Meet Nuria Solstrum

…the Nord fighting for Queen Ayrenn in the Aldmeri Dominion.

I’m still working/thinking about in-character details. To be honest, i’m not really much of a roleplayer, although the concept intrigues me and i might link up with a german roleplaying community in Elder Scrolls Online. Sooner or later, i’m going to need to find an explanation for a Nord fighting for the Dominion. Well, a better one than “i like big swords and the Nord seem to use them quite well”.

Now, what did you say? She’s wielding a staff in that picture above? Yes, that’s right. I just re-skilled her. It took almost all her ingame gold to do that, despite her being an old character and having no skill points set when i restarted playing her after our guild chose to go with the Aldmeri Dominion.

When picking up an old character, or even one i played two weeks ago, i’m always having trouble “returning” – what were their crafting jobs? What were her goals, where was she in game, where did she want to go? So this post is mainly to remind me- and also to share some experiences in the game- and i really can’t tell you how much ESO is growing on me the more i play.

Skills to choose from

Nuria was supposed to be a Stamina-based Templar with a few healing abilities to support and/or self heal. She was supposed to wear medium armor, a two-handed sword and Dual Wield as a secondary weapon choice.

The more i played her, though, the more i felt this wasn’t supposed to be her role. See, all Templar class abilities are Magicka-based. It also started to happen that i would be out of magicka during fights. That’s when i thought that, maybe, the dps/heal hybrid i have in mind would be better served with her being Magicka based.

So i reskilled her and am in the process of re-training her by fighting and turning in quests while using the secondary weapon- a restoration staff, now. For soloing, i’m having two setups now, and for now, they’re both making use of dps and healing abilities.

My first choice is the two-handed weapon. I can heal myself just fine with the Templar healing class tree and i’m going with a combination of Aedric Spear and Two-Handed abilities for damage. So one heal, two Aedric Spear and two Two-handed abilities are on my bar for now. The underlying goal of this will be to make her usable in close-quarters combat, not necessarily melee, while starting the attack from range.

Then, there’s the second weapon set- i chose Restoration Staff, to be able to heal our groups through dungeons and whatnot. Right now, i’m using 1 heal from the Templar class healing skill line, one heal from the staff, two attacks from the Dawn’s Wrath skill line and one from Aedric Spear. This is basically a ranged dps/heal hybrid.

What i (theoretically) like about this setup is that it makes use of all three class skill lines- the Templar is the only class where i like all of them- and they all support my will to do different things at times- Aedric Spear is mid-ranged with an option to engage close-quarters, while Dawn’s Wrath is ranged dps and Restoring Light is for healing. The weapon skill lines add melee and further healing ability into that mix.

I hope this way i’ll be flexible enough to react to different scenarios that might come up later: maybe i’ll see that i can’t really make use of the two Stamina-based skills if i use all my attribute points for Magicka. I hope in this case i might react by wearing some medium armor. Maybe i’ll realize i am too squishy- then i might add some heavy armor. In dungeons, i can make use of two separate skill setups- one for damage, one for healing- if i have a dedicated role- or stay a hybrid of sorts. Also, i think in PvP ranged combat might be preferrable when taking part in sieges.

Weight and commitment

Now i don’t know if this is going to happen or if my hybrid builds might work, but what i do like is that i have the option to try it, and it feels like “commiting”. Other games allow you to try, but they make it easy to try again- like Rift or Guild Wars 2, where you can be everything you’d want to be (within your class) in the matter of a few minutes or less if you saved your setup. This is nice, feature-wise, but it doesn’t build on your connection to the character- because she’s replaceable.

I think “commitment” is the keyword for Elder Scrolls Online- every choice i’m making seems to have weight, while still being able to change it later (with a few exceptions). Crafting, for instance. You can try and do all crafts with one character, but it isn’t exactly recommended. So you’ll have to choose. Since inventory size is still an issue (by the way, good tip in keeping your inventories in order: keep everything crafting-related in the bags of characters working in that trade), you’ll have to think about it in one way or the other.

Nuria is the armorer of house Mersault (my character stable that will surely grow), Tailor and Blacksmith. Why? Because that way, only one of my characters needs crafting motifs for armor. I don’t know if the woordworkers have different styles for their bows and staves, but that’s of minor concern for me right now.

Elder Scrolls Online is also really immersive- i love the story and how it plays out- sometimes, you’ll turn a quest in and something will happen afterwards. Like the story of a bard who loved too many women and fell for the wrong one.

Performing for eternity

There are chance encounters on the road- i witnessed an outlander being threatened by a guard in Grahtwood for eating a plant – the wood elves really don’t like that. Sometimes, these will grant a buff- with the minimal UI, though (and i refuse to mod heavily), you don’t really know what happened. One time, i saw that my Stamina bar recharged- so lighting that campfire seemed to have an effect on that.

So ESO rewards the player for sticking to it- you’ll be more immersed in the story, because you still know what happened last time you played, get to learn the places and the zones as well as the lore just by playing and paying attention to quest stories (and can dive even deeper with the books and letters found everywhere)- and i’m sure sticking to ESO will have an impact on your ability and experience in trade with other players and others.

So while the business model seems to suggest ESO’s fine with you leaving and returning later, you’ll get more out of it if you stay. I know, this can be said about almost every MMORPG out there, and it is quite difficult to put into words, but this feeling of…weight and the growing bond with my character(s) and immersion really makes me like ESO more and more the longer i’m playing.