Lucas, our guest author today, has grabbed a friend and together with him and two friendly people from the internet, took a look at the new ESO expansion “Shadows of the Hist”.
If I had to describe my gaming experience with “Shadows of the Hist” in one feeling, it would be anger. I didn’t count how many times our team was wiped by the bosses. But from initial anticipation, despair eventually turned into fear and finally anger. And for one simple reason: The new expansion is hard to master for “casual gamers”, or poorly coordinated teams.
A few words about the gameplay
The boss mechanics are well thought out and shine in direct comparison to dungeons like “The Spindleclutch” or “City of Ash”. Here, different behavioral patterns have been imagined for each boss with creativity. The environment looks beautiful, especially the ruins of Mazzatun with their Inca-like architecture and the jungle caught my eye. Your task here is to free the Argonian slaves and put an end to the madness taking place there.
In the ruins of Mazzatun, you will encounter Xal-Nur the Slaver, among others. He will be supported by adds during the fight. However, you can release three dragons during the fight that will take care of the adds. Proper timing is crucial here. Additionally, he occasionally spits toxic bile onto the ground, which you must carry to a spontaneously appearing fountain so that the boss becomes vulnerable again.
While you mostly fight outside in the “Ruins of Mazzatun”, you go underground in “The Cradle of Shadows”. It involves rogue assassins who want to plunge all of Black Marsh into chaos. In the caves, your natural enemy is the darkness, and everything revolves around good positioning and the constant lighting of light sources. The spider lady Sithera does not appreciate that you illuminate her cave, which is why she keeps extinguishing the light-giving campfires during the boss fight.
I don’t want to go into too much detail about the individual boss mechanics, as that would be beyond the scope at this point. If you’re more interested, feel free to check out the links at the end of the article.
Like in the good old WoW?
I have never played “World of Warcraft” intensively, but one often reads online and here in the comments that the raids from “Wrath of the Lich King” or “The Burning Crusade” were characterized by special and complicated mechanics. And even if this is not a raid, you will spend quite a bit of time on your first attempt in both dungeons figuring out how the individual bosses in The Elder Scrolls Online work.
On our first try, after about three hours in the “Ruins of Mazzatun”, we had reached about halfway and had to set up camp again for time reasons.
Value for Money
So far, five expansions for TESO have been released, and therefore one is faced with the choice of which one is best to invest one’s crowns in. For 1500 crowns, you receive two new instances (“The Cradle of Shadows” and “The Ruins of Mazzatun”) with new equipment, new enemies, and a new, fully voiced, short story. For some, this is a problem: you are dependent on other players to complete the DLC.
If you prefer a good single-player experience, then the expansions “Orsinium”, “The Dark Brotherhood” or “The Thieves Guild” are more suitable for you. I also took a look at these at the release.
A Cautious Conclusion
As different as the two new dungeons are, one thing they are not: easy. Of course, there are guides online for good builds and tips for individual bosses, but if you just want to spontaneously dive into two new dungeons, this expansion is not the right one. And I believe that was not the intention at all. What remains are two challenging dungeons, at which I will happily keep biting my teeth.
Many people herald the end of MMOs because they have become too easy. But there is still content that is not easily consumable “to go” – and that is good.
More about the two dungeons in English:
The Ruins of Mazzatun:
The Cradle of Shadows:
This post is from our reader Lucas Kaczynski.
