O'Zoon gives you a better way to play in Canada. Perfectify practice. With so much experience to draw on, it's like having your own coach. Whatever your favorite game, we have your playbook.
O'Zoon, well played. Discover free sports tips, casino games, and poker guides at O'Zoon.net. Robots Radio, Games, Lore, Stories, Community. Just press play.
The show is brought to you by our patrons at patreon.com slash Builderscrolls.orgast. Builderscrolls.orgast. A place where the Elderscrolls community can come together to discuss the boundaries of our knowledge and the thought of the universe. The Elderscrolls.
So now the intro video button doesn't even do anything. And when I click the overlay, for it to just turn it on for the stream, it doesn't do anything either. It's like it must have disconnected from the file. But that doesn't matter because we're back.
That just is a perfect ending for a glitchy year of software that I swear when I set it up, it works. And then when we go live, it doesn't work. But I'll have to keep doing that with that. Anyway, welcome to the Elderscrolls.orgast.
If this is your first episode, this is kind of how it goes sometimes. I'm your host, Tom, or robots from the Robots Radio Network. And I have with me my wonderful co-host, Lotus of Doom. Lotus, welcome back, buddy.
Hey. Hey. Thanks for having me back. It's my last show today and the year.
One last show today and the year. We are recording this right in the middle of the day on New Year's Eve because we can. We don't have to do it at night. And if we didn't, everyone else would be busy and nobody would tune in live.
But just like all of the other episodes for the show at this point, we are live at twitch.tv slash robots radio. Normally, we would be doing this about 10 p.m. Eastern 7 p.m. Pacific.
But we're right in the middle of the day for me. It's noon and morning for some people. Lotus, we have a year of stuff to review. I figured it would be a good idea.
Now that we're moving into year three of the podcast, we have these regular updates from Elder Scrolls Online, which do expand the lore and keep us interested in what's going on in the universe of Elder Scrolls. I figured it was a good time to do a year in review. And then the second half of the show, we're going to get into some more speculation about the gates of oblivion based on some things that were revealed just yesterday. Yes.
Still rolling out, too, actually, which is what's interesting about both. I mean, this is obviously like a marketing hype thing, but also it's just fun for the community as we try to figure this stuff out. It's the only thing that there's the X factor of is the mail system on when these things arrive. Right.
So that's kind of a weird X factor that can't be accounted for because people are getting things in all sorts of different ways. So then you're trying to piece it together. And it's like, what was this? The order they intended you to piece it together?
Is there an order that they intended you to piece it together? Or can it just be jumbled? We don't know yet because we actually don't have all the pieces of it. Right.
Right. Yeah. So yeah, so one of these days I hope I get one of these things in the mail to me. I don't know if you're you've gotten stuff before.
I have gotten stuff. I have zero idea whether I'm getting one of these things. I got the tablets, the ear-offs phones, but which those were neat. I had zero idea what those were.
Right. Great. And I played arena earlier. I would have known in advance and looked like a genius.
That's true. Also, I need to play through all these. That's why I got to tackle battle spire. It's very maryroons day gone.
I'm sure there's also it's an info there. Probably. And then last year was the maps, which was very interesting. So now this year, well, we'll get into it, but this year's the whole new thing going, which is also very, very cool.
Yeah. So stay tuned for the second half of the show for that stuff. But yeah, I hope I end up on the list. If it's awesome, you're listening.
Hi. I do. I do have a very popular podcast on the internet. I love the game.
One of these things. But for now, for now, I'll just rely on other people's screenshots and then just go with that. But let's kick this off. This is our one year.
Actually, this is the end of our second year of doing this. And the end of the year of the dark heart of Skyrim. And a year ago, at this time, we were speculating about what's it going to be like to go back to Skyrim because it looked like that's pretty much what it was going to be. And we didn't get the official announcement yet until I believe it was January.
So we were in a similar position last year. Okay, well, where are we going? How's this going to work? And then we got the official announcement January, dark heart of Skyrim.
But there wasn't a whole lot of info yet. They had kind of the screenshot and it looked snowy and it looked cool. We didn't know anything about vampires and werewolves and any of the stuff that was going to be revealed. So there was a lot of speculation.
I remember doing a video about like what was Skyrim like during this time period because we didn't have a whole lot of info about that. And then February, Vegas came and they did for the first time there, it was like a live event and community reveal, community reveal. Yeah. And then we got to get into the event and obviously had to pay to fly and stay in Vegas.
But you could just go and get in and it was great. And you and I got to hang out and that was super fun. And of course Vegas is Vegas. It's, you know, it's a weird experience.
It's a weird experience. Yeah, we had a wonderful buffet. I had two helping to buy a scream because heck it was a buffet and I was on vacation and I ate like eight crabs worth of crab legs. I let us say all the remaining crabs in the sea and there were no mud crabs left when I I was done.
Yeah. And we got to go to the event. We got in line, we hung out and we met a lot of people in person that we'd never met before in person, all of that kind of stuff. And then we walked into the venue and it looked awesome.
It was one of the arenas they actually use for esports and some of these other events. HyperX Arena I believe was called. Yeah. And we walk in and there's like everything's decorated to the nines.
They've got the merch table with all this cool new gear and like table over top of spoilers. I was walking in. Yeah. It was like, oh, we're actually in Skyrim here.
What is happening? Yeah. And it was really, really cool. And so they had to like take over the spoilers on the merch so that because nothing had been revealed.
Yeah, because we hadn't been actually anything. And then we walk into the main arena, we grab our seats, they've got like the stages all set up and looks all Skyrim-y with big rocks and snow and all the stuff that you guys were doing. You guys probably saw it on the video if you weren't there. And people were just walking around.
Like the Zosaur players were just like hanging out, just walking around. Everyone was just chatting. We took a little picture of fun pictures where they were putting like multiple cameras so that they panned in like 3D panning in front of solitude. Yeah.
Yeah. And so that was cool. We hung out. We had the big announcement went up.
Everybody got up on stage. They did their things and we learned, hey, we're going back to Skyrim, which we knew. But this is going to be vampires and there's going to be more stuff and they kind of went over the details of what was coming. That's also when they announced the antiquity system and they became kind of the hints at like what this is going to be like.
But then eventually we got the release and we learned, okay, this is what the antiquity system is going to be like. This is what the Harris storms are like. These are the software updates and these are the quality of life improvements that they put so far. So let's talk about that.
When we actually got to the release, which was like May slash June, depending on what platform you were on, how did you feel about the great more expansion and the grammar experience when you dove into it? So I love Skyrim. Both the game, the region, all that stuff. I've thought the new systems that they brought in with antiquities, I am a huge.
Antiquities is a very divisive system. Basically, most people love it. Most people love the lore to it, but some people don't like the, this just feels like a phone game thing. Like that's not what I want to do.
Which is totally fine. I love that system. I still do. I wish they would do more with it and less with the RNG of finding leads.
The lead collecting isn't my, I'm not as big of a fan of that, but I really, really like the actual digging and scrying to the system. I was a big fan of it, really liked it a lot. My biggest thing that was peculiar though with Greymore, which is, I forget which episode it was when we were talking about, you know, what is it that draws you into this series. Mine is the regions.
And although I love Skyrim, it dropped in June, which is the middle and the beginning of summer for me. And I'm like, I do not want to play in a snowy climate now. So I kind of just did a lot of the extra stuff, the farmable things, the trial, which kind of Vegas was the newest trial. It's possibly my favorite trial.
I really like it. Yeah. That are possibly the model or college, either of those. I really like that trial.
There is kind of a theme to this, not to rip on it. It had a lot of technical difficulties, unfortunately. The trial was close to a, well, it wasn't uncompletable, but you had an unintentional time limit built into it because there was a memory leak in the trial where if you took longer than an hour to beat the trial, which is hard to do when you're raiding and you're not sure what you're doing, if you don't beat with an hour, your audio disappears. So now you're mute.
So weird. Yeah. And then people would start crashing because the frame rate would start going down. And this was way back when we, you know, I had posted some of the things where most people didn't get the degree of visual issues that I seem to because a lot of people seem very confused by what I was posting.
But I would start getting very, very peculiar graphical errors. And I recorded them so that they were posted. I've got the files or whatever, but they're all over my Twitter and stuff like that. And one of my favorite ones, which even the desert like, what system are you going to go?
We've never seen this before. One of our, we were doing a skin run getting some new people their skin, which you get from completing it on just that, no hard mode or anything. Just that. So we would do runs for people to get them their skins.
And as we defeated the final boss, someone dropped a meteor scale. And instead of it being the meteor, it was this giant rainbow that came down from the sky and just sparkles for everybody everywhere. And everybody was like, what just happened? And I was like, I don't know.
But I decent amount of the crashing was bad. Stuff like that to me is very funny. I enjoyed the congratulations. You just summoned my little ponies into the game.
Exactly. But I thought the mechanics to it were very cool. Or different. One of the things to the trial requires the same mechanics you use in Cyrodiil, where you man ballista during the trial, which is very different than anything else.
It's all around. It was very creative. Same thing with the dungeons. They've done a great job of coming up with new mechanics to make things interesting and challenging while you're playing through them.
And it's not just tank in place, hit thing and heal other people type of deal. There's a lot more to it. And I like it quite a bit. So I definitely think that they did a great job with that type of stuff.
Yeah. Well, going back to antiquities, you're right that it's kind of like a phone game. But I can appreciate a system like that because it's the kind of thing you don't have to think and focus on too much. It's the kind of thing that you can sit and do while doing other stuff.
I agree. And I don't think that's a bad addition. It doesn't mean you have to do it. Now, obviously completionists would be like, well, no, I have to do it.
But with these games, I take and choose the pieces I enjoy the most and tend to focus on those. The things I don't enjoy as much or just don't have the time to do, I kind of leave out because I'm not really a completionist. But I think it would be amazing. And this has been an idea that has come up for other MMOs that you, if you could make this a phone game, if they had a Elder Scrolls Online app and you could log into your character and just search for antiquities and do that while playing a phone game, that would be amazing.
So that's my thought on that. Yeah. And since I do a lot of the end game trials and game dungeons, achievement hunting and stuff like that, I like something very much like you said, that's just kind of mellow that I can use because I can't just be cranked out on caffeine and trying to predict the movements of things and your PvP or end game. It's like sometimes I don't want to focus.
Sometimes I don't want to focus. Sometimes I'm watching a movie with my wife and I've got it streamed to my laptop on remote play. It's like, I have a full second of lag. Like I don't want to be trying to play battleground stuff.
But you can just dig stuff up in the ground and kind of run into a spot and dig more stuff up. And it's really not a problem. So I do enjoy the different levels of intensity type things that you can do. I think that it's not a bad thing at all to include more that you just may not want to do.
I think that's fine. The Herastorms were the kind of the things that happen in the events are in the zone, similar to the other zones. There's a lot of certain little events that happen and then there's world bosses and stuff. Then there were software updates and quality of life improvements.
And that's kind of the theme of this last year is that they've just been struggling with a lot of these updates. And we talked about this before. They're pushing the engine way further than it's gone before. It's all remote now.
Yeah. And it's all remote. You're not. No.
This kind of connects to there are some really interesting parallels between things that are happening in Fallout 76 and things that are happening in Elderscirls or have happened. And one of the discussions I was having around Fallout about a year ago was this concept of the Fallout 76 took an engine that was never designed to be multiplayer. And that's not similar. That is not a parallel to this.
But they were trying to make it a multiplayer online game out of a single player engine. And there was a lot of doubt in the community that they were ever going to solve the issues that it was ever really going to be a thing that worked. And now two plus years after the release of 76, it actually is very much improved every time they release a new expansion. Sometimes things get reverted, but then they fix them again.
But they're making two, three steps forward, one step back, three steps forward, one step back. Over time, it really is improving. I had some really serious doubts that we would ever get to a place where it was as good as it is now. And if they continue to improve it, it will continue to improve.
So I would imagine after a year like this that we might be in a similar situation with ESO, where it's like they're realizing all of the things that are keeping the game back as they continue to update it and uncover it. Because that's how software development works. You don't know what's in the code that's going to hold you back from the next update until you attempt to do it. And then you discover it.
And sometimes you uncover a pile of work that's way more than you expected. And then you have to allocate resources in order to handle that or give it more time. So I think we're probably in a good spot. I think this next year, things are going to smooth out with updates.
And then we're going to really start to see the advancements. What do you think? I will. I am inclined to agree with that because one, they've had much more time to adjust now as well to working from home.
So it's not going to be quite so much. Wow, this is really different. And we're trying to produce all this stuff as well as the other situation that they had was the idea was to do performance improvements throughout the year. But even though they had to go through with them, the same degree that they were able to work on them was probably very much compromised since they had to basically relearn how to program the game as well from home.
I mean, it's a very different atmosphere. I know, you know, that's whether you want to accept that as a thing or not. That's fine. You can not like how the game performs.
I mean, I had a couple of points where I was like, I've got to just take a break. It's not. It's not working right now, which it can be frustrating, but like this year was a mess. So they had to adjust quite a few things.
I had to just kind of wait sometimes for things to work so that I could play them again. If they're trying to do that, the likelihood they can also be on the back end, trying to figure out and recode what they were trying to fix to help their performance as well. They can only do so much in a 24 hour day period. And they also need sleep and eating into not be working.
Right. So there is a degree of limit. Like there's only so much that can be accomplished. I feel the X factor of working from home will be mitigated a bit more now.
And that Friar in his year end statement even mentioned that maybe keeping the same schedule might not have been the greatest idea for them. We'll see. I've been a proponent. I mean, the discussion has long been like, well, why don't they just take time off?
There's a myriad of reasons why they can't just not produce content and fix the game. Quote, unquote, as the point like, right? It's if you're an artist, you don't know how to code the back end for the game. Like it's, what are you going to do if you're just not working other than be unemployed?
So like, yeah, they're going to still produce stuff. But if they focus more on the technical aspects of making stuff run, which I assume is still their focus and has improved greatly, at least from my perspective, and maybe a little less aggressive on making so much stuff for us to do to dungeon packs, a zone. And then you've got the zone DLC and then you've got your new systems like the sticker book, which we haven't even talked about yet. Then you've got your new arena, your new trial.
It's like, that's a lot of stuff as well. Maybe have a little less stuff and you know, so you still got stuff to produce slash sell and you'll have more focus on that. So it's kind of maybe neat ease up the situation as opposed to end the situation, so to speak. Right.
Wyndham in chat says, I'm sure they have bigger server populations with so many people at home, which they do. They've told us that. 100% yeah, very, very much. There's 15 million accounts this year, which it was 13 million if I'm not remembering the numbers wrong last year.
So that's two million more accounts that were made and more monthly active accounts as well, and not just not just more accounts, but more people are spending time in the game who have the right. So yes, that is time played. It's like, yeah, that's it is. That's 100% a valid point, which is going to stress the service already, which the servers have been around for a while.
So it's just like, it's one issue compounds with another and nothing is just this is the one thing you do to fix it, which is. It's like telling a mess of words. Right. Yeah.
You can't figure out where one starts and one ends until you start pulling at them a little bit, but then halfway through it, it looks a little bit worse than it even was when it started. Yeah. Like, you have to do an ethernet cable at you and I tell you there's 10 ethernet cables in here and it's all wound up and I say, okay, you have this much time to untangle all of this. The odds that you're going to just unwind them all immediately with no hiccups.
Pretty unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. So that's good analogy.
So August, we get the stone thorn update. We have two new dungeons, Castle Thorn and Stone Garden. What did you think about these? So I liked them both.
Stone Garden is deceivingly difficult. I tell people the dungeons. So they've had like a method that they've kind of been going with it seems like where normal is for your story. Veteran is your challenging like, okay, I'm starting to get there.
And then the real ramped up difficulty comes with doing the hard modes where the veteran levels themselves have become kind of easier on a whole. The hard modes have almost become ramped up where it's like, okay, we're going to jam all the difficulty into this. Good luck. Yeah, pretty much.
And it's been like that for a while. And I feel like this year very much the veteran modes of because the other two dungeons we had was on Hela Grave with the big skeleton at the end from the Necromancer and Ice Reach. Both of those dungeons relatively straightforward. A lot of people were happy that they could beat them on vet.
And then when they would jump into hard modes, it was like, oh God, what's happening to me. And it was even more extreme with the castle, well, Thorn Garden Garden. Yeah, it's like Castle Garden Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone. Okay, perfect.
Castle Garden sounds very relaxing. Castle Garden has a good part. But it's like the, oh, wow, there's a guy who's going to say it's like an ocarina time when you're sneaking around the castle garden. What if they release a dungeon that's all just like chill?
It's just, you pick flowers for 20 minutes. It's like, oh, we have to get to the next section of the garden, pick 10 flowers. Yeah. And it turns out the end-floss is just really, really, it has like bad allergies.
And if you didn't pick enough flowers, you'd be able to beat the hard mode. Yeah. This is a garden party. You get to a garden party, then, and you just have to dance for five minutes.
You win. You did it. But these dungeons, nice and easy to go through. They were, you know, I feel like they're understanding the tiered approach, which we have long talked about on Tails and in the community where it's like better tiers of difficulty so people can work up.
I think it's a good thing because it's a little less shell shock when you go into something very difficult. And I think they've gotten that down much better with these dungeons. That's more appealing to me as well. Yeah.
You know, I think that's good. I, in this last year, I focus mostly on story content when I have been sampling the game. And I reworked my character back in the summer before this came out with a new vampire skill line because there was an update and felt way more glass cannon than I've been with my nightblade. And yes, I was like, I was tearing through stuff and then sometimes things were hitting me and I was like, oh, I'm dead.
Because my attacks would even take off my own health. But of course, I would do more damage when I had less health. So I never felt with that character competent enough to take him into some of the new content because I, in fact, I still need to spend some time and rework him specifically. The other characters that I usually do dungeons with are tanks.
But being that this is a new content and I hadn't done it before, I didn't know how to tank it either. So that was usually a second thing. You know, I'll take my DPS through the dungeon, let somebody else tank it, learn what's going on and then go, okay, I can take the state and then bring one of my tanks in. So hadn't really focused on that yet.
So that's something I'm still looking forward to doing. Yeah. And that's just it. It's like, I don't know, that seems like a good approach because it kind of gives people the story mode, it gives people a little bit of a challenge and it gives people who, like me, that I get joked about a lot of their sadistic and what for ways to just get obliterated on stream and stone garden took the approach even further where it actually has three, every boss has a hard mode.
And in order to get to the next hard mode, you have to pick, you have to complete the previous hard mode. So that's something that they started in Sunspire and this is the first time I've implemented it in a dungeon. And by the time you get to the third hard mode in that place, it's chaos, it's okay, how much damage damage you're taking. So it's like, but you can practice your way up, which I don't know, it just seems like a great way of getting people used to content without just necessarily pounding people into dust and being like, wow, you didn't beat it.
That's too bad. Like you can make progress. Right. Right.
So how did you feel real quick? How did you feel about the way the stories and these integrated into the content? I like, so I like the fact that in the seasons that the dungeons have something to do with them. Because before the stories were neat in the dungeons, but they were pretty divorced from what you were doing.
Like it really didn't have any rhyme or reason. Like, oh, here's a side story that's happening. I like the fact that they give a little bit of extra flavor to it. It's nothing deep.
One of the ones that I really enjoyed just because I saw it done without I always knew the dungeons. So I know like they referenced the dungeons a lot of times in the game. But if you don't do them, the one that I specifically remember was if you didn't collect the Rathstones from last year, and then when you would talk to Abner, thought about them, it would change from saying when you completed this and got the Rathstones, it would say some adventure got these two Rathstones. Yeah.
Well, that's just like a neat little nod of like either you did it or somebody did it because you didn't do it. Yeah. And that's something that is all throughout the game, which is one of the reasons why I recommend when people are like, oh, I want to jump into this. Where should I start?
You should probably try to go through the content in order because they will make reference to you being the person who completed the tasks. Every expansion, every DLC has some sort of reference usually to something else that happened previously in the game. And if you're the one who did it, then they're like, oh, it's you. Or if you come across an NPC for the second time, then they'll remember you from the first time that you did something with them.
So yeah, it's a really cool piece that kind of pulls everything together. So after that, back in November, we had Markarth and the storyline, which you just completed. I've been waiting to dive into this because I didn't want to spoil it and I want to do a playthrough as Sir Robots and release it on the stream. But I also want to do it in a way that like it's new to me and I'm experiencing it for the first time as I'm doing the playthrough because that's part of the fun is that like I'm guessing what's going to happen and I'm speculating and trying to figure it out as I go.
But I didn't want to do it so soon that it would be one of those things that people skip on the podcast because they just skip over it. And for those of you who are new to the show, sometimes I'll add extra bonus episodes in between these regular episodes where I'll do like a 45 minutes or an hour of gameplay where I'll tackle some of the quests in the game and role play my character in the game. So but you were saying in the pre-show that you think that the story of Markarth is actually better than the story that we got in the Greymore section of the game. I preferred Markarth personally.
I liked Greymore. I thought the twist at the end. Unfortunately, I also might have had an issue with it was spoiled in zone chat. Somebody just straight out yelled the ending in zone chat.
I just typed it out and I read it and I was like, we should I didn't read that and then I found out afterwards that it wasn't somebody just doing whatever. It was like, oh, that was actually what it was. So I did kind of, I'm not big enough. I don't care if somebody spoils something.
It's whatever. Sure. But if something is spoiled and there's like a twist is like a cool thing. It's like, oh, that's a, well, that's a downer.
I did kind of expect something. But it was like, oh, the end twist was like, oh, man. But I liked it. I liked the story to it.
It was pretty cool. And then I just, I'm not sure if it was the voice acting or what, but I enjoyed the Markarth story more even though it was smaller like on a grand scale of things. The voice acting was incredible. But generally I'm not too big into like characters.
People love House Raven watch. I don't care. Like whatever. They're fine, but it's whatever.
But I loved, what is it? All, Carac is, isn't it? I said, well, good Lord. I don't know how to do that yet.
It's the Despot of Markarth pretty much. It's, it's West Johnson's character. Pretty much. It's West Johnson.
It's West Johnson. It's West Johnson. Who was an amazing voice actor? Hello adventurer.
Yeah. Yeah. So he's fantastic as the Despot of Markarth and there's another character you'll meet. And I thought that was a great character.
And I thought that was awesome. And I just really liked how that all played out. And then when you complete both Greymores storyline and Markarth storyline, you get an epilogue storyline, which it's not like, it took like an hour and a half. Like it's like a full quest line.
And I thought that ended it perfectly. Like that was it closed up all the loose ends. It had a really compelling ending to something. And I really liked just the closure to the season.
I thought it was like, oh sweet, I feel like everything that was meant to be accomplished was like a flesh tier. It was good or bad for people. It was just like, okay, well, everything's wrapped up. So I was a big fan of the way the story played out, which to be fair, I thought the threat of empires and werewolves was actually a little weak at the start of the season compared to what we had fought prior with the Adric Lords.
And we've got Adric Prince is destroying the world with the plain metal. And we've got, you know, trifecta plots with Somerset and then all this. And then we have dragons ending the world. And then it's like, we have empires and werewolves.
It's like, all right, I'd be way bigger things than you. You're less concerning. But in the end, I actually liked it. I thought it was like a really good, not a side quest, but a really good.
So less of the world is ending quest and more just like, yeah, this is going to cause a lot of problems for a lot of people, if you don't fix this. So I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it quite a bit, actually. Yeah, that sounds good.
I'm looking forward to it. I plan to jump into that sometime in the next week or two. So look for the stream. I'll be streaming it while I record it.
And then if you don't get to hang out for the streams, look forward on the podcast as bonus episodes. And then the last thing, last thing from the last year, the sticker book system, this is probably the biggest quality of life improvement they put out in a long time. I would say this is the biggest fix quote unquote sense one damn real. Yeah.
Like that's the only thing that I can think of that was a bigger, more useful edition to the game. Because it essentially, it doesn't eliminate farming, but it makes farming gear so much less irritating. Right. Right.
Yeah. Cause I've been holding on to crap in my inventory for years now. Yeah. In my bank.
And to transition with another one, we may add it. That's actually another huge, huge thing. A further expansion on the transmutation stations. Sure.
Sure. So, as a whole compared to previous years, what's your, what's your impression of this one from story and all of that and added all together? So story wise, I feel it was, even though I liked it, I definitely didn't feel like I thought Somerset was a stronger like story. I would say it was like maybe a little less than elsewhere in the grand scheme of things.
So it was good, but not like their best storyline stuff. But then on the flip side, you technical problems aside, the reach of what, not the reach region, but the reach of what they're trying to do technically with the sticker book, the new arena, the new mechanics to dungeons and stuff like that. I feel that when they get it all ironed out, the systems they've added to the game are probably the best year of systems they've ever added as a whole. So the potential for the game running better, I think is all time high.
And the story was good. That would be how I would put it. Like, it's just like a, yeah, that was a kind of a bias. Right.
Right. I do. Okay. So from the lower side of this, the antiquities adding some more flavor in that way, I think that was, that was a win.
Getting an explanation of what's actually going on in the western parts of Skyrim and understanding the dynamic between the kingdoms and getting to revisit those locations, see what they were like, you know, what 900 years or so before the events of Skyrim, probably got the date run, but it's, you know, somewhere in that range. I think that's, that's a big win. Black Reach, the, you know, getting another divisive thing, another divisive thing. But I think that like having, having that kind of filled out a little bit was cool.
This idea that like, you know, you've got more knowledge, anytime you get more knowledge about things, I think it's generally good. Whether you like the way it plays out or not, at least we have more clarity and we have more things like that. It looked really cool. It looked really cool.
Yeah. Especially, you know, the big vampire castle. Yeah. That, that looked awesome.
So I think in general, from a lore perspective, it's, it's a win. I don't know that we were given much in the way of like deeper lore reveals, at least that I've seen, maybe playing through Mark Arthold, giving me some more explanation of that. Yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, these other Reach Man, they're doing Reach Man things. These are, you know, vampires, certain people are working together. The specific stack of vampires. Right.
Yeah. All of that makes sense. The, the messing with people's, like turning them into vampires or werewolves and like that kind of, the, the Herrostorm thing was kind of cool because that's a little bit of a different vibe than usually we get this idea that like we're, you know, manipulating, I guess it's similar in some ways to some stuff, but maybe we should go through that in a few trips. So it once it feels less spoilery and all the new content is out for sure.
But yeah, I think in general, it's, it was, it was a good year. I think, and we'll get to this in the gates of oblivion speculation. There were things that people had kind of hoped for and speculated about this year that didn't really come to pass. And those might be speculations for this next year as well.
We're going to have to see if those, those actually happen. So we'll get to that in the second half of the show. But overall, I think that's our, that's our summary for this year in review. If you aren't playing Elder Scrolls Online, you know, you don't need to hesitate if you're, the main reason I see people hesitate is because they're solo game players.
They're like, well, I just want to do the solo stuff. Guys, that's mostly what I do in the game. Sometimes I'll jump in for the group content. Definitely.
But most of the time I'm doing the solo stuff and there's so much solo stuff. I still haven't finished everything. And it's just like, there's that's one ton of stuff in there. It's, it's, this is probably the weirdest selling point to a game ever.
But one of the biggest complaints from people that I know that are big MMO people, more than Elder Scrolls people are, there's too much options for solo stuff. Yeah. Like, and some people don't like that. They're like, no, I want all MMO stuff.
And it's like, well, you get the full gamut of stuff in this game. So if you, if you had just like playing out, I mean, that's how I, I've never gotten into an MMO until this game. Um, and I got into this game solely because of the name, like the, the IP of Elder Scrolls. And then it turned out that it was like, Oh, some of this MMO stuff's kind of fun.
Okay. I'm a huge achievement hunter. Oh, now I'm going to try this out. Oh, I like this too.
Oh, I like all of these things. And it's like I, you just got sucked into all of it. Yeah. Exactly.
I am getting sucked in over the years because I've been playing since shortly after launch. I mean, I tried it right at the start and wasn't a fan until it got stabilized. And I've become more and more of a fan as, as it goes. So the only thing that's tough is just don't worry about getting overwhelmed when you first get it.
Just buy. I always tell people don't worry about all the expansion. So just buy the base game. It's like several hundred hours worth of things to do.
Yeah. There's tons of stuff. If you just want the stories and just play through the quest to start with, just go do that. You can totally do it.
It's fun. It'll be a little bit different than your experience with something like Skyrim, but it's, it's fun and enjoyable and you're going to get a whole lot more Elder Scrolls stuff with lore and it's major differences. Yeah. And it's similar enough.
And, and it feels good to play like, if you're just always have to worry about like queue times for Dungeons or the DVP, lag and seriality like, and none of that stuff is going to affect you. That's something that I always say. It's like, if you're trying to do a speedrun, no death hard mode of like a dungeon or a trial, it's like, okay, any little hiccup and you'll notice it because one screw up and it could ruin everything and you got to try to reorganize and you need to be perfect. Okay.
Yeah. I'm all about that stuff. But if I'm doing questing or whatever, it's like, I'm laying sideways on my couch playing with one hand. I'm like, whatever.
Is it playing? And fine, whatever. It's like, it's all about what you're trying to do with the time. There's a lot that you can do that's nice and chill and mellow in this game.
And for like $10 a cost for the base game, that's a great way of deciding if it's for you or if this isn't for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
If you have $10 and you're looking for something to do for a few hundred hours, it's not a bad option. All right. Well, let's move on to the middle of the show. The sky is marked with numberless sparks, each a fire and everyone a sign.
So being that this is the last show of the year, I need to say a very, very special thank you to our patrons because you guys are what enabled me to keep doing this show and it continues to grow. It's phenomenal. We have some new patrons that have come in for the over this last month, Sergio S, Jill R and Jacob P. Thank you so much for your for your patronage and for helping to support the show.
Welcome. Welcome. I also wanted to take time to just kind of go through if you guys will just give me a minute. I'm just going to burn through the whole entire list of all 43 patrons as a end of year.
Thank you to each of you who continue to support the show. You guys are just absolutely amazing. Noodle Aldente, you are our Akotch or Lork on I mentioned you last week. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for being our top patron right now. You are amazing as even just regularly you're our level five patron and this last month even a level six patron. So thank you very, very much.
Very much appreciated. And then we have Renegade Daedra, Sydney S, Kung Fu, Kangaroo, Brad Sparks, LSM, Jacob P, Jill R, Sergio H, RTS, Cody M, Rod Tottoski, I think is how you pronounce that? Stacia G, Megan E, wireless, Briar S, Samuel M, Bob Chaczynski. I'm not going to close his name because everybody knows Bob.
Not chickens. Not chickens. DJ Boone, Annyak, Annyak, that's it. That's it.
That's a terrible name. Annyak, Drew A, Brian R, Herbert S, Ali W, No Ratu, Stephen W, Kiefer D, David P, Brian B, discount supply, sorry, discount support, Jonathan H, Ryan C, Leon M, Zeip, or Zeep, maybe these names are so hard to pronounce sometimes. The Boros, Michael K, Remington C, Sirius, Daniel O, Frank B, Rosalie, Alex C, and Kat Mandu. Thank you to all of you for being patrons.
I just had to go through everybody at the end of the year and just say thank you very, very, very much. Very much appreciated. If you're not a patron yet of the show and you are excited about the things that are coming, Lotus and I will be tackling next week starting some character lore episodes, starting with some of the rulers of the different locations of Siridil during the time of Elder Scrolls online. So we'll be digging into some of that stuff as well.
Who knows where it's going to go, especially with the new stuff coming as we move forward. And especially thank you to our subscribers on Twitch as well, Scranjakat and Kather, both subscribers during the stream so far. So thank you to you guys as well. All right, let's move on.
We've got this is going to be a bit of a longer episode. We've got some awesome stuff to talk about when it comes to gates of oblivion. So here we go. You know how sometimes you look in the mirror and you think, if only I could lose that extra weight and you've been trying and trying, well, have you considered weight loss by hymns?
It's designed to support losing weight and keeping it off and they now offer an affordable range of FDA approved GLP1 medications, including the wagovi pill and the wagovi pen. It helps you regulate your appetite and eat less and in combination with both a better diet and exercise, you can lose 20% more weight and you can get it easily with hymns. Everything happens online. They connect you to a licensed provider who will determine if this is the right treatment for you.
Then if prescribed, they'll ship it to you right to your door. No insurance necessary. And on top of that, they support you beyond just selling you the thing. They'll support you with messaging from their care team.
There's also an in-app lifestyle and nutrition support that includes recipes and meal plans, fitness videos, sleep content. And they put they will dial in exactly what you need in order to reach your goals. So if you're ready to reach your goals, visit hymns.com. Scroll's lore to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you.
That's himns.com. Scroll's lore. Hymns.com. Scroll's lore.
Weight Loss by Hymns is not available in all 50 states. Wagovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS to get started and learn more, including important safety information, Wagovi clinical study information and restrictions. Visit hymns.com. Following is a public service announcement from the Start-Up Set Dungeons and Dragons podcast.
This is your D&D campaign. This is the Start-Up Set podcast. You know how like poison frogs don't lick each other's backs. So it's Howl's Moving Castle with a Face.
Hey there, aren't great mandibles. Because one of the parties speaks abyssal. You're all going to die. And then adventure falls into your lap.
This is your D&D campaign after listening to the Start-Up Set podcast. So join Simon and Ed every Friday on the Start-Up Set podcast for Prime Dungeons and Dragons content. Any questions? Yes, yes, you're entirely brilliant.
Concrete madness and all that. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, gates of oblivion. We've talked about this for the last few episodes.
There's always so many things to be excited about with new years of content and all that teasers have now been going out. Male teasers that we talked about right at the beginning of the show have been going out to some of the community. The first one I saw was from StarDancer on Twitter who posted this and I'm going to put this up in- The first one I saw I haven't posted too. Yeah, I'm going to put this up in the video feed.
So if you're watching live or if you look up the YouTube video of the stream, you can see it here. It's a letter with a coin and it's signed by Leerinth. And the text here says, little mortal, the coin included with this letter is one of three such disks that holds some significance to the order of the waking flame. The cultist I acquired it from has no further need of it and it may assist you in the near future.
Study the coin for I believe there may be a clue to the cult's activities hidden in its etched surfaces. In due time, I will summon you. Things are about to occur and I will require a mortal's touch. Be ready.
Leerinth. So, this item comes with a coin. It references a few different things. So the first thing I'm going to point out is the order of the waking flame.
This definitely sounds like a Mayroons day gone cult. Oh yeah. Flames associated with destruction. Mayroons day gone.
And as we talked about in previous episode, the mysterious Xerxes hasn't been written yet in the time of the Elders girls online. So that cult may not exist, but there might be a precursor group called something like the order of the waking flame. So that would make a lot of sense. A lot of people have commented that the coin looked like an Oreo.
Yes, actually, quick side note on the Oreo thing was the elder memes. He drew a picture of like a scarab. I thought one too. And he literally just put an Oreo cookie in the middle of it.
He's like, these are so cool. It looks delicious. Now I went Oreos. Here's the more zoomed up picture of the one side of it with the, it looks like a demon skull.
It's probably not pretty accurate. And you'll notice there's some letters around the edges of the coin, the Daedric letters. And then there's the back side of the coin, which I have here. And thank you again to to a start answer for these images.
And you can see that it has, it looks like flames, maybe a sunrise with fire coming out of the sun. If you look up with the mythic dawns and Mayroons daygons, Sigil, like pen is, it looks like a more fiery version of that. Oh, even more fiery. Yeah.
The flames are a little more intense on the coin than they are. But like if you look at what the flag looks like in Elder Scrolls for oblivion, that looks very, very similar to the symbol of the mythic dawn. Yeah. Yeah.
So that'll, that'll tracks the, we're going to talk about leering in a second. I'm going to jump to the coin stuff. So translated the, the Daedric text on the head. Well, let's talk about the flame side first.
The flame side says Mayroons daygon across the top and the destruction change ambition across the bottom, which makes sense. Those things are all associated with Mayroons daygon. The head side with what looks like a demonic looking head shape says ambitions, knowledge, freedom, wisdom, energy, maybe energy. Yeah, probably energy is missing a Y and then adventure.
That's the side that's a little bit more vague, you know, obviously the other side is clearly, it's clearly says Mayroons daygon, right? But this backside ambitions knowledge, freedom, wisdom, energy, adventure. So freedom, ambition, wisdom, energy. You know what this makes me think of?
Manny Marco. Manny Marco. Yep. Freeing of Manny Marco, maybe?
Maybe I believe it was the unofficial Elder Scrolls pages who might have posted that with three coins, it could be the three. I'm trying to find it so that I quote them properly. Yeah. So the letter said there were three coins.
This is just the first one that we've seen. So this is from the unofficial Elder Scrolls pages Twitter. The coins are probably representative of the clans and service to clan daygon. The Sharadai, the Zivolai and the Dromora.
So that could be related to one of those. One of those clans. One of those clans. That's another potential.
What with, you know, each of them kind of the Dromora, almost more like the grunts, the Zivolai are incredibly strong and also a little more. We're going to do our own thing. I actually, I'm not super sure of what the sure die are. That one I actually don't know.
That's another potential. Yeah. You can look into that a little bit. So that's what the coin says.
You maybe do a little research while I talk about a Liren. So speaking of Dromora, Liren, who signs this is a Dromora. And I love the Dromora. I love this idea of this other race of people who are different than us who live in oblivion and yet they're still people.
They're not just mindless slaves. They have their own personalities. They're on wants. She is a Dromora.
Now she shows up in a previous quest in Elder Scrolls Online. So here's, what's Matigan? Matigan. I have said this is a translation of mine.
I've decoded this message as well. This was more challenging than I'm not sure. So you have another one. Oh, man.
Okay. So Matigan has the third one. So okay. So Matigan has one.
Ambition, one power strength, honor, revolution. And then the other side is Maren's dig on destruction. Interesting. So ambition, one power, strength, honor, revolution.
Yeah. Maybe these are like the, you know, different clans, you know, text about them or whatever that's called. They're like mission statements. I guess it would be one way to put it or just descriptions of what they, what they value.
So let's get back to, let's get back to Leerith. So Leerith shows up in previous quest line. She works with you in order to fight against Mullig Ball and seems like she at least has interest that line up with mortals during that quest line for at least for the time being, right, which is always interesting to me because the Dromora I find very interesting. So the description from UESP explains it pretty easily.
Leerith is an outcast, Dromora originally encountered bound inside the runes of Telmor Walk in Shadow then where her essence is being harvested by the Dominion in order to create skin steelers. You are given the option to free her in exchange for information or leave her bound. Regardless of your choice, she can later be encountered at the tower of lies and will help you free the members of the Fighters Guild in prison down there. She will approach the Temrailic expedition outside the river Citadel and offer a way to break the Daedric defenses during the quest of the Citadel Must Fall.