ESO catchup post: Gyllerah in early April 2024

I’m so severely behind on getting ESO posts done that I’m giving myself another round of amnesty, and am going to get some posts up that are just high-level summaries of stuff that interested me across spans of play.

So here’s a post to summarize stuff with Gyllerah from April through June of 2024.

Dailies

Did a scattered amount of guild dailies to work on leveling Companions, mostly.

But also got in a daily in Necrom since Azandar builds rapport off of that–and that let me run the delve called Camonnaruhn. The local quest giver there turned out to be Ashur, who I’d last seen running Morag Tong action with Marwyth on Vvardenfell! And I realized at that point that Ashur also was a quest giver in Northern Elsweyr. I really need to swing back and pick up his quest there. I like the character! And the delve was fun, too.

Later, once I unlocked Sharp-As-Night, I did dailies with him too just to get him some leveling experience. I learned the World Bosses in Necrom and Apocrypha are tough. And I ran the delve right near Necrom, which is the Anchre Egg Mine. It had a good strong local plot that tied into the cultist activity with Necrom’s main plot, and that was fun to run.

Dungeons run, and gear acquired

The most notable dungeon for me was Unhallowed Grave, which was new to me! Ran this with Swamp Haven, since I hadn’t been in there before and I really wanted to go in with guildmates rather than randoms, so I would have time to enjoy the plot. Got several Aegis Caller pieces for Marwyth to try out, and nice big surprise action at the end! 😀 Did not actually get much of the story; I still need to cycle back and look that up, or do a proper story run in the place. Particularly since it involved Fennorian!

Running Undaunted pledges also got me three new colors unlocked on the dye table. <3

Spending Undaunted keys got me Ilambris pauldrons to play with for Veghra, which completed a monster set for her, yay!

I think this period was the first I’d run Banished Cells II and City of Ash II, as well. These were fun, and nice follow ups on the plots I’d seen in the initial rounds of both of those dungeons. Ain’t nobody pontificates like a High Elf, LOL. (Said the High Elf Templar player.)

I’d been in Castle Thorn once before but got to run it for plot. Again, fun dungeon! And it was good to see Gwendis in play again, after seeing her involved with the prologue plot for the Markarth DLC. Nice crunchy plot here, and a challenging boss.

I got enough pieces of Jailbreaker gear that they were useful for overland resource farming. I eventually handed those off to Marwyth, since she seemed best suited as a character to wear Jailbreaker gear. 😀

Unlocked the Ring of the Wild Hunt! And reclaimed the previously acquired Ring of the Pale Order for Gyllerah, who does have a Stamplar DPS config on her even though I usually run her as a Magplar healer.

Finally got lead number four for the Harpooner’s Wading Kilt.

Event action

Did a bit of the Jester’s Festival even though I’m not terribly enamored of that particular event. But, happily, the yearly Anniversary event kicked in right after it, and I had a great deal of fun running that as always. <3

Got a nascent indrik unlocked as part of the event ticket acquisition.

Companions action

Bastian

Worked on Bastian’s side quest, and as part of that, got another round of dealing with Bastian’s annoying cousin. Who wanted me to go recover a ring that was supposed to be for his new fiancee–oh joy, oh glee, an arranged marriage! Mostly, what stood out for me about that though was that this required me to go hit Ilessan Tower–which I’d literally just hit that same session as part of running event stuff.

Also, I was slightly sad that Bastian’s personal quest did not in fact allow me to punch his cousin for him.

What this quest did offer me, once I swung back around to continue it, was a chance to reunite Bastian with an old loyal family retainer who could tell him more about what happened to his family and why he’d been separated from his mother. So that was very sweet.

I do wish I could have offered to let that character live in Snugpod! It’s not like Gyllerah’s using it, LOL.

Isobel

I picked up Isobel as a Companion, finally, and pretty much loved her right out of the gate. She has big housecarl energy! And it doesn’t suck either that she’s voiced by Laura Bailey, best known to my ears as the voice of Serana in Dawnguard. I was pleased to see that Bailey is accomplished enough to make Isobel not sound like Serana in the slightest.

I especially love how Isobel totally fangirls the Undaunted, and gets super excited if you take her to an Undaunted enclave!

And I got enough resolve points with Isobel that her personal quest kicked off, too. So I ran round one of that, and it was delightful. High points in that for me were learning that Isobel was in fact queer (bisexual, at the very least), and seeing all the various NPCs team up to plot revenge on the antagonist. And, I got to meet her parents! Who were charming.

I adore how Isobel will often bellow “WE ARE MIGHTY” after you are victorious in combat with her as your backup.

Mirri

Swung around to work on Mirri’s personal quest, too. Her dead grandfather’s ghost was a surly bastard, and Mirri was definitely not impressed with him. It was fun going on the hunt to track down the puzzle cube, though!

And when I finally got the cube back and took Mirri back to see her dead grandfather, her mother showed up there, too. I managed to get the two women and the dead grandfather to be at least grudgingly willing to be nicer to each other.

Which was the conclusion to Mirri’s quest, and which unlocked having her as a houseguest. <3

Sharp-As-Night

Early April was when I finally ran the quest to pick up Sharp-As-Night as a Companion, and this was huge fun too. He was the final Companion I hadn’t gotten yet at the time. And his backstory was great.

He was an amnesiac, a trope I’m often partial to, so that right out of the gate got my sympathies. But his personal quest also turned out to involve the Twin Lamps effort in Morrowind to free slaves, which kicked it up a whole extra level for me. Anti-slavery activists, fuck yeah!

The quest to pick up Sharp went all over a lot of Necrom. At the time, I was still also running the main Necrom plot, so I had a little bit of overlap between the two.

And my favorite bits of running the first leg of Sharp’s quest were:

The shady guy down in the Necrom Outlaws Refuge who wanted to send some red flowers off to a contact. I pointed out to him that the flowers in question were actually Columbine, and therefore very useful to alchemists, and valuable. Because BOY HOWDY don’t I know it. 😀
Running Gorne, the public dungeon in the Necrom zone, which was a big crunchy dungeon with a big crunchy local plot about it being an asylum for mad mages. FUN!

Also, once I had Sharp, I naturally had to take him fishing with me a lot. ❤️

Favorite line of Sharp’s, which he threw off when seeing me die: “If you don’t get up, I’m taking your stuff!”

Side quests

Malabal Tor

On the way to Crimson Cove in Malabal Tor, I stumbled across a plot I hadn’t done before! This involved having to help a crew of Dominion marines who were fighting Maomer pirates. I had to rescue several captured crew, then get into a cave to rescue their captain.

The Sea Elves were trying a ritual on her that was supposed to steal her memories, and I was not clear on why they were doing this. Were they trying to make her a more tractable slave? Or maybe trying to convert her into somebody who’d work for them?

Still, it was a fun little adventure, and a nice pairing with a surgical strike on Crimson Cove.

The Rift

While running Mirri’s quest, I stumbled across a side quest in the Rift. I found a dead guy near Avanchnzel, and a journal that mentioned a contact in Riften. So I went to investigate this, and was eventually pointed at the house of someone named Malsia, north of Riften, near Fallowstone Hall.

The house was empty except for three large stones. I found Malsia’s journal, which mentioned she was trying to use those stones to open a portal–so I activated them, and that did in fact open a portal. Malsia fell out of it, but she was unresponsive, and clutching a soul gem. Apparently her soul had been yanked out of her body?

This actually concluded the quest, which really didn’t make any narrative sense at all. There was no real sign of what the hell she tried to open a portal to, and why her soul would get yanked out of her body. She didn’t look like she’d been soul-shriven, she looked otherwise normal, just non-responsive. So not at all sure WTF. And very unclear as well as to why the Mages Guild thought she should be killed.

Overall, not a satisfying plot, that.

Infinite Archive

This span of play saw me actually finish a full cycle in the Infinite Archive for the first time. <3 I did it with Bastian as backup, and his having leveled up some and taken on a new ability on his skill bar doubtless helped a bunch with that.

Also finally found the seventh set of bookbinding supplies to turn in and finish the quest with Destozuno.

Guild and trading action

I joined All’s Faire, the sister guild to Swamp Haven, to get access to their guild trader.

Did a crowns exchange via the Saints guilds, and got the Murkmire DLC, fuck yeah! \0/

Trial action

Trials run with Swamp Haven:

Dreadsail Reef, which was a bit of a mess. I had a couple of very stupid deaths, which is what I got for playing a trial while tired! But muddled through more or less okay.
Aetherian Archive and Hel-Ra Citadel in the same session. Wasn’t happy with stupid deaths in the latter. I managed to die because of not being undercover when everyone was trying to evade a trash mob, so wound up resurrecting back at the start of the trial! And when I tried to get through there again to catch up, fell off a damn cliff because I didn’t know where I was going. Everyone was very patient, though, for which I was very grateful. ❤️