Looking For Group
This is an area that makes me extremely happy and it doesn’t even have to do with the Thieves Guild directly. I’ve always been against the automated anti-social aspect of all looking for group tools, but the one in ESO was one of two things, incredibly broken or never used. If you ever used it you know what I’m talking about, endless queue times that in most cases never actually found you a group. It has been a large waste of development time as it went unused. That is until this patch.
The old tool was tucked away, in the upper right hand corner of the group window. I am willing to bet that a large population of the community didn’t even know it was there or how it worked. It would appear that ZOS thought this as well. The new LFG window is combined directly with the group window. If you want to see who is in your group you can but right along the side of the group is large font are “Group”, “Dungeon Finder” and “Alliance War”. It is right in your face. No more hiding a small nearly unnoticeable button in the outer corners. When you go to the Dungeon Finder options you have the ability to queue for a random Vet dungeon, a random normal dungeon or a specific dungeon where you can queue for multiple specifics. No more are you locked to queue for one specific dungeon.
Within the Alliance War tab you can queue yourself or your group for Cyrodiil or Imperial City. If you run a PUG group in Cyrodiil and you’re tired of constantly spamming /zone with “type X for Invite”, you can now just queue your group up and let the system automatically invite people as they queue.
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Using the LFG for the normal or Vet dungeons will reward you with a large amount of XP (at VR16 I receive 101,047). The amount of XP scales based on your level, as does the rewards within your reward crate.
ESO is designed as a casual game and now that they’ve improved the LFG tool - as long as people use it - it will only make ESO that much greater. Now casual players will be able to group up for the content they want when they want it, no more will we have to spam /zone trying to find groups for daily dungeons.
One quirk I did come across was when you place your group into a queue the members of the party receive no visual indication that it happened. There is a very faint audio cue that is played but if you’re not listening specifically for it, you’re going to miss it. I think there needs to be some sort of visual cue to notify other party members of the group leader’s action. Perhaps a simple text across the screen or in the chat box would work. Something that would say “Your group has queued for [insert name here]” to let you know the action has taken place. This way if the leader makes a mistake and queues for something incorrectly or it isn’t what one of the other members thought they were doing, no one is wasting valuable time.
Like I said, it’s just a quirk within in the feature that I think could use an adjustment.
Bosses and Mechanics
If you thought the world bosses of Orsinium and delves were tough and fun, you are in for a surprise with Hew’s Bane. The Devs have stepped up once again and delivered much harder, much more awareness style bosses for us to kill. These bosses are unforgiving. I know I said that back when I wrote about Orsinium but these are really unforgiving. I was doing Thrall Cove and if you’re not blocking after you get sucked in towards the boss you’re not going to survive, unless you’re a tank with some serious mitigation.
The new 12-person trial The Maw of Lorkhaj looks incrediblye. Sadly I have not had the opportunity to jump in and do it myself, but I have been glued to Twitch and Hitbox living vicariously through others as they do. It does not look easy. Looking back, Aetherian Archive, Hell Ra Citidel and Sanctum Ophidia look like they are child’s play in comparison to this one.
The best part of these new mechanics isn’t that they are difficult. It’s that they are scale-able. All of the bosses in Hew’s Bane are able to be defeated by anyone, even if you’re not level capped. You don’t have to spend days grinding out levels just so you can experience the new content. How incredible is that?
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Thieve Troves
You unlock these troves once you’ve accepted the invitation to join the Theives Guild. These little boxes of mysterious wonders are found throughout all of Tamriel (except Cyrodiil? I’m not 100% sure I never found one but that might just be horrible luck). They can contain anything from gold, small and large laundered shipments and even set items. I’ve been lucky enough to find an item for the Bahraha’s Curse and Night Mother’s Embrace sets.
I really enjoy these Troves. As you know I’m a major advocate for any content that’s not strictly combat related and this is one of them. I’m not forced to go around killing things to get gear or gold. I can advance myself just by wandering through the incredibly beautiful yet war torn lands of Tamriel.
So that’s it for now. Have you had the pleasure of playing the Thieves Guild on the PTS? Which is your favourite part? If you haven’t had a chance to get on the PTS I would highly recommend checking it out, but if you can’t what is it that you’re looking for?
