ESO catchup post: Veghra in late March

Another ESO catchup post, this time for Veghra, my Orc sorcerer alt. Fair amount of action covered in this post, mostly Daggerfall Covenant stuff in Glenumbra and Stormhaven, but a little Main Quest as well.

Also, did a lot of work on refining Veghra’s build once she hit Champion status.

General commentary

This post covers action with Veghra in the latter half of the month of March 2024, from 3/19 through 3/31. And as I noted in the last post I put up for Marwyth, I’m going to back off on trying to number sessions in ESO since that doesn’t really make sense for an MMO. And also, I’ll be backing off hard on in-depth play by play details. This also has begun to make less sense now that I have four different characters in play on this game.

Once I get caught up again I may or may not go back to posting more in-depth detail, but we’ll see. Right now my goal is to just clear out my backlog! So I’ll be in ESO Summary land for a while.

Level ups

Went from level 32 clear up to Champion status, thanks to experience boosts that were active during a lot of the latter half of that month!

Cosmetics

I’d previously gotten a dye stamp while leveling Vegs up. During this time period, Gyllerah got the Defender of Orsinium achievement, which unlocked costumes. I took a look to see if Veghra’s dye stamp would look good on any of those costumes. Answer: no. So I spent it instead on the Merchant Lord’s Regalia costume for her.

Build refinement

Pondered my weapon choices for Veghra a lot during this period. I’d started her off with dual wielding axes on her front bar and a staff on her back bar, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play her as a stamina build or a magicka one. I also tried her on a battleaxe on the front bar.

I came to realize I didn’t like dual-wielding axes as much as I did daggers. And while at first I didn’t like fighting with staves as much, it grew on me!

So at this point, Veghra’s definitely a magicka-based character. And her primary builds are staff-based. I do however have an overland adventuring build on her that has a greatsword on the back bar, just because having her proficient with at least one physical weapon seemed appropriate for an Orc. And I definitely like swords better than axes.

Switched to a gear set at level 36 that was a mix of Law of Julianos, Mechanical Acuity, and Magnus’ Gift, since these were all craftable. And I wanted to try out some of the sets mentioned in build guides for Sorcerer characters! This gear had me have a staff on both bars–so I went with Lightning on the front bar and Fire on the back. I’ve maintained that decision since.

I was very happy with the look of the gear, a mix of Malacath and Ancient Orc styles, and Trinimac for the hat. That seemed appropriate for Vegs. And I went with the jerkin/shirt style for the chest rather than robe, just because I feel like Vegs didn’t think robes were practical.

Since March I shifted away from that overall look, but I want to rebuild it as an Outfit, maybe. So I need to unlock another Outfit slot on Veghra so I can alternate between a “mage” look for her and an “armored” look.

I unlocked Magelight, and slotted it to try to start leveling up the Mages Guild skill line. I only realized later, though, that you don’t actually level the Mages Guild skill line by using its skills–you level it by finding Lorebooks! Which is frustrating to me, because every other skill line levels by you actually using its skills in combat.

Once I hit level 45, I spent a Skill Respecification scroll so I could try out this build guide:

ESO Magicka Sorcerer PvE Build

Rearranged some morphs so that I could get close to this guide’s recommended skillbars. I did not put the summons for pets on both bars, though. This was explicitly because I wanted to keep Surge available, so I could level it up enough to turn it into Critical Surge. And I got everything successfully rearranged without sacrificing skill points on the crafting!

This build let me really start having fun playing with Crystal Fragments and Daedric Prey! And it’s still sorta kinda in play on Veghra, with her “Two Staves” configuration in Wizard’s Wardrobe. It is not the primary build I’m using for her on dungeons and trials, though. More on this later.

Undaunted

Once I hit level 45, I turned in the Undaunted invitation and got a couple of keys out of the deal. And apparently also avoided having to go through the initiation! Good, because I find that boring and annoying.

Events

ESO ran a mini event in March that let everybody get a 100% experience boost doing things in the world, And the Jesters Festival kicked in at the very tail end of March, again with an experience bump.

So that was a great time for me to do adventuring with Veghra, and move the Daggerfall Covenant plot along!

I am still, however, not really a fan of the Jester’s Festival. Still, I did at least a bit of festival action in Ebonheart, which let me get some of the Stonefalls locations onto Veghra’s map: Davon’s Watch and Senie, in addition to Ebonheart itself.

Main quest action

I chose to take Lyris as my companion for the part of the main quest that involved rescuing Sai Sahan, on general “fuck Tharn” grounds.

Daggerfall Covenant plot in Glenumbra

I did a hard push in March to finish up the Daggerfall Covenant plot action in Glenumbra. Some of that stuff I’d already covered as Gyllerah, so in the interests of varying things up a bit, where I could, I had Veghra make slightly different plot choices.

For example, in the plot where I saw a vision of the past about how Faolchu originally died, I told the subordinate officer to go find Alina, while I killed Faolchu. This had the impact of not changing things around in the future; the mage I’d talked to before was still a dude, and Alina no longer had a lookalike descendant around to show up.

I also decided Veghra was willing to take Darien up on the offer of a drink… later. I’m not entirely sure she was as attracted to him as Gyllerah was–but she was not immune to the allure of a handsome dude showing some interest, either. She was after all coming out of a backstory where she explicitly bailed on her clan, which removed her from the marriage pool. So the whole idea of being able to romance whoever the hell she wants was probably very appealing, so she was certainly willing to at least appreciate Darien for the moment! 😉

And I LOL’d later when I found Darien in the crypts towards the end of the Glenumbra plot, and he joked, “Tavern! I said meet me in a tavern!”

This stretch of plot turned out to be the first time, chronologically speaking, that a player running the Daggerfall Covenant plot would meet Gabrielle Benele. As Gyllerah, I’d met her first in Coldharbour, and as part of joining the Antiquarians. But as Veghra, I got to meet her in Covenant territory. And see the initial rounds of Darien totally carrying a torch for her. So that was neat.

I was very charmed to see Giblets the dog, last seen in Daggerfall as part of the assassination plot there, hanging out at the Lion Guard camp. The camp commander said the dog perked up when the king mentioned my name and came with them, and that the dog looked happy to see me. Awwwww! ❤️

I got no other interaction with the dog, though, and was a little sad I couldn’t adopt him!

Notable locations in Glenumbra hit for all of this:

• Glenumbra Moors
• Lion Guard Siege Camp
• Camlorn
• Lion Guard Redoubt
• Gaudet Farm
• Merovec’s Folly
• Cath Bedraud

Glenumbra side quests

Ran the following side quests in Glenumbra:

• The Legacy of Baelborne Rock quest, which involved helping a young noble figure out why the estate he inherited was haunted; this one was fun! I decided to resolve it by letting the spirit’s curse stand, on the grounds that Veghra was an Orc and a worshipper of Malacath, so she wasn’t about to fuck with somebody else’s justified vengeance.
• Ran the Red Rook quest triggered by a note found in Ilessan Tower, and which required me to work to clear out bandits at the Noellaume Estate
• Quest near Farwatch that required me to help local Covenant forces thwart a Dominion attack
• And a related side quest that needed me to locate a scattered group of Covenant scout recruits
• Quest at Westtry to figure out why the place was massively haunted, which turned out to be because of a curse of Molag Bal; resolved it by choosing to free the villager spirits
• Quests at Eagle’s Brook to work with Tamien Sellen to try to free the town from the Bloodthorn cult; left it to Tamien to save his father from Oblivion, in favor of saving the town
• Returned regalia to its rightful place and cleansed the curse on some spirits at the Burial Mounds
• Helped Tamien again by teaming up with him to free Crosswych from the control of bandits

An Orc named Garmeg told me about what was going on in Crosswych, and that pleased me. I think Veghra naturally gravitated to getting info out of fellow Orcs when she could! She expected them to be least likely to bullshit her.

And I liked the continuity of working with Tamien twice. Particularly after concluding the action at Crosswych, and seeing how he was going to work with the town leaders to protect the place from future bandit problems. I headcanon that he got himself a nice legit town council job. ❤️

Daggerfall Covenant action in Stormhaven

After finishing off Covenant action in Glenumbra, I moved on to Stormhaven and found that the primary action there was going to be driven by Vaermina cultists, the Supernal Dreamers. Which triggered off several instances of my being not the slightest bit shocked to find certain critical NPCs totally being plagued with nightmares.

Main locations played:

• Koeglin Village
• Alcaire Castle
• Firebrand Keep
• Pariah Abbey

I was totally not shocked that Dame Falhut, the NPC who was making racist commentary about “foreigners” (i.e., Redguards) being camped outside Castle Alcaire, turned out to be the main culprit in the plot there. And was totally down with taking her out as part of the plot resolution.

There was a messenger at Castle Alcaire that I had to talk to–who turned out to be the same messenger I’d had to rescue in Koeglin Village. And who seemed to be rather a dork, because he spaced on delivering the message that I was coming to see the duke. I got a dialogue option to be cranky at him, but declined, since that seemed unnecessarily hostile. Veghra is not above smacking people around who piss her off, but this guy? Too much of a puppy to kick.

I was not a fan of the “distract this guard” plot task that required me to make the guard run off by telling him some other guy was making moves on his wife.

And I was on the fence about the plot task that required me to pick fights with five Redguard soldiers before I could actually talk to their general. Veghra was three hundred percent happy to pick fights with people, but her player? Meh. 🙂 I’d have been just as happy marching up to one of the general’s underlings and going “Duchess Lakana sent me”, which is what I wound up having to say anyway.

But on the upside, all of the Redguards I picked fights with were being arrogant and snarky, so I figured that helped encourage Veghra to get in their faces!

Props to the overall Castle Alcaire plot though for making the main quest giver there, Hughes, actually wind up killing the Duchess. I did not see that coming.

I rather liked the overall main plot at Firebrand Keep, since Hughes showing up there threw the place into some turmoil. Some of the knights there were determined to follow his orders, and others were side-eying him hard. I had to help the latter group take over the keep safely, and a couple of times had to blow on a siege horn to signal them. That was kinda cool and reminded me of the Horn of Helm Hammerhand at Helm’s Deep. 😀

Once I got Firebrand Keep into the hands of friendly forces, I had to decide the fate of Sir Hughes once the duke showed up. I decided to be merciful. I think that as an Orc and a Malacath worshipper, Veghra might otherwise have gone with “Kill the guy, the blood price demands it”… but she did just personally witness that a Daedra had been fucking with Hughes’ mind. And she also saw that Hughes was torn up with remorse.

The duke accepted this, but also exiled Hughes out of Alcaire and stripped him of his knighthood. And Hughes accepted that his punishment would have to be living with what he did.

Veghra, I feel, could buy that as an acceptable blood price.

Lastly, I did some of the stuff at Pariah Abbey. Since I’d already run this area as Gyllerah, I had a decent idea of what to expect. I did all the parts involving having to put out fires, and rescued Abbot Durak from being stuck in dreams. And I got the objective to go talk to High King Emeric about the theft of the shard.

Also, notably, did not see any sign of hooks into the Azura prologue plot for Morrowind.

Stormhaven side quests

Ran the following side quest areas in Stormhaven:

• Cleared out a bunch of Daedra at Vanne Farm
• Helped a crew of captured sailors at Steelheart Moorings
• Ran a bit of side quest action at Koeglin Village as well, by helping a mother find her missing son
• Freed other captured sailors at the Koeglin Lighthouse
• Thwarted more Daedric and cultist shenanigans at Nurin Farm–and was amused that this ended with a tie-in to the action at Vanne Farm, too
• Helped the ghost of a dead knight at Windridge Cave
• Helped Sir Graham at Firebrand Keep by recovering stolen knight tabards so bandits couldn’t pass themselves off as knights

I found the old parents at Vanne Farm kind of adorable. ❤️

The missing son plot was weird, just because the mother in question was freaking out about her son as if he were a little lost boy, but he turned out to be a grown man. I got an opportunity to snark about his not looking like a little boy, but declined–just because that seemed unnecessarily cruel. Veghra was not, I feel, above being snarky. But in this case it would have been punching down.

Bit of a yikes involved with the Windridge Cave plot, which involved knights having collapsed the place on some bandits to seal them in there–and the bandits starved to death. So their spirits were haunting the fuck out of the place. Yikes.

Delves run

Ran the following delves:

• Ilessan Tower in Glenumbra, ran this time without an external or internal objective to fulfill, though I found a note that triggered side action for clearing out the Red Rooks at the Noellaume Estate, see above
• Cryptwatch Fort in Glenumbra; picked up a local plot there that asked me to take potion and salve recipes to Alezan at the Lion Guard camp (the same Alezan I saw in Orsinium as Gyllerah, and at Camlorn in the Covenant plot as well!)
• Portdun Watch in Stormhaven, just west of Firebrand Keep; ran local plot there involving a regretful bandit asking me to warn his brother off of following him into banditry

World bosses

Fought the following world bosses:

• Titanclaw at Mudcrab Beach, which was the place I’d visited before as Gyllerah to get a lead to drop for the Oakensoul Ring

Next time

Veghra’s next post will cover her action in the first half of April.

Screenshots

Small number of screenshots, to cut down on the number of screenshots I need to write captions for!