Hey guys! With the massive slew of changes revealed in yesterday's ESO Live episode starring special guests Bill Mueller and Eric Wrobel, I've created a summary of what we know so far about the upcoming Update 7, presented in the form of patch notes
Enjoy, and let me know if I missed anything!
Remember that these new things are NOT the complete list - the actual patch notes will be WAY bigger than this.
Welcome to The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited v2.1.0, our seventh major content update! We have many new things in store for you.
BIG CHANGES/UPDATES/NEW FEATURES
THE IMPERIAL CITY
The highly-anticipated Imperial City is here! Battle your way through the fallen capital of Tamriel in an all-new PvP experience. Imperial forces have routed the Daedra back into the city, and are calling all adventurers for aid in battling the threat - but the Alliance War continues to rage on in the city. War. War Never Changes.
The Imperial City is able to be accessed when your alliance controls all of their 6 home keeps. If a home keep is lost while players are inside the city, your alliance will be locked inside the city until they are all killed or all 6 home keeps are retaken.
The Imperial City's surface has 6 districts - the Market District, the Arboretum, the Temple District, the Elven Gardens, the Noble District, and the Arena. Some of these districts may be captured by your alliance.
Xivkyn, or Imperial Daedric, armor may be crafted exclusively in the Imperial City, and is quite powerful.
The city may be entered through the sewers located on City Isle. Each alliance has a base camp in the vast, multi-level underground network of tunnels. Close-quarters and small-scale PvP will be common in these levels of the city, as well as many opportunities for PvE.
The Arena is both PvE and PvP, but it is not instanced. It is predicted that many cross-faction duels will be taking place in the Arena.
The city contains many quests, daily quests, achievements, bosses, gear, weapons, crafting stations, and much more PvE activities.
Siege weapons are able to be used in the city.
Population is shared with the rest of Cyrodiil.
Veteran Rank 16
The Imperial City brings over 20 new item sets and a whole new tier of progression. Because of this new progression tier, the level cap has been raised to Veteran Rank 16.
Veteran System Changes
The amount of XP it takes to earn a Veteran Rank has been lowered to 850,000, down from 1 million.
The amount of XP earned from Veteran Quests, including the new Imperial City quests, has been raised by 50%.
The amount of XP earned from Veteran Public Dungeons has been doubled.
The amount of XP earned from all activities in Craglorn has been raised by 20%.
Veteran XP rewards across the board have been improved.
Overall, it will take far shorter to earn a Veteran Rank.
New Item Sets
Over 20 new item sets have been added to the game. This includes the Xivkyn armor that is found and crafted exclusively in the Imperial City.
FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS
Alliance War
Alongside the Imperial City, a whole slew of improvements and changes are being made to PvP. These include changes to campaign assignments, the Emperor system, Scoring, Underdog bonuses, Battle Leveling and campaigns in general.
Former Emperor bonuses have been removed. You will still have the title of Former Emperor, but all the buffs will no longer exist.
You will no longer have to spend SP on Emperor buffs.
The cooldown on changing your home campaign has been decreased to 12 hours, down from 3 days, but the cost has increased from 15,000 AP to 150,000 AP.
The cooldown on changing your guest campaign has been increased to 4 days, up from 3 days.
All PvP bonuses will now only apply in PvP areas, eliminating the concept of Buff Campaigns.
Underdog and low-population AP gains have been increased to 20% extra AP, up from 10%. Population polling has also been sped up so the bonuses can be applied more often, but this also means they will expire faster.
Battle Leveling has been adjusted to include Veteran Ranks. Players that opt into Battle Leveling will be roughly equivalent to a VR14 in moderate gear. However, Battle Leveling will now include a 50% reduction to overall damage, healing, and damage shields, as a part of the improvements to PvP combat.
Gate Jumping has been fixed, and Elder Scrolls may no longer be stolen while their gates are closed.
A number of changes have been made to PvP combat so there is more capacity for reaction time and using skills. This means that there will be no more FPS-style kills where you're pretty much screwed if you don't hit first, and overall will make PvP combat feel like more of a tactical system rather than a frantic button-mashing contest.
A number of changes have been made to scoring and keep ownership across all campaigns.
Azura's Star: Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 30 days.
Blackwater Blade: Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 5 days. (Non-Veterans only.)
Chillrend: Keeps, outposts, and resources will generate zero points. Ownership of Elder Scrolls will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
Haderus: Keeps, outposts, and Elder Scrolls will generate zero points. Ownership of resources will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
Thornblade: Resources, outposts, and Elder Scrolls will generate zero points. Ownership of keeps will generate 1 point per scoring cycle and last 7 days.
All Console Campaigns: Ownership of keeps, resources, Elder Scrolls, and outposts will generate 1 point each per scoring cycle and last 5 days. (Non-Veterans Only)
Audio and Sound
Combat music has been improved (Thank you, ZOS!). The music in combat is now dynamic, and will increase and decrease in intensity based on how many enemies you are facing. For example, if you're facing one lone mudcrab, the music will be less intense, but in, say, a large-scale PvP situation or at a Dark Anchor the music will be very intense and epic. (Zenimax, THANK YOU!)
Some new enhancements to music to indicate when you're at low health or you're fighting a boss.
Some cool new soundtracks have been recorded for the Imperial City.
New soundtracks have been added to all the default vanilla zones.
Combat and Gameplay
All leaderboards have been wiped.
Scaling costs have been introduced for roll-dodging, similar to how Bolt Escape works. Every time you roll-dodge, the next time you do it in a certain period of time the cost will increase by 33%. A visual effect will show when the scaling cooldown ends.
You will no longer regenerate stamina while blocking.
Nirnhoned will now only apply to the piece of gear it is applied on.
All players will now have the same taunt immunity timer. However, things like potions, Templar spears and Earthen Heart abilities can still be used to regenerate stamina while blocking.
A number of fixes have been introduced for Weapon traits.
A number of fixes to broken Champion passives e.g Arcane Well have been introduced.
Werewolf and Vampire posion/fire weaknesses have been reduced to 25%, down from 50%.
Taunts have been changed. If the target was taunted by the same player the boss will keep aggro on him. Taunt duration was not changed, but now occasional multiple taunts from one player will not make the boss go out of control. As soon as another player taunts the boss it will work as it was before, so you can't play ping-pong with bosses anymore without consequences.
Dragonknight
Stonefist: The range of this ability has been increased to 28 meters.
Obsidian Shard: The damage of Obsidian Shard has been slightly reduced, but it will now restore health.
The resource gain from the Battle Roar passive now scales off of all 3 resources' max values, not just Magicka.
Nightblade
Single-target attacks against a Shadow-Cloaked Nightblade will no longer break them out of stealth. AoE abilities, however, will still remove the Shadow Cloak.
Grim Focus: Spectral Bow will now be active after 4 attacks, rather than 7.
The bonus damage from Agony has been increased to 5% per second, up from 3% per second.
Templar
The damage on Radiant Destruction has been decreased overall when not in execute range, but the first tick will now always be a critical.
Fixed an animation issue with Focused Charge.
Rushed Ceremony: the wax on/wax off animation will be faster. Furthermore, Honor the Dead will now restore magicka when healing a target below 70% health, up from 50%.
The speed of the projectile from Sun Fire and its morphs has been increased.
Sorcerer
Bolt Escape may now only be used 2-3 times before running out of magicka.
Lightning Form now has a stamina-based morph.
Mages' Fury: The execute damage on this ability has been increased by 10%.
The cost of Surge has been decreased and its duration has been increased.
Miscellaneous Abilities
Thrown Dagger will now give the Major Brutality buff, like the Momentum ability from the Two-Handed skill line.
The damage of each tick on Volley and its morphs has been increased.
The duration of Wall of Elements has been increased to 6 seconds, up from 4.5.
Vigor and Guard are now easier to obtain.
The damage on Magicka Detonation has been increased.
Miscellaneous
A massive slew of bugs, animations and many other such things have been fixed all over the game.
Tons of UI improvements
Lots of polishing and QoL improvements.
This list will be updated over time as more info is revealed about the update
