerfall merchants about the items on his list
• But before I could do that, an assassin showed up and I had to fight him
• Then I talked to the merchants, who clued me in that the guy was an agent of the king’s intelligence network
• One of the merchants told me to go find the captain of the guards to report this, so I did so
• Guard captain was all “shit, Roy died?” and drafted me to follow up on what Roy was doing
• Which was: investigating assassins coming after King Casimir
• Went to the inn to speak to an orc there who very pointedly wanted to focus on her drinking and not be obviously going after assassins
• She sent me upstairs to speak to on a shady contact, who had in fact attracted some of these assassins, so I saved his ass and got him to fess up more useful information
• Reported back to the orc and then to the guard captain, which led me to have to go investigate a ship with suspicious cargo and kill another assassin
• Finally ran up to the castle to try to protect the king, and a whole bunch of assassins showed up
• Fought my way upstairs to protect the king
• Got the gratitude of both the king and the captain of the guard, and authorization to follow up on who hired the main assassin to begin with
• Take two on boinging back to Alinor: sold some stuff
• Then finally boinged back to Cliffshade and logged off for the night

Thursday the 6th

• Ran some writs in Alinor
• Started seeing the gift boxes for the Anniversary Event, awesome <3
• Got a couple style sheets off of that and some unusual ingredients out of those
• Decided to run a delve, Tor-Hame-Khard again, just to see if I’d get additional anniversary loot off of that; answer: yes!
• Also got me an opportunity to harvest additional ingredients
• Short on writ materials though so boinged over to Shadowfen to run a clothier writ
• And again, had to fight assorted Dominion NPCs HEY HEY HEY YOU GUYS EYE OF THE QUEEN HERE SETTLE DOWN oh okay FINE <stabs and runs away>
• Boinged back to Alinor to finish up the writs
• Got ingredients necessary to finish up a master writ for Provisioning
• Boinged over to Elden Root to drop that off and get a couple more writ vouchers
• Nabbed the cake quest so I could get the Jubilee cake (mmmmm caaaaaake)
• Boinged to Vulkhel Guard to take care of that
• Got my three event tickets off of that and also had three left over from Jester’s Festival
• Boinged back to Summerset and hit up the event tent there; bought three rounds of the grab bags of prior Anniversary Event stuff just to see what I would get
• Spotted the Welenkin Geyser firing off, so ran over to run that for the loot
• Boinged back to Cliffshade to log out for the night

Jester’s Festival thoughts

I freely acknowledge that I didn’t engage with everything the Jester’s Festival had to offer, so I am not really working with an informed opinion here. But that said… eh, I don’t think this particular festival was for me. I get that the game is basically making this the “April Fool’s Day” type holiday event, and that’s nice and all. But I’ve soured on April Fool’s Day over the years, and so a festival where the overall point appears to be “okay, everybody be ZANY” doesn’t hit me well. It feels forced.

So I didn’t try to run any of the additional daily-type quests the festival had. I did do the main three types of quests from the Jester Queen and Kings, and those were okay. At least running around throwing flower petals on people wasn’t as annoying as hitting people with mudballs. Flower petals are pretty!

Noting for the record though that I also did not hit anybody with revelry pie. Because again, “hit other people with pies, ha ha, isn’t this festival so ZANY” doesn’t hit my current capacity for fun and humor very well.

I did like Jester King Emeric’s little quest about the dazzlers! The idea of “make me some tiny fireworks and then go fire them off” was fun. And firing them off for the approval of nearby onlookers raised a nice satisfying cheer from them.

I was not, however, a fan of the quest to feed stolen apples to the pig in Ebonheart. Particularly since this effectively resulted in my stealing the pig, which I didn’t realize until a guard nabbed me and made me pay a bounty. Given that I’m not trying to play a thief-type character with this alt, that was kind of an unpleasant surprise. And my ability to be on board with the “zany”, already kind of at risk with the concept of this festival, wasn’t helped by accidentally committing light theft.

Running Master writs

The Jester’s Festival might not have been my thing, but I can definitely say that I’m enjoying exploring the Master writs so far. Even if getting the materials for them is really fucking expensive.

I did pick up a critical piece of info, though, to help fix this problem: how to use a Skill Respecification Scroll. Paul pointed out to me that he’d learned about the skills you can spend points on to greatly improve your chances of using the appropriate materials to improve gear. He actually mentioned this in the context of just spending skill points on those skills–but I realized I had a faster way of doing this. Because I had a few of those Skill Respecification Scrolls banked up.

So I fired one off, and moved a point off of Bow (which I’m really not using much with this alt) and over onto the Resin Expertise skill under Woodworking. That punted down the cost of improving my shield from 20 rosins to 14! Which let me go ahead and finish it off. <3

As of this writing I think I now have 72 writ vouchers. Which would be enough to let me buy a couple more of the crafting stations for my house, but only the basic ones. (I.e., the ones that aren’t attunable.) But that’s not as high priority for me right now as actually getting another storage chest. I need 100 vouchers for that if I want one with 30 slots in it, and 200 if I want one with 60! So I have a while yet to go before I can pull that off.

I do expect it to take a while, too. Mostly because of how getting enough materials to run writs, and particularly picking up the style sheets for them, is expensive. I have only so much patience for how much grinding I’m willing to do, and I know I’m not making money as quickly as a more experienced player might do. For example, I know the Antiquities system should let me rack up money faster. I just haven’t managed to muster a huge amount of giveafuck about wandering around scrying for antiquities!

But I need to rethink that level of giveafuck. I’ve gotten pretty good at stacking quests in Skyrim to move things along faster, and I think some of that same strategy could apply here. So if I know I want to go hit a specific area to look for survey reports, I might as well scry for local antiquities while there!

Because there are tasty things to be acquired with the writ vouchers, not just the storage boxes. I also want the motif book for Glass armor! I’d also shoot for Ebony except that I did look that up on ESO Fashion, and I don’t think I care for the look of it? I don’t tend to favor close-faced helmets, and the Ebony motif does seem to enforce that even for Medium armor.

Practicing with Restoration staff

I had a chat with folks on the Guild Discord about recommended first steps if I wanted to join in on group fights with the Guild, and expressed my interest in maybe being healer/support. This is because I know from playing Skyrim nonstop for the last two years, as well as what playing I’ve done in ESO so far, that my aim is… not really the best thing on the planet.

I like walloping on things with swords. And I also like hitting things with bows and arrows in Skyrim. But even in Skyrim, where it’s just me playing, my track record of precision is not good. Which suggests to me that if I want to be at all useful in a group situation in ESO, I would probably function best as healer/support.

Or possibly tank, where I don’t have to care as much about precision if I’m hitting things with a suitably large weapon. But I would actually enjoy healer/support more. I know from Skyrim that I don’t tend to favor Heavy Armor or two-handed weaponry. And I say that as someone who does enjoy getting Volendrung and using it to clang the hell out of enemies in Skyrim!

That chat resulted in a couple of good goals I can work on accomplishing:

1. Building up a decent set of cp160 gear, from recommended sets; guildmates suggested Winter’s Respite or Spell Power Cure
2. Learning how to use a Restoration staff

Winter’s Respite is apparently an easy set to get, I can work on that in Western Skyrim. So I’m going to see about bumping up the priority of running quests there.

Meanwhile, I also made myself a Restoration staff just so I could unlock the skill line, and start practicing with it. I got a bit of opportunity to do this by hitting delves for the Jester’s Festival, and that let me start figuring out exactly what to do with a Restoration staff in basic combat situations. I figured out the short and longer attacks, but I don’t have any actual useful abilities ready for it yet, I think. I need to learn how those work and start building up a bar.

I did also learn that I can use the staff for blocking, which is helpful to know.

And I learned one more critical thing: that so far, I like playing with a staff better than I do the bow in ESO, honestly! So I think I will keep the staff as my backup weapon, and sword and shield as primary.

Surprise quest in Daggerfall!

On the second visit I made to Glenumbra for Jester’s Festival stuff, I didn’t actively plan to run an actual quest. But events dictated otherwise!

I’ve written before about how Paul and I have seen that bunches of NPCs in ESO can give you quests. And some of them even run right up to you and keep following you around until you actually interact with them. But apparently, this can even happen with creatures as well as people!

This time, as I was on my way back to Daggerfall’s wayshrine with intent to return to Alinor and start with final inventory tweaking for the night, I happened to notice I’d picked up an extra dog. My current pet following me around is this spottyboi, a Menevian coachdog I picked up by spending some Seals of Endeavor! But right alongside him, I also saw this poor thing, whose name was Giblets.

I saw a quest marker over Giblets, and realized oh. This dog wants me to do something. And when I talked to Giblets, I saw a prompt saying that the dog whined and trotted off a little ways, clearly wanting me to follow it.

So of course I followed the dog. Because I am not a monster that ignores an upset doggo!

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I was saving King Casimir from assassins. LOLOLOL. As you do.

From what I’m seeing on the wiki, this quest is the core objective to solve in Daggerfall, and it’s also part of the overall Daggerfall Covenant plotline. So, hah, this is another instance of my doing another faction’s quests completely out of order. Clearly Gyllerah is not entirely done boinging around in time. 😉

And I hope I didn’t just commit an act of treason by saving Casimir’s life! As I’m one of Queen Ayrenn’s agents and all. I think I will choose to call this an act of inter-faction diplomacy, and fodder to bolster my argument to get all three factions to help me take out Molag Bal later!

Beginning of the Anniversary Event

Unlike the Jester’s Festival, so far I’m digging this. <3 Copious gift boxes, fuck yeah! Also, Jubilee cake. I cannot quibble with an event that involves cake.

I particularly like these all these gift boxes include shots at some of the more unusual motif pages, as well as unusual materials for crafting. I’ve picked up a couple of motif pages (both for bows, I think, Ebonshadow and Coldsnap), as well as a scattering of unusual materials. It’ll be interesting to see if I can get a chance to use them.

And the cake quest was kind of adorable. Just to talk to this master baker, give him some ingredients, and he’ll make you a magical cake.” I’m down with that. 😀

Next time

At the very least, Gyllerah’s next post is going to feature finishing up the Argonian artifacts plot I was running, which is the prologue to the Murkmire DLC! I also expect there to be more Anniversary Edition loooooot, and maybe also moving the Aldmeri Dominion plot along some more.

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/25/2023: Restored missing gallery. And also realized that two of the screenshots in that gallery were for Gyllerah’s next post after this one, so I have moved those two shots to the appropriate gallery!