Anan

With regret, I will need to bow out. I've moved on and don't want to look back.

Have fun!

I'm just playing normal difficulty. Part of the problem, I think, is that I prefer non-violent solutions when available. That has two unfortunate consequences: (1) I spend a lot of time twiddling with a scenario to find the lowest-resistance pathway, and (2) I get less EXP than I would for killing everything in sight so I remain under-leveled. It seems this game punishes virtue!

I was anticipating some options we might face in putting together a co-op team on Sunday. I will be available if needed but will happily sit out if there's ample supply of players. My experience with the game suggests we might want to have the following four toons:

1. Tanky with melee and ranged attacks and perhaps ability to conjure a wolf or something.
2. Bowman with primarily ranged attacks who can also conjure a fire slug.
3. Summoner who can call up the Incarnate and imbue it while also doing ranged damage spells.
4. Hydrosophist who can dispense healz and also conjure the spider creature.

My experience is that fielding eight entities in this fashion tends to overwhelm the AI.

The four secondary specialties I've found useful are Persuasion, Bartering, Thievery, and Loremaster.

Other ideas?

16 minutes ago, Jaqques said:

 it would be cool to take it a bit slower and explore every bit of the game. 

That's definitely my playstyle and the reason I'm so slow, but I'm enjoying the game more my second time around... seeing more stuff and spending a lot of time looting containers. One of my toons has high magic charm so I get better equipment  from containers than I can buy on the street. I'm still struggling with being two or three levels down from typical mobs, so I'm apparently still not getting all the exp I should be. Makes me play sharp, though LOL.

Thanks! Would it be possible to gather up any  other posts on this topic and move them here?

After today's epic patch was finally downloaded and installed, I had Vlastarus all to myself. Poof! Nothing to it!

OK, rumors of my demise were premature. Vlastarus remains on my short list. I actually made some progress yesterday. Slow and a bit tedious, but measurable progress. I'm just one or two quests from completion of the ultimate exploration award.

I think I have the Vlastarus honor guards figured out: if one approaches from the side opposite the barracks, there's a barricade that allows one to get in range before being ranged by them. Mostly I just need to get there when other players aren't lurking for an easy kill.

SeaArcanist continues extra helpful when he's there, which seems to be many hours a day. He's so self-confident that he doesn't care whether I kill all his guards to get to the quest-giver. What a guy!

Well, Vlastarus has defeated me. Currently in blue hands and defended by a very nice blueberry named @SeaArcanist who forbore to take advantage of my ineptitude, but those honor guards I couldn't tackle without a distraction that he couldn't provide.

Never knew you could whisper across factions in Cyrodiil; nice, friendly guy. But I was starting to repeat yesterday's quests from the quest-giver I could reach and couldn't get to the other one, so I have to abandon my quest for perfection in the current content.

Now to decide which DLC and how I want to pay for it.

Weynon Priory is a lovely, bucolic, peaceful place: NO MILITARY PRESENCE!

One of the quests was in a dungeon that I think had three bosses, only one of which I saw. Grrr....

I made two attempts to complete quests in Vlastarus, which is deep in the southwest. Both times I got ganked before I could complete two quests.

Chorrol was much friendlier due to the presence of EP at nearby Ft Rayles. It was deep in blue territory but I sure appreciated the improved working conditions. I completed  the five Chorrol quests but I need to go back and get the five in nearby Weynon Priory.

I just hope the marauding bananas in Vlastarus will get bored ganking people and take some time off tomorrow AM. The Honor Guards there are a terror by themselves!

This morning I got through the ten Cheydinhal quests in an hour, which shows how much easier it is to operate in friendly territory (of which there is not much in the AM). A hint for anybody who follows: don't bother exploring delves until you've finished the fifty repeatable quests from the five major towns; these quests will often send you to nearby delves and there's no point doing them twice! Also there's a big difference between normal mobs and mini-bosses, and the honor guards; the latter can see you almost as far as you can see them, and hit you from further than you can hit them. Ugh!

The map below shows the major quest hubs in Cyrodiil:

Since I was in Cyrodiil for about four hours today, I witnessed the expansion (in the AM) and contraction (in the PM) of EP territory. Currently there are more blueberries there than anything else. I managed to finish Bruma and Cropsford. The former is especially easy when in EP hands. The latter is deep in the yellow, and since the last time I was there they've added three yellow honor guards in the town square which I had to overcome before I could get to the quest-givers. Or maybe they were always there but I was AD before so we might have been in charge there most days. The quests themselves seem straightforward to pursue. I did find a couple of delves that were easy to clear. Altogether it took me an hour per five quests. I got killed once by a blueberry lurking near Bruma. In Cropsford I encountered a banana nonchalantly sitting in the quest-giver's hut. I unwisely engaged, given that I was nearly out of magicka from fighting the honor guards. At first he seemed confused by my clannfear and spent some time attacking it LOL. We rolled around that tiny space like a couple of crazy people for a couple of minutes. Finally he ran me out of magicka and I died. From his behavior afterwards, I gather I pissed him off. I would have saluted him for a noble fight, but didn't get that chance. I expect to be in Cyrodiil Saturday and Sunday if anybody cares to link up.

This morning I noticed the enemy owns one fortress VERY NEAR our home base and has damaged the walls on others of our paltry holdings. If somebody is interested in working on this before this evening's raid, please message me in-game.

I came here hoping to finish off the 18 "caves" and 50 quests to complete my roster of exploration achievements. It appears that the "caves" are marked as delves, but from comments I found online these delves may be unusually hard to finish because they often have multiple bosses with long spawn timers. I read about players spending hours on each delve because of this mechanic, which doesn't sound like fun to me. The comments I found were from 12/16; does anybody know the current situation?

I'm going to focus on quests for now. A depopulated campaign would be least hazardous. Anybody know a campaign where we (EP) own most of the map or few players are found?