PTS Patch Notes v8.1.3

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The Elder Scrolls Online v8.1.3 adds additional adjustments to combat and balance, including re-evaluating how Light and Heavy Attacks scale and some class ability changes. Along with several fixes for the Lost Depths dungeons, we’ve activated the Witches Festival in-game event for testing this week. The size of this latest patch is approximately 174MB.

• New Features / Updates / Big Changes
  • Event Testing - Witches Festival
• Known Issues
• Fixes & Improvements
  • Chapters & DLCs
  • Combat & Gameplay
    • Combat & Abilities
    • Champion System
    • Companions
    • Itemization & Item Sets
  • Base Game

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Event Testing – Witches Festival
The Witches Festival returns to Tamriel! Acquire the introductory quest from the Crown Store or find the Crow Caller outside of Olyve’s Brewery in Auridon, Glenumbra, or Stonefalls. If you’ve completed this quest in previous years, you do not need to do it again.

• Dremora Plunder skulls this year have a chance to drop special rewards, including fragments for the Witch-Tamed Bear-Dog pet from last year, as well as the new Ghastly Visitation Memento and pages for the Witchmother’s Servant armor style.
  • Grave Dancer weapon style pages and Glenmoril treasure maps are still potential offerings from skulls this year.
  • Furnishings and furnishing schematics appropriate for the holiday are also available as both Plunder Skull contents and Impresario offerings.
• The Witches Festival grab bag this year contains the following items:
  • Festival masks (Hollowjack Spectre, Pumpkin Spectre, Scarecrow Spectre, and Thicketman Spectre)
  • Apple-Bobbing Cauldron Fragments
  • Skeletal Marionette Memento Parts
  • Throwing Bones Memento Fragments
  • Marshmallow Toasty Treat Emote (mmm!)
  • Witch’s Bonfire Dust Memento
• Event Tickets come from the first boss-type creature that would drop a Plunder Skull.
  • You can get 2 Event Tickets per day this way, all in one parcel, as a drop from the boss. Don't forget to loot them!
  • As before, Hollowjack style pages are available as part of a folio of rewards for completing any Witches Festival crafting writ (which can drop from any Plunder Skull).
• This event also introduces the first of three total fragments for the final morph for the Soulfire Dragon Illusion, the Sacred Hourglass of Alkosh furnishing, which can change the time of day when placed in your house!
  • You can preview this furnishing and its functionality by visiting the Impresario and previewing it from the fragment in her inventory.

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General

• Crushing Wall’s tooltip currently describes a behavior that has not been fully implemented, and its value is incorrect.
• Subterranean Assault’s total duration should be 6 seconds – dealing the same damage twice after 3 and 3 seconds – rather than its listed 3 and 5 seconds.

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General

• Fixed an issue that was causing Z'Baza in Coral Aerie to not always respect curated RNG rules.

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Quests

• Prisoner of the Past: Fixed an issue where the step to find Hagridden's remains would incremental too many times in a group at each location.

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General

• Fixed a number of issues with lootable objects in Gonfalon Bay.

General

• Fixed an issue where Razor Fangs found in Ghost Haven Bay could be fought in weird spots.
• The Gonfalon Bay Outlaws Refuge map now displays correctly in certain corners of the crypt.

Quests

• A Special Reagent: This world boss daily now properly increments the High Isle Monster Hunter achievement as well as granting Isobel rapport.

General

• The maximum loss and gain from a Rubedite ranked match is now capped at 150 points.
• Fixed an issue that caused the ranked play Ebony tier to require more experience to advance than intended. The Ebony tier now requires 1,000 experience to advance, similar to other non-leaderboard tiers.
• Brahgas no longer sits out of view during your conversation before he teaches you how to play.

Audio

• Fixed an issue that could cause audio to be cut off during the final match of the Tribute questline.

UI

• Added Patron lore to their respective entries in your Collections.
• Fixed an issue with the card Imperial Spoils that prevented this from displaying its combo effect in tooltip text.

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General

• The Carved-Bone Key is now like its counterparts in that it is no longer character bound (but still bound to your character), can be banked, and can be laundered.
• Fixed an issue where Imperial City vault keys generated from various sources would not stack.

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Dungeons

• Earthen Root Enclave
  • General
    • Firesong Groveshapers are much less jittery when attacked.
  • Corruption of Root
    • The initial Stone Wall no longer has a chance to persist throughout the encounter.
• Graven Deep
  • General
    • Xzyviian’s quick attack ability now also plays sounds to accompany the visual effects.
    • The Big Bubble ability no longer has a chance to be applied multiple times, rendering your character immobile.
    • Bristlepitch will now do damage less frequently on Veteran difficulty.
  • Euphotic Gatekeeper
    • The Euphotic Gatekeeper will now vanish from targeting attempts during its molting process.
  • Varzunon
    • Necrotic Cage will no longer persist if the target survives its grasp.
  • Zelvraak the Unbreathing
    • Defense Systems have a greater impact on the encounter when used.

Achievements

• Earthen Root Enclave Champion now lists the right name of the slayer achievement required to advance.
• The achievement Light of the Lost Depths now has a proper icon.

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General

• Fixed an issue if you sprinted like whoa off of the ledge, you might miss the area that triggers the Red Eagle's Flight achievement before you pancake on the ground. The designer's petition to rename the achievement "Red Eagle's Splat" was denied.

Achievements

• Fixed an issue where companion kills would not count towards the Saint Pelin's Avenger achievement.

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Halls of Fabrication Trial

• Scrapyard Trio
  • This encounter no longer has a chance to reset spontaneously when Necromancer pets and corpses are present.

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General

• Light and Heavy Attacks once again scale with the highest of your offensive stats, rather than dealing a flat amount of damage.
• Reduced the damage that Light Attacks do by approximately 26% compared to what’s currently on the Live servers, to ease back on their overall impact while retaining their importance in a rotation.
• Updated the damage scaling coefficients from fully-charged Heavy Attacks to follow a streamlined model that looks at their total cast time, cooldown, and damage when paired with a “spammable” attack (such as Lava Whip), to help reduce the DPS loss seen when you utilize Heavy Attacks instead of Light Attacks. Their coefficient will now be a total of 1 per second rather than varying between .97 and 1.12. This will result in the following adjustments:
  • One Hand and Shield Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 1%
  • Two-Handed Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 1%
  • Dual Wield Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 28%
  • Inferno and Ice Staff Heavy Attacks:
    • Damage reduced by approximately 26%.
    • Total cast time reduced to 1.8 seconds (identical to the total cast of Two-Handed weapons), down from 2.1 seconds.
    • Resources have been reduced to retain the same restore per second.
  • Restoration Staff Heavy Attacks: Damage increased by approximately 6%
  • Lightning Staff Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 2%
  • Bow Heavy Attacks: Damage increased by approximately 1%
  • Werewolf Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced by approximately 14%
  • Volendrung Heavy Attacks: Damage reduced to 7500, down from 7560
  Developer Comment:
  Spoiler

  Our original intent with the flat value rather than scaling was to target players who were boosting their stats beyond a set value, but ultimately it ended up dealing far more damage to mid-tier players than we anticipated. We have decided to go back to scaling modifiers and instead focus on reducing their ability to scale upwards. The new value is based off a melee spammable, where Light Attacks now deal one third of that damage, rather than 45% of it. This will still result in a reduction across the board, but by bringing these attacks down we have been able to also spend more time shortening the gap between them and Heavy Attacks.

Buffs and Debuffs

• Empower: This buff now increases your damage against monsters with Heavy Attacks by 80%, rather than your damage done with Light and Heavy Attacks by 1800 from PTS v8.1.0 or 40% from the live servers.
  Developer Comment:
  Spoiler

  We have turned this buff type into a more niche playstyle focus buff that is meant to help empower more accessibility driven builds, as Heavy Attacks requiring less precise activation and frequency of inputs compared to their Light Attack counterparts. In addition to this, we have decided to remove the impact it can have in PvP environments to avoid re-enabling one shot builds.

Warden

• Animal Companions
  • Dive
    • Cutting Dive (morph):
      • This morph now applies a Bleed on targets for 10 seconds if they are not off-balance, rather than refunding its cost if striking an off-balance target.
      • This bleed does not stack like its original form.
  • Scorch:
    • This ability and the Deep Fissure morph now deal their damage after 3 and 9 seconds, rather than 4 and 10.
    • These abilities now hit with 2 unique damage sources – the first hit deals approximately 14% less damage while the second hit does 20% more damage.
    • Reduced the cost of these abilities to 2700, down from 3240, to help improve their ability to be recast early for more DPS or faking your opponent out.
      • Subterranean Assault (morph):
        • This morph continues to reduce the time it takes for the second hit to go off, but this second hit does not gain the extra damage.
        • Please note this ability is currently not working as intended and its timing is still 3 and 8 seconds, rather than the intended 3 and 6 seconds.
    Developer Comment:
    Spoiler

    The changes to Scorch and their morphs were done in attempts to try and help the class feel less intensely focused on buff management and allow for other actions in combat, while still trying to retain their burst-oriented nature, to a more balanced degree when comparing them to other burst skills and taking their total time before impact better into account. The original PTS iteration was ultimately too disruptive to those who are familiar with the class, as it threw off the timing of the skill by a second, so we have brought it down back to the original duration while also keeping its overall timer divisible by 3s to help ensure a rhythm is felt with the class. By separating the damage, we can also better allow the skill to function as a burst skill or a sustained DPS skill, where recasting it earlier will result in more total DPS, whereas waiting for the bigger explosion will result in those dopamine printing burst combos.

Weapon

• Dual Wield
  • Flurry: Fixed an issue where this ability and its morphs were being treated as Damage over Time in some cases.

Warfare

• Cutting Defense: Fixed an issue where the damage from this node was not proccing enchantments or poisons as advertised.

General

• Fixed an issue where Ember and Isobel were incorrectly commenting on equipped polymorphs. Ember now only has unique responses for the Factotum and Werewolf Lord polymorphs, with Isobel commenting on the Xivkyn Tormentor and Cadaverous Assassin polymorphs.

Achievements

• Fixed an issue where the Isobel's Favor achievement might not increment due to a race condition.

Mythic Items

• Oakensoul: This item set now also grants you Minor Slayer, Minor Aegis, and Empower.
  Developer Comment:
  Spoiler

  We’ve been keeping a close eye on Oakensoul’s heated debates throughout the PTS cycle where the nerfs were noted as justified in PvP environments, but ultimately hit the set a bit too hard in some PvE scenarios. We opted to avoid enabling too much damage on the set by adding the Major versions of Slayer or Aegis, as those buffs are meant to be sourced from trial sets and to encourage coordinated behavior for groups. Instead, we went with the much more readily available Minor versions to help out players who may not have access to trials gear (or just have other sets they’d rather run!). In addition, we wanted to add the new Empower buff, which is by design now focused on helping accessibility – just like this ring is – so it was a stars aligning moment that we think will drastically help the set claw back some of its power, without showing up on veteran player’s bars as frequently as we saw.

PvP Sourced

• Nocturnal’s Ploy: Increased the cooldown of this set to be 15 seconds, up from 2, to reduce the rate in which it can actively dispel effects from a target.

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General

• Fixed an issue with the Nazaray Arms Pack where the off-hand weapon was not displaying its visual effects.

Heroes of High Isle

• Fixed an issue where High Isle daily quest reward boxes which were doubled during Heroes of High Isle wouldn't stack in the quest completion rewards display.

Undaunted Celebration

• The Glorious Undaunted Reward Box for Earthen Root Enclave is now shortened so as not to busticate the character limit on item names.

Witches Festival

• Fixed an issue where crows flying around at the High Isle Impresario tents during Witches Festival had one member of their flock floating while perching. Um. Spooky?

General

• You will no longer hear houseguests talking over each other while in the housing placement menu in Gamepad Mode.
• Fixed an issue that could briefly lock the camera's rotation when exiting certain furnishing previews.

General

• Fixed a rare crash related to item effects that was most likely to occur in large fights with many weapon effects nearby.

Elsweyr Prologue Quest

• Halls of Colossus: Player and quest pins are once again visible on the Halls of Colossus interior maps.

Update 36 Prologue Quest

• Sojurn of the Druid King:
  • Fixed an issue with some art assets displaying twice during the end quest sequence.
  • Fixed an issue where your icon would display in the wrong position on certain maps.