ESO mechanics and such

[GM Fright]

Some stuff about dungeons that I wish I'd known before giving them a shot (like the Pack Mentality and the Back Lines stuff...):
http://elderscrollsonline.com/en/news/post/2013/07/01/inside-eso-dungeons



Tanking basic guide, which explains mechanics important for every role:
http://tamrielfoundry.com/2014/03/tanking-primer/

[GM Fright]

So I'm starting to enjoy the game quite a bit more, and I wanted to share some of the things I'm doing that are making the game better and more fun.



First and foremost, ADD-ONS. Some are still slightly buggy, but nothing at all game breaking. All can be obtained easily and account-less at esoui.com.
Some of the more important add-ons I use are these (*** means vital):


--Wykkyd's Framework - all sorts of things, especially a titanbar type device that's very helpful.

--Wykkyd's Outfitter *** save and hotkey gearsets AND SKILL SETS (super helpful) ***

--Wykkyd's Full Immersion (I actually don't think I'm using settings from this one yet, but I probably will)

--ZrMiniMap *** glorious minimap greatness, but don't use it in Cyrodiil because it'll break your transitus shrine thing

--Foundry Tactical Combat (FTC) *** scrolling battle text, buff monitor, and unit frames (I don't use the unit frames)

--WarLegend HUD *** Unit Frames and some other stuff. Especially great for your target frame.

--Inventory Item Borders - displays item quality border color, as well as durability % right on the character frame.

--Simple Combat Alerts - tells you when to block, dodge, interrupt, etc. Very helpful when it works properly (most of the time).

--SkyShards *** marks your map (and ZrMiniMap) with all the skyshard locations. Completely changed the way I approached the game, and doubled my enjoyment of the game right out of the gate. Not recommended. Required.

--Rainbow Reticle - changed to color of your reticle based on what you're targeting (moderately helpful)

--insJunyard - auto-mark Trash as Junk, and auto-sell Junk when opening merchant window. Wonderful.

--Combat Log Statistics - basically gives you a WoW combat log, plus a simple damage meter for your actions only (addons can't track the actions of others in ESO, so there will probably never be a real Recount)

--Alchemist - tells you what herbs to mix to make which potions or to discover the most traits. Basically cheating at alchemy, but I got tired of wasting precious and somewhat difficult to find herbs trying to discover shit, especially when there's no indicator for failed herb combo's you've already tried. Herbs aren't quite as plentiful as in normal elder scrolls games.

I don't currently use, but will start using, Research Assistant and Research Tracker to make that whole researching mess easier to track.

[Kimlin]

Can you post a picture of your UI?

[GM Fright]

Second: BANK/PROFESSION ALTS.

My stupid little bank filled up with the tens of thousands of different types of mats for the 74 professions by the time I was level 8. So I made a bank alt, but that wasn't nearly enough, so I decided to make 4 bank alts, and three of them double as profession alts.

My original bank alt holds on to the gems you use to put attributes into crafted gear, since there's a million of them and I can't hardly use any of them yet, but I also don't want to get rid of them.

The other three do provisioning, enchanting, and alchemy, and hold all the mats associated with those professions. I'm not leveling those skills up on my main characters because that requires skill points, and skill points are relatively limited. Plus, you can pretty much max out those professions by level 10 or so (with skyshard skill points). This way I don't have to get rid of any mats simply for the sake of storage space, and I don't have to work on leveling those professions until I feel like it.

If this turns out to be a bad idea, then I'll at least still have a bunch of mats sitting on those alts, and I can level the skill on my mains anytime I want. They level relatively easily, the gathering is the only real limiting factor, so I just gather everything all the time everywhere always, and store it away.

I do the main crafting skills (blacksmithing, clothier, and woodworking) on the main characters that will use them, because those rely largely on deconstruction for leveling up, and also the researching thing makes it so that leveling those on an alt would be more tedious than necessary. I gather and deconstruct everything I find on all my characters, and keep about a full stack of 100 of each (wood, ore, cloth), and vendor anything in excess of that.


Anyway, I'm struggling with the list format of the inventory (as opposed to the gridable inventory like WoW where my organization OCD can fully manifest itself), so these changes have helped, aside from the simple storage space increases. Also, there are mods out there, like InventoryMod and Inventory Grid View, which I might start using to help with the organization catastrophe of this game, where 90% of everything you loot ends up in tossed into your Materials Tab...

[GM Fright]

Kimlin wrote:

Can you post a picture of your UI?

Yeah I can when I get home tonight. It's not terribly different, but I've got the default Action Bars and the Warlegend health/stam/magicka bars set to be turned on all the time, the Combat Statistics Log in the bottom right corner, and the minimap up near the top left, but not exactly because I can't move the quest tracker text yet.

[GM Fright]

Third: Turn the volume OFF. Then turn on some music instead. I only had to listen to the merchants same the same fucking thing every time I talked to them twelve thousand times before I about lost my mind. Turn on the subtitle thing in Wykkyd's framework if you're afraid of missing something terribly important.... Or just ignore them all. Fully voiced is a novel idea and all. Novel, and annoying.

[GM Fright]

Discovered that if you pull while sneaking, you don't pull the whole room but just that one mob. So it's a work around for that Mob Mentality thing (that killed another group I had several times when I was trying it on my nightblade). Things are much easier when I'm tanking.

[GM Fright]

Here's a bunch of screenshots of my UI, because I'm too lazy to sort them out. It's not perfect yet (the magicka and stamina values just won't stay inside the bar for some reason), but I'm liking it quite a bit so far.



























[/img]

[GM Fright]

Added some more add-ons tonight, and got some very good ones that errbudy should have. Also updated a few of the other essentials ones already listed a few posts above that are much better now. Really, updated just about every single one, but I'll only mention the ones that seem much better because of it.


Important updates:
-Warlegend HUD: fixed several pretty annoying issues
-ZrMinimap: actually got the newer version, ZrMM Modified, which works much better.
-All the Wykkyd ones.


Important new add-ons:
-Advanced Filters: help sort through the inventory disaster
-Azurah: Move and resize everything!
-Binder******** save your keybindings across all your characters instead of redoing them for each one.
-Craft Compare: see what you're wearing before you deconstruct or craft anything. pretty helpful.
-Guild Store Search Expanded: haven't used it yet, but if you've tried looking for something in a guild store you know the need for it.
-Inventory Insight: help sort through the inventory disaster
-Item Saver: help sort through the inventory disaster
-Joviex's Add-on Settings Saver********* save addon settings across all characters. worth it's weight in virtual gold.
-JunkBuster - help sort through the inventory disaster. very helpful.
-Wykkyd Quest Tools - new quest tracker and stuff.
-Mules Management*********** most helpful addon I've found to date. Saves incredible amounts of time. Required.
-RapidChant: haven't used it yet, but enchanting takes too stupidly long.
-Recharge Counter: mildly useful to track how long until you have enough resource to use an ability.
-Sous Chef: help sort through the inventory disaster
-Spent Skill Points: interesting and maybe very slightly helpful at times.
-Warlegend Group Frame: same as player/target frames. Better than the default, and they can be moved around.
-ZAM Buff Display: only thing I've found yet that reliably displays buffs, but I'm not sure I like it all that much. Still searching for debuffs...



That's about it. Obviously the ones with *asterisks* are the ones you should definitely get. The rest certainly deserve consideration, too.

[GM Fright]

Subscription cancelled, ends on June 11th. I just have no desire to play it whatsoever. Maybe I'll give it another shot after some patches or an expansion or something, who knows.