ESO catchup post: Marwyth in the rest of March

ESO catchup post for my Nightblade Marwyth, to cover what I did with her in the latter half of March of this year. A lot done here: parsing practice and building up Marwyth to function as a DPS, Ebonheart Pact quest action, Summerset quest action, Psijic Order quest action, and a bunch of side questing in various places.

General note

This post covers play dates from pretty much the latter half of March of this year, 3/15-3/31/2024.

As of this post, I’m going to stop actually counting sessions for this game. ESO has no real concept of a “finish”. Even after you do its original Main Quest, there is always something new to do.

So it makes less sense for me to bother to count sessions for any of my ESO alts. I’ll still do it for Skyrim, Morrowind, and Oblivion, since there’s a finite amount of content for each of those games, even if you play with mods.

I think I’ll just keep to this idea of covering action based on dates rather than counting sessions. That’ll make it easier for me to get posts up.

Parsing and build refinement

Did more parsing in this time frame, and several things that let me get from 33K to 51K, a nice decent jump.

Things I did that improved this:

Transmuting pieces of Marwyth’s Pillar of Nirn gear to Divines
Finally leveled Marwyth’s Fighters Guild skill up to 8, which meant I could unlock Trap Beast for her and experiment with that in her rotation
Choosing the correct Mundus stone (Thief)
Choosing a new build guide to follow with a skill set that appealed to me
Working on my light attack weaving
Flipped preferred weapons around, put daggers on the front bar and bow on the back
Tried out full Kra’gh monster set, once I got the epaulets via Undaunted keys
Tried out the Maelstrom Arena bow once I scored that as Gyllerah \0/

Here’s the build guide I decided to follow, and which I am still using as my primary trial and dungeon build when I’m running this character.

ESO Stamina Nightblade PvE Build

I’m not following the build guide quite exactly, since its preferred back bar weapon is a Desto staff, and I’m using a bow. Also, I’m not using the exact same gear as what it recommends for its Best in Slot. What I am using are a couple of armor sets in its Flex Options: Arms of Relequen for the front bar, Pillar of Nirn for the back. And I’m using both pieces of the Selene monster set.

But at this point I can reliably clear 80K in parses with Marwyth, and semi-regularly clear 90K. So by and large I’m very happy with where this build guide led me.

Dungeons

With Swamp Haven guildmates, ran Darkshade Caverns, which I had not been in before! And also Crypt of Hearts, which I’d tried to solo before as Gyllerah. We ran both of them on vet.

Dailies

Ran dailies in the following places, usually with Mirri for backup:

Dolmen in Deshaan
Aldunz in the Alik’r Desert for the Undaunted, which got me an additional objective to go to Volenfell after reading a page of Thorayya’s journal
Root Sunder Cavern in Grahtwood for the Mages Guild, which I ran in full since Marwyth hadn’t been in there yet
Drowned Coast Dolmen in Greenshade
Shroud Hearth Barrow, LOL, the day after I ran it for the first time while adventuring in the Rift
Bonesnap Ruins in Stormhaven, which I hadn’t run before as either Gyllerah or Marwyth; that was fun!

Closing time breaches and getting Staff pieces for the Psijics

Did all the breaches in Stonefalls, Eastmarch, and the Rift, and got the objective to go do the ones in Valenwood.

Also picked up the four pieces of the Staff of Towers from Bangkorai, the Alik’r Desert, Shadowfen, and Deshaan. And this time through, agreed with Josajeh that it’d be worth at least discussing whether any good could be done with the staff. (Shit, Marywth has some things in her life she’d love a reset on, like, say, the whole BEING KILLED BY MANNIMARCO thing. Or the death of that person she didn’t mean to kill in Balmora.)

Ebonheart Pact plot

Moved the Ebonheart Pact plot further along. Highlights:

Witnessed the ascension of Skald Svari to the post of Sage
Ran Vernim Woods, differently than Gyllerah; chose the less cruel option for intelligence gathering, which wanted me to take a globe around and use it to slurp up a bunch of cultist memories
Ran Nimalten

This time through Nimalten, since I’d run the initial part of the Ebonheart Pact plot with different choices than Gyllerah’s, I still had Aera Earth-Turner joining the Worm Cult. But this time, it was her daughter that was the only other survivor in her family. And I had some mercy on her and told her that if she really wanted to flee the Worm Cult, I’d tell everybody she was dead–because Marwyth knows from wanting to atone for past wrongs, yeah.

Side quests in the Rift

Here are the side quests I hit while playing through Ebonheart Pact stuff in the Rift:

Ran Northwind Mine, since I had not been in there with Gyllerah, and YIKES about what happened to that poor scout
Helped a woman trying to find her father; found her father’s remains not far away, and gave her the letter he’d left for her
Ran Snapleg Cave since I hadn’t been in there before, and I wanted the skyshard; it was a delve, but had no local quest
Ran side quest involving a swindler named Nilwen; would have liked this more if Nilwen hadn’t misgendered me, but Marwyth was professionally amused at this woman’s cheap con 😉
Participated in a festival at Geirmund’s Hall, which was fun but generally fluffy
Settled a dispute between rival businessmen in Nimalten, which I settled on behalf of the bandit leader both guys had hired to swindle the other, because fuck those guys
Ran Shroud Hearth Barrow delve for the first time, which was disappointingly not terribly like Skyrim’s version of it

I finished up side quest activity at in the Rift by running Shroud Hearth Barrow, since it was right there! And I was curious about whether the inside of it would be similar to Skyrim’s version of it.

Answer: not so much. Which was disappointing! No dragon puzzle door, no word wall, HOW EVEN IS THIS A DRAUGR BARROW, I ask you? But still it was a decent enough delve.

And running it got me Hero of the Rift achievement! Because I hit the required number of quests run in the Rift. Awesome. 😀 That was a nice bonus on top of just doing action in Skyrim in general, which I just like on obvious grounds of “because I love Skyrim”.

Dara: “This place feels familiar!”

Me: “I just feel like wandering around Shouting for no apparent reason!” 😆

Side quests in Deshaan

While in Deshaan, picked up a side quest to return a dead woman’s amulet to her mother. Finding the mother required me to go to Tal’Deic Fortress, where gave the grieving mother the amulet, and told her her daughter’s final thoughts were of her.

Side quests in Shadowfen

Ran the delve at Atanaz, where I picked up a side quest by finding a dead Orc’s body, and got an objective to make an antidote to cure his sick daughter
Ran the plot in Hissmir with the local Argonians being super concerned about a Dominion soldier trying to commune with the Hist
Ran two side quests at Xal Ithix; rescued several scavengers from stranglers going wild in the marshes, then also ran a plot involving an aspect of Namira trying to take over the place
At least twice, found random slavers and kicked their asses on general principles
Ran local plot at Mud Tree Village involving the local miners having trouble with getting goblins to work for them
Passed a random NPC by the road and helped her out by recovering her pack guar for her, as well as a ruby she needed that had been eaten by a crocodile

I liked the side quest with the sick Orc. I went for the antidote option that wouldn’t actually put her in pain. Marwyth may be a thief and definitely morally dark gray, but this doesn’t mean she wants some random Orc stranger to suffer!

And I liked the daughter, Mozgosh, once I found her in Hissmir and learned from her what had been going on with her and her father. Marwyth was there, I think, for for Mozgosh’s intentions of vengeance! Gotta say, really enjoying what I’m seeing of Orc female NPCs in this game!

By contrast, kinda didn’t like the side plot in Hissmir with communing with the Hist. The trials to run for it were kind of annoying.

The goblins quest at Mud Tree Village was fun, particularly when I got to the part where the miners were actually enslaving the goblins. Marwyth was having no truck with that shit, and I took the correct options to let the goblins be liberated. WELP sure is a damn shame about those goblins deciding to run off, guess you guys are gonna have to do your own damn mining now, huh? Be sure to pay your workers, or the Vestige is going to come back and have words with you. And by words, I mean BLADES.

Summerset plot

Pushed the Summerset plot further along by running the College of Sapiarchs, pretty much similar to how Gyllerah did it.

Next time

Marwyth’s next post will likely cover the first half of the month of April.

Screenshots

Skipping the screenshots this time. I took a bunch, but none of them were ones I wanted to keep.