UESPWiki:Podcast/2 06

News

UESP:

Moved to shoutouts

ESO:

Many maintenances on PC/Mac. There was one additional maintenance on Tuesday itself because they accidentally gave Greymoor to everyone, then bonus maintenance on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, to deal with long loading screens, lag, and issues with unresponsive combat. Currently the game itself is mostly not on fire.
However both PC-NA and PC-EU had a very delayed Guild Trader swap on Sunday. And PC-EU’s Guild Traders have been left horrendously messed up. 
The same problems we’ve seen before where a guild is allocated a trader, but (for some reason) the trader does not register as belonging to them. 
So other guilds are able to Hire it for 10k gold - despite the original guild having already paid for it!
And the original guild can’t do anything about this because according to the guild interface, they own a trader already!
 
Update from Gina today - on Wednesday during scheduled maintenance, ZOS are going to swap the owners of all Guild Traders on PC EU to the correct guilds that won the bid, and refund everyone’s gold. It’s a reasonable gesture considering they have lost almost 3 days of sales.
Still working on a fix to prevent this from happening in the future.
The patch “cadence” of ESO is changing due to the launch of ESO on Stadia on June 16. Since PC and Stadia players will share the PC megaservers, patches must be certified by Stadia, which will delay them slightly.
The next incremental patch (6.0.6) will be on Wednesday 3rd June, but the next patch after that won’t be until Monday 29th June.
 
6.0.6 will include lots of fixes for Antiquities, and also a fix for weapons not dropping 100% of the time upon successful completion of Normal Maelstrom & Dragonstar Arenas. 
There was an ESO Live on Friday 29th May in which Gina and Jessica ran Normal Kyne's Aegis accompanied by 10 Stream Team members. Rather cleverly, many of them were *also* streaming right now, allowing you to visit different Twitch streams in order to see different players' perspectives of the Trial. (e.g. Tank, Off-Tank, Healer etc.)
Many bad words were said!
At the end we asked Gina (whose video feed was displaying in the main window) to look up, and she was so frazzled from the Trial that she looked up IN REAL LIFE instead of in the game!
 
Given that she has “Liked” our tweet about it, I think she is just fine with us sharing this video :D
Not sure of the next ESO Live date, I’m sure it will be advertised closer to the time.
New Crown Showcase published today! 
Confirms that there will be a Midyear Mayhem at some point during the month of June!
Also announces the new Mournhold Packrat pet which will be available from June 11th, and acts like the Bristleneck War Boar, in that it grants an extra 5 inventory slots on each character, regardless of whether the pet is active or not.
As a person chronically incapable of managing her inventory, I'm hoping that the Mournhold Packrat pet will stack with the pay-to-win piggy. I wonder if it will also be 1200 Crowns? Frankly, I'd be quite happy to pay 12,000 Crowns and get 50 more inventory slots per character. ZOS wouldn’t even have to design a pet for it! -- baratron
They confirmed on the forum that it stacks.

This week’s limited-edition Crown Store stuff is:

The Gloomspore Senche Cub is available from now until June 8 at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT, if you like cats made of mushrooms. 1000 Crowns.
Three items will be available between June 4 at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT to June 8 at at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT. These are: 
The Elder Scrolls Artifact: Spear of Bitter Mercy Outfit style, the signature weapon of the Daedric Prince Hircine - for a STAFF. Returning item, so ESO Plus Members will receive a discount.
The Harboursworn Occultist costume.
The Pocket Watcher pet, a Crown Gem exclusive.

Legends:

The Grand Melee
It ended today at noon

Blades:


Call to Arms:

CtA blog from Lost:    Basically just talks about delve mode, not much new info

Other:

There is a new limited-edition Skyrim coin up on the Bethesda Gear store. It has the Dragonborn on one side and a Skyrim logo on the other. Perhaps not as nice as the ESO coins.  
I actually prefer the older Skyrim collectible coin which is, in fact, a re-release of the Oblivion Collectors’ Edition coin:   -- baratron
May lootcrate (“Rivalry” theme) will be shipping mid-June
The world is a scary, scary place right now and we hope that you all stay as safe as you can.
The imperial Library is running a quiz giveaway
 

Supporters

Patreon:

Efrain Mendez
Forager
AKB Donation note

Twitch Subs:

GrizzlyNacho
cruelwickedthing

iTunes:

N/A

Wiki:

Who won the contest?? - MolagBallet

Scholarly Pursuits
I will ask our guests what they have been working on in the world of TES! This can be game play, wiki work, discord things, anything relevant to UESP/TES that you’ve been working on the past couple weeks / when you were last on the show.

Pylawn
PYLAWN GOT 3 MOUNTS FROM CROWN CRATES (though one was a duplicate)
OMGWTFBBQ!! --baratron
I LOVE ANTIQUITIES OMG
Running the main quest and loving it so far
AKB
:(
Alarra
Antiquities! :D  Ebon wolf mount!
Lost
Not here this week.
baratron
I have been mostly doing Antiquities and Kyne’s Aegis. I will talk about this later.
Streamed a Lore Run of Kyne’s Aegis on Friday and was raided by Kyle Dempster with 1926 people! That was awesome, in both senses of the word. (Great, and terrifying!) We passed the raid on to Tea the Khajiit, still with over 500 people.
Streamed some Antiquities on Sunday. Currently at Scrying Level 4 and Excavation Level 5. Forgot to raid though :(
It’s a bit annoying, they get out-of-sync as you get Achievements.
Kiz
Ran some of the MQ, but then got to a part I can’t clear. Boss becomes non-targetable at either 10% or 5% health depending on if the mechanic is completed beforehand… must be missing something but instructions are vague.
Streamed, with AKB, the two public dungeons. Labyrinthian and Unpronounceable, both great fun. I prefer the layout of Labyrinthian, but Unpronounceable definitely has cooler bosses. Don’t know if I have found bosses in other public dungeons that are this tough to actually defeat.
Got one run of nKA in during the Guild’s Saturday trial, really enjoyed it. I think the add pulls seem more tricky than the actual bosses themselves.

Topic: Greymoor Things!

Antiquities!
Some irritating bugs at launch. It doesn’t appear to work At All in gamepad mode (at least, in baratron’s experience). More frustratingly, Mythic Antiquity Excavations are bugged. You need to dig where the blue sparkles are NOT where the item itself is! We hope this is one of the fixes in Wednesday’s patch.

After completing the Antiquities Tutorial with Gabrielle Benele, you get given a green Lead for every zone in the game. They are found in the Antiquities tab, which is in the Journal. This is also where any Lore that you learn about items you’ve dug up goes.

Successfully excavating a green item gives you a blue lead for the same zone, and up to one item of bonus loot.  The number of bonus items seems to vary. I’ve gotten 3 on a green one before.
Successfully excavating a blue item gives you a purple lead for the same zone, and up to two items of bonus loot.
Bonus items seem to be placed fairly close to the main item, so you don’t have to worry about trying to excavate every cell in the area (which isn’t even possible within the number of moves given).  Later on when there are fissures that you can detonate, they also sometimes are underneath those. 

Note that you can only hold one copy of a repeatable lead at a time, so if you can’t do purple leads yet, it’s pointless Scrying for a repeatable blue lead if you already have the purple for that zone sitting waiting.

Excavation gets more complicated as more layers of dirt get added, and you have to learn what each layer looks like so you immediately know if you’re digging through one, two, three or four layers (or more, I don’t know how many there are - someone who is further along please add to this)

Tiny stones - 1 layer
Bigger stones - 2 layers
GREAT BIG STONES - 3 layers
Very smooth rock - 4 layers
Rock with bigger stones - 5 layers

Unlocking abilities in the skill lines also helps a lot with scrying and digging. 

It is so much fun though. It’s almost the only thing I’ve been doing in ESO this week. I started in the small zones (Artaeum, Eyevea, the 5 starter islands, Gold Coast, Hew’s Bane, Clockwork City) because there is less land mass there. Artaeum and Eyevea are particularly easy. 

I haven’t been looking for fancy leads on the basis that I can only dig up to blue right now, but I’ve found a few ANYWAY just from ordinary gameplay.

Purple lead - The Dutiful Guar - from a treasure chest in Bal Foyen.
Purple lead - Sixth House Ritual Table - from a treasure chest in Vvardenfell.
Purple lead - Tusks of the Orc-Father - from a Thieves’ Trove in Orsinium.
Gold lead - Void-Crystal Anomaly - harvesting A NIRNROOT in the Hollow City.

I’ve also been mostly doing Antiquities and have really been enjoying the system. Maxed both skill lines and unlocked the Ebon Dwarven Wolf mount.

Only just made a start, respec’d my skills earlier so I actually have skill points to put into the lines, got some leads stashed already when I actually decide to start. Though I did make a start on a template to write them up for the wiki...

Kyne’s Aegis!
Alarra, baratron, Kiz and Pylawn have all completed the Trial on Normal (baratron 3 times because she’s a show-off).

Story:

Kyne's Aegis is primarily a mining and fishing village set a little north of Skyrim, of Solitude. It's a bulwark against invasions from the sea. The thing is, it's been a while, so they've gotten really really complacent. Now they’re being invaded by Sea Giants and Vampires.

Sea giants haven’t been seen in any Elder Scrolls game before. They’re a seafaring race with a darker skin tone than land giants, and (it’s believed) higher intelligence. They have allies who are half-giants.

Enemies:

Lots of new enemies! The half-giants include Stormcallers, Tidebreakers, Bulwarks, Bitter Knights, Blood Knights and Crimson Knights (at least, I think those are all half-giants - they’re all pretty tall!). There are also Vampiric Infusers, various lesser vampires, and feral vampires called Harrowfiends.

Stormcallers call down lightning strikes.
Tidecallers can use waves to knock you back and do a lot of damage.
Bulwarks have a shield circle and any other enemy standing in that shield becomes invulnerable.
Vampiric Infusers enrage other enemies, making them considerably more powerful.

The first two bosses are Sea Giants and the final boss is a Vampire Lord.

Opinions?

It’s a lot of fun. I enjoyed learning how all of the new enemies behave. I feel like Mike Finnigan and his team achieved what they wanted to do, which is to provide a sense of progression as you fight each boss in order. It feels like there is actually a story as you talk to the Nords from the village and progress through each area in turn.

The last “trash” pull (non-boss encounter) is insanely difficult. Finn said “we wanted this to feel really impactful… I usually joke around and say ‘ahh, it's the hardest pull in the game’ but this one probably is.” It’s difficult even on Normal, we haven’t yet figured out the best strategy, although the Stream Team members agreed with what UESP had worked out so we’re pleased about that. Also, if you wipe (all 12 members of the party die) the encounter does NOT reset - any enemies that you killed remain dead, so that does really help.

I actually screamed during the final boss when THE EVENT happens. I’m not going to spoil it for anyone who still needs to run the Trial and would prefer to go in cold, but if you do want to know, watch our Lore run on our Twitch stream, or the ZOS/Stream Team run on Bethesda’s Twitch. It’s quite something! --baratron

Really enjoyed it, I didn’t exactly run it blind as we did have mechanic explanations, the mechanics with the Bulwarks in particular is interesting. Its the trash pulls more than the bosses themselves with this one, and its a really interesting way to design the trial. --kiz

Western Skyrim!
Opinions? Side-quests, not really spoilers, that sort of thing?

I have actually not been into the new zones with the exception of a quick walk around Solitude to visit the Antiquarian Circle, and jaunts out to attune the new crafting stations for the Guildhall. I’m behind with ESO single-player content because I spend so long on multiplayer, e.g. still haven’t finished Summerset, so I’m not in a hurry myself. --baratron

I have spent some time travelling the overland areas, and whilst I certainly have not covered half of it, it is nostalgic going back to this Zone. Moreso that the Eastern Zones feel, some of the layout is really familiar as you go around. The World Bosses (this goes for Blackreach too) seem really interesting, im not sure if it was just because I was doing them with whoever was around rather than as a group, but the difficulty really does seem to be up and down throughout them. At the moment, the daily quests aren’t too bad to complete as plenty of people are in zone running them, the harrowstorm one though I clearly need lessons on how to find which one is actually going to pop next cause i’m useless at it. --kiz

Blackreach!
Opinions? Side-quests, not really spoilers, that sort of thing?

I have done zero of the side quests available down here, but did follow the MQ through some of it. Other than i’ve explored quite a large portion of it, and I really like it, I prefer it to Blackreach in Skyrim. It still feels like a cavern, but doesn’t actually come off enclosed and cramped. I’m looking forward to how they expand it (I don’t know if that's been confirmed - but with a map title like that they must be planning something…). --kiz

Harrowstorms!
They aren’t dolmens, even if they use the same symbol. Dolmens can be soloed! -- baratron

^ This. Just This. But also, I don’t know if it's intentional or not, but they don’t seem to follow a set pattern. I was in Blackreach for ~2 hours earlier, 3 of the HS’s popped twice, 1 never did. Not sure if this is intentional to stop the trains, or an “unintended feature”. --kiz

Finn, Lead Encounter Designer, said that Harrowstorms are intentionally more random than Dolmens. They are not in a set pattern. (Now, I remember Rich Lambert saying the same thing about Dragons in Elsweyr, and this clearly was not the case, but it looks like ZOS have improved their RNG!)

 

Only one Harrowstorm per zone (Western Skyrim or Blackreach) is possible at a time, but it is possible to have one Harrowstorm in each zone at the same time. -- baratron

Housing and Crafting Changes
They finally fixed the wonky floor in The Orbservatory Prior! (The house chosen as the UESP Guildhall on PC-NA). It is now sooooo much easier to place crafting stations! Haven’t even needed to try the new Precision Housing Tool because items just slot into place well enough (for me). Actual obsessives about position will enjoy it though, I’m sure. --baratron