February is finally here, and unfortunately it’s six more weeks of winter. On the upside though, theDragon BonesDLC forElder Scrolls Onlinelaunches today, and we want to share with you some of the more important changes and updates it brings to the game. Bundle up, grab yourselves a cup of coffee and let’s get right to it.
Dragon Bones DLC Outfits (New)
The new Outfit System is now available, and allows you the freedom to customize the visual appearance of your character including both the style and dyes. With Outfits, you get to determine the appearance of every aspect of your character, piece by piece, regardless of what you are (or aren’t) wearing underneath. To begin customizing your outfit, simply locate an Outfit Station, which are available in most cities and displayed on local town maps, and equip an Outfit via the drop down menu (every Dye Station previously found in the world has been upgraded into an Outfit Station).
Each slot in an Outfit can be customized individually. Any weight of equipment can be used in your outfits for a given slot. This means that an Outfit can override the style of your chest slot to look like a heavy armor cuirass, even when wearing a light armor jerkin or leather jack, but cannot make your feet look like they are wearing gloves instead of boots. This selection and appearance persists while the Outfit is active even, if you change your equipped armor.
you may also set an Outfit to hide your currently equipped helm with the “Hide Helmet” Outfit style, which is always available. Each Outfit selection can also be re-colored, similar to equipment dyeing, using the same dyes you’ve unlocked via achievements.
In addition to armor, weapons can also be visually changed through the Outfit System. Weapon slots are divided into one-handed weapons, shields, two-handed weapons, bows, and staves. You can customize the primary and backup weapons in an Outfit separately, and will only see the weapon types that you currently have equipped. You can simply swap weapons to change which weapon types you are customizing, or swap weapon sets to adjust your other set. If you only override the appearance of two handed weapons in your active outfit, and then change to dual wielding, you will see the equipped weapons without a style override, whereas switching to another two-hander will continue to show your style override.
Home Storage (New)
You can acquire four 30-slot coffers and four 60-slot chests, for a combined total of up to 360 storage slots. All four coffers share the same visual appearance, but each has a unique name and can be nicknamed for easy organization. Chests work the same way, with their own shared appearance.
To use a storage furnishing, first travel to your home and navigate to the new Storage section of the Services category of the Housing Editor to place your collectible. Once you’ve placed a storage furnishing, you may use it at any time to deposit or withdraw items from that particular collectible. Each one has its own storage, which is separate from all other item storage. Unlike bank storage, ingredients stored in chests and coffers will not be used when crafting, and stored equipment will not appear in deconstruction, research, or upgrade windows at Crafting Stations.
You can purchase storage coffers and chests from the Mastercraft Mediator, the Crown Store, or from Tel Var Merchants. You can also earn a storage coffer from the Level Up Advisor (detailed below) upon reaching level 18, if you have not already purchased it.
Level Up and Skill Advisor (new)
Level Up Advisor
This new system is designed to teach new players about the many facets of combat and progression in ESO. It contains useful rewards for new and veteran players alike as you progress from levels 2-50, and every five levels, you will receive a milestone reward with something special such as a mount, Crown Crate, costume, or a helpfulweapon. Simply open the Character UI to claim your rewards! Below, you’ll find the list of milestone rewards:
As with the Skill Advisor, the system is pretty useless, but you do get a bunch of free shit, so that’s a plus.
Skills Advisor
This new system makes recommendations on how to spend skill points based on the build you select. you’re able to use this system to mold your character as you’re levelling up, or to help you re-specialize your build after reaching max level. This system is not very well designed and frankly I doubt many players will use it since it’s not thorough or explanatory enough to be effective. IfZenimaxputs more time into it, it could be though.
Dragon Bones Sets (New)
There are 8 new Item Sets available from the two dungeons, Scalecaller Peak and Fang Lair. Each dungeon has 1 Light Armor, 1 Medium Armor, 1 Heavy Armor, and 1 Monster Mask Item Set to acquire.
You can see from looking over these that there are some really intriguing ones, with Trappings of Invigoration inching tanks ever closer to perma-blocking, Jorvuld’s Guidance extending the duration of many buffs that you apply to the group (42 secondBarrieranyone?), and with Zaan putting out a ton of DPS on a single target if you are in range. I fully expect many of these Sets to see much more usage than theClockwork City Sets.
Battleground Changes
It’s clear thatZenimaxis trying to give players incentive to play Battlegrounds with this Update. Unfortunately I think it will just exacerbate the current problem of 4 man groups that Build just for this type wiping the floor with any randoms who jump in and attempt to compete, but we shall see.
Combat Changes
AoE Changes
Area of Effect abilities now deal full damage to all targets hit, instead of having a damage penalty after hitting 7 or more targets. Secondary effects from those Area of Effect abilities (snares, stuns, etc.) are still capped at 6 targets. This will simply make the Eye of the Storm train worse in Cyrodiil…
Channeling and Interrupt Changes
In an effort to make combat more tacticalZenimaxhas made some change to the way channelling and interrupts work. You will now move faster when channelling skills that have cast times, to entice players to use these abilities more. However, when an ability is interrupted, it is now put on a 3-second cooldown where it cannot be used. Melee cast time and channelled abilities (Uppercut, Puncturing Strikes, etc.), Ultimate abilities (Soul Strike, Rite of Passage, etc.), and Heavy Attacks are still exceptions to this rule and cannot be interrupted.
Synergy Changes
Synergies are not longer affected by Global Cooldown, which means that they can be activated while you are performing another Skill, bu the cooldown for each individual synergy has been increased to 30 seconds from 20 seconds. Synergies also now display a unique, prominent visual effect indicating if a synergy is available and can be used by your character, which is nice. In addition, Synergies will now grant the synergy prompt to the three closest allies to the center of the synergy, up from only one ally. If one ally uses the synergy, the prompt will be removed for the other two allies.
Block Cost Changes
Block Cost has been decreased to 1730 from 2160, and Jewelry enchantments that reduce the cost of Block are now subtracted from this base cost first, then percentage reductions to the cost of Block are applied. This means stacking Jewelry enchantments and block cost reduction passives will now be less effective than before. Ancient Knowledge (Destruction Staff passive) now reduces the cost of Block by 18/36%, up from 15/30%.
This means that it will be more effective for players to Block who don’t specialize in it, and less effective for those who do. This will bridge the gap between perma-blockers and players who don’t invest into Block by a modest margin.
Gap Closer Changes
Nearly every gap closer in the game has had its damage reduced by a percentage to prevent players from spamming them as regular attacks because of high damage (Critical Rush, cough).
Skill Changes
Miscellaneous Changes
Champion Point Cap Raised
The Champion Point cap has been raised by 30 points (10 in each red/blue/green constellation) for a total of 720 Champion Points. The Champion Point experience curve has been automatically adjusted with this new cap so earlier Champion Points require less experience and can be earned faster.
32-bit ClientRemoval
As of Update 17, will no longer be supporting the 32-bit client due to there being significant memory limitations with it, in conjunction with having the minimum system requirement of 3GB RAM. If you want to check to make sure you’re able to successfully run the 64-bit client, click the cog in the upper right-hand corner of the patcher, then check the box that reads “Run 64Bit Game Client.” If this doesn’t work, or if you know you’re running a 32-bit version of Windows, you’ll need to upgrade to Windows 64-bit Operating System to continue playing ESO after this change is made in Update 17.
That’s a wrap for theDragon BonesDLC update and changes. We tried to keep it as short and sweet as possible, only covering the most important things, as usual. If you have questions or comments about these changes please post them in the comments below and we’ll respond as quickly as we can.
If you liked this article, you could check out theElder Scrolls Online Clockwork City Changes Explained. Alternatively, you could read theElder Scrolls Online 2018 Plansarticle instead.
