In our first interview about The Elder Scrolls Online, we have the currently most successful PvP player in the active campaign of the EU server Auriel’s Bow, Pryda, as our guest. And he does not hold back, but speaks his mind.
We talk to him about the hunt against his old guild to level 50, about the dupe exploit, the balancing, the problems of the game, and what it feels like to send whole enemy armies to the afterlife all on your own. And at the end, Pryda reveals five tricks so we can also get our act together in PvP.
Maybe not every player is familiar with the name Pryda. But shortly after the release, a video circulated of a sorcerer who reached the “natural” maximum level of 50 in just one day with AE farming, while many others only reached level 14 in the same time – including the writer of these lines. Who was that sorcerer? Pryda.
He streamed his way to the top on Twitch. A loyal following enjoyed watching a master at work. His Twitch channel now has almost 900,000 views. And he repeatedly sparks controversy.
Recently, Pryda made headlines again. He is the star in the video we recently had about “AE Nerf”. There, he blasts 50 enemies into the air with two friends. In the currently most active campaign Auriel’s Bow, he is clearly in first place with his sorcerer.
The Hunt for Level 50
Hi, I didn’t get to be the first level 50. The guild Wargaming, in which I was before, sabotaged us and sent people to our spots to leech EXP while their main team rushed to 50 as fast as possible. And this same guild also provided Jack Shelton as the first VR10. So, in a way, I consider myself and my leveling partner Smellfeit the first legitimate VR10s.
The idea for a rush to level 50 came to me while I was still in the guild that later sabotaged us. I had already pulled off a leveling rush in Aion and Guild Wars 2 and now in ESO. When I joined my current guild VoTF just before the release, Smellfeit was instantly interested in the idea of doing this. So, we ended up in a sort of competition with the guild I just left.
Two weeks before the release, we had devised a detailed route. The plan was to grind mobs in public dungeons. However, the developers nerfed that a week before the release, so we had to go back to the drawing board and back to the test server. We needed to come up with something new. It then became clear that grinding the mobs outside of dungeons was very effective. It took about two days to compile the right grind spots.
Four days and six hours to reach VR10.
How did you prepare for the launch of The Elder Scrolls Online? Did you read a lot about the game in forums or just play the beta extensively?
I played the beta weekends a lot, both the closed and the “public” beta weekends. My goal was to become number one on the leaderboard even back then. I didn’t play much on the test server, I might have accumulated a /played of 5 or 7 days. They simply didn’t let enough people in. There were almost no EU players. Luckily, there were guilds like Best in Slot, MH, or ER. The rest were players who had no clue that you could reach level 50 in 15 hours or that you could get to VR10 in four days.
Are you a fan of theorycrafting? How do you choose your build and decide what you still need to change?
Well, I’m not a “fan” of theorycrafting. I know a few guys who are really obsessed with numbers and stats. Those are the people I would consider as theorycrafting “fans”. But I keep myself updated on how everything works, how my gear should look, and what the next meta game will be. I did that in Guild Wars 2 when I was still with Red Guard.
[doptoggle title=”Editorial Note on the Terms Theorycraft and Meta-Game…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
With Theorycrafting, one means an intensive theoretical engagement with the numbers behind a game. With “Meta-Game”, one refers to playing at the highest level, considering all personal abilities as well as typical strategies of the opponents encountered.
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The Vampire Needed to be Nerfed
In recent weeks, there have been two major topics on Reddit and also on our website. The first one was about the overly strong vampires. And the second was about the AE cap of 6 players. What do you think about these issues?
The cost reduction for the vampire’s ultimate and also problems with mist form should have been fixed a long time ago. The developers lost a lot of players because they took it lightly. The debate about the AE cap first revealed how the game functions. Most people had no clue that the cap had already been in place the whole time. They also knew nothing about the various API changes just before the release. PvP was sold to us as “like in DAOC”, without AE caps. But the AE cap was already in the game months before ESO was released.
Most players do not understand what the problem with the AE cap is and confuse it with broken abilities like the vampire ultimate, which is simply too strong.
To clarify: The vampire’s ultimate is far too powerful and needs to be fixed immediately. However, this has nothing to do with the AE cap.
[doptoggle title=”Ed. Note on the Topics AE-Cap, API Changes, and the Vampire…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
AE-Cap: Many hardcore PvPers assumed before the release that area-effect abilities would affect all targets in a given area simultaneously, as it was once in the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot, which many hardcore PvPers still consider the “ideal” PvP game; the AE cap means that an area-effect ability now only affects a maximum of 6 players in that area, which has far-reaching effects on the meta-game, and is currently hotly debated.
API Changes: These concern changes that prevent add-ons from sending all data to the player, complicating the information analysis required for theorycrafting in other games.
Vampire: Due to a combination of cost-reducing abilities, the vampire is currently able to keep their ultimate active continuously or even have several running at once, more on that here.
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The Problem with the AE Cap and Why It Could Turn The Elder Scrolls Online into a Zerg Fest
Speaking of which, Atropos wrote on Tamriel Foundry: A limitation of AE abilities to only 6 players will lead to more Zergs. As soon as everyone realizes that standing simply behind a Zerg leader is the best way to play, it will turn into a zerg just like in Guild Wars 2. If you can only hit 6 targets with an AE ability and you cast it into 30 players, you will hit randomly 6 targets. The damage dissipates.
Ambitious, yet not optimally playing PvP guilds will suffer the most during the zerg. Optimized guilds will always find some way around it, whether it be through better strategies or theorycrafting.
Ultimately, the game is simply poorly optimized. The AE cap is based on a hardware problem. The servers would lag otherwise. Even the new zone Craglorn is way too easy if players use abilities like Negate Magic correctly.
[doptoggle title=”Ed Note on the Terms Zerg and Negate-Magic…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
Zerg: A large mass of players that runs together tightly, swarming and sometimes uncoordinated.
Negate Magic is a sorcerer’s ability that banishes all magic in a large area; currently, the ability mistakenly still affects all targets in the area, which is set to be changed with the next patch.
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Zenimax needs to understand that a raid doesn’t become hard just by cramming packs of 10,000 mobs into a 12-man raid. And if they simply nerf Negate Magic with an AE cap to prevent one sorcerer from stunning a huge number of mobs at once, it still won’t change anything. Guilds will just pack in more sorcerers. They would just need to change the abilities and mechanics of NPCs to increase the difficulty of raids. We will see, but right now, I think: One can facetank everything in Craglorn easily if they exploit abilities like Negate Magic or Barriers. We have already completed a lot of the 12-player trials in Craglorn with four or eight players.
The nerf is justified and appropriate. Vampires have killed PvP and set off an endless loop of bad behavior, including for me. The moment you see a vampire simply wiping out you and your faction, you start thinking about how to get even by using their methods against them, and then you end up catching some innocent guys too… It never stops.
They will now start fixing some passive abilities, which is very good. I just wish they would give someone in mist form an HP display. I have read that some guys think that with the nerf, Zenimax is making vampires too weak and completely taking them down. It will change NOTHING at all, they probably haven’t even noticed that you lose your vampire stage at every loading screen.
Why No One Wants to Listen to the Emperor
Yeah, I think… it’s alright. As emperor and a vampire, you can win 1vX even against opponents who are decent. That is otherwise nearly impossible.
I am currently at 4,600 health points, have 2,700 magicka and 2,000 stamina with the epic buff food.
I don’t lead anyone. People don’t care who the emperor is, what he says, and whether he is right. Being emperor is just a self-buff at the moment, good if we ignore the HP buff for those around you. When I started playing, I thought: “Oh god, I must become emperor! And when I am, it will be my duty to provide my entire alliance with buffs…”
I would love it if it really meant that an emperor would buff the people around them. That would make way more sense than just getting stronger yourself. And the option to choose to be visible on the map with a special icon or not – that would also be logical.
Most of the time, I run around Cyrodiil with a few friends. Or with a few guys who ask during my stream. Or I’m just solo. I’ve done a lot of guild raids but they’re all jumping to WildStar now, so we stopped raiding more than a week ago.
(smiles) I don’t mind when people talk about me. I always chuckle when someone pretends to know who I am or what my life is like. I have a few guys who tell me who is flipping out, raging, and getting offensive. It always gives me great pleasure to find those guys and kill them.
The game is not skill-based. You can’t do much against too many enemies. People think a level 16 has no chance against a VR10. That’s partly true because level 16s have almost no health points. But still, they hit like a sledgehammer. And if Zenimax now adjusts the scaling system, lower-level players will deal even more damage.
The emperor should not play in some kind of god mode. He should empower the players around him with buffs and benefit the entire alliance. A really well-played emperor should be able to take out 4 properly played guys. But there are so many issues in the game that it is almost impossible to survive against a multitude of opponents as long as they play at least decently. There are issues with combat animations, and the UI prevents a real competition between the players. The UI issues stem from the recent changes in the API system.
Why the Dupe Exploit Does Not Affect the Endgame
[doptoggle title=”Ed Note on the Dupe Exploit…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
Through a dupe exploit, it was possible for a while to create legendary crafting materials out of thin air; some saw this as endangering the stability of the game for years and feared that players could simply cheat their way to the best gear.
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The people who complain that the dupe ruined the in-game economy – well. You don’t even need gold in this game. You can easily farm the raw materials to level up your gear in a few dungeons. I don’t know a single elite player who has used the dupe. However, I have a few friends who became rich from farming rare armor motif books. They currently have around two million gold.
When I reached VR10, I had 4,000 gold and a horse. I never had more than 100,000 gold but still managed to finish my gear within a week. I really don’t see any advantage in duping items in the game. And if it’s true that some guys got away with it and weren’t banned, I don’t see how that could harm the game somehow.
Well, it was really annoying getting to VR10. We had to log out hundreds of times to clear a bugged quest. Sometimes we relogged thinking it was something buggy, but we just had to wait for a scripted scene to pass. I have never read any quest text in an MMO, so I can’t judge whether the story is good or enjoyable.
Oh yeah, I’ve always wanted to tell people who like to read quest texts and care about the storyline: I’ve never heard someone like me tell you how to play, that you should stop reading the quest texts, and so on. So please, please stop telling us that we aren’t playing the game “properly”. Everyone should be able to play the way they want. If you enjoy taking your time, then great. People who skip content have likely seen most of it in the beta already. Or they simply find that aspect of the game unenjoyable.
[doptoggle title=”Ed Note on the last paragraph…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
The level rush to 50 that took the world by storm obviously not only caused excitement but also prompted comments from many accusing such players of having no life or not enjoying the game, to which Pryda responds in his answer.
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Yes, Auriel’s Bow is at least the campaign with the most activity. That’s certainly because it’s at the top. It is somewhat balanced, but not really. Sometimes the Ebonheart Pact completely wrecks the Aldmeri Dominion and the Daggerfall Covenant. But right now, as I’m writing this answer, the Aldmeri Dominion completely controls the whole map. I also don’t understand that campaign…
I think the guesting system undermines the pride of a faction within a campaign, so to speak, the server, and leads to such crazy situations as we have right now. Zenimax should also simply delete empty campaigns.
Five PvP Tips from Someone Who Really Knows
- The most important thing is: Don’t go into PvP until VR1. At VR1, you can already do well, you don’t need to rush to VR10.
- Get more health points. I see far too many players with 2,000 health. It takes an optimized VR10 player two seconds to take them down. But it’s a whole different ball game to play against a guy with 3,000 health. You can obtain the same stats as a VR10 player even at VR1. Just put all your skill points (which can be reset) into health points, and then use glyphs to add enough magicka to your gear.
- If you die to guards or other players, you can port to any keep held by your faction. So if you need a port, just jump into the guards. However, if you die to slaughterfish (i.e., drown) or normal PvE mobs, there’s no free port of choice, and you’ll just be teleported to a nearby spawn point.
- Too many players just run away and don’t even try to fight back. The time, magicka, and health points that people like me spend killing guys like you can make it easier for other players to kill me later.
- Never buy items in the bags of NPCs. Save your alliance points to buy PvP rings. Rings and necklaces are the only items that can’t be upgraded through crafting. So start saving for epic rings. You can get everything else through the rewards you receive in the mail. Then you can just upgrade them from green to legendary. And Voilá!
Thank you for the interview, Pryda!
The interview was conducted in English. We made every effort to translate accurately, but not everything is always transferable 1:1. We will provide the original text of the interview shortly.
[doptoggle title=”As promised, the original source of the interview in English…” icon=3 activeicon=4]
1. Pryda, you were one the first guys who dinged 50 with some sort of AE-Farming, right? When did you start planning this run for Level-50? And how long did it take you to get to VR 10?
Hi! I didn’t get the first level 50. My previous guild griefed us by sending people to leech experience off ours mobs while their main team was still rushing. This same guild shared account for the first VR10 so I kinda consider me and Smellfeit (my leveling partner) as first VR10.
I had the idea in my past guild to do a leveling rush, like I usually do on many games (Aion, GW2 and lastly ESO). When I joined VoTF before the release, Smellfeit was interested in the idea and it was a sort of competition with the guild I just left.
We planned the entire thing 2 weeks before the release and the plan was grinding in Public Dungeons. They nerfed this grind one week before the release, so we went back to PTS and found that grinding mobs outside dungeons was really effective. Took us like two days to figure the grind spots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSPWzsTAVhg&hd=1).
4 days 6hours to VR10.
2. Did you prepare for the Launch of The Elder Scrolls Online? Like did you read a-lot about it or just played the Beta extensively?
I played the beta week-ends a lot, closed and “public” ones and was aiming for the rank #1 on leaderboard at this time also. I didn’t really play a lot on the Private Test Server, like 5 or 7 days of /played. They didn’t invite enough people on it and it was empty of EU players. Thank god they had guilds like Best in Slot, MH or ER because the rest was filled of players that had no clue you could get 50 in 15hours or VR10 in 4 days.
3. Are you a fan of theorycrafting? How do you decide, which built to run and what to change?
I’m not a theorycrafting “fan”, I know some people that are really crazy about numbers and they are the kind of guy that are consider as fans. I’m still keeping myself informed about how everything works, how I should gear and what will be the next meta in the game like I did on Guildwars 2 with Red Guard for instance.
4. In the last couple of weeks there were two big controversies on reddit and on our website too. First regarding the overpowered vampires and the second one regarding the AE-Cap of 6 people. What do you think about those issues? Do you think TESO could end a zerg-fest like some people claim GW2 to be?
Vampirism ultimate cost reduction and mist form should have been hotfixed long time ago. They lost a lot of players being so slacky about it. The AoE cap just revealed how the game works, people had no clue that it was already in the game and the entire API changes right before the release is the cause. PvP was promoted as a DAoC like, without AoE caps but in fact they were already in the game months before the release.
Lot of players seem to not understand the issue of non AoE cap and mix it up with broken mechanics like Vampire ultimate. To be clear, Vampire ultimate is a broken ability that needed to be fixed, it’s irrelevant to the AoE cap issue.
Like Atropos wrote on Tamriel Foundry, AoE cap will just lead to more zergs. Once everyone will figure that stacking on one leader is the most effective way to play (6 targets caps, if you AoE on 30 guys you’ll randomly hit 6 all the time), the game will be a GuildWars 2 zerg like. It will affect mostly non-optimized guilds, because such guilds will always find workarounds with better strategies or theorycraft.
The game is finally poorly optimized, this AoE cap is an hardware issue with servers lagging. It might also be an issue with their new PvE content, Craglorn which is really easy if you use spells like Negate Magic. Zenimax needs to understand that having 10000mobs packs in a 12man raid doesn’t make it hard. Nerfing Negate Magic aoe cap to prevent the stun of this entire mobs pack won’t make it harder either, it will just lead to guilds using more Sorcerers. Instead, they could just tweaks spells and mechanics from NPCs to make it hard. We’ll see, but I am pretty sure that you can facetank everything in Craglorn and abuse spells like Negate Magic, Barriers etc. We actually did a lot of this content with 4 and 8 players in trials.
4b. Do you think the Vamp-Nerf will fix some of the issues and let vampires still be viable?
The Vamp nerf is good and legitimate. It was really killing the PvP and was an infinite loop of bad manners, me included. The second you see a Vampire killing your faction, you want to punish him by doing the same thing. It never ends.
They’re going to fix passives which is really good. I just hoped they would give an HP bar to someone using mist form. I read some people saying that they killed Vampires. It won’t change ANYTHING for them, they probably didn’t even notice that you were losing your vampirism stage on each loading screen.
5. It must feel good to be the King, right? Could you tell us something about the perks of being the emperor? Do people look up to you? Do you lead an alliance or are you playing mostly solo? How much power to you wield as an actual player? People in other alliances tend to talk a lot about you, how does that feel?
Yeah I guess it’s ok. Being Emperor, without vampirism, allows you to do 1vX against multiple decent players, which is nearly impossible without it.
I’m currently at 4,6Khp, 2,7k Magicka & 2K+ stamina with epic food buff.
I’m not leading people because they don’t really care about who is Emperor and what he says and they’re right. Being Emperor is just a selfish buff at the moment (the HP buff for everyone apart). When I started this game, I was like “oh god I must be Emperor and if I am, I’ll have a duty to be online to provide buffs to my alliance”… I’d love that Zenimax actually provide buffs around you if you are Emperor, it would make more sense than the actual perks. An Icon on the map that you can activate or not would be fine to lead people with it.
I mostly run with friends, some guys that ask on my stream or solo. I did a lot of guild raids but my guild is going on Wildstar so we stopped raiding more than a week ago.
I don’t really mind people talking about me, it always makes me laugh that some guys pretend to know who you are and how your life is going 🙂 I have few people telling me who’s getting mad and insulting me and it’s always a pleasure to find them and kill them.
6. How strong do you think should one person be in this game against some average Joe’s? How many people should a perfectly played emperor could take on his own?
This game is not skilled based. You can’t do much against multiple targets. Players tend to think that a level 16 can’t do shit against a VR10: that is true because they have almost no HP. However, they still hit like a truck. With their upcoming changes on scaling system, they will hit even harder 🙂
Like I said, being Emperor shouldn’t be a god mod. It should provide buffs and be useful for your alliance. A really well played character should be able to take on 4 decent guys, but there are so many issues in the game that it’s nearly impossible (against decent players, again). The lack of good animations and UI system with the recent API changes prevents real competition in the game.
7. The dupe-exploit continues to be a big question for a lot of people. Do you think people on the upper-end of PvP earned their gear on their own or is there a stain on gear in this game after all?
People crying over the dupe that ruined the economy are fun. You don’t even need golds in this game, you can farm the mats to upgrade your gear really easily in some dungeons. I don’t know a single high level player that used the dupe system. I have some friends however that farmed motifs books that are currently standing with 2m golds. I finished my VR10 rush with 4k golds and a light horse. I never had more than 100k golds but still finished my gear in a week. I can’t see any benefits of duping items, and if some people didn’t get ban I don’t see how that could be harmful to the game.
8. What’s your take on PvE in The Elder Scrolls Online? You must have spent an awful amount of time in Cyrodiil, are you looking forward to going to Craiglorn with your guildies or friends?
The VR10 rush was a pain. We relogged like 100 times to fix quests. Sometimes we even relogged when we just had to wait for a cutscene to end. I never read quests in MMOs so I can’t tell if the lore is good or enjoyable.
By the way, I want to tell something to people actually enjoying lore and reading quests: I’ve never heard someone like me dictate to others how to play, that you shouldn’t do quests and so on. So please, refrain from telling us that we’re not playing the game as intended. One should be able to play the way he likes. If you enjoy taking your time, that’s fine. If you skip content most likely have seen everything in past betas or are not interested in this type of content.
9. Do you think Auriel’s Bow is the strongest campaign as of yet? Or at least a balanced one? Do you look after another campaign and have guested somewhere – or was Auriel’s Bow the first one on the list all the way like for most of us?
Auriel’s Bow is the most active cause of alphabetical order. It’s somehow balanced but not that much. Sometimes EP is completely raping AD and DC, when I’m writing this answer AD completely overtook our map. I don’t really understand this campaign, I think that the guesting system is harmful to server pride and that may lead to situations like this. Zenimax should also remove some empty campaigns.
10. Could you give a total Cyrdoiil-noob five good tips, where to start getting into PvP. Like – if someone knows what PvP is in other games, but struggles to get a grip on TESO PvP. Does he have to get the gear first or get a lot of skyshards or should he theorycraft some built, what do you think?
The most important: you should avoid PvP before leveling 50. You can perform really well at VR1, you don’t have to rush to VR10.
Get more HP, I see too many players with 2k HP which is a 2seconds kill for an optimized VR10 player while playing against a 3K HP player is painful. You can almost have the same stats as a VR10 player even if you are VR1. Just put all your attribute points (you can reset them) to HP then balance your magicka on your gear using glyphs of magicka.
If you suicide on guards or players, you can port to any keep your faction currently holds even if you can’t usually teleport to it. It won’t work if you suicide in slaughterfishes or PvE mobs, if you do so you’ll get insta teleport to your spawn.
Too many players are running and not even fighting. The time and magicka/hp we lose if you defend yourself might help someone else to kill us.
Never buy chest items from NPC, keep your Alliance Points to buy PvP rings. Jewelry is the only thing you can’t upgrade with crafting, so start saving for epic rings. You can drop everything else with the mailing reward, and upgrade it from green to legendary.
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