A world with dragons would be so much more exciting, right? Starting today, PC and Mac players can fight these legendary winged creatures with the release of The Elder Scrolls Online Scalebreaker DLC game pack. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One players will have to wait until August 27 to play the Scalebreaker expansion. However, this isn’t the only thing coming today to The Elder Scrolls Online, as the new and free Update 23 patch is also available, for all ESO players. The Scalebreaker DLC is available for free to all ESO Plus subscribers, but if you don’t want to fork out for a subscription, you can purchase it with for 1,500 crowns from the in-game Crown Store.
The Elder Scrolls Online Scalebreaker | What to expect
The Elder Scrolls Online Scalebreaker update brings two new Season of the Dragon dungeons. The first one is the Lair of Maarselok, where the terrifying dragon has slept for centuries. Now, he has awoken and is about to spread his corruption over the Wood Elves’ domain. It’s up to you to defeat this dragon, with the help of Warlock Carindon and the forest spirit Selene.
Moongrave Fane is the other new dungeon, where the vampires of the Hollowfang are getting ready to perform a horrible ritual. Their plan is to drain the blood from an imprisoned dragon, and you must stop them before they achieve this frightful goal.
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You can earn a free Dread-Aurelian Mask just by accessing the Scalebreaker dungeons. You can do so through several means: by teleporting straight from your map, by using the dungeon finder tool, or via the old-fashioned way of running to the dungeon entrances located in Grahtwood (Lair of Maarselok) and Northern Elsweyr (Moongrave Fane). If you want the cool shoulder items that go with the mask, you must complete both dungeons on Veteran difficulty.
Both dungeons can be played in Normal, Veteran and Veteran Hard Mode. Rewards for completing the dungeons include new item sets, achievements, and collectibles, among other things. If you manage to complete both dungeons on Normal or Veteran, you earn a collectible that allows you to unlock an additional wing within the Hall of the Lunar Champion home.
The Elder Scrolls Online Scalebreaker | Update 23 improvements
The free Update 23 brings various quality-of-life improvements, fixes and ability changes. The crafting system was revamped with a multi-crafting option, allowing you to craft, deconstruct, extract, and refine multiple items at once, leading to a noticeable faster process.
Undaunted Keys are now a currency, which means that they are no longer stored in your inventory. You can trade them at the three Undaunted dungeon quest givers for reward coffers, and the more keys you spend, the better are the chances that you receive your desired monster shoulders. Guild Trader locations now welcome multi-bidding, with Guild Leaders now able to bid on more than a single trader each week.
The Elder Scrolls Online Update 23 full patch notes
As noted on the ESO website, here are the full Update 23 patch notes:
Undaunted Keys and Merchants
With Update 23, Undaunted Keys are now a currency and are no longer stored within your inventory, making them easier to manage. In addition to this, you can now trade your Undaunted Keys to the three Undaunted dungeon quest givers to receive reward coffers. If you choose, you can spend more keys on specific coffers that give you a better chance at receiving the monster shoulders you want.
Previously, any Undaunted Keys you’d earned from completing daily dungeon quests had been stored within your inventory or bank and could be spent on one of the three Undaunted chests. With ESO’s ever-growing library of dungeons, this created a problem for Tamriel’s dungeon explorers.
“We knew that as we continued adding more and more dungeons (and thus more monster shoulders), it was becoming increasingly difficult for players to obtain the set they were interested in,” explains Philip Draven, ESO’s Lead Systems Designer. “So we needed a solution that would be sustainable and fair to players over many updates to come.”
With Update 23, Undaunted Keys are now a currency and no longer take up inventory or bank space. In addition to this, the Undaunted quest givers (Maj al-Ragath, Glirion the Redbeard, and Urgarlag Chief-bane) are now also merchants. For one key, you can purchase a mystery coffer from them that contains a reward similar to the ones you could previously receive from the Undaunted chests. Additionally, they sell specialized coffers that you can purchase for five keys. These new coffers provide a guaranteed monster shoulder set from only two potential sources, increasing the chance of you receiving the one you want! Finally, they also offer the monthly monster shoulder style page for 50 keys (and this page has a chance to drop from regular mystery coffers, as well).
“With Undaunted keys now stored as a currency, players regain some inventory space, can narrow their reward possibilities down, and can choose from rewards that are much more clearly labeled,” says Draven. “Additionally, this new approach provides us with much more flexibility for future growth.”
Multi-Crafting
This update also implements an improvement to the crafting system, allowing you to craft, deconstruct, extract, and refine multiple items at once. You no longer have to perform these actions individually, dramatically speeding up the process.
With Update 23’s multi-crafting addition, you’ll never have to waste time crafting or refining the same items over and over again. This change allows you to perform various crafting actions in bulk, including refining, creating, deconstructing, and extracting.
“With multi-crafting, we really wanted to streamline a lot of the repetitive things done at crafting stations so that you can get back to playing the game,” says Weir. “This benefits many different players, from the crafters and farmers that have a ton of materials to refine, to the dungeon explorers who return with a large amount of items to deconstruct, all the way to the hardcore PVEers and PVPers that burn through hundreds of potions and/or poisons in a play session.”
With this change, you’ll save a lot of time at Crafting Stations.
“Refining a whole stack of materials at once is pretty straightforward, but you can also refine several stacks of different materials at once too by first selecting each stack,” explains Weir. “You can do the same in deconstruction by selecting each item you want to deconstruct, rather than having to hit Deconstruct for each item.”
Guild Trader Multi-Bidding
Finally, Update 23 also introduces multi-bidding for Guild Trader locations. Guild Leaders can now bid on more than one trader each week. This change reduces the chance of missing a Guild Trader location each week and allows you to assign priority to the different locations based on how much you bid on each one. Don’t worry, when you win a location, all other bids are refunded.
Update 23 also introduces multi-bidding for Guild Traders. Previously, each Trading Guild could bid on only one Guild Trader Location each week, meaning there was a risk that some Guilds could miss out.
“Having access to a Guild Trader can be essential for trade guilds to operate, and with a single bid in a blind bidding situation, there was a significant risk of not having one at all after a bidding cycle,” explains Bobby Weir, ESO’s UI Lead.
To help alleviate this issue, the team gave Guild Leaders the ability to place bids on up to 10 different Guild Traders each week.
By bidding different amounts on different Guild Traders, you can set your preferences and priorities. Should you miss your first preference, the game will check your second choice and so on. Even if you have winning bids for more than one Guild Trader, you are awarded the location that you placed the highest bid on.
“While having 10 available bids may seem like a large number, only the highest winning bid will be applied,” explains Draven. “And once a guild has been assigned a guild trader from their highest winning bid, all of their other bids are completely refunded and are no longer factored into the final auction for any other trader.”
