PTS Patch Notes v12.1.3

ZOS_Kevin · August 24

Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online PTS v12.1.3! This week, the name of the game is dialing in Solo Dungeons, Nowhere Vault, and Rumors systems. You'll see many the patch notes this week are addressing immediate feedback on things like, adjusting rewards in Solo Dungeons and making more general gameplay play enhancements in Nowhere Vault for a better feeling product.

Additionally, you will notice some general quality of life fixes, like Wondrous Nowhere Keys (formerly Unformed Planar Keys) will now properly stack. Bugs like this have been frustrating over the last update, so we are aiming to alleviate some of that in this pass for PTS.

Thank you for providing feedback so far during this PTS cycle. We look forward to more as we work through week 4 and 5 of PTS. This update is around 296.65MB in size. Thanks!

Overview
New Features / Season Updates / Big Changes
- Player Experience Improvements
Combat & Gameplay
- Combat & Abilities
- Scribing
- PvP
- Itemization & Item Sets
Fixes & Improvements
- Base Game
  - Dungeons, Group Content, Dynamic Encounters
  - Events & Celebrations
  - Exploration & Itemization
  - Housing
  - Quests & Zones
  - UI

ZOS_Kevin · August 24

Undaunted Pledge Transmute Crystal Improvements
- Undaunted pledges now award their Transmute Crystals directly, instead of in the form of a geode.
- Urgarlag's DLC pledges now grant significantly more Transmute Crystals:
  - 5 for Normal
  - 10 for Veteran
  - 15 for Veteran Hard Mode

ZOS_Kevin · August 24

General
- Fixed multiple issues with ability animations not being properly versioned, which was causing unusual behavior to occur. This will fix issues where many skills would fail to properly animate, such as Feral Guardian or Healing Seed.
- Fixed an issue where certain personality-specific animations would incorrectly persist while in combat.
Classes
- Nightblade
  - Siphoning
    - Strife: This skill and its morphs now deal 1% more damage for every 2% Health you have. Reduced base damage by 33% for Strife and Funnel Health. This effect replaces the previously mentioned effect where casting the abilities would increase your damage done by 1% for every 10% Health you have. This skill and Funnel Health now cost 2700 Magicka and Health, rather than 4050 Magicka. Fixed an issue where these abilities would not break Invisibility when cast.
      - Swallow Soul: Reduced the base damage by ~17%. Paired with the new damage increase effect, this will increase the damage to be just shy of Concealed Weapon’s maximum damage threshold.
        
        [Developer Comment]
        We're making some changes to earlier PTS adjustments in two ways; tackling the high Magicka cost previously introduced and helping add power contextually to the skill itself rather than a generic effect. The damage changes will now help Strife and Funnel Health reach a normal damage spammable's capabilities when you have full Health – but now cost Health to make it harder to do and introduce reliance to layer multiple healing effects from other parts of the Nightblade kit. Swallow Soul is now significantly stronger itself, while remaining slightly weaker at damage production compared to Concealed Weapon - with the caveat that it's harder to sustain but offers immense healing.
- Sorcerer
  - Dark Magic
    - Crystal Shard
      - Crystal Weapon: Increased the number of charges this skill has to 3, up from 2.
    - Blood Magic: Reduced the healing of this skill to 3|6% of your Max Health when activated, down from 5|10% to reduce how passive the healing can become in many cases.
  - Class Mastery
    - Conservation of Energy: Reduced the resources granted from this passive to 1.5% of your Magicka and Stamina, down from 2%.
    - Static Reverberation: This passive now triggers off Sorcerer ability damage, rather than any damage. Increased the base proc chance to 20%, up from 5%. Reduced the cooldown to 100ms, down from 300ms.
      
      [Developer Comment]
      We're making a targeted approach here to correct some behaviors we've seen since this passive's introduction, where the optimal use of the previous iteration was to stack many non-Sorcerer attacks to trigger it as frequently as possible, introducing counter-intuitive design where the reward to playing your class is to use non-class abilities. To account for this restriction, we're trying to make sure building around it still is relatively as strong as it was before, so the base chances are higher, and can trigger more frequently when a target is near death. We'll keep an eye on this passive (especially in PvP) as this should help correct some of the more problematic use cases we've seen, but it may also introduce more devastation to where Sorcerers can already be quite powerful.

Grimoires
- Vault: Fixed an issue where this Grimoire when paired with Crusader’s Defiance Signature would act as a cleanse effect, despite not being a cleanse.

Battlegrounds
- Fixed: Battleground scoreboards were always showing 1s for time-based scores.
- Fixed: Damage Shields were granting more medals than intended.
- Fixed: Text-wrapping issues in the Battleground scoreboard.
Veterancy
- Fixed: If you were using max UI scaling, you would not be able to see or utilize the navigation arrows on the Veterancy screen.

Item Sets
- Class Sets
  - Monolith of Storms
    - This set’s damage is now considered a Sorcerer ability.
- Solo Dungeons
  - Mylenne Moon-Caller
    - Fixed: This set’s cooldown could be ignored in some cases.
- Mythic Items
  - Death Dealer’s-Fete
    - Fixed: This set’s bonuses were not properly removed when stacks decayed.

ZOS_Kevin · August 24

Solo Dungeons
- Fixed: The Reset Hourglass would become non-interactable after progressing through the dungeon.
- Fixed: Highlights and sounds that were not playing on the Misfortune Selection interface.
Solo Moon Hunter Keep
- Fixed: Health desync that could occur with the Wildbriar Bear's "Slam" ability.
- Fixed: The door to Jailer Melitus had a chance to remain closed.
- Jailer Melitus: Made the following adjustments to Bloody Cleave:
  - Bloody Cleave no longer hits outside of its telegraphed area.
  - Slightly increased the cast time of Bloody Cleave
  - Jailer Melitus now remains stationary for a short duration after casting Bloody Cleave.
- Hedge Maze Guardian
  - Fixed: The Hedge Maze Guardian could become stuck in a loop casting Thorn Toss.
  - Fixed: Spriggans had a chance to reactivate at less than full health.
- Vykosa the Ascendant
  - Fixed: The damage from Rending Slash was desynched from its impact animation.
Solo March of Sacrifices
- Per your feedback, we have adjusted the "Pulled Punches" Meted Misfortune as to not exclude those who play exclusively with Heavy Attack builds. "Pulled Punches" now reduces your damage done from all sources by 30%. Please let us know how this change feels!
- Fixed: Intro Hircine would not be visible if you left the dungeon and re-entered.
- You will no longer be facing the dungeon exit after traveling through post-boss portals.
- Fixed: Dagrund the Bulky's conversation did not appear at the beginning of the dungeon.
Stone Garden
- Exarch Kraglen
  - Blood Rage no longer persists if you enter a different group’s instance of the dungeon.
Lep Seclusa
- Orpheon the Tactician
  - Fixed an issue where only one player could earn the Slowed Not Stopped achievement at a time. The achievement now correctly states that your resources must be reduced to 30% or less, rather than 25% or less, in order to earn it.
Rockgrove
- Flame-Herald Bahsei
  - Fixed: Being struck by the Flesh Abomination's Bloody Bash could cause a health and resource desync.
Castle Thorn
- Lady Thorn
  - Fixed: Batswarm's safe area could become visually desynched.
  - You will now be temporarily protected from damage should you attempt to resurrect outside of Batswarm's safe area while Batswarm is in progress.

High Seas of Tamriel
- Fixed: Players getting pulled “underneath” the ship or skating across the top in a graphical glitch. Those Maormer sea wizards are tricksy folks.
- Improving the experience when you lose your deep-sea bubble protection and begin to lose air. It should be easier to see enemy attacks and the environment around you.

General
- Fixed: Under specific circumstances, new unbound copies of a stackable item could stack with old bound copies of that item, becoming bound in the process. These will now correctly form separate stacks as usual.
Nowhere Vault
- We've done some updates to what the nowhere chests reward in order to help give each chest a unique identity and balance the overall pacing of the rewards.
  - Room completion chests reward a consistent set of valuable items ranging from overland item set pieces to tradeable antiquity leads.
  - Stash room chests reward a varying selection of valuable items that should feel different from chest to chest.
  - Nowhere chests reward an elevated consistent set of valuable items ranging from trial item set pieces to valuable crafting materials.
- Wondrous Nowhere Keys (formerly Unformed Planar Keys) earned by characters of different level will now stack.
- Fixed: Wondrous Nowhere keys to drop from bosses inside the Nowhere Vault. Sage Voernet requires his challengers to face the world outside the vault before delving the mysteries within.
Solo Dungeons
- We’ve made a number of improvements and adjustments to rewards from Solo Dungeons.
  - Each dungeon now drops dungeon item set drops instead of overland sets.
  - The reward for completing a solo dungeon with 0 misfortunes is now 50 undaunted crests, up from 10 undaunted crests.
  - Purchasing curated dungeon set containers from Veya Thenim (the Crest Merchant) now requires completion of the Solo version of the associated dungeon, instead of the group version.
  - Rebalanced the crest pricing for a number of items on Veya’s store:
    - Undaunted Apothecary Parcel: 10 crests -> 50 crests
    - Undaunted Key Container: 1000 crests -> 500 crests
    - Dungeon Style Items: 10 crests -> 25 crests
    - Dungeon Style pages (both solo dungeon and rotating vendor): 2000 crests -> 1000 crests
Scribing
- Updated a few lingering references to the old Class Mastery script name. These now refer to the updated Class Flourish name.

General
- Fixed: Vista view in the Grotto of Desire House animation.
- Updated the Antiquity Lead for the “Cursed Ship's Bell” so that it was green quality to match the furnishing.
- While inside the Sheogorad Chateau your player pin will be in the correct position when viewing the map.

Nowhere Vault
- General
  - Added: The ability to reset the instance via the Hourglass found at the Nowhere Vault entrance.
    - Only group leaders can activate this.
    - The instance must be up at a minimum of 5 minutes before its use.
  - Nowhere Chests will now spawn uniquely to each player.
  - Fixed: Portals related to the Fungal Chasm and Moonlit Isles would sometimes not work properly.
  - Fixed: Players could interact with a Nowhere Lock at the same time and consume two keys for one portal.
  - Fixed: The book Unlocked Secrets was in the wrong location.
  - Fixed: Resolved issues stopping you from finishing the Secondary Rumors under certain conditions.
- Quest
  - Invitation to Treasures
    - Fixed: You couldn't accept the Crown Store bestowal for this quest if you had not completed the Glenumbra Thieves' Guild quest.
    - Players can no longer enter the various wings in the vault until on the proper quest step of "Invitation to Treasures" or having completed the quest. This was done to prevent people from entering the vaults early and then realizing they would have to repeat the rooms to earn the proper items.
    - Accepting the quest will reveal the vault icon on the map.
- Curios Room
  - Added: a mechanic to assist tracking down curios after a number of mimics have been activated.
  - The fake and real chalice is now more distinct.
  - Fixed: The room could improperly reset if you left and returned.
- Mushroom Chasm
  - Fixed: The exit portal to the entrance. So you’d end up at the proper exit portal and not stuck on the mushroom below.
- The Sands Room
  - The secondary goal activity has been adjusted to be more inline with the actual clues.
  - Fixed: Relogging could disable the secondary goal.
  - Fixed: Wind barriers lowered by destroyed the crystals would respawn shortly after.
- Twilight Maze
  - Fixed: Your ability casts could be randomly interrupted.
  - Fixed: You could receive back-to-back notifications that you are being noisy.
- Hunt of the Watchers
  - The secondary goal will now properly share across group members.
  - Fixed: Relogging in the room could prevent you from completing it.
  - Fixed: An animation issue involving the secondary goal in this room.
Rumors
- General
  - Added: Additional Rumor visuals to help locate hints/ending.
- Looking for Love
  - Fixed: One of the rumor hints would despawn as you approach if you had finished the quests in the area.
- Figures of Note
  - Updated various aspects of this rumor across the board.

General
- Fixed: HUD issue where your vitality counter would go off screen in Veteran Trials.
- When pinning an achievement and then performing a search, the quest pin icon should now appear next to the appropriate subcategory.