UESPWiki:Podcast/2 04

Totally not making a Blades on Switch Pun Welcome to the UESPodcast! Join your host Pylawn with guests AKB, baratron, and Lost in Hyrule as they discuss the latest Elder Scrolls News and have a discussion about the full release of TES: Blades on mobile and Switch!

Twitch: VOD • Youtube: VOD • Anchor: Audio

Show Notes

Roster

Host:

• Pylawn

Guests:

• AKB
• baratron
• Lost

News

UESP:

• • We’re holding a little contest on the wiki to create the quest pages for Greymoor. Pick any side quest or daily quest and get started!  Whoever writes the most complete pages (Quick Walkthrough, Detailed Walkthrough and Stages) by the end of the PTS will get our last Bristlegut Piglet 2014 convention exclusive pet code! (Blackreach Quests and Western Skyrim Quests for applicable quests)

ESO:

• There was an ESO Live last Friday featuring Kyle Nowak (Combat Designer) and Rob Garrett (Lead Gameplay Designer) talking about changes to Vampires in Greymoor.
  • Stage IV Vampires will no longer regain health at all, except via healing potions/spells.
• ZOS confirmed that not only are Vampires being added to the Justice System, but Werewolves are as well!
  • If townspeople see you transform into a werewolf, you will gain a bounty. Also all werewolf attacks are CRIMINAL ACTS.
• It also featured Mike Finnigan talking about the new 12-player Trial, Kyne’s Aegis. Finn has a new job title - Lead Encounter Designer, so he's now responsible for overland encounters and World Bosses as well as Dungeons.
  • They couldn’t run the Trial because it requires 12 people, but have promised to do so in a future episode.
• Still possible to watch the ESO Live here: [1]
• The official ESO Twitter’s “Vampire Week” ended with Verandis Ravenwatch (ESO Rivenspire) vs Serana (Dawnguard), and unsurprisingly Serana won.
  • To my dismay - Pylawn
  • At least AKB is happy that it wasn’t Verandis - baratron
• There’s another new Meet The Character - Fennorian. Some of us will already have met him in the Unhallowed Grave dungeon. [2]
• This week’s limited-edition Crown Store stuff is:
  • The Gloomspore Guar Calf (a guar made of mushrooms) from NOW until May 26 at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT.
  • The Icereach Masks Pack (creepy wicker masks of the necromancer Bani and cryomancer Gohlla) from May 21 to May 26 at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT.
  • The Icereach Wicker-Steed is a Crown Gem exclusive which will be available from May 21 to June 1 at 2pm GMT / 10am EDT. It’s literally a horse made of wicker, and very creepy. Will probably cost 400 Crown Gems like other mounts.
• Greymoor is being released on PC/Mac on Tuesday 26th May! (because Monday 25th is a public holiday in the US). If your Physical Collectors’ Edition pre-order doesn’t arrive on time, you can gain access to the game by providing proof of purchase to ZOS Customer Services.
  • Log into the Help website: [3]
  • Click on "Submit a Ticket" from the home page. Click on Billing --> Windows or Mac (as appropriate) --> I have a game purchase issue --> Physical Collector's Edition
  • All physical Collectors’ Editions will be sent out at the same time, so if you’re on console, it should arrive with plenty of time before the console release date of June 9th.

Legends:

• Allegiance Gauntlet [4]

Blades:

• Blades 1.7 Patch Notes [5]
• Switch Blades is out, see the main show topic! [6]

Call to Arms:

• Sent an email confirming that shipping starts at the end of this month, retailers will probably start to get things early next month.
• Next release is in July: the Adventurer Allies set and the Civil War card pack.

Other:

• Bethesda has made a US $1,000,000 donation to COVID-19-related charities. They have given $500,000 to Direct Relief and $250,000 to UNICEF, and designated the final $250,000 to be donated to local charities chosen by each local studio or office.
  • The full list is at: [7]
• New Sheogorath Funko Pop with Wabbajack! - “E3” exclusive - will be sold by GameStop in the US for $11.99 pre-order. Not sure about other countries yet.

Supporters

Patreon:

• Joel Hubbard
• Sean Galloway
• Sam Fox
• Special shoutout to Joel Hubbard who dropped a $300 donation to help with our charity drive!

Twitch Subs:

• N/A

iTunes:

• N/A

Wiki:

• N/A

Scholarly Pursuits

I will ask our guests what they have been working on in the world of TES! This can be game play, wiki work, discord things, anything relevant to UESP/TES that you’ve been working on the past couple weeks / when you were last on the show.

• Pylawn
  • I really haven’t played much other than Blades on Switch
    • We will talk about it more in the topic
• AKB
  • Adusa-daro is the best.
  • Wes Johnson is the best.
• Alarra
  • Greymoor prologue quest, not much else
  • Did one of the new Blades quests
• Lost
  • Started Skyrim! Got part way through Bleak Falls Barrow, died to a Draugr since I messed up on my controls, hadn’t saved the whole dungeon :(
  • Controls feel a bit clunky. Not sure if it’s due to a low powered laptop or the game. Swinging is sometimes a bit slow (how do you dual wield properly?) Uncrouching while still fighting is tricky
  • Found the sprint button last night!
  • Trivia, Skyrim SE, only 43.1% of players have absorbed a dragon soul
  • Why does it seem like the menus are confused everytime I use the mouse?
    • Further adventures, cleared out the dungeon.
    • Fought Mirmulnir, lost once and won once
    • Summoned to High Hrothgar, that was really cool
    • (Apparently I played this game so little so long ago that even the stuff I’ve done before feels fresh!)
    • Frost Troll, lost Lydia on round one, so tried again on round two
    • Greybeards trained me some, said I had to go off to some tomb
    • Told Lydia how weird it was that three days ago, I almost was executed. Divines, Hist, or fate, life sure has changed
    • Got down to Ivarstead, hoping to stop at an inn and rest. Two guys in weird masks walk up, call me a Deceiver, then nearly kill me! They weren’t counting on Argonian regeneration
    • Traveled north, heading past Whiterun, met a guy who seemed a little out of it. Helped get his wagon wheel fixed. Cicero was his name!
    • Delving into Ustengrav, trying to recover an ancient horn for the Greybeards
  • Progress on the new Blades quests, including a bit of the Arena line
    • Wizard Tower is another fun one, had a bit of actual puzzle to it!
    • Haven’t got it on Switch, Animal Crossing reigns supreme
• baratron
  • I have been doing ALL the Dragonguard quests in an attempt to get the Dragonguard Operative Achievement so I can start getting the free daily New Moon Priest motifs from the reward box before they stop being daily drops in Greymoor! Currently at 27/30.
  • Still can’t get over how utterly variable in length quests in Southern Elsweyr are. More so than usual?
  • Otherwise been running Trials both with UESP on PC-NA and with The Adventurers League on PC-EU.

Topic: Blades - Formal Release!

The Elder Scrolls®: Blades was released for Nintendo Switch on Thursday 14th May 2020!

• It is still free to download even on Switch.
• You also have the option of buying The Elder Scrolls®: Blades - Quick-Start Edition for US $14.99 or CAN $18.49. This is the free game plus paid-for DLC.
  • The Quick-Start Edition includes exclusive armor and a powerful weapon to help you survive dangerous quests and take on exciting battles in the arena. These legendary items were once owned by the notorious Bloodfall King, Durak gro-Batul.
  • Bring distinction to your town by adorning it with an exclusive decoration, the Sylvan Fountain, available only on Switch. The Quick-Start Edition also provides valuable scrolls, building materials, 2000 Gems, and 30,000 Gold – 200% value!
  • Interestingly this DLC doesn’t seem to be available in Europe - don’t know why.
    • I want to suggest that it could be due to EU legislation forbidding a bundle of a free game with paid-for DLC because this can confuse consumers into paying for something when they don’t need to, but I have no idea whether such a law actually exists.
    • Then again, some Nintendo regional websites don’t even know that the game is out yet, e.g. Australia.
• Cross-play is enabled so you can battle friends on Android and iOS.
• You can also use cross-save to maintain your progression across multiple devices. This requires a Nintendo Switch Online membership.
  • So people who have already played on Android and iOS have the choice of continuing with their previous character on Switch, or starting a new one.
• Some technical info:
  • The Elder Scrolls®: Blades game file size is 1.2 GB.
  • It supports French, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian, as well as English.
  • It supports all three Switch modes: Handheld, Tabletop and TV.
  • No motion controls yet but they’re still planned, according to a Reddit post by CVH.

Lots of new quests for Patch 1.7:

• Wizard’s Tower challenge, part 2 (the challenge is not what it seems)
• Finding a guy framed for a murder, former Redoran thief, fighting off the band of thieves that framed him (2 parter) (things are not as they seem)
• People are going missing in a river village, but things are not what they seem: investigation finds a cult tainting the forest with human sacrifices
• Treasure hunter looking for rumored Ayleid or Dwemer ruin in Cyrodiil! Lvl 41, Trophy Hunting (surprise, things aren’t what they seem)
• (Dunno the others, I think the above is 5 of 6 of them)
• Arena tournament quest line

Just as a reminder, the Elder Scrolls®: Blades was first released in Early Access on 27th March 2019. So it’s had more than a year of active development with player feedback. 6 major patches with a few minor hotfixes, this official release is the 7th.

(We should probably discuss who has already played Blades on Android/iOS, who is planning to get it for Switch, etc.)

I can’t help feeling that if Fallout 76 had done this very long "Early Access" to iron out the problems, rather than formally releasing in November 2018 while still buggy and incomplete, people wouldn't have been anywhere near as angry about it now. - baratron

(I don’t think you can really do this long of an early access with a paid survival game after all the issues with  DayZ, ARK, Rust, etc. - Pylawn

The story progression in 76 is the one thing that seems different to me. In Blades, if you start it now, you get all the same story (without waiting a few months between certain chapters). In 76, the actual story you experience is different now. Maybe the new story is *better*, and is probably better for marketing. Still, I wonder if it’d be interesting to have a mode where you play the NPC-less version until a certain level or quest when the NPCs start showing up. (which isn’t about Blades) - Lost

So instead of talking about this game, I’m going to talk about what I want this game to be instead. I think this game would have done a lot better (I’m not sure we can really say it hasn’t done well since it seems to be making lots of money (The game has reviewed fairly poorly, money isn’t the only form of success. Stop thwarting my plots :( )) if it had leaned a lot more into the customization elements. Instead of just decorations. An interior setting for house decorating. Resource collection elements, like farming, fishing, and mining. Ideally you could also assign townsfolk to this. The other obvious solution would be to remove the town aspects entirely. Explore a region of Tamriel, and visit randomized towns and villages. Dungeons are labyrinths like they were originally. No one could argue that it isn’t a TES game, and it would be harder for people to argue against it for being a throwback. - AKB