Elder Scrolls Online

The Thalmor

Today I am feeling a bit more stable, and as a result going to attempt work.  I think I could probably use another day of rest, but in truth… yesterday I rescheduled meetings for today… and I don’t want to go through the hassle of trying to go in and reschedule them again.  My throat is still insanely sore from all of the coughing, and my eyes were matted shut this morning…  but in truth other than these things I am doing considerably better.  My eyes are actually clear again instead of the red irritated mess that they have been recently.  I also noticed that during the day yesterday apart from a bit of a nap… I actually felt like playing games again.  During most of the weekend… I honestly spent more time staring at the screen than I actually did doing anything.  I continued my journey into the Aldmeri Dominion campaign on my now Veteran Rank 2 character….  roughly half of the way to rank 3.  Throughout the course of the day I managed to work my way around the map unlocking pretty much everything but the handful of Dolmen like the one pictured above.  The problem with playing during what is normally work hours… is that there simply aren’t that many people around able to help you out.  While I can struggle through most world boss encounters thanks to the hax of Green Dragon Blood.  I have heard that it has technically been nerfed several times… but it is still enough of a self heal that I can struggle through most fights on my own.

The harsh realization I had while playing Aldmeri content is that maybe I don’t actually hate the High Elves or Aldmer as much as I though I did?  In past games I honestly went out of my way to kill the High Evles when I saw them… but I am coming to realize that these were the Thalmor, and not necessarily representative of the High Elves as a whole.  So pretty much all I was seeing was this extremist wing of the elves, that are just as horrible to their own people as they are to anyone else.  I mean I have always liked the Bosmer and their Green Pact…  I mean who doesn’t think Cannibal elves are awesome?  Then there are the Khajiit, and you have to be a horrible ass to not like them.  It is awesome seeing them in a light that is not as constant comic relief, even though they are absolutely right up there with the Argonians for most oppressed race of Tamriel.  So while I expected to like the occasional merchant and small folk in this campaign… I did not expect to really like the leaders.  The Canonreeves and Battlereeves have for the most part been awesome…. as has Queen Aywren herself.  I am actually enjoying helping them turn the tide in the battle against the Maormer and the Veiled Heritance.

Epic Battles

Hands down the best part of the zone was the final fight for Firsthold.  During this sequence you have to actually breach a number of Oblivion gates, as you push into the Refuge of Dread and try and sever the ties of Mehrunes Dagon to our plane.  The irony is… were it any OTHER Elder Scrolls game… I would probably be completing the quests to HELP out Mehrunes Dagon because I would almost certainly be rewarded with a spiffy weapon.  Sadly I took zero screenshots while in the Refuge of Dread, so instead you are getting a random dungeon screenshot.  That is just how enthralled I was by that sequence of quests, that I kept wanting to move the story forward and get to the final culmination of the zone…. which itself was an equally epic battle.  What makes it even cooler is that immediately following the conclusion of Auridon… we are thrust into yet another epic sequence as we try and win back the town of Haven in Grahtwood from the Jackdaw Pirates who have taken it over.  I know it is going to shock Tam that I am saying that I actually kinda like the High Elves…  but I have to admit it.  Sure I like working for the Khajiit or Bosmer slightly better…. but the sad part is that we apparently only get to see the assholes in the form of the Thalmor when we are outside of the Summerset Isles.

All of this said… I still feel a much greater pull to the Daggerfall or Ebonheart Pact.  I do have to say I really am enjoying questing through the Aldmeri areas however, in part because this was the last content to go into the game… and also the content I spent the least amount of time playing.  I feel though that once I finish leveling through it… enough time might have passed for me to be able to enjoy the Ebonheart areas again.  Largely it is just the Stonefalls area that tends to drag on… and if I can ever make it through that area I will be perfectly fine because then I am mostly into undiscovered territory again.  I have to admit I am having a lot of fun, but I am mostly playing as a solo player.  If you too are playing ESO on the PC, feel free to throw a friend invite to @Belghast my root account.  It would be nice to at least have some folks to chat back and forth with while I am playing.  Since I still don’t have much of a voice, and it is actually somewhat painful to talk… I am avoiding voice chat like the plague.  Otherwise I would be sitting on our teamspeak server, and at least listening to the others as they are playing Warframe.  At some point soon I need to poke my head back into that game, but the mood just hasn’t hit me.  I also similarly need to play some more Destiny, but I have been spending most of my time downstairs on the couch and not near the PS4.  I have to say… it feels pretty good to have things to talk about… other than just how horrible it is to be sick.

Running its Course

I am sure at this point that you my wonderful readers are getting sick of reading about the adventures of Sick Bel.  I promise I am also getting tired of writing about them, because at this point I keep thinking that surely today is going to be that magically day where I start to feel amazingly better.  Pretty much the longest a virus will run is seven days, and at this point I started coming down with it last Sunday…. which would in theory make today the day things just start to improve drastically.  I am still fairly miserable, and last night I had another night of constantly interrupted sleep.  Around 7pm I went to bed, after taking some evening meds that knocked me out.  From there I ended up sleeping pretty solidly until around 11pm.  Well my wife woke me up twice about the stupid printer upstairs, but those little blips really didn’t effect my overall sleep.  After 11pm I wound up waking up every hour on the hour to adjust or get a drink.  So in theory I got more sleep than I am used to, but it was super fitful.

This morning I got ready like I was going to work, however I could quickly tell that it just was not going to happen.  I didn’t have a lot on my schedule today, so I felt like it would be better served to spend the day chilling out and napping as much as I could, with the hope that come tonight I will start to just be doing better all around.  I am taking what feels like a smorgasbord of over the counter meds to try and help with the symptoms.  The first line of defense is Mucinex Fast Max, followed up with an antihistamine, and huge doses of vitamin C.  This morning I am just worn out… but something already feels slightly different.  So here is hoping that by tonight I will be able to get a normal nights sleep.  The problem has been that honestly no position seemed comfortable at all, so I just ended up alternating through the bad choices.

Lapse in Gaming

You can always tell how sick I am based on how well I can game.  That is always my happy place, and the activity I retreat to when I need to recuperate.  The problem is that yesterday and quite honestly the last several days….  I spent a lot of time booting games up but not really playing them much.  I mean I got this or that quest done in Elder Scrolls Online, or would pop into Diablo 3 and do a Greater Rift…. but each of those activities would wear me out to the point where I just needed to log out for awhile and do nothing.  So over the last few days I have spent an inordinate amount of time staring blankly at my laptop, and television at the same time…. not really paying full attention to either.  When in this state…. I really am not functional at all.  Which kinda sucks for the whole, writing a daily gaming blog thing.  I am hoping that today or tomorrow I will start to get back to normal so I can once again have adventures worth writing about.  Thanks to all of you for bearing with me while going through this mess.

Struggling to Record

Last night was one of the worst ideas I have had in awhile.  I am still extremely sick, and for the most part don’t really have a proper speaking voice.  The problem being, that Saturday night is the night we record AggroChat.  This seemed to be an off week for most people.  Grace was busy, and Ashgar was being worked to death in the “on call” rotation.  The smart and adult thing to do would have been to simply apologize to our listeners and take a week off.  However I am hopelessly chained to this notion of not missing an episode… either in my daily blog posts or weekly podacsts.  I guess there is a part of me that is afraid that if I ever go by without making a post, that all of this will fall apart.   That people will go their own separate ways and whatever thing we have called AggroChat will just cease to exist.  I mean I am deathly afraid that if I miss a day of posting on this blog… that day will turn into six months before I start posting again.  So there was what I should have done…. and then what I did.  The end result is me today not really being able to talk, and afraid that I won’t be magically better by tomorrow morning for work.

The show itself went pretty well, I just felt like I struggled to try and maintain a voice that could actually be heard and understood.  Quite literally I sound like I am going through puberty, where my voice cracks and squeaks at uncontrollable times.  My vocal cords I guess have been ravaged by the congestion and the constant coughing.  To make matters worse yesterday my eyes started watering uncontrollably and are all bloodshot.  Basically I feel horrible, and will probably end up taking a sick day Monday as a result.  The worst part has been trying to get any rest in this state.  I’m taking NyQuil but it doesn’t seem to actually do much.  My night felt like it was perforated by getting up every hour on the hour to readjust myself.  I am hoping after staying up all day today I will be tired enough that I just simply collapse tonight and don’t much care what position happens to be comfortable.  I realize this is just a cold…. but my god is it one of the worst ones I have had.  I swear I have had the honest to god Flu and it has effected me less annoyingly.

Questing Auridon

It wouldn’t be me if I went too terribly long without adding some interface addons into Elder Scrolls Online.  Right now I have Dustman, a mod that auto sells junk items and allows you to auto sell other items that you don’t really want, which is one of those things that I end up trying to find in any game I play.  I also have Lore Books and Skyshards that simply mark the location of any books or shards that you have yet to collect.  I also found a really cool mod called Undiscovered which marks areas that have some sort of a POI that you have yet to visit, which makes completing maps much easier.  The best of the mods however is the Minimap I am using which is ultimately something I complained about not having back in early testing.  I love the compass rose, but it doesn’t really replace the minimap… and I found myself spending too much time with my map open when I lacked the minimap.  Having this makes the overall experience of moving around the world so much more enjoyable for me, because quite frankly….  I have gotten used to always being able to see that top down view.  The only negatives are that most of the really awesome interface mods that I ran during the first days of the game…. seem to be long gone.  I guess I should probably check the non-curse sites just to make sure that they might not be still lurking out there.  I realize that I am essentially “Wow-ifying”  Elder Scrolls by adding these mods in…. but quite frankly I don’t care.  It makes my experience more enjoyable.

The biggest improvement so far is that the Veteran system was replaced by the Champion system, and it finally feels like I am making forward momentum again.  I like that doing a few things here and there ends up earning me a point that I can spend on improving my character.  It also feels like they have put some serious polish in place, because in playing Friday night and most of the day yesterday… I really didn’t encounter any bugs.  All of the deeply scripted events went off without a hitch, and while I had gotten used to having to log in and out to get things to trigger during those first days of the game…. all of that seems to be a thing of the past.  The other really positive thing is that the community seems to be pretty cool.  I’ve gotten a lot of impromptu help, or folks asking if I wanted to join in for this world boss or that anchor.  I’ve not really seen anything that made me cringe, which is a huge plus given that there were plenty of cringe worthy happenings during those first months.  I am not sure how long I will remain playing the game, but I gotta say I am enjoying myself….  which is huge given the funk I have been in lately of not really knowing what to play.