What inspired you to create this tool for the ESO community?

I’ve had many inquiries in the past regarding Discord bots. I’ve initially always refused, as I was relatively unfamiliar with the commonly used programming language surrounding Discord bots, NodeJS. At one point, I just thought I’d give it a try. I have never been a fan of anything JavaScript related, but even I have to admit that the learning curve wasn’t very steep. It only took me a few hours to have the first commands up and running. At that point, I thought, “I might as well keep going now”.

What separates the Dwemer Automaton from other, similar Discord bots?

This would be two aspects that are locked in a vicious circle. First would be data completeness. It knows all the sets, skills, Crown Store items, Guild Store item prices, etc. The second point would be feature richness. And as I said earlier, these two are interlocked. A big set of useful data allows for the implementation of many features.

What has been the reaction from the ESO community since its release last year?

Very positive. There have been many celebrative comments on Discord, Twitter, and Reddit about the release (and constant updates) of the bot. As I am writing this article, the bot is serving a little over 3700 guilds/communities. I think that also says quite a bit about its popularity. Especially so given the fact that it’s not even six months old yet.

The bot can pull detailed information on item sets, Skill Lines, Crown Store items, Guild Store items, and much more. What was the most challenging aspect of developing this tool?

The bot itself wasn’t really a big challenge to build. The system that supplies the data, however, was. We’ve called this system “Beast.” The Dwemer Automaton itself does not hold any data. When a user types a command to the bot, the bot will ask Beast for the requested information. Beast will then answer to the Automaton, and the Automaton will in turn answer back to the user. Of course, the Automaton is not the only application that talks to Beast. Websites like eso-sets.com, eso-skillbook.com, and alcasthq.com all communicate with Beast in order to get relevant data to present to the user.