Yeah, at some point this one is going to have to change newbie Feathered-Snake’s body type. He must have accidentally drank a shrinking potion when he arrived in Seyda Neen, because he is actually a rather large Saxhleel fella. So are you going dual wield with Lucius or perhaps destruct staff? Or maybe just two handed?

We have another empty house! Unna just bought Autumn's Gate, and moved her bedroll in front of the fire there. Don't worry about Spreads, who shared the Inn room at Ebonheart, because the Imperial Bed, Single that Taminwe got at level 18 is installed there in its place.

And since level 18 is where you get the free coffer, that's now in every residence, too. We just have to decide how we'll use it. Probably to pass items that need to avoid deconstruction. It's getting hard to remember who's collecting a set, and whether a specific piece is a lower-level duplicate that can safely get used up. We'll maybe put recipes and plans for Laurie there, so the bank will only hold duplicates. Those uses will mean that it gets emptied regularly, so the limited size won't be an issue.

Laurie hit level 24, and now there's a cat sitting on the bunk bed at the Rosy Lion. Blossom will get there next, and only have the dog to choose.

Dual wield. Was thinking axes, but idk. Mace and Shield for the tanky part, mostly because I don't want to repeat the sword and shield. (Then again, weapon reskins ARE an option. Hm...) At one point I did consider a Fire Staff but it was abandoned early on. Like, two years ago early on. He would have made a full set with Jo and Fjotreid, though. :v

All this talk reminded me that Fjotreid never got a second weapon and currently uses another Frost Staff. I ditched the 2-hander idea when I decided to pour most attribute points into Magicka. Maybe some tweaking is in order?

Yeah! For dual wielding purposes it’s like we can have swords that can pierce/bypass armor or cause bleeding damage! (Yes the actual weapon will have to be a mace or axe, but we can make it look like a sword!)

Or maybe start using sword singer armor set+ Stamina enchants? Sword Singer specifically increases damage of Two Handed abilities, so maybe this paired with a little tweaking of the attributes?

Anyone notice longer load screens in Vvardenfell?

Ever since the update dropped, yeah. I kinda assumed it was because the influx of new/returning players.

Oh, right, I got excited about already having a set of Sword Singer but all I had was jewelry and I think I sold that lol

Aww, jewelry is half the battle! Feng is going to start looking for Spriggan’s Thorns stuff soon.

————————————————

Khajiit needs to be very careful with outfits. Can see it getting out of hand, cost wise. Today we were messing around with Mira’s outfit and we created a “Conquistador” outfit that looked really good! Didn’t save it though as it would’ve cost like 6k.

Weapons is where the cost can really skyrocket, especially with rare motifs. The cost of the Squads outfits are all at least 20k each. :v



I messed around with Fjotreid's setup and tbh I think I'm okay with keeping him as he is now. May or may not have something to do with replacing Impulse with Screaming Cliffracer Might still have him use like, a hammer or something for the sake of aesthetic. Sort of like Will Raynard from Tales of Legendia. (In spite of his looks he's a spell caster and seems to use the hammer as a catalyst)

On a side note, I never liked selling the Ashlander/Morag Tong motifs. The prices seem to be all over the place and mine never sell. :v

It’s funny you mention that! Feathered-Snake scored a Morag Tong chest chapter in his Hall of Justice delve daily today. Considered selling it since this one isn’t particularly fond of it but decided to go ahead and let Mira learn it. Maybe the medium armor could make a decent alternate for Sorai-Arbul. Also, couldn’t find any other Morag Tong chapters in my trade guild’s store.

I reference my MM data and Tamriel Trade Center's before I throw these up there. But yeah, always good to hang onto them in case you end up liking the style.

Today I finish my Morag Tong farm, since I got all the ones the Squad need, but I am really liking the difference slotting Animal Companion skills makes for Fjotreid. I used to dread Morrowind delves because of the number of enemies in them, but now he cuts through them pretty quickly without having to completely abandon the ice-mage thing I wanted to do.

I've done that too! Lol. Way to waste a whole lot of mats just to find a stylish armor, lol. I do love being able to preview the armors this way; and so far it is all I've used the Outfitter for. Not ready to commit my one slot (or gold) for anything yet, lol.






I usually test out the new characters on the PTS first too; have to ever since I discovered that the "test" for voice choices doesn't give a sample of everything they do; and I ended up with a female that grunts like a sow with every movement.





I've been trying to build a DPS Dragon Knight with Inga of the Aldmeri = as a DPS she is still way below my Templar; and doesn't have the sustainability Britta has as a Tank. I think Dragon Knights' power is all in torque; they are so strong; but can take a hit much better than give one out. Maybe with a two handed weapon it might make a difference; or possibly trying to make a magicka Dragon Knight with destruction staff on the front bar?

IDK, but even with all her champion points put into DPS'ing, it is still taking Inga a full minute to kill a mudcrab; but boy can she take a hit, even without spending any points in Tanking!

So yeah, I have been questioning whether DK's are just a one trick pony anymore. Acadian and I just had this discussion last week, lol.








Ditto. I made Bubba way too muscular and barrel chested, can't stand to see him with his shirt off, he looks like AHRNOLD. But after seeing how thin Hazmick was able to make Haa-Rei = I did go to the PTS and test out ways to thin him up and make his body look punier; and oddly enough no matter how puny I made him, he still looked built. I think that is like trying to make a short Altmer; they have preset limitations by race on these characters. So my Bubba will never achieve the boyish/androgynous look I was hoping for,

Really? A full minute to kill mudcrabs? Geru Naboor cut a bloody swath across Stros M’kai and she’s a Dragonknight. Dual wield. Something seems wrong. Inga should be at least as good or better than Geru.

tbh, I did quite a bit of testing of voices too, lol. Tried 3 voices before settling for one. I mostly go for what they sound like when they speak (as in the NPC voice it matches) rather than the limited sounds they make. I ditched one voice because I knew it was from the voice actor that did the human male Player Character voices in Skyrim and he'd remind me too much of Alois when playing. (That said his grunts are different this time around. A little "better" than Skyrim's imo.)

...now that I think about it, I'm not sure what NPC voice the Breton/Imperial "Voice F" belongs to...hm...



I think eventually you just gotta accept that you can only do so much with the tools your given and let your imagination "fix" what couldn't be done.

Since I already brought up Skyrim and Alois, I actually went through the same thing there. At first I just went along with what the game gave me and compromised a bit but by the time I got Aza-jo, my main Dragonborn, I said f-it, if the game doesn't let me make a waifish cat guy then I'll just let my imagination fill in the blanks. His in-game avatar may be insanely ripped in spite of being set to 0 weight, but the "real" one is slender and graceful and doesn't walk/run like an ape. The other male characters are still athletic, but Alois also has fat padding it up and Tyrellius has terrible posture. (I grew to accept Deleras' height, since I was pretty happy with how he ended up looking anyways. At least Bosmer men are still technically below average height.)

I'm thinking of giving Lucius the surname "Aurelius" but not only was it an insanely common name IRL, I highly doubt it's still available lol

EDIT: Welp, I knew I should have taken everything out of my Armor Storage chest. 29 of the 60 things stored in there are gone and I don't want to play until that's resolved. Worst part is I might have to delete Lucius again lol

Yeah, Khajiit would be shocked if it wasn’t taken. Honestly, it may be hard to find a well known Roman name not in use. May have to make something up (like Khajiit did with Mira’s surname “Cervantii”).

Yeah, I had to use mods to get the build I wanted on my males in both Oblivion and Skyrim. There is one modder that made excellent punier males that looked more boyish than manly for Oblivion; and he did the same thing in Skyrim but didn't post his mods for Skyrim like he did for Oblivion. I really wish they would not force their version of Lore anatomy on the players in this game; because I'm sure there are young thin Redguards and red-headed Imperials somewhere in the Lore.

Another thing I would like to see is for them to have the choice for us to have an Ohmes Khajiit like my Oblivion Khajiit Maxical looked like:


https://i.imgur.com/PWQ5OlB.png?1


But I doubt we will ever have that. It is one thing I really miss in MMORG = not being able to mod our characters to our own tastes.

Well, it may have been an exaggeration; It was in Cyrodiil; (not a starter island) = but it still took her longer than my Templar takes to cut through stuff. The Templar can take down bosses in the time it takes the DK to take down a regular enemy.






Oh crap! Have they not fixed that? I thought they resolved that when they took the server back down just hours after they added all that = especially since they knew there were people losing items.

I think it's more that there are limitations to the system, at least as far as body and face types go. (The hair color thing is very dumb, though.) One thing I will forever praise about ESO is the fact that you can customize your character's body at all. In Skyrim the only thing you could do is change their frame in 2 directions, and the change was MUCH more dramatic in male characters than female (honestly, the ONE game where playing a Brawn Hilda-type character would be the most appropriate and you can't????)

That's not ever getting into the fact that everyone looks either 30+ or perpetually 10 if they're a kid, no in-between. I always loved running into "teen" characters and seeing they have the creases of an adult. (And no, having a hard life doesn't explain their faces. Especially if they happen to be city-folk or nobility and thus have access to better skin care.)

I actually really liked that each race has a template in ESO, but I also believe the restrictions are a little too severe. And once again, female characters are limited in their range, but thankfully it's not as bad as Skyrim. I think it's more obvious with the faces, as you're locked to the same features based on race and the "weight" setting and editing tools can only do so much. I'm guessing it's a compromise to letting you stretch and shrink them, since Skyrim had a lot of options but limited ways to edit them. (And let's not forget Oblivion's pudding faces lol. Again, ESO improved on that, too.)

'Course, you start to see the, uh, strain on the character models when you go a little too far.

--

But anyways, yeah! It'd be nice to have the less, uh, visible forms of Khajiit available, too. You can sorta do some of them with the tools we have now, but some like the Ohmes are impossible unless you want to roll a Bosmer and pretend they're a Khajiit. Maybe we'll get them if/when we go to deeper parts of Elsweyr? Hmm, maybe that's unlikely, and if we do they probably won't be playable lol. We were supposed to get Naga Argonian NPCs in Murkmire for example.

If it is that then that would mean they have a different skeleton for each race; wouldn't it? Although = I am sure the Argonian's and Khajiit have different skeletons than the other races; which would probably be why they are able to be made so thin. In fact, to date I have never seen a plump Argonian in game.

But I agree on the hair color being ridiculously picky. Also, the wigs. We should be able to buy a wig a different color than our character's hair so we can change them up if we want to. Instead of the wig changing to your character's hair color like it does. I was hoping to buy a red haired wig for my Imperials so they could finally get away from all being blondes, lol.

Mira’s hair is kind of auburn-ish, but yeah it’s insane that all hair color options aren’t available for every race. What if my Redguard’s Da was a red headed Breton, Nord, or Dumer? True, in Elder Scrolls you get your race from your Ma, but you are supposed to get some traits from your Da as well. Ideally, Geru Naboor would be a red head (as she’s basically a nod to Nabooru from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time).

Agreed. I really don't recall anywhere in the Lore that it restricted the hair color of any race.

I think they do (or at least a pre-edited body that's further edited in the creator, which is why it gets weird when it's edited more than it should be). The origin being some kind of default body. (Again, most likely the Breton one. They really are the White Bread race of Tamriel lol) I think I've actually seen some chunky Argonians from players, but idk.

But yeah, Khajiit, I don't think genetics really work the way they do in Tamriel like they do IRL. I remember reading the (slightly supported) theory that the reason traits are largely from the mother is because memories of her being are "burned" into the child through the water of the womb. (Water being memories shed from souls that went through the Dream Sleeve, aka Sovngarde/"Aetherius"/whatever afterlife, with memories in general capable of producing it) If it's memories doing the work, then the father's hair color could be incorporated easily.

Not to mention that most people probably aren't "purebred". Bretons and Imperials being the most mixed human races by default, with Bosmer being this for Elves. Hard to say for Redguards. They came from another continent apparently just as big or even bigger than Tamriel, and their names are the most diverse of all the races, so they could be just as mixed as the other two humans.

==

Anyways, looks like my ticket was ignored and I honestly don't really care much for what I lost lol so I went ahead and made room for Lucius in Jo'zira's house. (His full name ended up being Lucius Aurelius Ignatius. If Bethesda can get away with Corvus Umbranox, I can get away with that)

There's...a lot to unpack about what the [censored] just happened, especially from Lucius' perspective.



I'm excited. Not only for a new character and his potential, but hey! Character development for Jo'zira! (Most of it being fanfic material lol) I wonder if they'll answer the ticket eventually and I'll get a rollback. that would suck

Even if so, how come Oblivion lets you make your hair color whatever you want and Skyrim has the same hair options for all races? It’s just unnecessarily restrictive in ESO.

I can understand why they do it. It's because ESO has to send the details of every player's character to everybody else, so the list of options has to be as small as possible. Select from a fixed list, instead of settings on a continuous scale, and it takes less bytes to hold the data.

I suspect the idea behind outfits is to reduce the number of changes of appearance that have to get sent from the server. A player is more likely to stay with the same look now, instead of changing every time they find a new piece with better stats. They'll wear the new piece, but everyone else doesn't need an update for the visuals. Costumes were the first attempt, but some folk wanted to show an armoured look, and now they can.

Eh, still not explaining it though. Redguards, for instance, have multiple shades of brown, some of which are barely different from the one before or after it. Yet there isn’t one shade of red! Not one!

Ah, well that does make sense then; if all that is overloading the servers. Oh well, I still like it better than any other game right now; though I do miss modding.

Because Blossom was in the area foraging and doing quests, she took a look at the Orcish house Hammerdeath Bungalow. We gave it a miss - why would anyone want a home where the fireplace is bricked up? I could understand not having one at all, but there's a chimney at one end with a solid wall where you'd expect space for a fire.

By contrast, Unna's Autumn's Gate had a fire already lit when she bought it.

Yeah Khajiit is not fond of Hammerdeath Bungalow. Besides the chimney issue, this one doesn’t like the fact that it has all that space around it that you can’t use.

I'm still waiting for chimney furniture. I'm waiting, ZOS.

Lucius walked around Rawl'kha looking for a job but only found the kind that needs one to be well-armed. He won't have any gear for a while, so that isn't an option unless he plans on running constantly. He can't do writs yet and I wonder whether I should even get him started on that considering (Datamine spoilers)

Hmmmm, interesting.

Worked on Feathered-Snake today. Got him up to Lvl15 and through Bleakrock Isle to Bal Foyen. Enjoying his playstyle so far, despite a few miscues in a Vvardenfell delve (specifically a giant Kwama Warrior that spawns a bunch of Kwama Workers gave us trouble). We fleshed out his defensive abilities and seems to be hanging in there a lot better now.

Mira got some new CP150 gear (5x Torug’s Pact, 4x Song of Lamae), which she’ll probably be staying in for a while since she is retiring from anything harder than delves to focus on crafting.

I just noticed that four of my characters are at level 19 - i.e. their next level gets a Crown Crate. The PTS ones were Fire Atronach, does anyone know if it's moved on to the current season, or if FA is still there for the level-ups?

Edit: and of course, another of the rewards is a choice from 3 costumes, so that means we get all three, and someone goes without.

Yeah it’s still Flame Atronach

So I finally sent the ticket through the right channel to reclaim my lost items (days later yeah) and I got a people person to answer after just one reply so I guess I'm gonna make an effort to get them back?

Like, the fact that the armor I lost was bound suggests that I wore it at one point and probably wanted to hang onto it considering it was never deconstructed. If it fails, there's also a chance I get something as recompense for having to deal with an atrocious bug that defeats the purpose of the storage chests. I can hope at least.

There will most definitely be some difficulty in restoring the stuff since the character I deleted was Lucius' botched attempt and that one had the exact same name as the one I'm using. Chances are deleting the recent one would make things harder so tbh I'm not touching anything else lmao

(All that PTS planning and I still screwed up lol)

As it happens, that might have been a good thing. We got a White Wolf mount, which would have been something skeletal if they'd switched the crates. None of the crew actually wants to ride it, but it won't look bad parked in a yard somewhere.

Now if I could just cross it with the bear, I could have a brown wolf, knowing my luck.

We’ve got a white wolf. It’s Brenna’s mount o’choice!

Today Snake helped stop a Daggerfall Covenant invasion of Bal Foyen only to greeted by another Covenant Force attacking Davon’s Watch when he arrived. He then protected a Dunmer mage lord, Tanval Indoril, while he summoned a massive revenant called Balreth that proceeded to stomp the crap out of the Covenant troops attacking Davon’s Watch.

Geru Naboor got some time in as well. She is currently lvl12 and is investigating what the Bloodthorn necromancers are doing at Carzog’s Demise on the isle of Behtnik.

Taminwe was doing Auridon quests to try and reach level 20, and ended up taking on Kinlady Estre in the final quest of that line. We've done that recently with Wizwen, and forgot the strategy of killing off the atronachs first. Some of that is the difference between sorc and NB strategies, which you inevitably fall into because of your equipment and skills. I discovered the hard way that you can't harm her at all if you don't eliminate her support first. Had to remember to eat again after resurrecting (didn't the first time). Third time's the charm!

That didn't quite get her to 20, so we farmed the Dolmens trying to get her Twin Sisters amulet and rings to go with her Death's Wind outfit. Lots of duplicate Veiled Heritance stuff resulted, and some Queen's Elegance too. Wizwen is wearing some Twin Sisters, and there could be a bit of shuffling between them, and some more work for Laurie. Cat Man Dhou is all heavy, and has more Veiled Heritance than anyone can wear.

Unna's DW set has been handed down to Blossom, and replaced with Torug's. She's not sure what set should provide the amulet/rings. Her current ones are Plague Doctor, but are at half her level.

Laurie uses Werewolf+Bloodthorn despite being able to craft a set if she wants to do so. Too busy trying to find Hickory so she can grind up her woodworking to level 5, where almost all the furniture seems to be. Except for the Bosmer stuff, which wants her Provisioning and Clothier higher. What's most annoying is that she can now make all sort of things to go on a dining table, but can't make the table. And she wouldn't have the Pitch for it, either. Every time we collect nine, she makes another piece of furniture, and wants more.

I'm not moving crap out of my bank again. So moving on...

Wonderful to hear the great progress that everyone is making!

Well as you know, Buffy manifests as a magplar healer, magsorc stormsorc and as a bow/bow stamsorc. Each seems to fulfill an aspect of her nature and we thought we had things pretty settled down.

Thing is though, she adores tanks and has even toyed with the idea of trying to become one. Alas, that is a bridge too far for Buffy who eschews metal armor, melee weapons and is neither strong nor robust enough for the role.

Clever elf is quite resourceful though. . . . Her response was along the lines of, “Well, Acadian, I may be too frail to be a tank. . . but you are not.” In response, the old paladin figured out / arranged things so that instead of him traveling as a spirit inside Buffy, he can manifest a physical form while she travels inside him as a spirit. Buffy is delighted because it lets her ride around inside a tank to experience combat through the eyes of a role that is everything she cannot really be. Yes, this means that Acadian now constitutes a fourth character as a DK tank. He's currently almost L44.

Just so Khajiit understands, this happened because you deleted a character that put stuff in a storage container?

Oh no, it happened because I deleted a character I had for only three minutes. He didn't even touch the storage chests. I sent another ticket but again, if they make me clear out the bank for a second time I'm not gonna bother again. (For anyone worried this happened on Saturday, the recent patch should have fixed this.)

Oh so even if it’s not fixed, it’s only a problem if you delete a character?

Yeah, something about the way the storage works soft-binds items marked "Bound" to a certain character or something. If the character is deleted, the items assigned to them also go. They don't even have to have touched the items or been around when they were "created" it just...happens.

They fixed it on Monday but I'm guessing they're still dealing with the aftermath from deletions that happened on the days leading up to the patch. (Like mine) Like, at this point I don't really care if I get my stuff back, I'm just mad this happened at all. It REALLY shouldn't have happened.

Yeah they had plenty of time to test that crap out. They should’ve caught it.

They probably caught something similar, "fixed" it, but created another edge case, at the last minute. Testing time keeps getting reset to zero when you 're chasing a deadline. In this case, handling motifs in the outfit system might have contributed a late correction that backfired.

A warm welcome to Lucius and to Acadian the Dragonknight! Woo!!

Now that he's back on his feet, Lucius settled into the Mara's Kiss Public House room that was his to begin with. From there, he's just going to tour the Dominion's lands for a while, so maybe he'll learn more about his friendly, if a bit ditzy, benefactor along the way.

All this furnishing stuff has gotten me interested in fixing up the houses again, too. Maybe I'll go and do that. (Gotta figure out how to cobble together a forge, though)

Today Sorai-Arbul decided to stop playing merc for the Tribunal and continue her mission to make contact with Vvardenfell’s Ashlander tribes. After jumping through some small hoops, she’s now living amongst the Ashlanders at Ald’ruhn, learning their ways and working on their behalf.

I really should just shoot myself in the head somewhere out on the back forty.

Trying to get Julian and Alise through their Gold (Alise at the beginning of Greenshade, and Julian at the beginning of Deshaan), and Argis through his Silver (started the Alik'r quests, almost halfway through), and bringing my youngest Phae up to Coldharbour (right now she is chilling her heels at her own private rotmeth brewery). All this and doing daily crafting writs for four CP160 toons, which means we burn through a stack of ruby mats a day.

Some of you met Do Raheita, my Khajiit who joined Phae in both the AD and the shady side of the law. While she is Theives Guild, he went through the DB quest line. He is now kicking Level 17 around Vvardenfell, still plagued by tantalizing dreams of that last blue fish waiting to be caught back in Gold Coast.

Then last week I added a new toon to the mix. Shoot me now. He is my third DC toon (along with Julian and Maz), and is my potential tank - we'll see how he feels about that. He is also cooling his heels in Vvardenfell, having arrived on the slow boat from Cyrodiil. In my head it is early in the Fourth Era, and he is investigating certain matters in Vvardenfell before returning to a shattered Empire and a paramilitary organization cast adrift by the loss of the last Dragonblood to wear the Amulet of Kings. This is how I account for Julian and her beloved Captain get cast back to the Second Era - the Planemeld pulled souls all across the time spectrum into Molag Bal's Coldharbour.
This is what happened to Alise and Argis too. Maz, Phae and Do Rah are native to the 2nd Era and so didn't suffer the pronounced effects of time hopping.

Hopefully I will get EVERYONE through their Gold before I add a new toon . . .