Feast of Shadows
Two New Dungeons!
Naj-Caldeesh
The legendary Xanmeer of Naj-Caldeesh was hidden long ago. All but forgotten by the Stone-Nest Argonians of Solstice and left with few defenses, it seemed as though the Xanmeer’s secret would remain buried. However, a faction of Argonian Necromancers uncovered the entrance. Help stop the necromancers before they can corrupt the mysterious power inside and unleash Naj-Caldeesh's Voskrona Guardians on the rest of Solstice.
Black Gem Foundry
In one of the many twisted pathways of Coldharbour lies the freshly forged Black Gem Foundry. The cruel masters of this infernal armory are fusing black soul gems into weapons and armor, resulting in armaments that steal life essence with each attack. Dalenor the Summoner, scholar of Daedra and friend of atronachs, barely escaped with his life after discovering the Foundry's nefarious plot to send these armaments to support Coldharbour's forces along the Writhing Wall. He's located a portal that leads directly to the Black Gem Foundry, but he needs your help to shut it down.
New Dungeon Infomation

• Naj-Caldeesh and Black Gem Foundry are 4-player dungeons which can be found in Solstice.
  • Naj-Caldeesh’s entrance is in central Solstice west of Sunport.
  • Black Gem Foundry’s entrance is located in southern Solstice northwest of the Shell-Tide Village wayshrine.
• Both dungeons include a Normal version in addition to a Veteran version. Each dungeon features challenging Hard Modes for each of their three boss encounters.
• There are unique item sets, including two new Undaunted Monster Mask sets, only available within the Dungeons.
• Unique Achievement awards are available for completing the dungeons, including the following:
  • Unique Skill Styles
    • The “Weakness to Elements, Orange” skill style is available for those that complete the “Naj-Caldeesh Vanquisher” achievement.
    • The “Fire Rune, Dazzling White” skill style is available for those that complete the “Black Gem Foundry Vanquisher” achievement.
  • Unique Skin
    • The “Xanmeer Defender” skin is available for those who complete both Naj-Caldeesh and Black Gem Foundry on at least Veteran difficulty and trigger the achievement “Feast of Shadows Delver”.
• Two unique Mementos
  • The Seed-Heavy Hist Bulb and Slippery Soul Gem mementos are available to players who complete Naj-Caldeesh and Black Gem Foundry, respectively, on at least Veteran difficulty.
• Unique Dye
  • Weathered Keystone Green is available for those who complete the “Mining Tunes” achievement.
• Several Titles
  • Unique housing items.

Battle for the Writhing Wall
Battle for the Writhing Wall is a unique event that unites Tamriel on a mission to combat the Worm Cult and destroy the Writhing Wall in Solstice. This event progresses through three phases, with more activities becoming available as the event continues and the final battle approaches.

• Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the event are available for completion.
  • Travel to Solstice to support the Fellowship siege camps on the front lines, or provide supplies for the war effort from Stirk on the mainland.
  • Completing Fellowship Camp quests, killing Daedra and cultists at invaded sites, and clearing hostile Siege Camps and Dark Anchors will advance event progress.

Quests

• New Event Intro quest available.
  • Speak to your ally Skordo the Knife at the Solstice Fellowship Camp to learn more.
• New zone story quest that continues the fight against the Worm Cult on Solstice.
  • Speak to your ally Prince Azah at the Solstice Fellowship Camp to learn more.
• 4 Repeatable Quest types that support the war effort.
  • Orinde Glenuvon needs Vitrified Souls to power the Meridian Lens.
  • Quartermaster Nurwalne is gathering supplies to upgrade the camps.
  • Armorer Reistaff needs skilled craftspeople to supply the Fellowship soldiers with arms and armaments.
  • General Zasimba requests help clearing out hostile Siege Camps.
• Quest reward coffers are available from repeatable quests that support the war effort, which may include the following:
  • Unique Skill Style fragments: “Caltrops, Bone”
  • Unique Outfit Style: “Wormwrithe” Style Pages
  • Unique Pet fragments: "Wormwrithe Haj Mota Hatchling”
  • (Siege Camp Quests Only) Unique Motif: “Fellowship of Stirk” Motif Pages

Siege Camps

• New Siege Camp Incursions appear along the Writhing Wall in Solstice as the Worm Cult attacks.

World Boss

• In Phase 2 of the event, Ghishzor joins the fight on Solstice.

Worm Cult Invasions

• Cultists are invading sites on mainland Tamriel! Certain delves and public dungeons are populated with invading forces and Worm Cult bosses.

• There will be the usual high and mid level templates to choose from. The high level template will start players at level 50 with 3600CP with all the bells and whistles and new item sets, while the mid level will start the player with a cleaner inventory for a standard experience. Both templates will start you in Solstice.
• To participate in the new zone story quest, templates will have the Western Solstice zone story completed.

Introduction
Greetings! It has officially been an entire update with subclassing in the wild, and we’ve been closely monitoring all the fun and wacky antics unfold in its wake. We know there’s a lot of discussion over its impact in the game and how it could potentially change a lot of things moving forward (namely game balance), but we’re going to continue to watch as data comes in and solidify this brave new world! This patch will be relatively light with balance adjustments on classes, since we’re still discussing a lot of potential ways to move forward and waiting to see how behaviors, sentiment, and engagement change. This period is critical to ensure adjustments in the new subclassing era are done right for a positive play experience.

Being light on class balance still means there is some! We still have a few adjustments, largely aimed at correcting some of the less ideal behavior we’re seeing with passive slot effects. Abilities like Grim Focus and Bound Armor are often being used purely passively, granting more power than we’re happy with for how simple they’re being used. So we’re going to do some gentle reworking of what they grant. In this update, neither of these abilities nor their morphs will grant unique, unnamed effects for slotting. Instead, they’ll be granting Major or Minor effects to ensure they’re still helpful, but not in the same way as before. Additionally, we’re taking a stab at Ultimate generation and how high it can get by converting many unique Ultimate sources to the Major and Minor system. This will mainly be expressed in the form of class passives like Mountain’s Blessing or Savage Beast – where these passives will still grant the same amount of Ultimate as before, but over a duration and unable to stack with other sources of the effect.

Outside of this, you can expect two other main initiatives in this patch; regular bug fixing and a balance pass on some of our item sets. This update we’ll be doing a pretty hefty number pass on our trial sourced sets, where we try and better reward stack-based sets for their more restrictive requirements, while also lessening the delta between those who can utilize them perfectly and those who struggle to get good milage from them. The two main ways we’ll be achieving this is by building some amount of power into a passive effect, The other will be through lowering how many stacks you need to reach for them to be worthwhile! Most of these cases result in buffs for reaching their upper limits, while also making them more consistently viable by allowing you to reach those limits.

Outside of these initiatives, we’ll continue to lurk and watch over the discussions and experiences you get into, while we formulate on how to best deliver on improving the gameplay experience Tamriel has to offer. Happy reading, safe travels, and we hope to see you in Tamriel!


General

• Updated the visual effects for Dodge Roll to better convey the ramping Stamina cost of rolling multiple times in quick succession.
• Many Fear sources have been updated to no longer place two effects on you while under their influence (a fear effect and an immobilization to prevent you from moving around). Fear will now handle both occurrences in one, resulting in a case where some interaction with passives and sets will change.
• Block no longer fails if the required resource was gained while actively Bracing.
• Block no longer fails when using channel or cast time abilities while bar swapping and reinputting the command.
• Fixed an issue where some effects in your buff tray and character sheet could appear as if they had multiple stack counts, even when they didn’t. This occurred mainly when an effect with a stack count ended; their stacks would not properly flush and instead appear on the UI of the next effect in line.
• Fixed an issue where some abilities could set your Health to full when activated in very specific and rare cases. Those who know, know.
• Fixed an issue where some transformation Ultimates could surprise you upon completion, interrupting your abilities while causing them to go on cooldown.
• Interacting with certain doors no longer prevents your character from being able to use single target abilities against targets. Some doors are better left un-opened.
• Fixed an issue where temporary summon abilities could be cast and drain resources, even when their summon would fail to spawn due to being at the pet limit. This affects the following abilities:
  • Summon Shade and morphs
  • Sacrificial Bones and morphs
  • Skeletal Mage and morphs
  • Spirit Mender and morphs
• The following passives granting unique forms of Ultimate when meeting their conditions have been converted to grant Major and Minor Heroism to prevent them from stacking with one another. The total amount of Ultimate granted will be identical but will not stack with additional sources and will take more time to generate.
  • Mountain’s Blessing: Now grants Minor Heroism for 1.5/4.5 seconds with a 6 second cooldown, rather than 2/3 Ultimate with a 6 second cooldown.
  • Transfer: Now grants Minor Heroism for 1.5/3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, rather than 1/2 Ultimate with a 4 second cooldown.
  • Catalyst: Now grants Major Heroism for 7.5/15 seconds, rather than 15/30 Ultimate. This also means that the Ultimate will now only generate in combat (you can still activate the effect out of combat however).
  • Prism: Now grants Minor Heroism for 1.5/3 seconds with a 4 second cooldown, rather than 1/2 Ultimate with a 4 second cooldown.
  • Savage Beast: Now grants Minor Heroism for 3/6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown, rather than 2/4 Ultimate with an 8 second cooldown.
  • Corpse Consumption: Now grants Minor Heroism for 7.5/15 seconds with a 16 second cooldown, rather than 5/10 Ultimate with a 16 second cooldown.
  • Implacable Outcome: Now grants Minor Heroism for 3/6 seconds with an 8 second cooldown, rather than 2/4 Ultimate with an 8 second cooldown.
  [Developer Comment]
  Over time, Ultimate has become more and more accessible to players, greatly increasing the frequency in which these combat altering abilities can be activated. This has allowed for strategies that hyper focus on the generation of this resource to amass and creep up over time, creating cases where some Ultimates can be activated incredibly quickly. We're going through many sources of Ultimate and converting effects over to the Major and Minor system so they still offer powerful bonuses, but with a much more controlled ceiling. We've started with class passives in efforts to make it harder to stack their effects with subclassing in mind, while also trying to mitigate the need to gain this effect from things like scribed abilities or consumables.

Abilities

• Alliance War
  • Support
    • Barrier
      • Replenishing Barrier: This morph no longer grants 1-4 Ultimate when the shield ends. Increased the Magicka restored when the shield ends to 1200-1500, up from 700-1000.
• Guild
  • Fighter’s Guild
    • Expert Hunter
      • Evil Hunter: The damage bonus granted from this morph now applies to the damaging effects of Torchbearer.
  • Mage’s Guild
    • Meteor
      • Shooting Star: This morph now ranks down to a cost of 185. The Ultimate generation now grants 10 Ultimate per enemy hit up to a maximum of 6 times, rather than 9-12 based on rank with no limit.
        
        [Developer Comment]
        Shooting Star should be a bit rarer to use than it currently is - so we're putting a hard cap on this effect of the standard 6 enemies, rather than 100. Realistically there are very few cases where more than 6 enemies grouped up within 5 meters of one another, so this shouldn't hurt its effectiveness in general play experiences. This is mainly to make master mob shepherding a little less powerful.

Class Abilities

• Necromancer
  • Grave Lord
    • Flame Skull: Resolved the issue where corpses generated from this ability and its morphs could not be replaced, causing you to quickly reach the summon limit and be unable to activate other summon abilities.
• Nightblade
  • Assassination
    • Grim Focus: This ability and its morphs now grant Major Prophecy and Savagery (12% Critical Chance) for slotting on either bar. These abilities no longer grant increasing Weapon and Spell Damage per stack. Additionally, these abilities now play their special sound effects when reaching their activation conditions.
      • Relentless Focus: This morph now ranks up in cost reduction, since there is no Weapon and Spell Damage granted per stack any longer. Instead, this morph reduces the number of stacks needed to activate the ability to 4, down from 5.
  • Shadow
    • Shadow Cloak: This ability and the Shadowy Disguise morph now grant Minor Protection (5% reduced damage taken) for slotting on either bar, rather than Major Prophecy and Savagery.
      • Dark Cloak: The bonus healing condition for this morph now requires you to be actively Bracing (holding Block), rather than to not be moving. The healing duration from this ability is no longer influenced by the Dark Veil passive.
• Sorcerer
  • Daedric Summoning
    • Bound Armor: This ability and the Bound Aegis morph now passively grant Major Resolve (up to 5948 Armor) for slotting on either bar, rather than granting Minor Protection (5% reduced damage taken) and increasing your Max Magicka by 5-8%.
      • Bound Armaments: This morph now grants Major Sorcery and Prophecy (12% Critical Chance) for slotting, rather than 8% Max Stamina.
  • Dark Magic
    • Dark Exchange
      • Dark Deal: This morph no longer grants Minor Force. This morph’s Minor Berserk is no longer half as long as the base ability.
  • Storm Calling
    • Lightning Form: This ability and its morphs now grant Minor Force while active, rather than Major Resolve.
  Weapon Abilities
  • Restoration Staff
    • Blessing of Protection: Fixed an issue where this ability and the Blessing of Restoration morph's healing and buff application was twice as long as intended (800ms delay instead of 400ms).
      • Combat Prayer: Fixed an issue where the healing and buff application from this morph was instant, rather than having its intended 400ms delay.
  • Two-Handed
    • Berserker Strike
      • Berserker Rage: This morph's Crowd Control Immunity now work as intended.

Buffs & Debuffs

• Major Heroism: Reduced the intensity and volume of sound effects from this effect.

Scribing

• Grimoires
  • Banner Bearer: Adjusted the combination effect of the Class Mastery script as an Arcanist with this Grimoire. This effect will now only generate a Crux if you have no Crux active.
    
    [Developer Comment]
    We're toning down how passive Crux generation has become since this combination was introduced. Crux was designed to play a central role in the Arcanist's rotation, and most of its sources are built on taking actions with an active cost or reacting to events outside of one's control. Passive forms of Crux tend to have a limitation on their activation: Cruxweaver requires taking damage with a mild cooldown and Tome-Bearer's Inspiration requires you to have no Crux active. Both limitations are done to ensure you cannot purely passively generate Crux, or that it takes an extended period of time to do so. Banner Bearer has disrupted this significantly, causing a sharp increase in performance for the Arcanist above any other class - despite it also generating a plethora of other impactful events. With this reduction we’ll continue to look at creating a compromise effect if you do have a Crux active, so this combination doesn’t feel like a complete loss in power.

General

• The Akatosh, Mara, and Stendarr Shrines in the Great Chapel of Zenithar are now more "centered" on their respective fixture and should no longer give range errors when interacting from the sides or behind the objects.
• The Leyawiin map icons for the Great Chapel of Zenithar no longer list two non-functional shrines (Kynareth and Arkay) as service providers.

Infernium

• Your character animates correctly when knocked back by the "Tail Lash" ability.

General

• Weapons of Destruction: The map and compass pin for the step “Confront the Inevitable” are no longer off-center.

General

• Ashen Scar: Excavated a Bone Flayer and Skeletal Senche encounter from inside a rock. Why? Because necromancy, that’s why!

General

• Curation of item sets in Sunspire Trial is now working as intended.

General

• Tournament of the Heart: The floating weapon appearing outside Aspirant Mortens's door is no longer there. It was all an illusion! *Cue spooky hands*

Polymorphs

• Players wearing the Voskrona Guardian polymorph will now whistle as expected when summoning their mount.

Ossein Cage

• General
  • Tab target will now always correctly cycle targets when used repeatedly.
  • Bridges in Ossein Cage will now always appear intact even when leaving and re-entering the area.
• Overfiend Kazpian
  • Kazpian will now always award the correct amount of loot rather than extra. Kazpain’s Oprah days are done.
  • Kazpian will now only transition between platforms when intended.

Survey Reports

• Several rich nodes have been placed closer together in Solstice.

Fort Colovia

• We believe we have fixed the issue where after ringing the Fort Colovia Distress Bell, it then continues to ring until you logout.
  • If you still run into this issue please report it in the bug section along with any related details you can think of so that we can provide that info to the Dev Team. Thanks!

Vengeance Test 3

• Various systems have been turned on for this testing round to see what overhead they could contribute to overall performance. Skyshards, Mount Selection (along with any collectibles allowed in Cyrodiil), Titles, and Achievements have been re-enabled.
• Meatbag Catapults are back, however they no longer leave a ground lingering effect and only effect players on impact.
• Mages and Fighters Guild lines have been added, again, with tailored abilities for performance.
• A new armor skill line has been added which includes all three active abilities for light, medium and heavy armor, tailored for performance.

Endeavors and Golden Pursuits

• Endeavors and Golden Pursuit tasks for completing consumable and durable Master Writs now correctly categorize enchanting glyphs as a consumable product instead of a durable product.

Customized Actions

• The Lunar Oregathering customized action was now player the correct sound effects when harvesting Rubidite Ore.

Polymorphs

• Players wearing the Molag Bal Illusion polymorph will now whistle as expected when summoning their mount.

Infinite Archive

• Verses and Visions
  • Players will now always be able to summon pets regardless of which verses are active.

General

• Fixed a large batch of harvest node placement issues in Bleakrock Isle, Bal Foyen, Stros M’Kai, Betnikh, and Khenarthi’s Roost.
• Rewards from all Trial leaderboards now include purple quality Transmutation Geodes.

General- Houses

• Fixed an issue in the “Ebonheart Chateau” house where you could be hurt by lava without touching it in some areas.
• Fixed a few minor visual issues in “Bismuth Steam Bath” house.
• In the Amaya Lake Lodge you no longer will have your initial view of the home obscured by a black box.

General- Furniture

• Adjusted the pivot point for the following furnishings to better align the nodes to the furnishings:
  • High Isle Pillar, Ornate
  • Clam Shell, Large
• Adjusted the preview of the following furnishings when viewed from your inventory:
  • Tide-Born Totem, Short
  • Tide-Born Totem, Medium
  • Tide-Born Totem, Tall
• Adjusted the following furnishings' description text to say "huge" as they are huge furnishings:
  • Solstice Bismuth, Gigantic Deposit II
  • Boulder, Vertical Sandstone
  • Tree, Gigantic Water Chestnut
• Adjusted the description of "Conch, Large Spiny" furnishing to better match its size.
• Adjusted the following furnishing names:
  • “Pigment Bowl, Blue Large” removed a space between “Pigment” and “Bowl”.
  • “Statue, High Elf Hero” was changed to “Statue, Elven Hero” to match other depictions of this character.
  • "Tree, Banana" is now "Sapling, Banana" to match the category better.
  • "Tree, Sierra Palm” is now "Sapling, Sierra Palm" to match the category better.
  • “Solstice Bismuth, Large Tower” is now “Large Solstice Bismuth Tower” to match the antiquity lead name.
  • “Stone-Nest Totem, Geometric” is now “Geometric Stone-Nest Totem” to match the antiquity lead name.
• You can now obtain the "Blueprint: Tide-Born Duster, Wicker" furnishing plan from Solstice as expected.
• Furnishing packs purchased from the crown store should now properly sort into the consumable category in your inventory.

UI

• We modified the Housing Editor UI slightly to list where furniture will be retrieved, next to the keybind of "Put Away". This retrieve to location can be changed when in retrieve mode in the Housing Editor.

General

• Resolved a rare instance where you sometimes would be unable to interact after using a chair.
• Camera errors with NPCs and objects have been resolved throughout the base game.
• Fixed a few more “speedy guards” patrolling around cities in the game. Nyoooooom!
• Updated the "Finding Item Sets" help entry to include information on crafted sets, as well as group dungeon, arena, and trial sets.

Energy Sustainability

• In the settings menu, you can now adjust whether Energy Sustainably is enabled or disabled while viewing menus.
• You can now set how long it takes for Energy Sustainability effects to turn on while you are idle. Three options are available in the settings menu.

Mounts

• Large mounts no longer disappear when viewed from certain angles.

Outfit Station

• Your legs no longer get distorted at an outfit station.

Preview

• Previewing Skill Styles while a costume or polymorph is equipped now works as intended.

General

• Fixed issue where numerous enemy-summoned Ice or Molten Pillars counted toward giant kills for Endeavors.
• Mudcrabs that were respawning too quickly in Alik'r, Bleakrock, and Stormhaven have been dealt with.

Gandranen Ruins

• Fixed an Ancient Fire Mage that was not targetable until it moved away from its spawn point.

Craglorn

• The Warrior’s Call: Titus Valerius now goes into a defensive posture when you enter combat, rather than standing there like a lump.

Khenarthi’s Roost

• Cast Adrift: Fixed an issue where Jyklos’s storm effects could persist on both him and his spawn location during combat.

Main Quest

• Soul Shriven in Coldharbour:
  • Lyris learned how to open doors, rather than phase through them to enter The Bleeding Forge.
  • The Freezing Sigil trap will properly trigger in The Undercroft.
• Shadow of Sancre Tor: Molag Bal’s grubby hand now appears when he arrives to claim Mannimarco’s soul.
• Companions and Pets no longer their ghostly VFX after exiting any of the Prophet’s visions.

A Moonlit Shadow

• You no longer caninteract with other players’ Zerith-vars (ominously named “Grim Swordmage”).

General

• Stack counts do not display on buffs that don't have stacks.
• Icons should now display correctly when clicking and dragging.
• Resolved a UI error related to unit attribute visualizers.
• Multiple text labels throughout the UI now use the correct color.
• The confirmation message for sending a C.O.D mail now correctly displays the username.
• Adjusted the messaging and display of locked skill styles.
• Item style will now show on its own line in an item tooltip.
• You will now load in to the pre-login screen several seconds faster.
• Fixed a potential crash related to map pins.
• Fixed UI error that could occasionally appear in keyboard UI when navigating to the Golden Pursuits menu.
• Quests markers now show on the map while in a house.
• Your companion will no longer overlap with you when summoning a companion while in a group.
• Loot menus should no longer get stuck on the screen while moving.
• Made additional adjustments to UI assets as part of the UI refresh.
• Added a new "Toggle Sprint" setting for keyboard. When “On”, turns your sprint into a toggle instead of a hold (like how gamepad behaves innately.)
• Attempting to place furniture after purchasing no longer causes the camera to lock.

Additional Controller Customizations

• The team has added further controller customizations, specifically for look speed in first and third person. These new options can be found in the Camera Settings menu.

Audio

• Added a replay dialog button to NPC interactions. Also added screen narration support to the NPC conversation screen.
• Added missing menu sounds to multiple screens.
• Menu sounds should be playing correctly as intended.
• The functionality that muffles background sounds while scrying no longer gets stuck on your character.

Console

• Audio settings on the launch screen are now being respected.

Gamepad

• Swapped currency and capacity on the store header to match the order in inventory.
• Adjusted the default input mode to automatic for new installs and made it so the mouse can be used in gamepad menus without auto-swapping the UI to mouse and keyboard.

Language

• Japanese
  • Fixed spacing issue in Japanese lore books.