In Which Gyllerah Investigates Abyssal Geysers

This post is a bit more focused than other recent ones I’ve done for ESO, because this only covers one session! But it was a good action-heavy one, in which Paul and I ran the side plot on Summerset involving the Abyssal Geysers, and getting official quest pointers to go and raid them and get credit for that.

Highlights

• Play date: 10/28/2022
• Session number in this run: 27
• I’d already run this day’s round of writs the night before so didn’t have to do that
• Paul and I went to talk to Battlereeve Tanerline
• She sent us off to find word of three other operatives she had tasked with finding out about a threat from the Sea Sloads
• This required us to go to Karnwasten and run the place
• Lots and lots of Night Runners in there; by themselves night runners aren’t a problem, but in large numbers, rather more challenging
• But at level 26 Paul and were up to the task, we just had to not get cocky, and in several places we evaded hostiles by sneaking
• Started running into “Risen” versions of the Night Runners who appeared to be undead, and also assorted yaghra
• Made it to the mage Cainar and talked to him
• Got his intel about where the Orc Grog had been captured as a possible sacrifice, so we then had to go rescue him in the same cavern complex
• Freed Grog and got word from him that we needed to find the captain’s journal
• So we did that, while also observing that a more powerful player and a companion were running the same track we were and just laying waste to the place, LOL, so we got off a little easy while following that player 😉
• Then we had to return to Cainar where we’d found him before
• He went back to Alinor to report in and we had to look for their missing third compatriot; found her on the beach near Alinor, badly wounded
• Learned from her that she’d been with a force of marines who’d assembled a report for the Battlereeve, so we had to find those marines and recover the pieces of the report
• All the marines were dead but we did get the report pieces
• While we were doing that we also hit Welenkin Cove since it was right there
• Paul died a couple of times in that fight and I died once, and we didn’t get any loot off the kill? Possibly because we didn’t do enough damage to B’Korgen to pass the proper loot threshold?
• After that returned to the Battlereeve to turn in the report
• Got the quest from her to officially shut down three geysers
• So we went back down to the beach to the Welenkin geyser
• We couldn’t see how to activate it, but then a cultist showed up and triggered it while we were there, so we lucked out
• GEYSER ALERT! A few other players showed up when that happened, so we converged on the wave of critters
• I died once during that fight but this time Paul and i got in enough damage on it to get loot credit 😀
• And that was the point where we called it a night, Paul went to go get the beardog for the event while I did some inventory management, then logged off for the night

Commentary

Paul and I both, by the time we ran this session, had hit several of the geysers on Summerset already. But this was the first we’d actually run the official quest to do so, which would give us more loot credit for running them.

And certainly the quest leading into authorization to hit the geysers was a decent challenge. Neither of us had officially run Karnwasten before, and we were glad to do it together. In the upper 20’s for our levels, we were not really overwhelmed at any point–but we did have to be cautious and not get cocky. As I called out in the notes above, most of the opponents in Karnwasten were Night Runners, the same pirates we always see along the beach near Alinor. By themselves, those guys are not difficult.

But in large groups, they were definitely more of a problem. And we ran into multiple groups of four or five of them, and sometimes two groups in close enough proximity that triggering one group risked triggering the other as well. More than once, it turned out to be appropriate for us to just sneak past opponents rather than trying to engage them directly.

And heh, Paul’s character is definitely more inclined to sneaking than mine is, I think. But then, I also see Gyllerah being willing to let her Khajiit pal’s wisdom prevail in these situations, even if her instinct is to run up to the opponent and whack them to death with her sword. 😉

Which gives me an opportunity to note here that I’m a little surprised that it was as easy to sneak through parts of Karnwasten as it was. There were sections, particularly the camp near where we found Cainar, where if this had been Skyrim we would totally have been spotted. Because we were not in shadows, and we were sneaking through a fairly open area.

But in ESO, it seems like you have better chances of sneaking as long as the opponents aren’t actually looking directly at you.

Paul thinks, and I agree with him, that this is likely another of those situations where they had to adjust things simply because ESO is in fact an MMO. But Paul also reports that he has found situations where sneaking is more challenging–and more akin to how it works in Skyrim. I.e., if he’s trying to break into a house for purposes of robbing it. Which is good to know! I still don’t think thievery will ever be on Gyllerah’s agenda, but future alts? Quite possible! So I’ll have to keep an eye out for that in such future play.

All things considered, we also got off a little lightly partway through Karnwasten. Because we spotted another player character coming through, and their companion–and this player was clearly more powerful than we were, because they were just laying waste to every opponent they fought. So at least for some stretches of this dungeon, Paul and I just followed that person. 😀

We did not, I note, actually find K’Garza in this dungeon–which I confirmed by looking up Karnwasten on the wiki, to see if there was a boss monster we missed. That boss would be K’Garza, the Sea Sload responsible for the geysers. Don’t know if we’ll return to try to go up against her later. Maybe? We’ll see!

After we got out of Karnwasten, we had a few more hoops to jump through to actually get the authorization to destroy the geysers. Namely, finding the third missing operative, and then her marines who’d had the report for the Battlereeve. All of those marines were dead along various bits of the beach, but we did at least assemble the bits of the missing report.

And while we were at it, since we were right there, we tried hitting Welenkin Cove as well. Which was not related to the geysers at all, since that spot’s just a world boss lair. That Sload, B’Korgen, was definitely beyond us even battling him together. One other player did show up when we tried to engage him, and that player legit did just about all of the damage to him. Paul died a couple times and I died once, and neither of us got loot off of the kill. Pretty sure this was just because we didn’t do enough damage to the bastard.

We returned to the Battlereeve after that, with the assembled report, and got her official sanction to go after the geysers. So we returned to the beach, just to check out the nearby geyser there–and lucked out, because the thing went off shortly after we arrived. That fight went better! Because when the geysers go off, it basically sends up a signal to every player in range, and it can easily attract a swarm of players to help with the resulting wave of monsters.

This time Paul and I did get in some credible damage and get loot, so that was very satisfying.

I learned from Guildmates afterwards that the geysers trigger on their own. You have to look for a cultist showing up with a pearl, and that’s the trigger event for the geyser to go off. So that was useful to learn.

Don’t know yet how many more of the geysers we’ll bother with, since we learned that this is a repeatable quest with no particular endpoint. But we still have some time left on Summerset before we finally finish up the island’s main plot, so it’s distinctly possible we might clear a few more of them before we shift gears and start adventuring elsewhere! And I do want to try to clear each geyser at least once.

Next time

In the session following this one, Paul and I cleared a couple more geysers–and did in fact move the island’s plot farther along, by visiting the College of Sapiarchs!

Screenshots

Editing to add

• 11/24/2023: Restored missing gallery.
• 10/11/2024: Converted gallery to native WordPress one. Changed header graphic to the one I’m using on more recent Gyllerah posts.