OVERVIEW
The Elder Scrolls Online v0.18 presents new features in addition to tons of fixes and improvements to existing content based on tester feedback. Here’s a brief overview of what awaits you in this test:
Thousands of fixes for quest issues across the entire game.
Now after the tutorial completion, new characters will go directly to first alliance city where you will then have the choice to go to the starting islands.
Starting leveling is slightly quicker, while higher-level is a bit slower.
Implementation of Molag Bal’s newest threat – Dark Fissures, smaller version of Dark Anchors.
Player to NPC collision.
More orchestral music across all zones.
Many gameplay improvements, including balancing and polish to class and weapon abilities.
Many updates and improvements to the UI.
TEST GOALS
For this test, we have a few goals we’d like you to try and reach while playing the game.
Start a new character, and provide feedback on the new starting location experience.
Find and defeat a Dark Fissure and let us know what you think!
Travel to Cyrodiil and participate in the Alliance War.
BIG CHANGES / UPDATES / NEW FEATURES
New Post-Tutorial Experience
In order to give new characters more freedom of choice, we’ve made a change to the way that characters move between the early zones. With this change, after you complete the tutorial and escape from Coldharbour, you will now arrive in the starting city for your alliance. You will have the option to visit the original starting areas, or just go forth and start adventuring immediately. Content in and around each of these cities has been adjusted to be more easily performed by characters of levels 3-6.
Aldmeri Dominion
New characters leaving Coldharbour will now arrive in Vulkhel Guard instead of Khenarthi’s Roost. Razum-dar will be waiting for you in Eagle’s Strand when you take the quest Storm on the Horizon from Captain Tremouille. There is now a ship that will ferry you to Khenarthi’s Roost from Vulkhel Guard.
Daggerfall Covenant
New characters leaving Coldharbor now arrive in Daggerfall instead of Stros M’Kai. Kaleen will be waiting for you in Port Hunding when you take “The Broken Spearhead” from Mihayya. There is now a ship that will ferry you to Stros M’Kai from Daggerfall.
Ebonheart Pact
New characters leaving Coldharbor now arrive in Davon’s Watch instead of Bleakrock. Rana will be waiting for you in Bleakrock when you take “A Beginning at Bleakrock” from Riurik. There is now a ship that will ferry you to Bleakrock from Davon’s Watch.
Dark Fissures
Molag Bal has stepped up his attacks, and Dark Fissures are opening throughout Tamriel! These are smaller events than the larger Dark Anchors. To close a Dark Fissure, several Daedra will emerge from a fissure and must be slain. They are designed for solo or a small group.
NPC Collision
In order to make the world feel more substantial, you will now collide with NPCs, including collision with NPCs in combat. We’d appreciate everyone’s feedback about how this changes the way the world – and especially combat – feel, and of course any bugs you find with this new feature. Please note that this will not affect PvP combat with other players; collision is only on NPCs.
Known Issues
Some ship hatch doors may be difficult to target, or could potentially teleport you to locations that are slightly off where you should have ended up.
Your cursor may become active during lockpicking, and can hinder interaction with the tumblers. NPC VO will be missing or off in the starting experience.
For some people, the game will freeze for 4-6 (actually 4-11 or so) seconds at irregular intervals. During this time nothing updates – the screen locks until it comes back from this issue. If you have your task manager open you will see the CPU go to 100%. We are aware of this issue. We don’t have a fix yet, but we’re working on getting a fix out for it as soon as possible.
FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS
Alliance War
General
Experience awarded for player-character kills has been increased.
Battle bolstering now properly sets Spell Skill and Attack Skill values.
In Cyrodiil, red circles will now appear around enemy damage spells, and green circles will now appear around ally heal spells.
One Mystic apiece has been added to the Daggerfall Covenant and Aldmeri Dominion entry gates in Cyrodiil (Northern High Rock Gate and Western Elsweyr Gate, respectively). Ebonheart Pact already had one at their entry gate (Southern Morrowind Gate).
Capturing/influencing a flag now has sound associated with the visible effects.
Alliance War NPC Guards now properly reflect their difficulty on their unit frames.
Elder Scrolls will now properly “snap back” to a keep after 60 minutes if they were last held in a stasis platform within a keep and not captured in a Scroll Temple or other keep. Before this change, this was properly working for Elder Scrolls removed from Scroll Temples, but not for those removed from keeps.
Achievements have been added for killing any Emperor, and for killing an Emperor in your home Campaign.
Keep bonuses no longer display in your Character panel. They are still visible in the Alliance War Bonuses panel.
The “inspect keep” UI has been updated. When you click on a keep or resource on the map, it will now show its upgrade and level status on the left side of the map.
Quests
Experience granted for completing quests that originated in Bruma, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Cropsford, and Vlastarus has been increased.
Quests that originate in Bruma, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Cropsford, and Vlastarus can now be completed once per 24 hour cycle (resetting at 6:00 AM EST).
The amount of Alliance Points awarded for completing Scout and Capture quests has been increased.
Siege Weapons
Siege weapons will no longer disappear when mailing them to other players.
Siege weapons can now only be used by characters that are of the same alliance as the weapon. For example, you can no longer put an Aldmeri Dominion siege weapon in your bank, and use it with an Ebonheart Pact or Daggerfall Covenant character.
Art & Animations
General
Fixed a number of issues with NPC appearances.
Fixed issues with the red “missing” boxes and NPCs with red faces.
Fixed issues with some monster and quest-specific animations.
Audio
General
More NPC dialog has appropriate voiceover (this is an ongoing effort).
More zones and areas have their orchestral music (this is an ongoing effort).
Audio and sounds have been improved across many aspects of the game.
Some overall mix and balancing sound work has been done (this is an ongoing effort).
Combat & Gameplay
General
You will now accelerate when approaching max speed, and decelerate when stopping.
When changing direction of movement, the acceleration is instantaneous.
Effects from enchantments on bows now trigger properly when a heavy attack is used.
Slightly increased the difficulty of monsters beginning at level 5.
Updated camera shakes for all light and heavy attack impacts or projectile launches. They should generally be slightly larger than before.
Light and heavy melee attack animations and impacts have been improved.
Adjusted the difficulty of several bosses in the Main Quest and Mages Guild quest lines.
Fixed an issue where monsters in Veteran Rank 9 zones would appear as a level 50 monster. They should now be the appropriate level.
Fixed an issue where you would deal damage with charge abilities without actually moving to your target.
Fixed an issue where many abilities were not properly obeying line of sight rules.
Adjusted the speed of cost reduction enchants through Veteran ranks.
Fixed an issue where the Restoration Staff heavy attack beam could get stuck on a monster after the attack was complete.
Fixed an issue where you could appear to be permanently invisible after being killed by the ability Disintegration, and later reviving.
Monsters will now properly work together to use synergies against you.
Increased the damage caused by humanoid monster special attacks (attacks that can be blocked or dodged).
Updated the Vampirism stage tooltips to better reflect their effects.
Fixed an issue where the Call of the Pack passive would cause UI error sounds to play.
Fixed an issue where the Devour icon would not show up on your screen.
Logging out with a disguise equipped should no longer break the disguise.
Balance changes
Templar
Increased the radius of Spear Shards.
Updated Ritual of Rebirth so it now casts faster.
Slightly reduced the heal of Lingering Ritual.
Edited the tooltip text for Restoring Aura.
Slightly increased value of Remembrance, and the bonus damage taken now applies while channeling.
Added a 50% health requirement tooltip to Honor The Dead.
Slightly increased the cost for Focused Charge.
Adjusted Aurora Javelin and Binding Javelin so they have the same damage values.
Redesigned the Restoring Spirit passive ability. This now reduces all magicka, stamina, and ultimate costs.
Slightly increased the Aura Javelin damage bonus.
Increased the shield value per enemy hit for Radiant Ward.
Increased the angle distance for Puncturing Strikes.
Reduced the cost of Healing Ritual for Light Weaver.
Sorcerer
Fixed several issues with Charged Lighting
Slightly increased the damage-per-second of Twilight attacks.
Increased the pet damage bonus for Empowered Ward.
Increase the strength of Conjured Ward.
Reduced the armor bonuses and damage from Lightning Form.
The summoned Storm Atronach now has a different appearance, including glowing Daedric runes on him.
Fixed an issue where Lightning Flood III was doing several million more damage than intended (whoops!)
Fixed an issue where Ball of Lightning was not absorbing projectile attacks from some monsters.
Dragonknight
Reduced the cost of Petrify.
Slightly reduced the cost of Take Flight.
Slightly increased the damage return on Spiked Armor.
Slightly increased Dragon Blood healing.
Increased regeneration of Green Dragon Blood.
Reduced the crit bonus for Molten Armaments.
Made improvements to Deep Breath, including increasing the final explode damage, and causing enemies you interrupt to go off-balance.
Increased the cost of Magma Armor.
Increased the damage from Shackle.
Increased the bonus damage from Liquid Lightning.
Significantly reduced the resource restore for Battle Roar.
Fixed an issue where the molten weapons FX could get stuck on your weapon permanently.
Fixed several visual issues with the dragon leap ability.
Nightblade
Increased the morph damage of Twisting Path.
Updated the attack animation for Shadow Image. He is now immobile and shoots a bow.
Increased the cost of Rank 1 Malefic Wreath.
Sap Essence should now correctly heal you if there are no allies nearby.
Reduce the damage of Strife Healing.
Reduced the base snare of Cripple.
Increased the movement speed bonus on a concealed weapon.
Increased the healing from Hidden Refresh.
Reduced the spell damage and weapon damage of Siphoning Strikes, and increased the amount of resources restored.
Significantly increased the stamina regeneration from Focused Attacks.
Weapon Damage now properly updates in your UI when using it on multiple targets.
Weapon Abilities
Sparks now only applies to melee attacks.
Significantly decreased the chance to apply a status effect against vulnerable monsters when using Force Shock and Impulse.
Fixed an issue with Force Shock, which has resulted in a slight increase to damage.
The maximum health reduction in Pulsar no longer applies to bosses.
Increased the “bleed” chance from axes from Heavy Weapons.
Increased the “bleed” chance from axes from Twin Blade and Blunt.
Removed the cast time for Power Bash, and added a feature where you can stun your target for 2 seconds before it disorientates them.
Increased the damage done with Snipe.
Elemental Susceptibility now has a flat value instead of a percentage, which will allow destruction staffs to trigger elemental effects.
Increased the cost of Force Shock.
Decreased the cost of Force Siphon.
Significantly increased the initial damage from Cleave.
Increased the cost of Cleave.
Significantly increased the heal from Rally.
Increased the cost of Hidden Blade.
Reduced the global cooldown of Flurry.
Increased the healing from Blood Craze.
Increased the damage of the Unstable Wall of Elements explosion.
Increased the cost of Reverse Slash.
We decreased the light attack speed for all staves, and increased the damage to compensate. The damage-per-second should be the same, but individual attacks will hit for more damage.
Fixed an issue with Fire Touch occasionally not knocking back your target.
Guilds
Increase the cost of Meteor.
Burning damage should no longer have a chance to cause additional burning damage.
Reduced the damage for Dawnbreaker.
Slightly increased the cost of Silver Bolts.
Fixed an issue where you could use Caltrops to generate too much Ultimate.
Fixed an issue where you could stack multiple ranks of Rapid Maneuver to gain a huge speed bonus.
The Soul Shatter passive now requires you to have a Soul Magic ability slotted for the explosion on death to occur.
Fixed an issue where werewolves could lose the ability to Bash after going through a door.
XP and Veteran Points
The amount of XP needed to attain the next level has been adjusted across the board. Many skill lines and ability progression lines have had their XP values adjusted as well.
Increased XP for player kills.
Veteran Point rewards for quest, monster kills, objectives, and achievements have been dramatically reduced.
Veteran dungeon speed-run and deadly boss kill achievements no longer award Veteran Points.
Crafting & Economy
General
Edited the names for crafting resources and the resulting items for smithing, tailoring, and woodworking.
Fixed an issue where some smithing stations were not interactable.
Highest rank Glyphs no longer say they can be used to enchant V11+ items.
Fixed additional issues with crafting nodes that would instantly respawn.
You will now occasionally see the next tier of harvesting material in each zone.
Hirelings now send you more appropriate items in their mails.
Clannfear and Netch monsters now drop leather.
Edited names for some crafting materials.
Plant nodes in Eastmarch are now harvestable.
Cloth spawners in Malabal Tor now spawn the correct cloth plants.
Fixed an issue where monsters would drop leather inappropriate for their level.
Crafted set items now have their visual tints scaling correctly.
New in-game training manuals have been placed near starter area crafting stations.
Filtered Water now drops correctly in V1-5 zones, and Cloud Mist water now drops in V6-10 zones.
Dungeons/Group Content
General
Dungeon bosses and mini bosses now properly reflect their difficulty on their unit frames.
Dark Anchors
More monsters will now spawn at the beginning of the Daedra wave, and they will spawn faster during the event.
Overall difficulty has increased with monsters spawned in during the final boss portion.
Fixed an issue where a Dark Anchor could get stuck in a state where it is incomplete, but has no Daedra present.
Exploration & Itemization
General
More areas have lootable barrels, chests, and crates to pillage!
Fixed an issue where clickable fixtures would not spawn correctly in the tutorial.
The Guar vanity pet now has the correct item icon.
You should no longer see veteran level critters in veteran zones; they should now be level 1.
Fixed an issue where you could not loot a Main Quest 1 item if you already had it in your bank.
Updated the location for the Elden Root Shrine of Mara; it is now just east of the Elden Root Wayshrine.
Loot
Enemy loot drops now take your level into account, providing loot that is more level-appropriate. If your level is higher than the enemy’s level, loot received will be of that enemy’s level.
Items obtained by interactable objects, such as barrels and crates, now have a sell value of 0 to prevent looting exploits.
Known Issue: As a side effect, some low level items now incorrectly have a sell value of 0.
Monsters in Vaults of Madness now drop more appropriately leveled loot.
Greenshade group bosses now drop group boss-quality loot.
Items obtained from monsters in Cyrodiil are now capped at level 50.
Veteran Rank glyphs no longer drop from monsters; they must be crafted.
Kargan’s Helmet can no longer be double enchanted.
Vendors should now be showing the correct stores.
Empty interactable objects should appear empty.
Multiple quest rewards in Coldharbour now have enchantments.
Boss set items now scale correctly for veteran ranks.
Fixed a number of items which could be double enchanted.
Fixed a number of vendors who would not sell veteran rank items in veteran zones.
Equipping bind-on-equip items will give you a tutorial describing the behavior.
Reduced the quality of the items dropped in the tutorial area.
Miscellaneous
General
One Time Password functionality is now live. Untrusted devices will be prompted to enter a one time password – provided via email – in the same way that the Account website challenges untrusted devices.
Quests
General
We have fixed thousands of issues with quests and content in the game.
Eastmarch will now properly award an Achievement for exploration.
The difficulty has been adjusted for the fight at the end of the Fighters Guild quest, Will of the Council.
The end of the quest, Peledil’s End, has been extensively reworked.
Fixed issues with disguises disappearing or preventing quest progression.
Fixed several quests that could not be completed once you finished the area they were intended to introduce.
Many followers should be better at following you.
Visuals for interacting with and destroying various gems across the game have been improved.
Fixed an issue in the quest King of Dust where using the Scroll of Release would make nearby corpses stand up.
Coldharbour
Many improvements have been made to the stability of The Soul-Meld Mage.
You should now respawn to closer graveyards when dying in certain areas.
Fixed issues surrounding holes in the world where you could fall forever.
The quest Library of Dusk is now more group friendly.
Auridon
The braziers in Torinaan should be easier and more reliable to light.
Bal Foyen
The gate to Stonefalls is now unlocked.
Betnikh
A boatswain is available on the docks to take you to Daggerfall immediately.
The Abomination of Wrath (and other such bosses) should now spawn more reliably.
Bleakrock
Molla of Underfoot should now appear more reliably.
Khenarthi’s Roost
The lever in the Temple of the Mourning Springs should be more reliable.
The trail in Mistral should be visible to everyone on that quest step.
The Perils of Diplomacy is no longer reliant on completing Shattered Shoals or Temple of the Mourning Springs.
Malabal Tor
The main quest in Silvenar is more group friendly.
Reaper’s March
Restructured the area to help improve combat experiences.
Many issues in the quest Vile Manse have been improved.
User Interface
General
A warning dialog will now pop up when you try to sell your horse (mount).
The text for several tutorials, including crafting and lockpicking, has been updated.
The following localized keyboards will now automatically be detected:
US English, default German, and default French.
The color of the Veteran XP bar has been changed to an off white/gold color.
Minor improvements have been made to the loading screen layout.
New characters will no longer flicker on the first login.
In conversations, if an NPC offers you a dialogue option to access the store, the option will have the type of store appended as “Store (store type)”. For example, an alchemy vendor will display “Store (Alchemist).” Added a confirmation dialog when you attempt to convert an item’s style to the Imperial racial style.
Added an option to turn off quest-giver indicators, which is located under the Interface portion of the Settings menu. This will turn off the indicators both in-world and on the compass.
Fixed many word-wrap issues where a hyphenated word was not properly wrapping at the hyphen.
Updated the art for quest compass pins, floating quest markers, waypoints, and custom waypoints.
The “Hidden” message will now properly appear if the Crouch Eye partially opens, then you return to being hidden.
While your character is dead, the purchase/morph of abilities will no longer appear to function as if your character is still alive.
Fixed an issue that sometimes resulted in a “Character Not Found” error when attempting to whisper another player using the Radial Menu.
Pressing F1 will now open the Help UI instead of going directly to the Customer Support UI.
Most error messages that appear in the top right of your screen will now play an error sound.
Many text localization tweaks and fixes have been made.
The revive prompt will now properly display immediately when you target someone you can resurrect.
Starting the tutorial will no longer sometimes show the W, A, S, D letters outside the keys.
Fixed an issue that caused the conversation camera to break when interacting with NPCs.
We have made improvements to certain triggered events in the game. The experience bar will be shown on the top left of your screen, and sound will be heard when the following take place:
An overland boss has been killed.
An event has been completed.
You have successfully picked a lock.
You have completed a Lore Library collection.
Text will be seen in the center of your screen when you:
Complete a Rings of Mara ceremony.
Complete a Lore Library collection.
Alliance War
A tutorial for PVP daily quests has been added.
A window to the map that shows a summary of each keep and resource’s status has been added. To show the summary, click on a keep or resource in the world map.
Added ore, wood, and food upgrade tabs to the keep information window in the world map.
Added summary, production, and defense tabs for inspecting resource keeps (farm, mine, mill) on the world map.
The icons for Forward Camps, Meatbag Catapults, Oil Catapults, Scattershot Catapults, and Siege Repair Kits have been updated.
Audio
An error sound will now properly play when you press the world use (default E) and player-to player-use (default F) keys and no target is selected.
Chat
We have added zone chat channels for English, French, and German. You are not placed in these language-specific zone chat channels by default. You must join them. You can do this by clicking on your chat “Options” (the gear icon in the chat window) and enabling the one you want to join.
Channel colors for these new language-specific zone chat channels can be changed independently from each other through the “Social” portion of the “Settings” menu.
We have consolidated the functionality of the “.” cursor mode key with the chat interface. You will now automatically get the cursor when the chat interface is brought up (by pressing the Enter key, by default). New default chat colors are now available. To use them on existing characters, you must reset your chat text color options to default (under the “Social” portion of the “Settings” menu).
The profanity filter is now enabled by default. You can toggle it on and off in Options (under the Social portion of the Settings menu).
You can now change the chat window transparency in Options (under the Social portion of the Settings menu).
The chat options checkbox labels will no longer word-wrap early.
Crafting
Most crafting result messages will now appear in the center of the screen.
On potions, the longest ability cooldown has been moved to the last effect position. All previous effects no longer list a cooldown.
Smithing Interface Revisions:
The Extract tab has been separated out into the Refine and Deconstruct tabs. By default, you will now see the Refine tab when first interacting with this interface. The functionality between these interactions has not changed.
The ‘Have Knowledge’ filter is on by default on the Create tab.
HUD
The quest window’s ‘Set Focused’ function has changed.
The quest window will now open to your currently focused quest, by default.
It will now cycle through the list of quests, updating the selected quest and making it focused.
Selecting a quest manually with your mouse will automatically set the newly selected quest as focused.
We have made the following improvements to the targeting reticle: The reticle now defaults to open instead of closed.
The reticle now closes when a target is in range of your light attack or interaction.
The targeting reticle will now briefly flash red when you hit a target.
Inventory & Bank
You can now withdraw and deposit gold from your account-wide bank.
Fishing bait and siege weapons are now located under the Miscellaneous tab instead of under Consumables.
The new indicator (!) on new items will no longer clear if a single consumable in a stack of consumables is used. The “!” will now stay on a new item until you close your inventory.
Keybinds
The keybind for cycling to the next focused quest now displays on the HUD in the Quest Tracker. This is only visible if you have more than one quest.
We have removed the “Target Self” keybind.
Secondary keybinds are now considered when generating automatic keybind labels.
Maps
Maps have been added or updated for many dungeons in the game.
Dungeon maps that were zooming out to the wrong overland zone have been fixed.
Roads, bridges, or small structures that were missing from the Cyrodiil map have been added.
Many issues related to the player pin in dungeons showing in the wrong location or not showing at all have been addressed.
Fixed an issue that was preventing player-set destination pins on the World Map from being visible.
Added a map tutorial prompt in the main quest.
Tool Tips
Duration numbers are now color-coded white versus the same color as the rest of the text.
We’ve fixed a variety of issues related to tool tip formatting.
