Laurie has been deconstructing all the jewelry that the others have been gathering from their dolmen runs, and she's finally reached level 50, and got her achievements for Master level in all trades. Now she just needs to accumulate a score more chromium grains, and she can gold out an item and get the nice dye. (Blossom wants that on her axes). Blossom is next up for jewel deconstruction duty.

All those dolmens have got Blossom, Minx, and Taminwe up to level 9 in the FG, so they're closing on their Dawnbreaker. Unna and Bo have it, but not from actively chasing it. I'm not sure what they did differently, but I need to work that out.

And the crew as a whole has reached CP782, so we're closing on the cap.

Buffy's pretty happy with her crafting arrangements. Healer does provisioning, alchemy, furniture and is an 8 trait all round crafter. Stormsorc makes gear - all armors, weapons, glyphs, jewelry and is 9 trait in all now.

The others don't make anything; they just focus their 'crafting' on what we call fighting, finding, grinding:
Fighting - Provisioning and alchemy perks to make food/potions last longer.
Finding - Keen eye for alchemy, jewelry, clothing, wood.
Grinding - Perks for all crafts to extract the best results when grinding stuff up.


In other news, Bowsorc just completed her Psijic skill questline.

The rate of Chromium grains dropping is getting really annoying. Laurie did two JC surveys last night and got a single grain from each of them. At this rate it will take weeks to get that Divine Gold dye.

On the positive side, a few circuits of the Auridon dolmens got Taminwe her FG level 10 and the Dawnbreaker is now on her bar. She'll still need another skill point to morph it up, but there are plenty of skyshards. Minx is next in line for that grind, as Blossom is busy on Jewel Crafting. She's just moved up to Copper.

ghastley, if you need research pieces for the last few traits in jewelry, ping me - May has all nine traits researched and will be happy to make any pieces you need.

This goes for anyone else interested in getting all their traits researched - Maz finished hers some time ago and is truly a Master Crafter. She is now working on getting all the motifs . . .

Thanks for offering, but...

I looked at the prices on TTC this morning for an Exemplary Triune Ring, and I found one for 2000 gold. I picked Triune, as that's the one where I have neither ring nor necklace. If I wanted one made, I'd have to supply the Dawn-Prism trait material, which was selling for 27,000 gold. There are very few crafted research pieces in the stores for that reason.

After thinking a while, it made some sense. There's only one thing you can do with the ring, and that's research it. What's more, each character can only use one of them, so supply is adequate for the demand. The trait material can be made into a set piece, which is much more valuable than the research item, as there are a lot of sets. They also made the trait mats hard to get, compared with Nirncrux, which is a rare drop, but you can reasonably go forage for it.

I already bought exemplary pieces for several other traits, and we're waiting out the research timer to use them.

So if I need something for purposes other than research, I'll consider that offer. However, by then, Laurie may be able to make her own.

ETA: JC continues to be frustrating. Laurie got two surveys out of the crew's daily writs, and refining all the Platinum got her no Chromium grains at all.

Minx ignored all that and finished off her FG grind with the Auridon dolmen train. Now it's just Blossom that needs her Dawnbreaker, and she'll get the jewels to deconstruct from doing it, too. She's about to move up to Silver, and will need a side trip for some skyshards.

Another grindy weekend.

All my stamtoons now have their Dawnbreaker (FG 10), so that's one item crossed off the list. Everyone is still doing their daily Undaunted delves, and that only goes at one pace. A couple of times recently, somebody also got a skyshard from the delve, because it hadn't come up for them before. The daily JC writs are slowly bringing in the intricate items for Blossom to deconstruct, and the surveys for Laurie, which get her a Chromium grain a day on average. CP is steadily rising - 792 now.

We've been chasing the Exemplary Triune pieces that pop up around the guild merchants. Managed to find the ring under 10k, but the necklace always sells before we get there, or else they have one for 40k. That's the only piece Laurie doesn't have, but there are four in the queue for a research slot, so it can take its time. It's becoming a race between the research set and the chromium, to see which takes longest.

Odds and ends are getting cleared up, like getting the purple ring to replace the blue, or changing, or adding a missing, enchantment to a set piece. We may use up some transmute stones, too.

When we finally hit the CP cap, there will be a round of re-assignment to re-balance things. Which will probably happen a few times more, as items helms show up at the Golden, and sets get adjusted.

---

I found a bit of time to play on the PTS, with my necro. I just gave her a set of training Hunding's at level 14 (head , hands, feet and bow) to see how that works. With the helmet hidden, she's still only visibly wearing gloves and shoes. They're Khajiit style as an outfit, so she can keep her claws out. She briefly donned chest and legs of each weight, to fire up the armour skill lines, but they've been sold off again, and she's advancing them slowly but steadily wearing 1,1,1.

Because there's nobody around on the PTS, going to a dolmen means attempting it solo, and she died about twenty times doing her first. We may not do that again, but she did want better jewelry, so it was worth one try. Naturally she wanted robust or healthy, and got arcane.

She just rescued Sai Sahan, as the MQ pushes you to complete each quest immediately after the prior one, now that the level gates aren't in place. Since they give high XP and a skill point, we're doing them.

I've given some consideration to switching her to magic, but magcro is getting generally bad press. She likely won't last long enough to find out, anyway.

Well we hit CP 801 this weekend, so we have all the right digits, just need a bit of work on the order.

Grats on breaking CP800!

The PTS has been a big help for me in making decisions about changing what I'm going to do with a character's build or armor = a huge help! (especially in keeping me from making a change that would have been detrimental and at great cost on the Live server).

Woo Hoo, I think only 9 left to reach the ceiling, right? Congrats on barking running with the big dogs CP-wise now, lol.

We're starting to feel "just a bit short" of everything. Crew now at CP 804. Laurie is a few chromium grains short of the fourth plating. The healers are at Undaunted 4.x, and Orbs are at 5. Unna is at Undaunted 8 1/2, and so on. All of which could be done in a week, if the grind doesn't get to us.

On the other hand, Floozie just took her final riding lesson, so the team has nine of ten completed on that. (Bo still has a month more).

Edit: Made the CP 810: Next up - learn to play!

Edit2: Unna now has Undaunted 9 at last, and the Healers both got to 5 and Necrotic Orb. Neither has it morphed for healing yet. Blossom reached L50 JC, but needs a skyshard for the final level of Engraving. Several of the stamina characters need to morph their Dawnbreaker still.

Everyone is doing JC writs in the hope of surveys, as you have to refine stupid amounts of platinum to get chromium grains. We get about one from every four surveys, and we're lucky to get a survey from 10 daily writs. When we final get those last three grains, Laurie will do a Master Writ to at least get something back for the effort. It's the achievement and dye she's chasing, but a few vouchers will also help.

Still no decision on Merchant. There's a good chance we'll buy Nuzhimeh, and also get the Alfiq banker for the small homes.

We got Nuzhimeh, still thinking about "small home" banker.

Laurie is getting increasingly frustrated by the lack of chromium. The only sources are writ rewards and refining, and the refining part really needs surveys, which also come from writs. So she's been doing her JC writs, limited to one a day, and all the others have been doing JC writs, too. The whole weekend, 30 writs worth, got us two surveys, and no chromium at all.

But Bo has moved up to doing Copper, and Blossom is at Platinum, which should give her a better chance at a grain from her writ rewards. Still tiny, but better than nothing. She'd better contribute, as we want the dye for her axes.

I thought the drop rate of jewelry grains increased after that long patch on Monday. I got 11 of them from refining just under 400 Platinum Dust; which was a LOT more than I've normally gotten from that amount of Dust. Before now the most I was getting would have been 3-4.

I do get the grains in the rewards for doing Daily Writs too; but not every time. I thought last week it seemed like I got more frequent drops of it in the Daily Writ Rewards too; but couldn't actually be sure about that (since I normally don't keep count on those).

The numbers I've seen (and I have no idea where they came from originally) are 0.5% chance for a chromium grain in each refine (10 dust), 0.75% chance of Zircon grain, 1.25% chance of Iridium grain, and 2.5% chance of Terne grain, for a total of 5% of any grain. I presume that was before any recent patch. Those are the same numbers as the whole tempers for other crafts.

So 400 dust should get 2 grains on average, and 3 or 4 would be a good day. I hope you're right and that 11 sample represents a five-fold increase on the expectation of 2.

I hope so too; because they have been trickling them out way too slowly before now.

I don't know what criteria (if any) they use for their random numbers to generate the drops; but my Misa also seems to be in some kind of a "sweet spot" with her Master Writ drops. She has been flooded with them this past week too; even with not having done the Daily Writs every day last week.

Laurie got a chromium grain with her writ rewards, but the whole crew's 10 JC writs failed to produce a survey, so we couldn't check the grain drop from refining.

Buffy doesn't really care about gold grains since she's only interested in the ability to purplize jewelry (no gold jewelry, no fancy furniture). She generally does a writ daily (along with her frost miriam-restocking provisioning writ). Over the past week, she's gotten two jewelry surveys. Each netted about 200 bits of dust. Between the two of them, grinding it all up netted exactly zero purple dust bits. She honestly thinks farming dolmens for purple jewelry and grinding that up nets a better yield on getting purple dust. Grinding up a piece of purple jewelry seems to net a purple dust about half the time. She may well stop doing those unproductive jewelry writs; she doesn't do any jewelry master writs either since they are a poor return on investment.

I got 4 grains from 200 dust last night; which is still better than I was getting before that patch a week ago. Just = with this game I can never tell if it is a fluke of the random numbers or if it is something they have "fixed."








You know, I've never noticed if I get the temporing grains from grinding up
the rings before! I'll have to look next time! Thanks for the tip, Acadian!

We needed two more grains, and we'd failed to get them over an entire weekend, plus Monday night. So last night, Laurie got one as a writ reward, the crew got three surveys, and we ended up with five grains - 150% overshoot.

Laurie has now golded out a ring for Unna, got her achievement (and the dye), and has no more interest in chromium grains. We expect a lot more to flood in now they're not actually needed.

Of course, that leaves us in the situation Acadian described, where the purple mat (Zircon) is the scarce one. We used up the last of ours on a piece of Taminwe's Briarheart set, and need to purple about half-a-dozen more pieces across the crew. We'll most likely attempt to gather the purples directly from dolmens where applicable, and grind up the ones we don't want for the grains. Everyone has at least blues of their preferred set, so it can take as long as it likes.

Buffy had some good luck this morning. Rather than waste her time on jewelry writs, she opted for a FG daily instead (close 3 dolmen). That got her a purple ring and necklace - BOTH of which yielded a purple dust when she ground them up! I'm not kidding about luck. It seems more normal to get one purple jewelry piece about every half dozen dolmen and grinding up a purple jewelry piece only seems to yield purple dust about half the time. Still, I much prefer that to wasting time with jewelry writs.

I think you have the right method for the purple. Laurie was trying to get gold, for which there are no drops. Now that's done, we'll be getting back to dolmens. Everyone who was chasing Dawnbreaker has it now, so FG won't be a motive, but if we see a dolmen open, it's hard to resist. With Blossom living at Mournoth Keep, she's right next tp one.

Laurie has all the pieces she needs for Jewelry research, just needs the time, and she'll complete those. Her motif collection has become a bit stagnant, so we may start doing full daily crafting rounds, to get the Master Writs that will encourage her to get some more.

Next on our agenda is Filling Blossom's Nirnoned line. She's already got three clothier, and three blacksmith researches in progress, so we need to gather some more Potent Nirncrux, so we can start on some staves. I think we have a couple of Woodworking research scrolls from the daily log-in rewards that will help her. Of course, Bo has to be parked near a stable, as she's the last to complete mount training, otherwise she'd go foraging for Nirncrux around her home at Domus Phrasticus.

And a lot of the houses could use more furnishings. We haven't looked at the material stocks, but it's probably time to deplete them again.

I’ve been working on questing my toons through the game content so they all have the same zones and wayshrines etc etc. Do Raheita finished his Caldwell’s Gold on Sunday, so I sent him off to the castaway resort for some R&R. Stefan has been ready to leave Vvardenfell for some time, so I took him to CWC to complete the quest line there. He just finished it today. Right now he’s going to take a little break while I sleep off the after effects of my bronchoscopy, then move on to Summerset. I hope to take him all the way to LVL 50 between Summerset and Artaeum questing, at which point he will finally start his MQ and eventually his Caldwell’s.

I hope to have him done by the end of the year (ambitious, I know, especially with a full time schedule), so that I can finally start my Argonian healer . . .

Bo only had a blue necklace and one blue and one purple ring in her Spriggan's, so Blossom always checks if the nearby dolmen is open, when she leaves her home at Mournoth. Today she did that, and the chest coughed up a blue ring in the wrong set. Howver, on the way back to the way shrine, she stumbled on an Advanced chest that gave her a purple Spriggan's ring! So Bo got to swap her ring, and decon the old one, plus the unwanted one from the dolmen. That took her past level 22, and she could upgrade her Jewel Extraction. The dominoes are starting to fall.

Next on Laurie's list is collecting enough Zircon to upgrade Taminwe's Briarheart jewels. She's done one, two to go. And researching the other traits, of course. She has all the pieces, so it's just a matter of time.

Grats to Bo on the purple ring! Buffy's farmed that dolmen in northern Bangkorai loads of times to get purple Sprigg jewelry. Happily, she's all set with it. Spriggans is a very solid, fairly easy to get set and a good staple for stam builds.

Buffy goes out with dual bows on three different classes (sorc, ward, NB). All three use Hundings's Rage as a base. Two then compliment it with Spriggans. The NB compliments with Dreugh King Slayer instead though (from Fungal Grotto 1). She finds passive major brutality from that set better than the NB buff options for it.

Would the Dreugh King Slayer be weapon/jewelry? I'd seen it was all Heavy and ignored it, especially prior to having JC available for improving anything.

That is indeed the challenge with sets like Dreugh King Slayer and Rattlecage - they are heavy but the bonuses are for stam and mag respectively. In both cases (Magplar's in Rattlecage), the answer (to maintain our desired 5/1/1 for undaunted) was to farm for two weapons, two jewelry pieces and one cuirass of the desired (but heavy armor) set. Harder farming but the end result works fine. Notably easier with Dreugh King Slayer (Fungal Grotto 1) than Rattlecage (Vaults of Madness).

I think I'll give up trying to collect a Dwemer Theodolite. I ran four of my characters through Nchuleftingth and each got the "Conqueror" achievement and the skill point, but our total haul was three parts, two of them the same.

Still, useful skill points. I wish I could say the same for all the lock-picks.

About the only way to get that Theodolite is to group with a bunch of friends (like on one of our Guild Meets) = grind farm that section on the hill before going through that door. There are several mobs there and mini-bosses that drop a lot, and they respawn in seconds. Then when you get a piece you don't need; you trade it with someone who has a piece you need.

And don't forget to look in our Guild Bank, there might be some pieces in there too.

The rest of the crew may well go do Nchuleftingth at some point, as I've reached the stage in my skill where I can handle solo Public Dungeons reliably, with any build. The tanks take forever, but they get it done eventually. So now we're completing Skyshard collections for zones, and getting the explorer and quest achievements on the way. A few are filling in the gaps of Silver or Gold, that weren't really being worked on, but just happened. Blossom is actively trying to become Hero of the Covenant, (Unna did Pact already) and we may have Taminwe get the Dominion one.

Nobody's soling World Bosses yet. The tanks can't finish them off, and the DPS characters don't dodge very well. My healers seem to combine the negatives of both. But with any other player's help, they usually manage. Laurie has had several instances of fighting a WB to a stalemate, and then someone comes past and finishes it. Similarly, two is the minimum we need for normal dungeons, so we could pug the pledges if that appealed to us, but can't just go do them solo. We're reaching the limits of our solo play, but wondering if a few set changes (especially getting some monster helms from The Golden) would step us up a notch.

I've soloed some World Bosses with three of my toons so far (Julian, Maz and Phae). DoRah comes close, but not close enough.

I've got Stefan up to lvl 45 and we still have half of Summerset to get through. It's moving along well, especially with the free crown experience scrolls we've accumulated. I've got him parked outside karnwasten with the two quests in that dungeon, I hope to find a partner to take that on with us. While I discovered that he can hold his own (we were surprised by a goblin trash mob in Craglorn Sunday and -barely- survived that encounter), I'm not sure he's up to soloing a public dungeon yet. But we would like to knock that one off the map thankyouverymuch. I hope to have time to take it on tomorrow (Wednesday) morning before work, but we'll see.

His tanking is coming along nicely - nowhere near the level of Bear's tanks, but surviving decently well. He is having an easier time with some of the quest bosses than Julian (at CP160) did. Of course, the difference is that Julian was doing Summerset on her old, rather disorganized build, while Stefan (and Do Rah, of course) were doing it on Alcast's builds for their classes. Do Rah is a mag blade, and Stefan is stamplar. I should bring Julian back through some of this content with her new stamblade build, and see if she's stronger.

Cincinnatus soloed his first public dungeon yesterday. Long story, but I was in Root Sunder yesterday and didn't realize it would be that tough. Luckily didn't die at any point, but I was ganged up on regularly by 5 or 6 enemies throughout. Fortunately had a crown fortifying meal as a login reward earlier in the week. Otherwise, I doubt I would've made it through.

Grats, Rader - they surely can gang up on you in public dungeons and the ability to solo those represents a solid step up as far as what your characters can do.

I'm always amazed to hear of players soloing the WB's since One Tamriel! (Prior to One Tamriel, Misa could. Not since though!) I am in awe of any of you that are able to solo WB's and group dungeons!!!!!

Thanks. Yeah, definitely one of the bigger individual accomplishments of mine in ESO. Was able to do a couple more tough delves on my own over the past couple days.

Not entirely sure how the difficulty of dungeon types works. Obviously, group dungeons are difficult on your own because they are meant to be done by a group. But beyond that, I don't know how it is supposed to be with public dungeons and delves. Delves, at least, seem to vary in difficulty from what I have experienced, if my memory serves me correctly.



Ha, there is absolutely no way I can take on a World Boss by myself yet. Barely escaped death multiple times over the past few days in these public dungeons, delves, etc. Definitely impressive when someone can solo World Bosses and group dungeons.

I'm also amazed at how quickly some people can deal damage to all sorts of different enemies. Also makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong since I can't deal that much damage in such a short span of time. I suppose that will change when I hit champion levels? I'm at level 46 now. Although I think I've seen levels below champion do the same thing, but I may be mistaken.

When you hit level 50, you start to earn Champion Points, and those are account-wide. So those characters below 50 may be getting the benefit of CP earned on another character, by the same account. The same ones are also likely to have higher-powered equipment made by another character.

The point where things change most isn't level 50, but CP160, where the equipment level caps, but also steps up a lot. It also takes 10 times as much material to make it! When you're able to use CP160 equipment, you'll still be improving via the CP bonuses, but the rate of rise slows down, until at CP810 you can't get any stronger, but practice will still make you play better.

There actually is a difference at level 50 = that is the level the game stops buffing a new character. So your character may suddenly take a little step back in what they are able to do; but that is just a temporary setback because you will start getting those CP Points to spend and can buff up your own character with them in the same way the game did.

After level 50; the XP you get for completing quests or killing enemies converts to gains in CP Points so you can buff up your character quicker the more you do at this time; and there are a certain number of hours every day that your character gains CP Points at an accelerated rate. (you will hear the sound and see it written across your screen when you log in if it is during that time; so if you see that notice = get that character out and turn in quests or go on a quick hunt for enemies until the period ends. (to build them to CP 160 as soon as possible).

After you reach CP 160; you can continue to get CP Points and spend them to round out your character better.

When you see a young (below 50) character kicking butt that way like you described, they most likely have the benefit of an elder character's CP Point bonuses on top of the in-game buffing. That makes them a very powerful young character. (so once you build this first character's CP Points up; all your next characters will have all the game's buffing plus all your 1st character's buffing through the CP Points too = they will be kicking butts right out of the starting gate).

Ah, I see. Thanks for the info, peeps.

Yeah...so I'm definitely going to need those CPs because I just got my ass kicked last night. I became Undaunted the other day and got my first pledge. I knew it would be tougher because it is a higher-level group and the dungeon icon indicated some difficulty...but then I thought, "Well, if they are going to give it at level 45, maybe it isn't THAT difficult or I can at least take it on with a health buff like I did those few public dungeons and delves."

AND BOY, WAS I WRONG. Went into the dungeon last night and barely made it through 2 mobs of 6-7+ skeletal enemy variants before I just got shredded every way from Sundas as a level 48 character. Died twice and realized that it was not even remotely going to work out. I suppose it is supposed to be done by a group unless your character is absolutely jacked, so that was probably dumb of me to try anyway.

On the bright side, I got a Crown Experience Scroll as a log-in reward that gave doubled my XP and I got to complete some quests nearby and kill some stuff. So there's that.


So, would anybody like to give me a hand sometime with the Undaunted pledge? Not sure when would be the best time and day, but ya boy here needs some help because I'm a scrub.

Yes, it does take a group. I'm at CP810 and still can't do it solo. mALX and I failed one together, and needed to call for help recently, although that may have been because I was deliberately running a glass tank, and relying on having a healer (which we didn't at that point). It would probably be a good idea to participate in a full 4-player group, with all the standard roles, so you see how it's meant to happen. That will take a bit of organising.

Acadian and I have done one with a healer/tank duo, but his healer has some dps capability, or that would not have worked either. At level 45, you probably have a mix of skills, and could use both a healer and a tank to run with, even if you duplicate some of their skills.

Do you have the "MyBuild" add-on? That makes it easy to post a screen-shot of your equipment and stats, so everyone can see what support you need.


Edited to add that Public dungeons typically have five or six bosses at the one-pip level (seen at the ends of their health bar). Those have 100k to 250k hit points, and generally fight solo. World Bosses are at the two-pip level, and have 1-6M hit points. They may have adds they can summon to make it harder. In the pledge dungeons, the mini-bosses are two-pip, and the main bosses three-pip level of difficulty, and summoned adds and other mechanics come into play, making the hit points a lesser part of the equation.

Oh yeah, you are not going to be able to solo the Pledge dungeons before you have your CP Points built up. I still can't solo them; but Acadian and a few other people I know can; but I've never been able to.

But Ghastley is right = you can and def should start going through them with a group first if you ever plan to do them solo; get to know the dungeons (and especially learn the boss mechanics) as your character develops; so maybe when your character is fully built up you might be able to begin soloing them.

I am still in total awe of Acadian and Buffy doing them solo!!! I think Acadian uses a very high Crit percentage and high penetration. If you are in a group; you don't want your penetration over 38%; but in solo play you would probably want that even higher.

It's worth pointing out that some dungeons just can't be done solo, because of their mechanics. There are several where one player in the group is targeted by an attack that can't be resisted, and the other players have to prevent the victim from being killed. If you're the only choice for the attack, and have no support, you can't win.

Only a few of the pledge dungeons can be solo'ed, but two good players have a decent chance of doing any of them on normal difficulty, as long as they have appropriate builds. If you don't take a tank and a healer, you need to do their functions. And if you only have a tank and a healer, it could be slow going.

You can't even solo it at the highest level?! Shor's bones, then what the Oblivion was I thinking?! That goes back to my gripe about how the level scaling is done in the game, but I won't get into that at the moment.

I do not have the MyBuild add-on, so I'd have to look into it. I don't have any add-ons, in fact, so I guess I should change that. You're right that I have more of a mix of skills, but I usually go up-close and personal but with some magic-casting ability (I haven't even used a bow yet, but I am focused on my other skills). I can do a bit of healing, but nothing like what Acadian can do with Buffy. Since I'm such a lower level than all of you, I probably couldn't be a full-on tank in a Pledge dungeon, but I can definitely throw in some support. I've killed a few World Bosses with you all in guild meetings, but if they aren't as tough as Pledge mini-bosses and especially bosses...yeesh.




I doubt I'll ever be able to solo them, but thank you for the advice. I'll take the advice anyway.

Acadian and Buffy are absolute beasts. But just to be sure, you mean you don't want your penetration UNDER 38%, right?



I think I'd drag the other person down too much to be able to tag-team a Pledge dungeon, but I think I'd be capable in a 4-person (MAYBE 3-person) or more group. I've started getting some CPs, at least, since I hit level 50 last night.


Perhaps we could all do a Pledge dungeon or two in our next guild meet? I don't want to force anyone into doing it, though.

No, I meant it the way I said it. If you are playing regularly in a full (proper) group of 4 (Tank, Healer, and 2 DPS) or 12 (Trials) - your penetration should NOT be OVER 38%

It is all based on what you do the higher percentage of the time. If you are playing solo most of the time and just grouping using the "Groupfinder" to "PUG" group yourself (or very occasionally grouping with friends at Guild Meets, etc) = by all means get your crit and pen as high as you can so you can go in kicking butt.

(But if you frequently do Pledges and Trials with a group regularly together; you will want to adjust your build for teamplay rather than solo play; (and that means toning down your penetration if you have it maxed out for solo play).

The reason for that is that the take from Boss kills are based on percentages of a player's contribution to the kill. If your penetration and crit are maxed out for solo play; you will be doing the major percentage of the Damage (altering the curve so no one else's contributions will be able to match yours).

There's also diminishing returns. More than 33k resists do nothing, over 38% penetration adds nothing and when you're min/maxing for damage, too much health is bad, too. You want to regenerate magicka and stamina at exactly the rate you use them, and no more.

And all of that requires equipment and Champion points you won't have for another year, if you're building your first character. But when you've got there, there's not much else to do! Except furnishing houses, and fishing.

Yeah, there are def ceilings on how much you can build all your combat stats; but it will be a long time before that will effect you unless you accelerate your CP/XP. (and you can always reset any stats or CP Points you might want to change later for a reasonable in-game gold fee).

Here's what I know about spell/weapon penetration. Note this is PvE only; PvP is very different since enemy players' resists run the gamut but are generally way higher than any boss would have. Overland mobs have about 9.1k resists so more than that is wasted on them. On the other hand, big bosses have 18.2k resists.

There are spells that reduce a foe's resists and since most organized groups run those spells, a dps in an organized group generally goes for well under 18.2k pen. So it is a combo of who (if anyone) you are fighting with at your side, and who your foes are, coupled with the fact that big bosses always represent much more of a threat so they are arguably what you might focus on.

A general tip is that adding 500 pen adds about 1% to your damage up until you reach your foe's cap. In my case, each and every version of Buffy is a soloist who likes to consider herself a boss killer. So whether she's playing as a mage or archer variant, she likes quite a bit of spell/weapon pen respectively, depending on what type of resist debuffs she can apply to her foes. All mage variants of Buffy run Elemental Drain, for example, to debuff over 5k mag resist from her foes.

Here are some sources of penetration and rough numbers below. I'm not recommending all these things by any means but it is a good list to pick and choose from.

Spell Pen: 5x Light Armor passive bonus gives 4900 pen. A gold staff with sharpened trait gives 2750 pen. 5 pieces of Spinners armor set gives 3450 pen. 55 CP in Spell Erosion gives 4200 pen.

Weapon Pen: 5 pieces of Spriggans armor set gives 3370 pen. 55CP in Piercing gives 4200 pen. I didn't check the numbers but a gold bow with sharpened trait should give about 2750 pen I figure.

Said much better than I could about the teamwork. So if you are regularly doing Pledges in a group; the entire group's pen is counted together for the cap; so if you over-penetrate it hurts the whole group.

When you get into Trials, the leader of the Trial will tell you what armor they want you in and what they want your CP Points set at for on things like Penetration. (and many times they will tell you what to put on your bars as well; such as "Crushing Shock." Pia wore light armor and used a destro staff; so in Trials she had to keep her pen at 32 so she wasn't using up too much of the group's pen stat.

But if I take her out to solo play in a hard dungeon; she can always up her pen and crit to make up for group members that aren't there. (although I'd be scared to even try to solo a Pledge dungeon, lol).

To illustrate what Acadian wrote:

Blossom

She has the Spriggan's Thorns set (including her bow) - five pieces - plus 60 CP in Piercing.

She needs a Stormfist helm, to match her shoulders, and the five pieces of Hunding's give her decent critical percentage. The only thing really holding her back is my skill, or she could take on a world boss. I still wouldn't take her into a pledge on her own, and I'd prefer a whole team of four.

Unna has the "Hero of the Pact" achievement, and Blossom got the "Hero of the Covenant" one, so I designated Wizwen as the Dominion achiever - she had more quests already completed then Taminwe or Cat Man Dhou - and we completed her fourth zone's Adventurer yesterday. Only Reaper's March to go, but she's done exactly zero quests there so far, out of 45.

We're doing these mainly so we qualify to buy the Manors for gold. I'm not sure we ever will, as they're about 3.8 million apiece, but I'd prefer the gold to be the only consideration.

We did buy a few more small homes - Flaming Nix and Sisters of the Sands apartments, and the Cyrodiilic Jungle house - to provide for some zones where we didn't already have a base. Being able to port directly out of the end of nowhere saves a lot of effort. Laurie is sorting through her plans for basic furnishings.

There are a few zones with not much choice in housing, such as Shadowfen only offering mud huts, and Rivenspire with only Ravenhurst, where we haven't done that. On the flip side, we have both Twin Arches, and Mournoth Keep in Bangkorai, but that zone is two halves, with not much connection between them. We also have two on Vvardenfell, two in Summerset, and there aren't any in Wrothgar if we wanted one. Moonmirth is being used as a furnishing warehouse, as you can't really go anywhere from there.

Many of the homes we have are empty, or almost so. The Summerset ones are waiting for more Alinor plans, although I'm getting tempted to add a single bed of each racial style to the townhouse, so that everyone feels at home.

So I finally started taking screenshots in the game. I'm guessing there is no way to remove the HUD when taking screenshots? Not like you can pause the game like in a regular TES game, so that is what I imagine.

Anyway, this might be spread out in several posts since there are a bunch of them. Won't be in chronological order either, probably.

Desert storm

Dolmen party

This Dolmen sure is popular

Whoa...um...is it getting hot in here?

UNLIMITED POWER

Interview with the vampire

Duel in the Far Shores

Down goes another Tharn (In case there are those who don't know what I'm referencing, Jagar Tharn is the final boss and main antagonist of Elder Scrolls I: Arena, which I beat several years ago. That game is set several hundred years later than ESO. And I headcanon that all my main characters in the TES games--well, the ones that let you pick an Argonian--are related, so my bloodline will be dueling another Tharn later.)

You can remove the HUD. If you go into CONTROLS, you can assign a key to toggle it on and off. I forget the actual wording, but it's something like "Hide UI". All the options are listed, and quite a few are just not assigned to any key. I use the Num Pad '-' key.

And I forgot to mention that it doesn't turn off everything. Enemies and allies will still have their bar over their heads when in combat. This shot from the last guild meet shows what I mean. No UI except that one health bar. If I hadn't triggered the dummy, it wouldn't be there.