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Character Chat: Plague Knight of Peryite

    • 1595 posts
    July 6, 2019 1:50 AM EDT

    Similar idea to DB's Character Chat: Taladran Sarethi, this format seems ideal to brainstorm a character in the very early concept stages. I was inspired by all the Peryite-themed items in the Crown Store, and at the same time realised I had made a mistake with my Necromancer character which ended up straying from what I had planned. I just don't get on well with magicka characters. Time for a new one, then, stamina-based and a way of incorporating necromancy, Peryite, and Redguard honour into one character.

    I'm ironing out the backstory details, but I'm thinking I'd like him or her to be connected to the Crimson Ship and the Day of Shame. This ship, loaded with Kothringi refugees fleeing Blackmarsh and the Knahaten Flu, was turned away at every port. Later, all the Kothringi aboard were found dead as told in the book Pirates of the Abecean.

    I quite like the idea of a character being maybe one of the guards of a port city in Hammerfell who turned the Crimson Ship away on that day which would become the Day of Shame for the Redgaurds, and being profoundly moved when word came back of the final fate of the Kothringi aboard. Playing into that Redguard sense of honour and cultural shame they felt, I'm picturing a character driven by redemption. Things get hazy here, but somehow the character gains the attention of Peryite and becomes his emmisary, and part of that deal means they have to carry a visible sign of Peryite's protection. We get from The Only Cure quest in Skyrim that the Afflicted Refugee would have died from the plague had he not Peryite's protection, which sort of infers that carrying a disease while being a worshipper of the Taskmaster renders one immune to it's effects.

    So I'm kind of picturing my honourable Redguard making a pilgrimage to find the Crimson Ship and gaining Peryite's attention by doing so, then given a new purpose on the road to attonement by that Prince.

    Peryite, the Taskmaster and The Blighted Lord, is quite a tricky Prince to understand. I mean, we immediately associate him with disease and pestilence and it's easy to end there. Yet he's also the Prince of natural order and the hard truth that comes with how the tools he employs bring about that about.
    Kesh the Clean summarizes it fairly nicely: “He is the pus in the wound. Oh, proper ones curl their noses, but it's pus that drinks foul humors and restores the blood. I worship Peryite, yes, because sometimes the world can only be cleansed by disease.”

    Pestilence and disease for this character concept, then, are a means to an end rather than the end in and of themselves. In a way that's a similar concept to the cylcical nature of the Kalpas - Alduin the World-Eater, although a bad thing, mythologically serves to bring about the end so that the new can come to be. With Peryite we see that on a smaller scale, and leads us to wonder if that is the reason for his draconic appearance as though he is the dark shadow of the Dragon God of Time, fulfilling a necessary purpose so that balance and the natural order can be maintained, a biological forest fire from which new growth can rise from its ashes.

    So all this fixation on a past mistake, the dead Kothringi, and the effect that has on Redguard culture is sort of giving rise to a necromancer, a death knight of Peryite who uses the pestilence and plagues of his lord to cleanse the world. Exiled and shunned, the character wanders in a very real Walkabout, honing their skills and adhering to a strict, martial discipline by learning the techniques and styles of all the cultures of the world.

    To do: Decide gender, find a name, stop procrastinating and make the character.


    This post was edited by Paws at July 7, 2019 3:01 AM EDT
    • 1467 posts
    July 6, 2019 9:23 PM EDT

    To do: Decide gender, find a name, stop procrastinating and make the character.

    With you I didn't know this was a choice :P Thought there was just the one option but I guess it's an ESO character so I can't use your collection of Skyrim Builds to figure out the gender. It's looking interesting so far, I don't know much about Stamina-Necros but it does seem like they're going to naturally work quite well with the concept of the Knight of Peryite. Are you going Heavy Armour for this character since your using Stamina anyway or is it...urgh it's been too long since I've properly played ESO. Does Medium Armor provide Stamina boosts? I dunno, HA is obviously very knightly but it is Peryite so...

    Yeah, very interested but don't know enough about the ESO side to say much there. Peryite though, that's a fascinating Daedric Prince to focus on, the only character that really sticks in my mind focusing on him is...Boro's build that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of right now. He's defeinitely an underappreciated Prince and it seems like they're giving him a bit more love? I will say at the moment I'm still sort of struggling to make the jump from honourable Redguard who has some level of disgust for turning away the Kothringi into a worshippre of Peryite but I always love seeing how your character progress so, yeah just looking forward to seeing more. 

     

    What are some of the more interesting Stamina-morphs for Necros? 

    • 1595 posts
    July 7, 2019 4:06 AM EDT

    Dragonborn2121 said:

    To do: Decide gender, find a name, stop procrastinating and make the character.

    With you I didn't know this was a choice :P Thought there was just the one option but I guess it's an ESO character so I can't use your collection of Skyrim Builds to figure out the gender. It's looking interesting so far, I don't know much about Stamina-Necros but it does seem like they're going to naturally work quite well with the concept of the Knight of Peryite. Are you going Heavy Armour for this character since your using Stamina anyway or is it...urgh it's been too long since I've properly played ESO. Does Medium Armor provide Stamina boosts? I dunno, HA is obviously very knightly but it is Peryite so...

    Yeah, very interested but don't know enough about the ESO side to say much there. Peryite though, that's a fascinating Daedric Prince to focus on, the only character that really sticks in my mind focusing on him is...Boro's build that I cannot for the life of me remember the name of right now. He's defeinitely an underappreciated Prince and it seems like they're giving him a bit more love? I will say at the moment I'm still sort of struggling to make the jump from honourable Redguard who has some level of disgust for turning away the Kothringi into a worshippre of Peryite but I always love seeing how your character progress so, yeah just looking forward to seeing more. 

     

    What are some of the more interesting Stamina-morphs for Necros? 

    Ha! In fairness it's about 50/50 for Skyrim characters and I tend to roll a lady followed by a male. I'll probably roll a woman version for Vez's Pantheon Challenge.

    For ESO, though, I really do tend to play men and this character turned out to be no exception: Jivad al-Tava.

    So he'll be wearing Medium Arrmour underneath his Skeevemaster Robes until I decide upon his eventual role, but it's likely he'll be a damage-dealer. Medium Armour is designed for stamina damage-dealers, with the passive abilities of Dexterity, Windwalker, and Agility granting increased Weapon Critical, Stamina Recovery, and Weapon Damage along with bonuses to Movement Speed and Sneak.

    The standard setup I follow is to have a Heavy Armour chest piece, Medium boots, gloves, legs, shoulders and head, and a Light Armour belt or sash. However, the outfit system allows us to dress the character in whatever way we wish, and my eventual goal is to make him look a bit like he's wearing the armour from the Crusader Kings Megapack mod for Sklyrim (link to mod embedded):

    I get the hard leap from honourable Redguard to Peryite-aligned. I'm trying to think of a way of showing rather than telling, but that probably means writing a story which I'm not too keen to do.

    It's like, with Peryite there is the tendency to stop at the pestilence and disease aspects of his sphere and dwell too much on the fanatics. Plague doctors, mad scientists sort of give this Prince a really bad rep, as does the somewhat gross subject matter of disease. But what if all those people have gotten it wrong? Natural Order is the bottom line, almost like Liam Neeson's character of Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins and the role of the League of Shadows: "When a forest grows too wild a purging fire is inevitable and natural. Tomorrow, the world will watch in horror as its greatest city destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time."

    Unlike my character, Ra's is a villain, albeit one who is actually trying to heal the world in a very twisted way. Yet my charaacter and Ra's share a similar point of view. Like, we don't know the reasons why Peryite may have unleashed the Thrassian Plague or the Knahaten Flu, all we see is the tragic and widespread loss of life. For my character Jivad, he can see the tragic and the necessary - the balance of it. Is the world we have now a better place because the playing field was levelled? Would the All Flags Navy and cooperation between different races have happened were it not for the Thrassian Plague? Would the Khajiit have joined the Dominion alongside the Bosmer and Altmer were it not for the Knahaten Flu? We don't have the answers but in each case the diseases have altered the power structures and fortunes of entire civilisations. It's refreshing in that there is no meddling, no plots or nefarious Daedric schemes, Peryite's influence is just a biological equivalent of a forest fire which burns away the dead wood to allow new life to grow from the nutrient-rich ashes.

    It's that natural order Jivad influenced when he turned away the Crimson Ship out of understandable fear. Maybe they would have spread the plague to Hammerfell, and maybe the loss of life would have been catastrophic. But then again maybe the Redguards could have helped those Kothringi refugees, healed them and provided comfort, and the world would not have lost an entire race. Jivad will never know, but what he can do is understand how they felt to be turned away at every port, he can be the shunned and ostracised leper so as to understand the balance he upset on that fateful day. That's his burden to bear, his pennance and attonement.

    So he'll use those tools of pestilence and plague on a smaller scale. The natural order of Tamriel is upset, the balance is gone as the Planemeld continues and the Worm Cult gain power, dragons have returned and the Sload once again threaten the shores. The necromancer class plays into that quite nicely with the stamina morphs being diseased or poison based. I'll let you know which are really fun.

    Ultimately, then, the character is all about the hard truths and how sometimes he has to do what's necessary for the natural order to resume. Lawful Neutral, maybe? A guy who follows a code which he puts above all things. I was thinking about some sort of knightly order he could establish. Peryite has been known to cure disease and shelter those who suffer from them. Sort of moving away from the unclean, I'm picturing a castle or monastery where hygiene is paramount, natural springs and serene landscapes so as to be a place for convalescence. The odd thing being that in some form each Knight carries with him a mark of Peryite like an isolated and contained disease, a symbol of Peryite's protection as well as an understanding of the balance of hard truth in the natural order.
    This post was edited by Paws at July 7, 2019 4:51 AM EDT
    • 490 posts
    July 11, 2019 5:06 PM EDT
    Not a khajiit, didn't read.
    • 1595 posts
    July 11, 2019 8:29 PM EDT

    Henson said: Not a khajiit, didn't read.

    I totally get that. I'm like that about most things.

    • 1595 posts
    July 13, 2019 6:39 AM EDT

    Quick update log: The character is going well and is pretty fun. I skipped the tutorial with him so as to have a clean slate, then had him travel to my Aldmeri Grotto so that the start of his adventure is in Summerset and that he's arrived there by ship from Sentinel. I may need to write a backstory after all as my vision for him involved being sent by Peryite to Summerset in order to do the Corgrad Wastes quest. 

    Once he's there, Jivad quickly understands why he was sent. The Thrassian Plague isn't as gone as people would like to believe and the natural order of its continuity is being interfered with by magical means. Trapped in the catacombs beneath the ruins of this ancient estate, carriers of the disease still exist. The town's leaders had quarantined the estate, herding all the infected townsfolk into the vaults below. There, they established a means of having their life preserved through a transference of energies from the infected inhabitants and themselves.

    Faidur is their ancestor who is exploring the crypts with me. He's captured because the kinlords and kinlady believe his blood will rejuvenate them in a way their current methods don't allow for. For Jivad, it's interesting to hear such direct accounts of the Thrassian Plague.

    Jivad puts a stop to the whole thing but is slightly concerned about Faidur's thirst.

    The quest wraps with the fate of the infected survivors in the caves below being Faidur's problem to solve.

    With the natural order restored, Jivad is now free to go where the road may lead him. 

    • 1467 posts
    July 16, 2019 3:33 AM EDT

    At least a billion apologies are required Phil, should have responded ages ago. 

    Ha! In fairness it's about 50/50 for Skyrim characters and I tend to roll a lady followed by a male. I'll probably roll a woman version for Vez's Pantheon Challenge.

    For ESO, though, I really do tend to play men and this character turned out to be no exception: Jivad al-Tava.

    So he'll be wearing Medium Arrmour underneath his Skeevemaster Robes until I decide upon his eventual role, but it's likely he'll be a damage-dealer. Medium Armour is designed for stamina damage-dealers, with the passive abilities of Dexterity, Windwalker, and Agility granting increased Weapon Critical, Stamina Recovery, and Weapon Damage along with bonuses to Movement Speed and Sneak.

    The standard setup I follow is to have a Heavy Armour chest piece, Medium boots, gloves, legs, shoulders and head, and a Light Armour belt or sash. However, the outfit system allows us to dress the character in whatever way we wish, and my eventual goal is to make him look a bit like he's wearing the armour from the Crusader Kings Megapack mod for Sklyrim (link to mod embedded):

    That's a pretty awesome sounding design then, hope you get pretty close to it because the sort of 'Dark' evil mage get-up is pretty awesome. Well, I guess I could also describe it as Sauron-esque because I could totally see that fella being one of his minions...Anyway, so is there a benefit to running the HA chest instead of full Medium Armor? I know that most perks are based on how many pieces of Medium Armour your wearing but is there a benefit the single piece of HA provides (and the single piece of LA) that surpasses wearing two extra pieces of Medium?

    I get the hard leap from honourable Redguard to Peryite-aligned. I'm trying to think of a way of showing rather than telling, but that probably means writing a story which I'm not too keen to do.

    It's like, with Peryite there is the tendency to stop at the pestilence and disease aspects of his sphere and dwell too much on the fanatics. Plague doctors, mad scientists sort of give this Prince a really bad rep, as does the somewhat gross subject matter of disease. But what if all those people have gotten it wrong? Natural Order is the bottom line, almost like Liam Neeson's character of Ra's al Ghul in Batman Begins and the role of the League of Shadows: "When a forest grows too wild a purging fire is inevitable and natural. Tomorrow, the world will watch in horror as its greatest city destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time."

    Basing character's off Liam Neeson's roles would make for a hell of an event now that I think about it :P But yeah you've got a point, I think we're just constantly hit with the idea that he's "One of the weakest of the princes" and all so a lot of the lesser (at first glance) aspects of him are sort of pushed away in favour of the poisons and the disease and the pestilence and all that fun stuff. But Tasks and Natural Order are a pretty interesting mix, in a way it sort of makes him seem like a bit of a counter to Arkay, or the other side of the coin in a way.

    Unlike my character, Ra's is a villain, albeit one who is actually trying to heal the world in a very twisted way. Yet my charaacter and Ra's share a similar point of view. Like, we don't know the reasons why Peryite may have unleashed the Thrassian Plague or the Knahaten Flu, all we see is the tragic and widespread loss of life. For my character Jivad, he can see the tragic and the necessary - the balance of it. Is the world we have now a better place because the playing field was levelled? Would the All Flags Navy and cooperation between different races have happened were it not for the Thrassian Plague? Would the Khajiit have joined the Dominion alongside the Bosmer and Altmer were it not for the Knahaten Flu? We don't have the answers but in each case the diseases have altered the power structures and fortunes of entire civilisations. It's refreshing in that there is no meddling, no plots or nefarious Daedric schemes, Peryite's influence is just a biological equivalent of a forest fire which burns away the dead wood to allow new life to grow from the nutrient-rich ashes.It's that natural order Jivad influenced when he turned away the Crimson Ship out of understandable fear. Maybe they would have spread the plague to Hammerfell, and maybe the loss of life would have been catastrophic. But then again maybe the Redguards could have helped those Kothringi refugees, healed them and provided comfort, and the world would not have lost an entire race. Jivad will never know, but what he can do is understand how they felt to be turned away at every port, he can be the shunned and ostracised leper so as to understand the balance he upset on that fateful day. That's his burden to bear, his pennance and attonement.

    So he'll use those tools of pestilence and plague on a smaller scale. The natural order of Tamriel is upset, the balance is gone as the Planemeld continues and the Worm Cult gain power, dragons have returned and the Sload once again threaten the shores. The necromancer class plays into that quite nicely with the stamina morphs being diseased or poison based. I'll let you know which are really fun.

    Ultimately, then, the character is all about the hard truths and how sometimes he has to do what's necessary for the natural order to resume. Lawful Neutral, maybe? A guy who follows a code which he puts above all things. I was thinking about some sort of knightly order he could establish. Peryite has been known to cure disease and shelter those who suffer from them. Sort of moving away from the unclean, I'm picturing a castle or monastery where hygiene is paramount, natural springs and serene landscapes so as to be a place for convalescence. The odd thing being that in some form each Knight carries with him a mark of Peryite like an isolated and contained disease, a symbol of Peryite's protection as well as an understanding of the balance of hard truth in the natural order. 

    That's an interesting angle really, actually I really enjoy the concept of him looking at these disasters from a...not quite political point of view, but examining them for more than just the death that they caused. It's just a generally fascinating topic even without focusing it on TES. I also assume then that he wouldn't interfere in a disease? Like, if a new plague came along he wouldn't try and increase the spread but also wouldn't slow it down, just let nature take it's course?


    This post was edited by SpookyBorn2021 at July 16, 2019 3:37 AM EDT
    • 1595 posts
    July 16, 2019 8:25 AM EDT

    Dragonborn2121 said:

    At least a billion apologies are required Phil, should have responded ages ago. 

    No apologies necessary dude. I'm enjoying the character and been doing a bit of writing, having fun with the concept and having a place to talk about it, regardless as to if anyone reads it or not :D

    Dragonborn2121 said:

    That's a pretty awesome sounding design then, hope you get pretty close to it because the sort of 'Dark' evil mage get-up is pretty awesome. Well, I guess I could also describe it as Sauron-esque because I could totally see that fella being one of his minions...Anyway, so is there a benefit to running the HA chest instead of full Medium Armor? I know that most perks are based on how many pieces of Medium Armour your wearing but is there a benefit the single piece of HA provides (and the single piece of LA) that surpasses wearing two extra pieces of Medium?

    I think I can get that look, yeah. There are so many robes in the game, hell even a basic Imperial robe 1 should look pretty good when paired with some heavy-looking pauldrons, guantlets and boots. For now I'm quite happy with the skeevemaster costume - I've re-dyed it to be brown and grey so the character has a bit of a jedi look to him now. It's actually pretty cool with that whole wandering bladesman aesthetic.

    There are benefits to wearing a Heavy Armour chest piece for a couple of reasons. Chests give the highest armour resistance value so it's good to have the extra protection just for survivability. As you say, there is a trade-off going on. A stam dd is going to sacrifice some damage output but a dd who keeps dying is no good to anyone. In solo or smaller group play it really helps if the dps characters can stay on their feet and not be glass cannons. The other thing to take into account is a passive skill in the Undaunted line called Undaunted Mettle. This skill increases each of your stats (health, stamina and magicka) by 2% per armour type worn, so if you're wearing 5 medium pieces, 1 heavy and 1 light armour piece, you're looking at a 6% increase to each stat. It's good practice, then, to unlock each armour skill line early then wear 5,1,1 so that even the armour skill most ueless to you still levels slightly with you while you wear them.

    Dragonborn2121 said:

    Basing character's off Liam Neeson's roles would make for a hell of an event now that I think about it :P But yeah you've got a point, I think we're just constantly hit with the idea that he's "One of the weakest of the princes" and all so a lot of the lesser (at first glance) aspects of him are sort of pushed away in favour of the poisons and the disease and the pestilence and all that fun stuff. But Tasks and Natural Order are a pretty interesting mix, in a way it sort of makes him seem like a bit of a counter to Arkay, or the other side of the coin in a way.

    That's an interesting angle really, actually I really enjoy the concept of him looking at these disasters from a...not quite political point of view, but examining them for more than just the death that they caused. It's just a generally fascinating topic even without focusing it on TES. I also assume then that he wouldn't interfere in a disease? Like, if a new plague came along he wouldn't try and increase the spread but also wouldn't slow it down, just let nature take it's course?

    Being the weakest Prince is something which I think is objective. The way I see it, it's not about personal power but of influence. Like, to say Dagon is more poweful and can beat Peryite in a fight is probably not accurate. Could be that "weakness" in the context of Daedric Lords is more about the influence they have through worshippers rather than their influence on Nirn. Because Peryite is so focussed on the natural order, that makes him far less overt than Dagon. Dagon delights in messing with the natural order and causing as much destruction as possible - things which are easy to measure. But when the natural order is in harmony and just works, it's a very understated power. But does it make Dagon is more powerful? Dagon'll likely attract more worshippers keen to taste some of that power, and likely Peryite wants as few worshippers as possible upsetting the natural order in his own name. But ultimately measuring the power and strength of immortal spirits of infinite dimensions is futile. Easy to see Peryite as being weak, but when you open the window in the morning and see the sun shining and hear tyhe birds singing, and everything as it should be, perhaps we're seeing Peryite in his full power.

    Counter to Arkay... That's interesting and not something I'd considered, but it definitely works. The cycle, the changing of the seasons and the balance of life and death are very close to the Peryite sphere. I wrote a little piece as I examined Jivad's take on it and general philosophy, and I came closer to Kynareth than Arkay:

    The Spadetail rocked upon the waves, her timbers creaking as she crested each swell. Breyja and Jivad al-Tava sat in the captain's cabin, their mugs of Stros M'Kai rum almost empty and in need of a top-up.

     

    "Jivad al-Tava. That means you come from a place called Tava, or that you are "of Tava" in a more spiritual sense?" Asked Breyja as she swigged from her tankard.

     

    Jivad grinned. "You know something of my people and culture. I thank you for the thoughtful question. I'm from Tava's Blessing, the name is often shortened to al-Tava for ease."

     

    The captain nodded. I've docked there once or twice. This rum came from those docks, I think." Breyja paused, looked quizzically at her mug as though it might jog her memory before continuing with a little laugh. "Or maybe it was Stros M'Kai. Tava is the Redguard goddess of the wind and weather, like my own Kyne, right?"

     

    "Indeed. We revere her as a goddess of the wind and of birds, and of all elements of the sky. You could say she is the sky, and that the sun is her shining eye gazing down upon us."

     

    "I like that!" Brejya smiled broadly back at the Redguard. "Back in Sentinel you invoked Tava's name to bless our journey. Yet Hadley identified you as a follower of Peryite which you didn't deny. Can you serve two deities so different from each other and not feel conflicted?

     

    It was Jivad's turn to gaze at his flagon in thought, swirling the liquid within. "That's an interesting question. I think Tava and Peryite - and maybe even your Kyne - are similar in a few ways. Think of a hawk as it dives on its prey, or the steady wind which turns into a gale then a storm, tearing your sails from the mizzen. These things are indescriminate. The hawk's prey is an innocent, and the storm takes innocent lives. They just happen and are beyond our control. Tava can be gentle, or she can be supremely deadly. Peryite is similar. It's not personal, only the natural order in harmony. So I don't feel much conflict, no, for Peryite is just another aspect of the natural order of the world, something that must happen for reasons I may never understand, much like a storm can blow up from nowhere and sink a ship and its crew. The main difference is that Tava's storm doesn't smell foul or look discusting. If Peryite and Tava swapped places for a day, would we notice a difference? Who has the most blood on their hands?"

     

    The captain was thoughtful as she drained the last drop of her rum. "For Nords, Kyne is the Kiss at the End who carries those who died in glorious battle to Sovngarde. She's a warrior's goddess, invoked upon the field of battle. Sometimes that's a hard thing to swallow for me. When I'm in the wilds and at my happiest while listening to a waterfall and the sounds of  life, war and death are far away. Then i might be confronted by it and see the body of a young man or woman on the border, a casualty of Covenant or Dominion fighters, and it seems so senseless. I ask Kyne why, but she never answers."

     

    Jivad nodded, fixing his gaze on the tabletop. "I understand that completely. Not a day dawms when Tava opens her shining eye in which I don't ask why did the Kothringi have to die? Would they have lived had I to have let them dock? The answers are beyond us, I think, but we should never stop asking them however much they hurt. Hard truth, Peryite teaches, should be embraced. The moment you stop caring about that young man or lady is the moment you've strayed too far from yourself and your own natural order. Who knows, maybe if the only good their death has served is to remind you of what is important and how the world should be, then their end isn't as meaningless and senseless as you presume?"

    Okay, your last question is a doozy. Would Jivad increase the spread, slow it down, or let it take its course should he encounter an outbreak? I struggled with that question when doing the Corgrad quests and knowing the Thrassian Plague is still alive. I think he'd need to know more details. Like, where is the disease from? Is it natural or the result of a bad experiment? Has it spread because of of unnatural activity or just a naturally occurring illness? If the former, he'll end it or limit it. If the latter, will let it take its course while still offering whatever aid he can to those afflicted. He's not a zealot, has a great deal of questions and is not afraid of asking them. Hard truths are important and not an easy thing, but ultimtely if a plague rears its head he realises he's as insignificant to its progress as a fly is to a thunderstorm.


    This post was edited by Paws at July 16, 2019 8:29 AM EDT
    • 627 posts
    July 16, 2019 9:33 AM EDT

    Have you had any luck replicating the Crusader Kings armour? I assume it would be difficult since there aren't many styles that share features with it.

    • 1595 posts
    July 16, 2019 11:38 AM EDT

    Golden Fool said:

    Have you had any luck replicating the Crusader Kings armour? I assume it would be difficult since there aren't many styles that share features with it.

    I'd be quite interested in getting yourthoughts on that as you are the outfit expert. I don't think it's possible to recreate it exactly, but something reminiscent of would be cool. I admit I haven't really given it that much attention, although I did log just now and have a little play.

    From bottom to top in the above pic he's got Stormlord Sabatons, Sapiarch Greaves, Bloodforge Girdle, Dwarven Jerkin, High Elf Gauntlets 3, Ebonshadow Pauldrons, and Malacath Hat. The Jerkin isn't great, has that swing-y bit which clips with the battle skirt, as well as too much texture on the padded area. 

    • 627 posts
    July 16, 2019 6:16 PM EDT

    (Click on the image to see it full size)

    I did some tests of my own last night after commenting. The most difficult part was the torso since very few pieces have anything that comes close to the face guard-y part (it has a proper name but I can't remember it); Skinchanger, Ebony Medium and Heavy, so I settled on the Scalecaller Cuirass since it has a connection with Peryite. I had a similar idea for the shoulders but decided against Ebonshadow since they just looked too bulky (to me) so went with Apostle Arm Cops. One mistake I made was using Meridian Gloves since those aren't officially released yet. The only option in my mind for the Helm is the Stormlord Helmet since it has the "crown" and the hood similar to the mod. I also used Psijic Greaves but they could be swapped for Sapiarch, based on how armoured you want that battle skirt to be.

     

    • 1595 posts
    July 17, 2019 7:22 AM EDT

    That looks pretty good, Golds! I had similar thoughts about the Scalecaller chests regarding the peryite theme, although there is still too much texture going on. I tried Fang Lair and the Fanged Worm variant whhich replaces the books on the waist with vials, but again passed over it. What belt are you using there? It's huge! I'm not sure if I have Stormlord Helmets, will need to check that. But it does look good.

     

    • 627 posts
    July 17, 2019 8:06 AM EDT

    First off that belt is the Ebonshadow Girdle, I wanted to replicate the size of that shown on the mod's armour. A big part of why I went with the Scalecaller chest is the cloth "straps" that are draped over the shoulders and down to the waste since they at least seemed to fit the style of the armour, it wasn't until later that I noticed the Peryite connection. So you want the chest to be cloth or like it is all a robe with maybe a little bit of armour on it?

    • 627 posts
    July 17, 2019 8:41 AM EDT

    (Click on the image to see it full size)

    This is pretty much the same pieces with the Ebonshadow Jerkin and the Dwarven Bracers swapped in. Now that I look at it the shoulders might no longer fit as well with the change of chest piece but that is probably a personal preference.

    • 1595 posts
    July 17, 2019 3:47 PM EDT

    That looks much sleeker. The Ebonshadow Jerkin paired with the Psijic Legs makes it look more like robe while still keeping some of the armour elements. It's quite reminiscent of the original. I'll take another look at the shoulder pieces, although recreating the angel/cherub thing is pretty impossible at the moment.

    For the head, I do like the stormlordhelmet but it's a bit too big and doesn't quite have that armoured hood thing going on. Maybe Order Hour would have those elemets as I recall that's a good hood. Thanks for looking into this, Goldie!

    • 627 posts
    July 17, 2019 8:33 PM EDT

    I tried the Order of the Hour hood and for some reason it was masively over size for Cyre's head, sort of like how a hood will grow to fit the shape of a Kahjiit or Argonian's head.

    • 1595 posts
    July 18, 2019 8:12 AM EDT

    I had a quick play last night but didn't commit to an outfit. The outfits we've looked at only cost about 6k gold but it annoyed me, to be honest. The outfit system is a good idea, and customisation and options ar never a bad thing. And 6k or so is not a lot of gold. But, man, why did they make something so good into a grind? There is no fundamental difference between an outfit and a costume - I have them, they are mine. Yet one charges me gold and locks me to just one unless I spend money, while the other I can dye for free and change whenever I wish. The game's biggest flaw is the amount of hoops you need to jump to get something you want. It's the same with housing as I eyed up the Alinor Townhouse. I was thinking it would make a nice place to decorate, much smaller and easier to do up than the Psijic Villa (which I still haven't started on), and is quite affordable to buy with gold or money. Yet to actually decorate it and put things in there you want is the world's biggest ball-ache. Not so much in terms of cost as it's all doable, but just the RNG.

    I think that's when it occurred to me what was annoying me: I hate the RNG in this game. Cannot stand it. The trick to getting anything naturally through play is not to want it. Whether it be a furnishing plan or a motif chapter, unless you want to buy it there's no point in going out with the intent to get it. I don't even know how many times I've raided the urns in Direnni Necropolis or the wardrobes in Traitor's Vault. I can't say how mnay Pyandonean Bottles I've caught and how many Psjic Portals I've closed, yet the drop rate is so shockingly poor that it kills inspiration. To play not to want something and be mildly surprised and happy when you do get lucky seems counter-intuitive. 

    I thought getting to 35k DPS was a fairly hard challenge. It's got nothing, not a thing, on decorating a room or designing an outfit exactly how you want it. The worst thng is that the economy is so tied to it. When Summerest landed I got quite rich selling Culanda Lacquer. Last night someone bought 50 Shimmering Sand for 100k. With that money I could go buy a really nice motif page, a furnishing plan, or furniture to decorate a room. Getting gold to buy this stuff is far and away easier than getting it yourself through play, and that just doesn't make sense to me. 

    Rant over xD

    I'll probably lock down an outfit later. I definitely like the combo of the Psijic Battleskirt and Ebonshadow Jerkin - good work there dude - while the Dwarven Bracers work nicely. Boots aren't that important, so just head and shoulders to finalise.

    • 627 posts
    July 18, 2019 9:09 AM EDT

    The gold sinks I get since otherwise things would get stupidly expensive (even the basic trash) just so that players would have things to spend their money on and new players would struggle to get into the market, but yeah the rng is so bullshit with a lot of stuff. Let's take my latest purchase; the style page for the Engine Guardian shoulder, if I'd attempted to get that page when it was an available drop from Maj's chest it would never have happened and yet I was able to get it for 12k from a guild trader. Or we can look at the monster set shoulders, trying to get one of those in the right weight can be a nightmare; one which should be lessoned in the upcoming update, but still a nightmare that has existed for far too long.

    If you haven't seen it yet I posted some more screenshots in the discord, but I'll put them here as well. The first two use the light and heavy Sapiarch hoods/helmets and the light Silken Ring shoulders, while the last makes use of the Ayleid Royal Crown (which I hate the look of but might work for you). Also you can ignore the Dwarf-Style Brow Shields.

    (As with the previous shots click on these to get the full size image)

    • 1595 posts
    July 18, 2019 10:58 AM EDT

    I totally understand the need for gold-sinks, at this stage we need something to spend money on. To be fair I'm hoping the trend in QoL improvements are starting to address it and remove or reduce the grind. The new crafting system will shave so much time off the process it's untrue, while the process of grinding is now more fun whyen we look at the drop rate and rewards for slaying dragons: Those have become my new regular dailies which I enjoy. Acquiring the half-eaten documemt pouches for Elsweyr plans or getting the Pellitine motif pages are possible rewards for doing something I enjoy, even if the drop rates are atrocious. That's no a bad sort of grind as far as grinds go, and double the potential rewards that Summerset's dailies had. I could then sell those things and keep a steady income from the grinding.

    What I don't get are things like achievement items or the monster style pages. With achievement items, we do something in-game and on the back of that achievement unlock something to spend a load of gold on. Like, wait... I just did this thing and my reward is to spend more gold, which I need to grind for, to get the thing linked to my achievement? Imagine a perfect world a sec in which I don't just unlock the ability to purchase the item but actually get the item itself? Or at least the first one free? Madness!

    Same with your style page. Imagine if it wasn't RNG-based but an actual reward for doing that dungeon for a limited time, and after that first drop it becomes RNG-based? You know me, I don't like dungeons, or most group content because I'm not a social creature. Would I do a dungeon on the slim chance I might get a style page? Nope. Would I do it if that were a guaranteed reward for a limited time? You betcha! Those who missed out could still buy from GTs from those who did it more than once and got lucky on the RNG.

    Also, introducing new gold sinks would be a good idea. The mounts you can buy from stables haven't been updated in years, and the same things are in the Crown Store year in and year out while they focus on making money from LTOs. Why not have those old store items now be available to buy with gold from a stable? Like, go to Orsinium and be able to buy the old bear mount, pet and even echalette for a frew hundred thousand gold each from the stablemaster? Or even better, new mounts worth 500k each or so. That's a good gold-sink, no?

    It's hard to find the right answer without significantly impacting the game's economy. I like that I can buy a motif page or furnishing plan from GTs. I'd like it more if I could actually have a good chance of getting this stuff myself without having to devote entire weeks to it. But that same rarity powers the economy so balance is really hard to get right.

    It's just right now too much. I buy a furnishing plan or find one, but that's not the end of it because, chances are, I only have enough mats to craft one or two items. Not a problem, I go buy more Heartwood or Mundane Runes because I have the means to do so. But the new player? How do they manage to decorate their home or get their character to look how they want? "Look at my house, newb. Look at my costume. Just think, in a year or two you'll be here too!" That's fucked up.

    Anyway!

    You know it's really hard to look at Cyre dressed like that and take him seriously? xD I can't ignore the Dwemer Eyebrow Shields. What is a Dwemer Eyebrow Shield anyway? A shield Dwemer used to use to protect them from eyebrows? Like, a fire shield protects you from fire, right, so an eyebrow shield protects you from eyebrows. Maybe those dwarves knew something we don't and eyebrows will one day rule the world.

    The Sapiarch helm looks pretty good!

    • 627 posts
    July 18, 2019 8:00 PM EDT

    You should see Cyre's updated outfit, I have trouble looking at it xD