Dragons are coming to The Elder Scrolls Online, and we also have a new expansion to look forward to, ZeniMax has announced.
It’s all happening as part of the “Season of the Dragon”, which will see The Elder Scrolls Online receive four updates throughout 2019 as part of a year-long dragon related narrative. A year long? That might drag-on a bit (sorry). The synopsis for the Season of the Dragon reads:
“The Dragons have returned to Tamriel. Unleashed upon the world by the unwitting Abnur Tharn and the Imperial usurper queen Euraxia, the great Kaalgrontiid and his followers hunt from the skies and threaten to burn down the ancestral home of the Khajiit.”
It all kicks off when dragons are introduced with the Wrathstone DLC pack that will land at some point in February, and then things will continue with the launch of the Elsweyr expansion that will release on PC/Mac, Xbox One, and PS4 on June 4th. The expansion will add a new zone to the continent of Tamriel named Elsweyr, which is the aforementioned ancestral home of the Khajiit (or the cat people, as my dad likes to call them). ZeniMax says that players will be able to:
“Traverse both fertile grasslands and scorching deserts, interact with moon-sugar farmers and wandering nomads, or confront merciless Imperial occupiers and roaming bandits. In this new Chapter, you can truly dive into the life, history, culture, and mythology of the Khajiit and their homeland.”
If that doesn’t get you excited then check out this badass cinematic trailer for the expansion:
Players have been able to get to the outer edge of Elsweyr in ESO from the regions of Reaper’s March and Khenarthi’s Roost, but this is the first time that players can fully explore the region. ZeniMax did note that Elsweyr was explorable in The Elder Scrolls: Arena, but let’s be fair, that was way back in 1994 on the MS-DOS.
As well as the new region, the Elsweyr expansion will add a new main story quest line that ties into the overarching Season of the Dragon story, and there will also be a new 12-play trial called Sunspire for players to tackle. There’s also a new class, Necromancer, which ZeniMax describes as “dark and mysterious”. As Elder Scrolls veterans will know, Necromancers can command the dead and cast elemental spells. That’s not all though, there will also be a “huge amount” of unique delves, public dungeons, and stand-alone quests added, and a load of updates and quality-of-life improvements. ZeniMax is also promising new world events in the form of Dragon Attacks (who would have guessed?), which will force players to work together to take down their fire-breathing foes.
The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr is available for pre-purchase now, and doing so will bag you some unique rewards at launch, such as a Noble Clan Chief costume, Blue Dragon Imp pet, Treasure Maps, a Baandari Pedlar Crown Crate, and Experience Scrolls. Players who decide to pre-purchase digitally will also get immediate access to the Rahd-m’Athra mount.
There are, staggeringly, four editions of The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr available (which is ridiculous, quite frankly). I’ve listed each of the four editions that will be available below, and you can also check out the benefits of each one in the handy image that ZeniMax provided:
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr Standard Edition
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr Digital Upgrade
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr Digital Collector’s Edition
- The Elder Scrolls Online: Elsweyr Digital Collector’s Edition Upgrade
To break things down for you, the Elsweyr Standard Edition is the ideal choice for new players as it contains the ESO base game, the Morrowind Chapter, the Summerset Chapter, and the Elsweyr Chapter, as well as all of the pre-purchase rewards that I listed before. Essentially, the Standard Edition gets new players completely up to speed with all of the ESO content for a price of £39.99.
The Digital Upgrade Edition is the go-to choice for existing players who already have all of the previous content, as it just adds the new Elsweyr Chapter and offers all of the pre-purchase awards for £24.99.
The other two editions, the Collector’s Edition and the Collector’s Edition Digital Upgrade, provide the same things—the Collector’s Edition containing the same as the Standard Edition and the Collector’s Edition Digital Upgrade containing the same as the Digital Upgrade Edition—as well as the following rewards:
- Senche-raht mount – Largest of all the furstocks, or “breeds” of Khajiit, the Senche-raht is fully intelligent, and in combat often serves simultaneously as warrior and mount.
- Ashen Scar Jerboa pet – There are many in the Ashen Scar, and if you catch one when it’s small, it makes for a pleasant, fuzzy friend.
- Archaic Lore Tablets memento – Invoke these Tablets of Archaic Lore and they glow with the wisdom of ancient knowledge!
- Khajiiti Culture Emote Pack – Cat-Folk Pack that includes the Cat Contemplation, Feline Hygiene, and Pedlar Beckoning emotes.
- Dragonbone Outfit Style – Allows you to convert your gear to the Dragonbone style.
Those two editions cost £49.99 and £34.99 respectively.
If you haven’t got a Scooby Doo which edition to go for then you can read the full details on the different benefits of each edition here, and all editions are currently available to buy through the Microsoft Store, the PlayStation Store, Steam, or here. You can read the full announcement regarding the Season of the Dragon here. As you can see in that announcement, there will also be a DLC dungeon pack to look forward to in Q3 2019, and a new DLC story zone in Q4 2019, but no details are known about those yet.
Looking further ahead, ZeniMax says that more information on the Elsweyr expansion will be announced in the coming months as we approach the expansions release. I’d tell you to keep it locked to Buff Nerf Repeat for all of that latest information, but why would you ever think to go Elsweyr? (sorry again).
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