You know that. The typical ESO year begins with the announcement of the new annual event, followed by the Dungeon DLC in March and the next paid expansion in June. It’s not much different in 2023 either. With Shadows over Morrowind, the annual event was announced on time, the Dungeon DLC is here and Necrom is the next expansion, which will be released on June 5th for PC and June 20th for Xbox and Playstation. We were at Zenimax Online in London back in March to check out an unfinished version of The Elder Scrolls: Necrom.
Zenimax Online continues to fill in the blanks on the Tamriel map and take players to areas they’ve never, or haven’t, seen before. This continues with The Elder Scrolls Online: Necrom. The Telvanni Peninsula east of Vvardenfell was last accessible in The Elder Scolls: Arena, if we remember correctly. And Apocrypha was a theme in the Skyrim DLC Dragonborn. An exciting mixture of halfway known and unknown terrain that gives the developers enough creative freedom.
Apocrypha, the realm of Daedra Prince Hermaeus Mora, then shines in a rather unique look. As a repository of knowledge, books play an immense role in the design of the environments. Mora herself, however, is more reminiscent of a creature from the Lovecraft universe. This fits the greenish, unhealthy look of the surroundings, which are paved with strange structures, some consisting entirely of books, while tentacles reach out of the sky and strange beings do their rounds.
The creative minds let off steam on the subject of ESO meets Cosmic Horror and once again created unique and worth seeing landscapes. The Telvanni Peninsula, however, embodies more of the typical Morrowind look with huge mushrooms and braids in all the colors of nature, complemented by Necrom, the bizarre city of the dead, which you will of course also see as part of the expansion.
Why is? Hermaeus Mora is generally known as a keeper of knowledge, but that also means he has some secrets under his wing that are better left untouched. When unknown forces attempt to distract the Daedra Prince’s attention in order to obtain such secrets, you are in demand. Leramil, an agent of Hermaeus, hires you to stop the conspiracy so the secrets stay hidden.
Supported by Hermaeus, Leramil and a few other characters, you quickly come across figures such as the obscure Telvanni master Shelreni or the Dremora Torvesard, and apparently other Daedra lords have their fingers in the game either directly or indirectly. As usual with ESO, the story of this new chapter should keep you busy for over 30 hours, including side quests. Incidentally, a good 60 percent of the action is said to be located in Apocrypha, so that you can thoroughly enjoy this strange world.
We were able to get a taste of both the main and the side quests during the preview session and can confirm that the usual level is maintained with multi-level quests that lead you across the country and whose dialogues are once again completely set to music. Which never ceases to amaze considering the size that The Elder Scrolls Online has now reached. Hardly any other MMO has so many lines of text and so much spoken dialogue.
Much more exciting for most ESO fans, however, will be the fact that a new class is finally coming into play – after at least four years. Most recently, with the Elsweyr expansion, the necromancer came into play and romped about in the realms of Tamriel, which was quite incongruous with the story at the time. It should work better with the arcanist. His presence should be much better integrated into the story and also be implemented visually more appropriately. The latter is even true, because the color green, which matches the look of Apocrypha, shows up again and again in the effects.
In fact, in terms of abilities and visual appearance, the Arcanist fits quite well with Hermaeus Mora’s forbidden lore, as well as using slightly different gameplay mechanics than previous classes. Skill mechanics are all about Crux, a kind of supernatural energy. The system most closely resembles a combo system, with skills that build up Crux and other skills that consume Crux or use it as a modifier for greater impact.
You can build up to three of these cruxes with certain skills, which is represented by green triangles floating around the character, so you don’t have to keep looking at the interface. Other skills consume this crux, for example to deal more damage or reduce the magicka or stamina cost to use. All in all, this should lead to some interesting rotations, especially with regard to the fact that the arcanist can be played in three different ways, namely as a tank (Soldier of Apocrypha), healer (Curative Runeforms) or damage dealer (Herald of the Tome). .
In our try-out session, we decided to use a combination of different damage skills and a quick heal, since we were going solo. It worked pretty well – we had both targeted skills that built up Crux and a debilitating area of effect, as well as some kind of channeled energy beam that consumes Crux and deals massive damage if you’re not interrupted. Our Super was a kind of floating eye that also fired a green beam at the target. It’s good that you can also use Crux-consuming skills without Crux, just with a much weaker effect.
After a good hour of hands-on, it is of course difficult to say how well the class fits into the entire portfolio, especially not how it fares in comparison to other classes, since the balancing is not final anyway. As a damage dealer, the arcanist seemed to me to be quite suitable without giving me much opportunity to tinker with builds. The tank at the next table still seemed to have some doubts. But it’s safe to assume there will be more tweaks as the expansion hits the test servers and feedback from ESO veterans starts pouring in.
The new Shadows over Morrowind story arc in The Elder Scrolls Online will begin with a DLC in March.
The entry of a new class is interesting for both beginners and old hands. Veterans who have already seen it all will have a good incentive to revisit the game and re-experience the content with the new class. Beginners, however, can be happy that (as usual) the scaling system works and you can start the new adventure directly with the new class. The advantages of “One Tamriel” are not to be underestimated even today. In other words, you can play anywhere because the opponents adapt to your strength and you can also play with players of any level.
Otherwise you can expect what you basically always get in Necrom. There are numerous new items with a new look, mounts and pets, but also two new companions that you can unlock through your own quest lines. Azandar Al-Cybiades is an Arcanist-class Redguard and the Argonian Sharp-As-Night represents the Warden-class Companions. Both certainly not unwelcome additions. Of course, there is also a new 12-player trial that takes you into the twisted brain of a magician under the title Sanity’s Edge and wants to shine with special game mechanics.