The Strange Economy of Werewolves and Vampires in Elder Scrolls Online

Dungeons, man... dungeons. Elder Scrolls Online has them by the cartload. When you hit level 15, you’ll be prepared for your first true group instanced dungeon, and once you defeat it you’ll gain instant teleportation to the other two factions’ dungeons as well.  With PAX East devouring much of my time this past week, I was just glad to keep progressing in ESO what little bit I did. I’m nearly level 20, and have hit over 40 hours played so far. I get that ESO has more than its fair share of bugs and design quirks, but I’m having a lot of fun regardless.  There’s something about Zenimax’s theme park that really trips my trigger.  It needs a lot of polish, sure, but what’s in game now is a lot more fun than I ever expected and I keep coming back for more.  Anyway, on to dungeons.

There are several types of dungeons in ESO. The standard “Delve” dungeons that are scattered across the world, which players can enter, explore, clear for achievements and find skyshards in.  These are sort of “lesser public dungeons”, and you’ll find random other folks in your adventures there.  Scour the map and find them all, because each one has a skyshard, and you’ll want to collect as many of those as you can, believe me.  Then there are Public Dungeons like Crow’s Wood that are small open zones for multiple groups which have an overall story, several missions, and usually a larger group boss to take down as well.

These are my goblins. There are many like them, but these are mine.
I like to think of Public Dungeons as a prelude to what we’ll find in Adventure Zones at the endgame.  It’s worth noting that players were grinding like mad in these areas early on, and this is how many people hit level 50 within days of launch. You won’t find much of that now, though, as XP from mobs in these dungeons has been nerfed to the point where delves and Public Dungeons should only be played to get quests done, skyshards found, and achievements earned.  Hopefully XP on the mobs inside will be rebalanced one day for those who do like to grind.
On top of all these more public dungeons, Elder Scrolls Online has more traditional single-group instanced dungeons.  I’ve played through both the Fungal Grotto and the Banished cells now, two of the three level