I’m Shantyman, one of the hosts of the Tenth Divine podcast.
Despite years of experience playing massively multiplayer games, I’ve never really had a desire or drive to participate in the typical endgame pillars of raiding or player versus player. However, with starting Elder Scrolls Online, and being able to play with a controller, I am gaining more interest in picking up raiding, or running trials, as the game has named them. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the title one earns for completing the trifecta (no death, hard mode, speed run on veteran difficulty) of the latest trial, Dreadsail Reef, is “Swashbuckler Supreme”. I’m going to share my experiences, setbacks, and victories in my pursuit of this title with you.
The Plan
“A goal without a plan is a wish”
While continuing to research, I’ll also be in the process of building up the habit of doing group content regularly. Of course, it would be best to have a regular group to work toward the end goal with, I freely acknowledge that my schedule often makes it difficult to check this particular box off. I have many years of negative experiences using group-finding tools in games, but I am going to have to get over it and use the tools available to me.
Once I am doing content regularly, the next step is to build muscle memory and do something I have actively avoided because I’ve always viewed it as something that pro players or the “try-hard” community does. That’s right, I’m actually going to be using the parsing dummies that are available in my guild house. This step is going to give me the most culture shock out of anything that I’ve talked about so far, but I feel like it will be a necessary step for when I start looking for a group to start running endgame content with.
With any journey, it is of course best to set an itinerary. My current status despite playing for nearly a year now would be firmly categorized as casual, a lot of times I don’t even finish the monthly login rewards.
Clearly, I need to be logging in more frequently if I am going to get from this point to where I am completing the most challenging PvE content in the game. So the first step is getting into the game more frequently.The next step is doing the research on builds and skill setups for the class that I will be going on this journey with, which is Dragon Knight.
I have not decided on a build and skill setup yet, there are so many resources available that I’m still trying to decide what feels the best to me. Look for an update on this particular bit next month.
The Habits
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit”
The people who participate in endgame progression regularly have built habits into their gameplay. My aim in sharing this journey with you in both written form and slightly more frequent updates on the Tenth Divine podcast is to provide myself with more accountability. I often find it easy to say “oh, it’s just a game” and slack off even when I have a goal in mind.
My other endeavors include language learning, and I’m taking the approach that I have with that of “even a little bit done is better than a day off” and starting to apply it to the Elder Scrolls Online. Habits are the key to improvement, regardless of what aspect of life one is aiming to improve. At this point, I have 15 years of bad gaming habits to unlearn and replace with good gaming habits.
The Challenge
“There are always new, grander challenges to confront, and a true winner will embrace each one”
As I briefly alluded to earlier, scheduling is often, if not somewhat difficult, downright impossible for me. I work overnights in the Central time zone. This is 6 hours later than London, which makes scheduling with EU players, where I do most of my playing, tricky, as I get home from work at roughly 2 in the afternoon for them, so it’s hard to coordinate there, and it’s also difficult to engage with players in the US during typical working hours. I don’t yet know how I will be overcoming this particular challenge, but I do have time to try to figure it out.
I will be taking this on in manageable steps instead of trying to dive headfirst into it and burning myself out. It will be difficult to maintain the long view once I start hitting intermediate goals, such as a particular amount of damage per second on the dummy, but I am going to do my best to keep my excitement from allowing me to trip myself up.
I’m very excited to start this journey, as well as to share it with you. I’ve never been overly public about my in-game progression, despite streaming for a little over 2 years and podcasting for 6 months at this point. Part of this has been because of the very casual nature I have played the games with. Part of it, frankly, has been the embarrassment at the lack of an endgame track to follow me on.
But as Mia Hamm said in the quote included above, and is almost a truism in the MMO community, there are always new, grander challenges. I’m looking to rise to these in the future, and hope that you continue to encourage me on my journey.
The Tenth Divine
The Tenth Divine is a community podcast for Elder Scrolls Online, casting a spotlight on the wonderful content creators for the game through interviews.
Hosted by Raven & Shanty, and recording every other week, it’s a casual show in a conversational format where we kick back and relax with people who just love the game.
if you are an ESO content creator who’d like to be featured please get in touch on Twitter @TenthDivinePod or email us at tenthdivinepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 14 - Snugpod Podcast
We have a whole pile of Snugpod friends with us this week when Never, GoneCrazyBackSoon and GwenTheBard all join us to chat all things Snug.You can find the Snugpod Podcast in all your podcatchers!
