Formulaic. After almost a decade in operation, this has become a word I’ve associated with The Elder Scrolls Online in recent years. The team at ZeniMax Online Studios had found a formula that worked for them and have, for the most part, stuck to that almost to a tee. As a result, everything from the various Chapter releases each year down to the way classes and class builds play has felt somewhat “same-y.”
However, a return to Morrowind in this year’s chapter release, Necrom, has that formulaic feeling shaken off a bit. At least, that’s how it felt in my limited hands-on time with the next chapter during a preview event last month at the Game Developers Conference.
Being A Little Bit Weird
I’ve maintained that The Elder Scrolls Online and the IP at large is at its best when it’s a little bit weird. When it’s leaning into those things that make it feel wholly unique in fantasy. For me, the perfect example of this is Morrowind. My first foray into The Elder Scrolls was through Morrowind years ago on the OG Xbox, and ever since then the towering mushroom and the Carapace buildings have dominated my memories when I’ve thought about The Elder Scrolls over the years.
Indeed, the reveal that we’re going back to Morrowind left me rather excited - as I stated in my review for IGN years ago when the eponymous Morrowind chapter was released, going back to my Scrolls roots felt like “coming home.” Morrowind itself is dotted with fungal forests, ancient ruins and volcanic wastelands. Even when compared to some of the more wild landscapes in The Elder Scrolls Online, such as the dense forests of Grahtwood or the umbral crags of Blackreach cavern, Morrowind and Vvardenfell by extension stand alone.
So how do you make it even weirder and more unique to TESO? Add some Lovecraft.
“We have a one-word descriptor for every chapter that we do,” The Elder Scrolls Online’s Game Director Matt Firor explained to me during the preview event last month. “High Isle last year was Camelot, right? Greymoor was Gothic. And just to give everyone kind of a thing they can assess, the one for this year is Lovecraft. And that makes it just a little different, a different vibe than players are used to.”
To that end, The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom doesn’t just take you to the ancient city of the dead, Necrom itself. Rather, it also takes players further into the weird and alien with Apocrypha. This plane of Oblivion is the home of the Daedric Prince Hermaeus Mora and it in of itself is very different than anything ESO has done before.
Power and eldritch influence oozes out of every corner in Apocrypha, its atmosphere blending with the landscape of twisting and eerie shapes throughout the world. Apocrypha’s endless library is a maze of floating books and a repository of massive knowledge. The otherworldly beauty of Apocrypha itself feels right at home with the alien landscapes of the Telvanni Peninsula.
Indeed, the Daedric forces that spurred me into action felt right against the backdrop of giant mushrooms and Stilt Striders grazing in the distance. The city of Necrom itself is a sight to behold as well, its gleaming white walls and spires giving the ancient city a feeling of grandeur. Built on the remains of a beast felled by Vivec himself, or so the Dunmer legends say, the city holds a special spot in Dunmeri culture as the place of the dead. Long processions of Dark Elves bring their fallen family members to be laid amongst the crypts of Necrom, the long winding crypt under the city full of the ancient bones of Dunmer long gone.
I was taken aback by how busy and bustling the city felt, despite it being a place for the dead. The city looked and felt old as well, with the seeming ribcage of the fallen beast making up some of the spires and architecture of the city. It feels wholly distinct from the mainland settlements of Ebonheart and the rest of the Stonefalls cities, and even feels older than the places established in Vvardenfell itself.
I’m eager to explore more of the Telvanni Peninsula, as well as uncover the secrets hidden amongst the tombs and crypts of Necrom itself. However, in my short time with ESO’s Necrom chapter, I wanted to know just how the new class was shaping up.
Thankfully, I’m happy to report that the feeling of sameness that the landscapes of Necrom shake off is doubled down on with the Arcanist.
The Arcanist Feels Wholly Unique
The Arcanist is the first class to come to The Elder Scrolls Online since the Necromancer dropped in 2019 with Elsweyr. I love my Necromancer, but after a few years of playing the class, I have felt like I need a change of pace. However, nothing felt too wholly different as the core basics of ESO were still built around specific class and stat builds.
There is no escaping the Trinity in MMORPGs - you need a healer, tank, and DPS role in a party to succeed. And while ESO allows for a ton of character customization from the class skills to weapon and world skills to choose from, I have always found myself settling for something similar in each class build: staff wielding and Magicka-based builds.
However, a crucial change with some of the Arcanist skills might allow for even more customization on that front. Instead of choosing between a Stamina or Magicka skill line when you morph an ability, some of these skills now simply scale based on which of your stats is higher. So if you’re leaning into a stabby dagger-wielding Stamina player who wants to also shoot a massive Apocrypha-powered laser beam from your hands, you can do that without sacrificing anything.
For me, this small change is crucial as it allows for a bit more freedom in class builds. Sure, min-maxers will always find a way to create the most “optimal” build, but I’m glad that there feels like there will be some more organic, unique choices here, and it’s something I’m hoping extends to the rest of the classes in ESO.
However, it’s not simply this that makes the Arcanist feel unique. Instead, it’s the Crux that’s at the…erm…crux…of the feeling. Crux is effectively a combo point you build up through certain Arcanist abilities, easily identifiable by floating runes surrounding your Arcanist during battle. Crux itself isn’t that complicated, but it opens up so much in creating complex layers for veteran players to play with in combat.
This was by design as well, as the goal was to create something that was a different way to experience the game.
“New classes in and of themselves are cool,” Firor explained during our interview. “It’s a different way to experience the game. And you get a whole different toolset with this one. We wanted to kind of stretch it a little bit and add some new things. And that’s where Crux comes from, which the goal was [to] make it so if you’re a beginning character and you buy the game, you jump in and you start playing Necrom as an Arcanist, you will be useful in the story and the open world without needing to worry about how to use Crux.”
Honestly, too, at the outset, I felt instantly powerful, even without really understanding what each skill did and how Crux played into them. I wasn’t bogged down by the extra mechanics, which is a great way to ensure those players who are drawn to The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom thanks to its Lovecraftian horror influences can pick up and play like usual.
ESO is built for those players who either play it for a month during the Summer when a new chapter releases, or those veterans who understand every little detail, from the best way to weave skills in combat to each point in the Champion Point constellations. However, the more I messed around with Crux, settling on a build with points in both the DPS line as well as the Tank lines (Herald of the Tome and Soldier of Apocrypha, respectively), the more it started to make sense.
Some abilities build Crux, giving you a pool to work with, while others are spenders. Once you’ve built up three Crux, signified by the floating Apocrypha runes around the Arcanist, that Crux can be spent on a skill that becomes more powerful with the Crux.
This isn’t to say that the skill can’t be used without Crux either. But when you do spend Crux, abilities can do different things, such as deal more damage or augment a healing skill to be more potent. In practice it made me think instead of simply going through a standard rotation.
Because Crux is important to the Arcanist, I have a feeling I might end up using more Arcanist skills on my limited skill bar than normal thanks to how it functions. Right now, my Necromancer’s main skill bar only has two Necro skills on it - the rest are weapon or Mage Guild skills. However, I wanted more Arcanist skills on my bar, if for no other reason than it made my massive hand laser feel more powerful when Crux was absorbed by the skill. In my limited time with the class I had to think laterally instead of simply dipping into a predefined skill rotation each time I fought off an enemy. This was exactly according to the design plan, according to Firor.
“If you’re an experienced player [...] then you start to figure out how the rotations work where you can build up Crux and then spend it, it makes the class that much more fun in high-intensity situations like the World Bosses, Vet Dungeons and Trials.”
It helps too that the visual design of the Arcanist immediately roped me in - the initial reveal cinematic showing the dual dagger-wielding Arcanist blend this power from Apocrypha with a stealthy playstyle immediately made me decide how I was building the class when the Chapter drops in June.
Heading into the homestretch
The Elder Scrolls Online has had a bumpy history with a few of the last patches and content drops, which Firor acknowledged in our chat at GDC. The team last December announced changes to its yearly structure, and while I felt part of this was to potentially break up the formula that had formed around ESO’s releases since Morrowind, it also seems to stem from a desire to ensure that content drops are as stable as they can be across the board.
ESO is dropping content across multiple platforms - PC, Mac, Xbox One, Series S|X, and PlayStation consoles. There is a lot going on behind the scenes. Update 36 last year dropped and the team was still chasing bugs and issues a month later heading into 2023. So when the team at ZeniMax announced changes to its year-long structure, especially ensuring there is time in that release window to address bug fixes and quality-of-life changes, I was excited.
The last few major releases have been bumpy, something that Firor mentions that it’s taken the team a bit to get out from under.
“In COVID times, we got more players than we had since 2015, like we were completely unprepared for it. And in games of this type, when that much mass comes into the game all at once, cracks in the seams start showing up. And we had to devote a lot of time to fixing those problems to keep the game up and running. And I think it’s just taken us a while to recover from that.”
Firor goes on to explain that once the team has finished the datacenter refresh it’s been working on, it gives the team at ZeniMax a much more stable foundation to build from. This has already borne fruit with the last release, Update 37, releasing in a much better state than Update 36 before.
Part of the new release structure each year is that time to work on bug fixes and other issues, and the timing of that phase in the year is no coincidence.
“[W]e need time for the team to focus on just making the game better, and it’s no coincidence that it’s not during a major release. Because up until then we do a major chapter release and we do a lot of tweaks and bug fixes at the same time, which is not a good idea usually. So just separating them out and having a smoother big release and then focus on [the] quality of life and bug fixes after that is just a much better cadence to work on.”
As it stands now, The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom feels like one of the more exciting and refreshing releases in recent ESO memory. Having just celebrated its ninth anniversary, I’m pretty stoked to see how the ZeniMax team shakes up the formula in the next Chapter this coming June. While I didn’t get a ton of time to play Necrom during GDC thanks to time constraints, I’m eager to try more and really dial in how the Arcanist feels when Necrom hits the PTS on April 17th.
