PTS Patch Notes v7.0.2

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

The Elder Scrolls Online v7.0.2 includes numerous fixes for Companions and Rockgrove trial, along with several adjustments for item sets and their scaling. We also have added a new event for testing this week – the Pan-Elsweyr Celebration – and will be running several tests to assess the impact of Companions on in-game performance. We’ve also copied all PC EU characters in this patch, which is approximately 181MB in size.

New Features / Updates / Big Changes
- Pan-Elsweyr Celebration
- Companion Performance Testing
Known Issues
Template Updates
Fixes & Improvements
- Chapters & DLCs
  - Blackwood
  - Greymoor
  - Wolfhunter
- Combat & Gameplay
  - Combat & Abilities
  - Itemization & Item Sets
- Base Game
  - Exploration & Itemization
  - Miscellaneous
  - UI

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Pan-Elsweyr Celebration
Dragons? In the Khajiit homeland? What are you going to do? Knock 'em out of the sky, of course! Return to Elsweyr this week to test the Pan-Elsweyr Celebration, which encompasses both Northern and Southern Elsweyr zones.

As with other zone celebrations, Elsweyr Coffers will drop from performing activities in either zone. These activities include defeating bosses, opening treasure chests, harvesting nodes, and completing daily quests.
The first daily quest you complete in either Northern or Southern Elsweyr each day will reward a Glorious Elsweyr Coffer.
- Coffers have a chance to drop tradeable pages of the new Ja'zennji Siir armor style, in addition to myriad other rewards.
- Bound versions of this style are available on the Impresario for 5 Event Tickets each.
You can earn up to two Event Tickets per day during this event. One ticket comes from the first Northern Elsweyr daily quest you complete, while the other comes from the first Southern Elsweyr daily quest you complete.
If that's not enough, all daily quest (or weekly Sunspire trial quest) reward boxes from Elsweyr zones are doubled, and resource nodes have a greater yield. All Northern and Southern Elsweyr world bosses and Dragons drop extra loot, as do the bosses from the Sunspire trial.
Last but not least, the first fragment of a new mount type, the Dagonic Quasigriff, is available on the Impresario for 10 Event Tickets.

Companion Performance Testing
Companions are a new, exciting feature coming with the Blackwood Chapter, but it’s also a huge system that touches many different parts of the game and has the potential to have performance implications on both the client and server. Improving in-game performance has been a huge focus for us and we’re starting to make significant progress towards our goal; progress that we don’t want to undo with Companions. We’ve been testing Companions a lot internally, but situations on the Live megaservers are a very different scenario and one that we can’t replicate perfectly. As such, we’ve built in a number of dials and knobs that will allow us to tweak the impact of Companions while we find the right balance.

Over the course of the remaining PTS cycle, we will be testing these dials to ensure they work and to better assess the impact they have. Some of the tests we will be running include:
- Only showing your Companion or the Companions of group mates when in high population areas (i.e., cities)
- De-spawning all Companions in Cities
- De-swawning Companions during extreme high population encounters (i.e., Harrowstorms or Dragons)
Please keep in mind these are just tests and that there may be more after this first batch as we measure impact. These tests are vital for us and will help determine what we will do for Live.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Item Sets

Aegis Caller: This set is currently doing more damage than intended.
Nightflame: This set is currently healing more than intended.
Stone Husk: This set is currently doing more damage than intended.
Unleashed Terror: This set is currently dealing less damage than intended.

Blackwood

Icons for 4 additional Wayshrines in Blackwood may appear on your map. These Wayshrines are being added in a future PTS patch.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Updated the "Companion Booster" item, found in the Companion's Arsenal container for PTS template characters. It now unlocks and fully advances all of the skill lines for your active Companion.
The Antiquarian's Folio of Leads no longer contains another copy of itself. This was done to prevent a rare issue that could cause disconnection issues or long loading times for certain characters. We're currently investigating alternative means of providing PTS Antiquarians with a repeatable method of acquiring the full gamut of Leads.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Companions

General
- Fixed an issue that could rarely cause Companions and combat pets to move to your character’s location and overlap after combat.
- Companions are no longer interactable during the scripted moments from the God of Scheme quest.
- Companions will now continue to grieve when your character dies, and won’t just get back up and carry on with their lives.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when changing languages with an active Companion.
- Mirri’s negative reaction to the use of Blade of Woe is now more consistent.
- When initially acquired as a Companion collectible, Bastian's hand armor is now medium weight bracers to be consistent with the rest of his armor.
Animation
- Fixed an animation issue that could cause Companion weapons to pop during some transitions.
- Improved Mirri’s animation transitions between standing and walking.
- Fixed an issue where your character could be incorrectly dismounted when exiting a menu with a Companion active.
- Fixed an issue that could cause Companions to appear to be walking when being utilized at outfit stations.
- Companions will now appropriately visually cull out when in dialogue with other NPCs.
Audio
- Bastian now has something to say (and grants completion of an Achievement) when entering Eyevea with him.
- Bastian will now occasionally comment when you defeat many bandits and cultists throughout the world.
- Fixed an issue causing some Companion dialogue to be quieter than intended.
Combat
- Companions will now block incoming blockable attacks more consistently.
- Fixed an issue which caused some healing abilities to not properly target Companions.
- Frost Blast now has a visual impact on targets.
- Fixed a visual issue with the Companion Cauterize ability projectile which could cause it to persist.
- Improved the consistency of targeting fallen Companions with Soul Gems for resurrection.
- Removed camera shakes from Companion abilities.
- Mages Guild, Fighters Guild and Undaunted solo daily quests now correctly grant skill line experience to Companions as intended.
Rapport
- Fixed an issue that could rarely cause Companions to respond to or have rapport changes for seemingly no reason.
UI
- Fixed an issue where experience gain from Companions would still appear in the loot stream UI after the Companion hit max level.
- Fixed an issue where your companion's experience progress could temporarily display as empty or with incorrect values.
- Fixed an issue where the Companion rapport description was displaying localization tags.
- Fixed an issue where the tooltip for the Companion Ultimate auto cast setting had incorrect text.
- Fixed an issue where Companion items would appear in the re-trait tab of Transmute stations even though Companion items can't be re-traited.
- Mounts and costumes that can't be used by Companions now note as such in their tooltips.
- Slightly adjusted Companion equipment icons to avoid truncation issues.
- Fixed a minor text issue in Bastian’s Companion collectible tooltip.
- If an unlocked companion's intro quest is incomplete on a character different than the one that unlocked it, the collectible's tooltip will now specify the required quest.
- Fixed an issue that could cause the broken equipment UI element to overlap with the Companion Ultimate ability box.
- Companion item trait information on Companion equipment tooltips will now include decimal values, to better distinguish between the impact of different tiers of quality.

General

Your Crafting Writs will now point you to the correct turn-in site in Leyawiin if you are doing them in Blackwood.

Rockgrove Trial

General
- Hard Mode difficulty is now unlocked for all bosses in Veteran Rockgrove.
- The achievements Rockgrove Sprinter, Will of Stone and Soul Savior no longer require you to defeat Basks-In-Snakes or the injured Sul-Xan militants. Achievement descriptions are updated to reflect this.
- Stranglers created by Sul-Xan Reavers will no longer persist after the Reaver has been defeated.
- Sul-Xan Bloodseekers will no longer defy gravity momentarily when using their Fire Jump ability.
- Updated the casting visuals for Soul Extraction and the telegraph has been updated on player targets.
- Updated the target selection for Soul Extraction.
- Soul Extraction now deals less damage in normal mode and the damage can be blocked. However, player characters that are indirectly impacted by the area effect take increased damage.
- Astral Shield no longer stacks.
- Soul Remnant projectiles now fire from the monster that just had its Astral Shield expire, and the damage is now sourced from that same monster.
- Soul Remnant now deals slightly less damage in Normal mode.
- The shield value provided by Astral Shield is now less potent in Normal mode.
- Lowered the damage of the Ignite Damage over Time ability.
- Dremora Armigers will no longer summon Daedric Arch.
- Havocrels will no longer have the chance to appear twisted when dying.
- Havocrel Butchers no longer twist unnaturally when performing their Uppercut ability.
- Havocrel Butchers will no longer move while casting Fire Trails and the visual effects will no longer get stuck.
- Havocrel Torchcaster’s Meteor Call ability will no longer display two telegraphs at the impact location.
- Havocrel Barbarians are much more selective of which player characters they will teleport to.
- Increased the health of the Ash Titan.
- The Ash Titan’s Molten Rain ability will now target more player characters with each successive volley.
Basks-In-Snakes
- Reduced the ground clutter around Basks-In-Snakes.
- Basks-In-Snakes will no longer create a second Basks-In-Snakes when he is victorious in combat.
- Summoned snakes will no longer persist if Basks-In-Snakes is victorious.
- The Giant Snake no longer awards experience upon defeat.
Oaxiltso
- Oaxiltso will now always play the correct death effects when defeated.
- Oaxiltso will now always cast Savage Blitz when intended.
- Reduced the camera shake applied by the Savage Blitz ability.
- Molten Earth’s Area of Effect flames will now always display correctly.
- The Molten Earth ability now does increased damage in Veteran difficulty.
- The UI visualization which indicates that Oaxiltso or the Havocrel Annihilator are enhanced by the Blazing Boon effect will now only appear when Blazing Boon is active.
- The meteors that fall from the Havocrel Annihilator's Sunhammer ability will now fall at the same synchronized speed.
- Havocrel Annihilator’s Cinder Cleave ability will no longer display an erroneous icon in your active effects UI when you are being targeted.
- Damage from the Ashen Wounds effect will now persist even if the Havocrel Annihilator is defeated.
- Damage from the Meteor Crash ability can now be dodged as intended.
- Made adjustments to where the Havocrel Annihilators choose to arrive.
- Removed the rocks surrounding the Ruined Springs.
Flame-Herald Bahsei
- Standing close to the Oblivion gate after defeating Bahsei will no longer cause the interact prompt to disappear.
- Flame-Herald Bahsei, Fire Behemoths, and Flesh Abominations will now target Companions correctly.
- Bahsei’s Prime Meteor ability will now correctly affect Companions.
- Prime Meteors will now appear more frequently in Veteran difficulty.
- Adjusted the cast time of the Flesh Abomination’s Hemorrhaging Smack to better align with the visuals.
- Increased the health of Flame-Herald Bahsei and Flesh Abominations in Veteran difficulty.
- Embrace of Death now affects any player characters hit by Kiss of Death and deals damage to all players nearby.
- Adjusted the initial cast time of Bahsei’s Torch the Sky and Prime Meteor to be used earlier in the fight.
Xalvakka
- Companions are now correctly damaged by Xalvakka’s Area of Effect abilities.
- Xalvakka and her Volatile Shell will no longer change its visual appearance when afflicted with player abilities.
- Xalvakka’s flame eyes now appear in her eyes… you know, where they should be.
- The damage from Volatile Shell no longer has the chance to apply once the Shell is destroyed.
- Lightning and Restoration Staff Heavy Attacks will no longer look odd when attacking a Volatile Shell or Xalvakka herself.
- Xalvakka will now animate correctly when casting Volatile Shell.
- You will now correctly “Join the Encounter in Progress” to the correct phase of the fight.
- Nova damage from Volatile Shell now increases the damage it does over a longer period of time. Don’t stand in the stupid.
  - Note: This increased Nova damage does not reset when the target dies.
- The damage received from Unstable Charge from standing in the Corrupted Azureplasm now increases in damage as the Azureplasm grows in size.
- Xalvakka will no longer briefly appear invisible after teleporting.
- Area of Effects from Deadstar are now all the same size.
- Scathing Evisceration will no longer cancel casting when Xalvakka drops below her health threshold.
- Walls of Flame will now always be visible.
- Xalvakka will now always begin casting Creeping Manifold when intended.
- Xalvakka’s tail will now correctly animate during and after casting Scathing Evisceration.

General

Relocated several fishing nodes to make them more accessible.
Added heavy sacks in the wilderness sections of Blackwood.
Added resource nodes for Cloth, Mushrooms, Plants, Thieves Troves, Wood, and Runestones to Blackwood.
Reduced the number of Safeboxes active within Blackwood to their intended amounts. (Previously, all possible Safeboxes were spawned at once, which was not intended.)
Reduced the number of Treasure Chests active at one time within the Silent Halls Public Dungeon to the intended amount.
Increased the number of Treasure Chests that can be active within Zenithar's Abbey to their intended amount.
Ivory Brigade motif chapters can now drop from Psijic Portals found in Blackwood.
Fixed an issue which caused some Blackwood Delves' enemies to drop more loot than intended.

Achievements

The "Summon Companion of Max Level" part of the "Brother-In-Arms" and "Treasured Comrade" Achievements will now work properly.
Updated the "Oblivion Obliterator" Achievement to properly list the Ash Titan boss's name as "Salosuum".
Updated the "Comrade's Steed" Achievement to more clearly state its requirements. You must not only change your companion's mount, but also mount up (causing them to mount up as well).
Updated the test of a number of Achievements that previously referred simply to "Defeat Enemies in Oblivion Portals". These Achievements now correctly indicate that you must destroy the catalyst in Oblivion Portals.

Treasure Maps

Fixed an issue which prevented Blackwood Collector's Edition Treasure Map Chests from dropping Companion gear or the equipment that is expected of CE Treasure Map chests.
Updated Blackwood Treasure Map V's image to better indicate the location of the treasure.

General

You can now preview the lines for the houseguest versions of Bastian and Mirri in their Housing Editor previews.

Homes

Updated the image for Water’s Edge in the Crown Store and the Collections menu.
Updated the name of the Pantherfang Crypt doors to Pantherfang Undercroft n Pantherfang Chapel, to better reflect the area those doors lead to.
Fixed an issue where some of the walls in Pantherfang Chapel, near the entrance to the undercroft, didn’t have the self-confidence to stop people from walking straight through them. They’re just as good as any other wall, and they know that now.

General

Increased the density of monsters in some locations of the wilderness.
Increased the amount of active Oblivion Portals in Blackwood.
Resolved several timing issues related to quest audio and voice over.
Updated several lorebooks so they can now be found and read after completing their related quests.
Fixed a number of buildings inside Leyawiin that were not showing proper quest assists.
Fixed an issue if you spoke to Sevilo too quickly, his face would morph into a horrible nightmare (we suspect Hermaeus Mora was involved in these shenanigans…)
Looted items in Borderwatch are no longer considered stolen.
Added a number of missing maps for this zone.
Fixed an issue that involved invisible collision on a drawbridge in certain locations.
You can no longer sit on the Eater of Knowledge inside White Stallion Inn. Yeah, you read that right.
Added “Interesting Location” icons for Ayleid Wells to the overworld map. You can complete these locations by drawing power from their source.

Quests

A Deadly Secret: Fixed an issue where the quest assist was pointing to the wrong location.
A Mother’s Obsession: Fixed an issue where you could not advance past the quest step “Go to the Inner Sea Armature”.
Ghost Writer of Giovesse:
- All of Mathen and Yisara’s VO lines can now be heard correctly.
- The Duchess Asetella no longer pops into a scene where she shouldn’t be.
Shattered and Scattered:
- Fixed an issue with gate levers not animating.
- The beams attached to the levers will now properly disappear on use.
- Reduced the interact range on a number of grapple points that were causing interference with quest interactions.
Shrine of Nocturnal: Your character will now properly place Nocturnal’s sickle at her shrine.
The Face of Change:
- Corrected some inconsistencies in the Quest Journal.
- Fixed a number of quest tracker issues and text/VO mismatches.
The Rising Wind:
- Fixed a number of text/VO mismatches.
- Fixed a number of doors that were named incorrectly.
- Fixed an issue where not speaking to Meer-Ta during a certain step would cause the quest to become blocked.
- There will now be more threats in your path on your way to completing Elossi’s trial.

Tutorial

Norianwe will no longer reference Bal Foyen in her dialogue.
Adjusted the conversation after the Combat Tutorial to prevent it from accidently restarting if quickly clicking through.
Fixed an issue where invisible versions of Norianwe could be interacted with at certain portals.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Antiquities

Fixed a number of minor typos and added missing Lore entries to Blackwood Antiquities.
Adjusted the naming of the Leads for some Chapters of Ancestral Motifs, to more closely match the actual Motif Chapter items.
Updated the boundaries of Antiquity dig sites within Blackwood.
The Blackwood Tapestry and the Kothringi Tidal Canoe now have appropriate icons.
Fixed an error that prevented the acquiring of many Blackwood Tapestry fragments' Leads.
Fixed an issue that occasionally prevented the acquisition of bonus loot when excavating Antiquities in Blackwood.
Removed some remaining in-game references to an early Mythic jewelry piece, the Harvester's Hope-Ring, which was ultimately not added to the game at this time.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

Dungeons

March of Sacrifices
- The Trick and Trap achievement no longer incorrectly states that it can only be completed in Veteran difficulty.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

General

The Damage over Time effects listed below will now contiguously update their damage based on your stats each tick, rather than following the standard of snap shotting their stats on application. This should fix a few issues where they were not inheriting traits, such as Bloodthirsty, or other changes in stats like Flawless Dawnbreaker.
- Arms of Relequen
- Cutting Dive
Fixed an issue causing your character to experience desynchronized death states, causing them to live for a few seconds after dying.
Fixed an issue where you could continue to gain effects past the effect limit, creating situations where effects gained would persist indefinitely rather than failing to apply. This will fix multiple issues with Character Stats showing buffs or debuffs lasting long past our life span as mere mortals.

Necromancer

Living Death
- Restoring Tether
  - Braided Tether (morph): Fixed an issue where this ability healed the caster twice per tick.

Alliance War

Assault
- War Horn
  - Sturdy Horn (morph):
    - Increased the Critical Resistance granted from this Ultimate to 1320, up from 990, to match the adjustments to Major Force increasing to 20%.
    - Fixed an issue where the Critical Resistance granted could be stacked per cast.

General

Made the following adjustments to item set scaling:
- Sets that use Weapon and Spell Damage now require 6574 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 5478, resulting in approximately a 17% reduction.
- Sets that use Magicka or Stamina now require 39,901 of either in order to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 4% reduction.
- Sets that use Health now require 43,968 to reach their original values, up from 38,350, resulting in approximately a 13% reduction.
- Sets that use Physical or Spell Resistance now require 30,680 of either, up from 27,890, resulting in approximately a 9% reduction.
Fixed an issue when mixing Perfected and non-Perfected item set pieces to cause some major/minor buffs to appear twice on your character.
Fixed multiple visual effect errors when using new item sets in first-person view.

Ability Altering Weapons

Merciless Charge: Reduced the damage of this set by approximately 33%.

Crafted

Song of Lamae: This set now scales off of Max Health rather than Weapon or Spell Damage.

Overland

Cyrodiil’s Ward: Fixed an issue that could cause some sources of this item set to drop ranged weaponry.
Frostbite: Increased the damage done with Frost Damage to 8%, up from 6% to help this set to offer more of a bite. Haha so original.
Way of Martial Knowledge: Fixed an issue where this set would not proc on some NPCs.

Dungeon & Arena

Crimson Twilight: Reduced the damage done by this set by approximately 44%.
Explosive Rebuke: This set now applies Burning to enemies hit but deals approximately 42% less damage.
Icy Conjuror: This set now ticks every 2 seconds instead of 1 second but the total coefficient remains unchanged except for the global reduction.
Unleashed Terror: This set now applies the Hemorrhaging status effect each tick but deals approximately 46% less damage.
Widowmaker: This set now lasts for 10 seconds with a 10 second cooldown, instead of 5 seconds with a 5 second cooldown.

Monster Masks

Scourge Harvester: Reduced the damage dealt by this set by approximately 30%.
Thurvokun: Increased the damage dealt by this set by approximately 22%.

Mythic Items

Death Dealer's Fete:
- Reduced the Health, Magicka, and Stamina granted from this set to 88, down from 150.
- Increased the max stacks to 30, up from 10
Developer Comment:
Previously, this set didn't bring enough power to the table and had a very easy interaction case. While wanting to sell the concept of getting stronger the longer you stay in combat, the previous 20 seconds cap felt too low to really grant larger bonuses. With this new 60 second build up, we can reward much more resources than before, hopefully making this set more fun and impactful.
Gaze of Sithis:
- Reduced the Max Health granted from this set to 3276, down from 5000.
- Reduced the Armor granted to 4000, down from 10760.
- Increased the Health Recovery granted to 1025, up from 500.
Developer Comment:
Now that Battle Spirit has ingrained mitigations against stacking high Health Recovery in this Update, we've opted to take a much more balanced approach to this set’s bonuses, equalizing all three of them rather than weighting for Armor and Health. With this, the goal is to have the set be more balanced for builds who are using it to gain tons of survivability while ignoring the main drawback of the set, since many builds may not block frequently to begin with.
Harpooner's Wading Kilt:
- Increased the Critical Strike Chance per stack to 125, up from 119.
- Reduced the Critical Damage done to 1% per stack, down from 2%.
- This set now causes you to lose 5 stacks upon taking direct damage, rather than 1, but it now also has a 1 second cooldown to help prevent losing all of your stacks in Player versus Player situations when getting hit by multiple attacks at once.
Developer Comment:
This set was originally presented as "don't get hit, the game" but in PvE encounters, that is the ideal gameplay to begin with. By keeping that in mind, as well as the massive difference in attack cadence between PvE and PvP, we've readjusted the rewards and the penalty of this set to help bring a tighter balance between the two, with a more engaging risk of running the set in general.
Shapeshifter's Chains: Increased the Health, Magicka, and Stamina granted from this set while transformed to 1707, up from 1206.
Developer Comment:
Previously, this set wasn't offering much for Werewolves as the stat gain was pretty low, and the cost reduction felt much less impactful since your main goal with the Ultimate is to never leave it to begin with. Bone Goliath and Blood Scion both receive much more effectiveness out of the cost reduction, while the max stats are less relevant since they already have large stat steroids built in. By pumping up the stat boost a little more, we can help out the pack a bit without making the tyrants even more tyrannical.

PvP Sourced

Almalexia's Mercy: Fixed an issue where this set healed for its intended full value each tick, rather than over the duration. This will result in a significant reduction of this set's power, as it was never intended to acquire the godlike powers of Almalexia herself.
Vicecannon of Venom: This set now ticks every 2 seconds instead of 1 but retains its overall damage after the blanket reduction to scaling.
Vicious Death: Increased the radius of the explosion from this set to 5 meters, up from 4, to better align with its visual effects.

Trial

Defending Warrior: Reduced the damage done by this set by approximately 30%.
Saxhleel's Champion:
- This set now scales in duration for the amount of Ultimate spent, similar to the Halls of Fabrication sets, rather than a flat amount. It now scales in 1 second for every 15 Ultimate spent, as it effects more targets than the others do.
- Removed the cooldown from this set.
- You must now be in combat to gain the effects of this set.

ZOS_GinaBruno · May 2021

General

The Quasigriff Fragment category is now properly called the Dagonic Quasigriff.

Endeavors

Fixed an issue where a Daily Endeavor asking you to harvest Woodworking resource nodes was asking for more resource nodes than intended.

General

Fixed a rare crash that could occur when playing particle effect audio.
Reduced the loading time required when loading into the game from the character select screen.
Equipping or previewing costumes and polymorphs will now behave the same between the Collections menu and Crown Store.

General

Fixed an issue where Activity Finder queues could give misleading error messages when the queues are at capacity.

Addons

Fixed an addon compatibility error found with ConvertToSkillLineId.

Endeavors

Fixed a UI error that appeared when viewing some items in the Seals of Endeavor store.

Gamepad Mode

Fixed an issue where attempting to redeem a code in-game could erroneously bring up the chat window when attempting to enter the code in with a keyboard.
Fixed an issue where you unable to select Antiquity Fragments marked as new in the Antiquity Codex.
Fixed an issue that resulted in the group HUD UI stacking on itself when swapping Gamepad Mode on/off while in a large group.

Help & Tutorials

Updated information in the “Companion Access" help text.
The Endeavors section of the Help menu now has an icon.