ESO catchup post: Veghra in April 2024

Time to do another ESO catchup, to try to clear more of my backlog of posts I’ve been meaning to do. This one covers my Orc Sorcerer alt on ESO, Veghra, and everything she did during the month of April 2024.

Companions action

Ran the quest to pick up Ember as a Companion, since at that point Veghra didn’t have a Companion at her disposal. I’m not convinced Ember is the best fit for her temperament-wise. But at least in terms of skillset, they do both like to bring the lightning! So there’s that they have in common at least.

In general, used Ember as backup on several rounds of Guild dailies. And I got Ember’s rapport bumped up enough that I was able to unlock the first phase of her quest.

Got her leveled up at least once, too, and unlocked the skills Parallel and Skeletal Aegis on her.

Build refinement and parsing

Got in some practice with heavy attacks with a lightning staff, working on a one bar build using the Oakensoul Ring. During that time frame I still liked Veghra’s two-bar build better than the one-bar attempt, but this has definitely changed since then. As of this writing, I have four builds on Veghra now, two of which are one bar, and the one I use in groups packs a wallop. <3

Just for giggles, tried to parse on the iron atronach on the Swamp Haven Guild island. And it was hilarious how bad those numbers were: about 17K. I could tell fairly quickly that I was not doing nearly as much damage to the thing as Marwyth could at the time, and I was right.

At the time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to gear Veghra up for actual damage. Her gear then was perfectly acceptable for overland adventuring, although she was squishier than I liked. This motivated me to aim her towards a more medium armor/stamina setup–though that wasn’t where I eventually landed with her. In reading up on Sorcerer builds, I learned that using medium armor on a magicka build was actually better than light armor in a lot of situations, to avoid running into a cap on critical damage.

For the time being, though, I swapped out a couple of her armor pieces with medium armor equivalents, just to make her slightly less squishy. Via Gyllerah, I built her a cp160 jack (Malacath style) and arm cops (Ancient Orc style).

Also, I made her a battleaxe. At the time, at least, I felt like Veghra ought to have a physical weapon as well as the Lightning staff. And I wasn’t really feeling like making her yet another dual wielder. Since April, though, I actually swapped her off to greatsword. I feel like a battleaxe ought to be more Orc-like, but I’ve never liked wielding axes. And I do like greatswords.

Running dailies got me a couple more skill points that I then dropped onto Two-handed. That bought me the Cleave skill, which I then morphed to Brawler, because that seemed very Orc-like!

Houses acquired

I bought Hammerdeath Bungalow in Stormhaven, partly to have it for an easy port into the western half of that zone, and partly because I I didn’t have a house yet that I felt would really suit Veghra.

I still don’t like that ESO doesn’t let you set a primary residence at the character level, just at the level of your account. I love my Cliffshade, but I just do not see it actually being shared by all four of my alts! I did come up with the little headcanon about Marwyth sort of living there out of phase with Gyllerah… but even given that, I don’t think Marwyth stayed there permanently. So eventually, I want other houses for the three alts.

Hammerdeath was my first candidate for a Veghra house. As of this post, I’ve furnished it a bit with Orc-themed furnishing, though I think Ravenhurst in Rivenspire will actually be more likely to be her headquarters once I finish building it out. Which is still a work in progress.

And I bought Black Vine Villa in Malabal Tor, since a) it’s cheap, and b) it’s right there by the Silvenar Vale Dolmen. Which is super useful for purposes of running Fighters Guild dailies, if I get sent to Malabal Tor. And that did in fact happen for Veghra during this month!

During April was also when I started considering nabbing the player home near Woodhearth, Bouldertree Refuge. Because again, conveniently located near a regular daily location for the Undaunted! I did in fact pick up this house later; more on this to come.

Undaunted and other Guild dailies

Crimson Cove

Ran Crimson Cove for the first time with Veghra, and did it in full so she could get credit for the quest. I’d been in there before–but discovered there was an extra quest I’d previously missed, which I had not done as Gyllerah.

This required me to spend a little extra time in the dungeon rescuing Bosmer prisoners, who apparently didn’t spawn until I finished Glanir’s quest. I got out of the dungeon after rescuing everybody, and Glanir had a final conversation with them all, offering to get them to safety at Velyn Harbor.

I noted as well that the others were not happy with Peras for leading them into Crimson Raider territory, especially after finding out that their captors were actually Imperials in disguise.

Random Gold Coast recruit encounter

On the way to hitting the Silvenar Vale Dolmen for one of the dailies, I stumbled across a Gold Coast Recruit NPC fighting a zombie. I heavy attacked with my Lightning staff. But I accidentally also killed the Gold Coast Recruit! Oops. *^_^*;;

Other notable dungeons hit

Crypt of the Exiles in Bangkorai, which I didn’t remember running before until I searched previous posts and saw that Marwyth had been in there in June 2023.
Lost City of the Na-Totambu in the Alik’r Desert, hit the same local quests Gyllerah had done while running Azandar’s quest, but did not get the group boss. Did get enough of a rapport bump with Ember that the first stage of her personal quest opened up!
Naril Nagaia, which I hadn’t yet hit as Veghra. So got the skyshard there and also picked up the side plot to go talk to the mage in Woodhearth afterwards, and got the skyshard under the bridge near Woodhearth while I was at it.
Bonesnap Ruins, another new visit for this character. Ran the whole thing, all side quests in the dungeon, as well as getting Uncle Leo’s Spectacles, and doing the Group Event boss.
Crow’s Wood, another public dungeon Veghra hadn’t hit yet. Ran the whole thing, and this time through opted for the Tribute of Flesh for the Blackfeather Court, since that seemed Orc-like. Still made the mage live up to his side of the bargain with the Crow Mother, though.

General exploration

Got in quite a bit of exploring Vvardenfell just doing skyshard hunting. That got the following locations on Vvardenfell onto Veghra’s map:

Vivec City, and both of the wayshrines there
Suran
Molag Mar

I accidentally trespassed into a restricted area and pissed off a Nightblade Ashlander, oops. I ran like hell, because I didn’t want to fight with them–and that slapped a big ol’ bounty on me, which I had to let burn off. But that was an excellent excuse to do some fishing!

Events

Got the Staff of Worms replica page as part of the Anniversary Event.

Daggerfall Covenant plot in Stormhaven

Once I got Hammerdeath Bungalow, that put me in good proximity of picking up action at Pariah Abbey. I’d completed some of this plot action already, and mostly played through it the same as I’d done with Gyllerah. The one major exception though was the side plot involving the Orc priest who was being possessed by a daedra.

Unlike Gyllerah, Veghra opted to poison him as he requested. He was a fellow Orc, and he explicitly asked to be poisoned. Veghra was going to respect that, on the grounds that an Orc would damn well know when he needs to die. And she was going to help him do that with honor.

Then I finally headed into Wayrest, and found my way into the palace so I could talk to King Emeric. Once I actually saw him, I recognized him from when Gyllerah hit the part of the main plot that sent her to Stirk. And I told him about the situation at the abbey, and the missing shard.

Emeric instructed me to go check out Count Hosni at-Tura, who was in theory in charge of the Midnight Union. Ever so conveniently, the dude was holding a betrothal party, and had sent the king an invite! Which he then handed to me.

Snerk. I don’t think Veghra was particularly thrilled about that. But she was prepared to put on her “daughter of a chieftain” face, and stoically do her duty for the Covenant!

Stormhaven side quests

Cumberland’s Watch

I’d seen this place before as well as the goblins that had overrun it. But during this time frame, I actually finally ran it with Veghra.

I discovered that the goblins had been provoked into attacking the fort, because one of the soldiers, a Redguard, had stolen their totem and displayed it. The dude apparently really fucking hated goblins. So I had to do several small tasks to help them get the situation under control, including finally retrieving the totem.

Meanwhile, I also did a parallel side quest involving freeing a prisoner who begged to be let loose. The implication there was that he was actually locked up for cause, petty thievery of some sort. But I decided Veghra was willing to take him at his word. So I found the key needed to free him on a dead soldier, and let him out.

Rama, the aforementioned Redguard at fault for the whole attack, ran off. I was tasked with pursuing him. I found his cousin near his hiding place, and the cousin offered to just give me the guy’s sword so that I wouldn’t have to actually face him in battle.

Fuck that, said the Orc, who was not going to turn down a fight. So I went in and kicked Rama’s ass, and returned to his commander to report it.

Dreughside

On my way into Wayrest for the aforementioned meetup with the king, I discovered that Dreughside, a shanty town just outside the city, had been overrun with pissed-off dreugh.

I talked to a sergeant stationed on watch, as well as a panicked woman whose husband had been hauled off, to get info on what was going on. And I had to rescue several citizens by breaking them out of mud mounds, until I eventually found the missing husband as well.

From the sergeant, I learned that the baron who owned the land they were on was acting awfully damned suspicious about the whole thing, like he was actually enjoying the chaos. And also, I found evidence that the dreugh were pissed off because their eggs had been stolen and strewn around the shanty town!

All signs pointed to Baron Sorick actually staging the whole damned thing, so I confronted the asshole and called him on it. He tried to be all I AM A NOBLE OF WAYREST YOU WOULDN’T DARE KILL ME.

Veghra’s answer to that was an Intimidate check: “Get those eggs out of Dreughside, or I’ll kill you where you stand.”

Fuck yeah! Veghra the Orc takes no bullshit whatsoever from haughty nobles. And he actually caved, LOL. Problem SORTED.

Next time

Veghra’s next post, covering the month of May 2024, will see a bit more Companion action, finishing up RP in Stormhaven, and moving on to Rivenspire!

Screenshots

No screenshots this time.