News ahoy! From this article from IGN.

"Elder Scrolls Online will receive three pieces of new DLC above and beyond the new content announced at Bethesda's E3 conference.

Speaking to IGN, game director Matt Firor confirmed that an Argonian Dungeon Pack and character customising barber shop would arrive in August, while the much-requested addition of player housing would be added in "the first quarter of next year"."

Hey Grits!... ....Very much awesome to see you too!... ...

It's gonna be interesting to see how the do the player housing thing...Because unless they can carve out a separate "Hole" in the universe - like Destiny's vault-space - then you're going to be very cosy with about twenty-odd people each time you go "Home" won't you?...

Though reading this the other day...We may as well get used to ESO as the main PS4 version, because ES6 will be a VR title...Betcha...And we're not going down the VR route...I feel enough of a Muppet sometimes, playing on the tele...Without the whole VR headset/gloves thing...

Here’s the best news I have seen for hybrid characters: the Pelinal’s Aptitude crafted set from the Colovian Revolt Forge Yard in the Gold Coast DLC. Not so much hybrid attribute distribution, but in the sense that a character could wield both spells and weapons effectively. I am so pleased with this I almost think it can’t really be true. It requires nine traits researched, so it will be a while before Jerric can try it. He can't wait!


For housing, could they make your house an instanced thing so that you enter alone or with your group? Then everyone could share the same few locations in the world without sharing the interior.

I saw that when I was looking into traits the other day. Pretty good for spellswords, but Haa-Rei only has one ability that actually uses magicka, as his other spells have been converted to stamina abilities. Besides, 9 traits is...a lot.


I'm not sure how they're going to do housing, but having it in separate instances would be the most sensible thing to do. It's how it works in Lord of the Rings Online, and I really liked that when I used to play.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure how they'd do it any differently.

I like the bonus on that set; and the fact that you can craft it. Most of the best armor is dropped, and the only way to get 5 pieces at your level is buying them in the Guild Stores. I recently spent over 200,000 gold on a set I wanted and still need another dagger for it.




I have two questions:

1. If an item of armor is bound, is it bound to the Player and can be shared among their characters; or is it locked onto one character?

2. Any Tips on the fight with Molag Bal?

mALX, what are the class and weapon skills of your character? My experience will be very different from someone with a different character type.

Jerric fought Molag Bal as a Stamina Templar, so he was able to heal himself a lot. He switched between a shield and the Prismatic Blade he got from the Fighters Guild questline and dual-wielding swords when he had an opening to deal some fast damage. There are a couple of skills that increase the damage of your next attack, I would make sure I had an appropriate one on my bar for the fight.

Managing Magicka (for healing in Jerric’s case) and Stamina (for his bashing and weapon skills) was important because there were some long fights with Molag’s minions. Jerric has perks that help him move faster while blocking, so he didn’t take all of the damage from most hits. He used his Dawn’s Wrath Ultimate every time it was ready. It was an awesome melee brawl with lots of dodge rolls, woo! Molag Bal is big and you can see his special attacks coming, so if you’re fighting in close just dodge, block, or move out of the way while blocking. If you’re using ranged attacks that will be completely different from my experience with melee Jerric.

Blocking was important. Move and block. There is a huge amount of room to work. I thought it was a fun fight. I’m looking forward to taking him on with Magicka Sorcerer Darnand. I suspect that Darnand will have to run around a lot.

Not sure about the gear binding. I only have one character that I really use.


Considering ol' Molag is a Daedric prince, his battle isn't that bad. As Grits said, the area where you fight him is pretty big so you can just run around and avoid most of his attacks with dodge rolls. If you're a ranged build, then just keep moving and shooting.

Misa is a NightBlade, duel wield (one blade I made for her, the other is the Prismatic) is her main weapon, she carries a bow I made for her as a secondary weapon... I have never taken potions; but will hot key some. Most of her healing comes from the blade and bow I made her, they absorb health.

Usually if her health gets too low I'll run away long enough to regenerate health; she regenerates pretty fast with the enemies in (say Dark Anchors or the boss fights).

I didn't even know she could block with duel wield, but when they added that visibly "invisitble" shield I discovered that she actually seems to have a fairly decent block and bash thing going on with her duel wield. Haven't figured out how to use it with the bow yet.

Thank you both for the help and tips on this battle, I am really nervous going into it. Somewhere on the internet it says you can go explore the other Alliance territories without beating Molag Bal, but no where does it say HOW to get into those other Alliance territories to explore,



Oh, and can you explore Coldharlbour first and get the Skyshards? Misa already has any skyshards available in Ebonheart Pact and Cyrodiil; even the ones behind enemy gates. So I can't upgrade any of her defenses or weapons via skills without them; and have done all the available quests that give skill points too.

(urk)


(in other words, I'm kind of stuck with nothing I can do until I beat Molag Bal, have finished the Mages and Fighters Guilds too.

On the PS4 you block with a bow using the same key as with dual-wield or a shield. You can also block spells that way even though there doesn’t seem to be an effect for it, which you need to do against Molag Bal’s titan friends.

You can explore Coldharbour without getting to the final fight with Molag Bal. Part of the region is behind a quest-related door, but even after you go through it you can use the Wayshrines to come back. In other words you don’t get suddenly stuck fighting him without warning.

I don’t remember when Jerric got the Wayshrines in Daggerfall and Vulkhel Guard (opening the other faction areas for him). He turned level 50 soon after finishing the Molag Bal quests, so I don’t know if it was related to his reaching the then Veteran levels or a result of starting the next series of quests with Cadwell. Is Misa in the Champion levels, and if she is can you see any new Wayshrines in the other faction areas on her map?

Also regarding fighting Molag Bal, you get some quest-related blessings that make it plausible that you could take him on, so it’s not just your regular self against a Daedric Prince.

I'm pretty sure you have to beat Molag before you can move to other alliance areas, since the lore mechanic (Cadwell) that allows you to go there is tied to the main story.

There's no reason to be nervous about it though. It's a story quest, and all story quests are scaled to your character and designed to be pretty simple. It's no more difficult than anything you'll have done for the Fighters or Mages Guild.

Oh, this information really helps; I do feel a little better about facing him after hearing this. She is CP level 51 now; and I haven't seen any new wayshrines showing on her map; but I'll try going to the Davon's Watch wayshrine and checking out the Vulkhel Guard or Daggerfall wayshrines specifically.

Misa reached level 50 a long time ago, but I was really nervous about facing MB and so started new characters; took her to Cyrodiil; etc. - even did a bunch of quests after I'd gotten all the achievements for all of the Ebonheart Pact areas; anything to keep from facing him, lol.

http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/ne...hist-first-look

Little bit of new info on the next DLC.

Looks like the new dungeons are both going to be for groups, as I expected. That should make a lot of people happy.

There's not really much for them to say about the barber shop, other than that it is coming. You'll be able to change your character's race, appearance, and name. There will be "dozens of new hair styles, adornments, and body markings that can be purchased from the in-game Crown Store." More information on features including new motifs, new item sets, improved facial effects, and the ability to dye costumes will be revealed in the future.

They're also making some towns in Cyrodiil capture-able in the alliance war, which should make things more interesting. Now if only they could fix the lag so people could actually play PvP.


I'm hoping this will be a free DLC, since it adds nothing worth paying money for (since you have to buy new hair styles etc in the store anyway). We'll have to wait and see if they announce any pricing or anything. As with all DLC, it comes as the DLC itself (which in this case is the dungeon pack) and the base patch (which in this case includes the barber shop).

Not really news, but here's an interview with Matt Firor about general ESO things.

I'm trying to seriously take this in, but the interviewer has Matt listed as "MF" - making it hard for me not to react like this:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbVItpQp7BI














I hope we can change their voices in that barber shop!

I discovered today that Nirnhoned is the ninth trait, not the tenth trait as I’d thought. *palms face* Yeah, it’s going to be a long time before any of mine can craft Pelinal’s Aptitude!

Thank you for the interview link! Lol, I was also giggling at ‘MF.’ You can let me play an M-rated game, but you can’t make me mature.

I know, right? I couldn't concentrate on the content because the reader automatically read it as "M" "F" and instantly I was cracking up no matter how hard I tried not to,

It is their fault; they should have just written out "Matt."

Some new info from an ESO live twitch stream. There was stuff about the dungeon pack, but they're group dungeons so it wasn't that interesting.

The Style Parlor (Barber Shop) is looking really good. The character editing is pretty simple - you edit your character in a window that looks identical to the one at the start of the game. You need to buy appearance change tokens in the crown store.

New hair styles, adornments, etc. are also bought from the crown store, and work as in-game collectibles that can be equipped and changed at any time, without having to go back to character creator.

The costume dyeing works in a similar way with regards to tokens. You buy sets of colours from the crown store, each set with 3 specific colours which will be applied to your costume. ESO plus members can edit their costumes freely and completely by just going to a dye station.

They're releasing some patch notes next week too so there'll be some more smaller changes coming to the entire game. They'll also release the pricing and whatnot too.

Excellent update, hazmick, thanks!

I like that the appearance stuff that you buy for Crowns will be equipable rather than part of a permanent appearance change.

Skill respec is practically free right now on the PS4 due to the DB changes, but I expect that the next patch will send the price back up to normal. I need to remember to get Jerric’s Alchemy points back before that happens. He ran his skill up to 50 because he is Jerric, but he’s perfectly happy to get the points back and let Lil make all of his potions for him.

I'm happy with the way the Style Parlour is being done. Nice and simple. Also having a little extra for ESO Plus members is really cool.



Heh heh, Haa-Rei and Jerric have that in common. Got Alchemy quite high but then decided that we didn't really like it and did a skill respec. Provisioning is proving to be quite useful and interesting (and delicious) so we're going to focus on that now, and we finally got Blacksmithing maxed out.

It's amazing how many skill points you can waste on useless skills. After the respec Haa-Rei has 21 points lying around and no skills to throw them into.

Here is an article about the upcoming Shadows of the Hist dungeon pack, and the new additions coming with the base game patch.

It will be coming to PC/Mac on August 1st, and both Xbox One and PlayStation4 on August 16th.

Non-ESO Plus subscribers can get the dungeon pack for 1500 crowns, and there'll be a collectors bundle for 2500 crowns which includes the two new dungeons, the Hist Guar mount, the Haj Mota Hatchling pet, and five Crown Experience Scrolls.

NOTE: The Style Parlor, costume dyeing etc does NOT require you to buy the DLC, as it will be added in the base patch.



That Hist Guar mount looks awesome. Haa-Rei is a very happy lizard.

A couple of videos for your perusal.

The first is a look at a new personality - Drunk.

The second is a look at the Hist Guar mount.

Both will be coming in the next update.

BWAAHAA !!!! It looks like that guy with the beard puked into his tankard! URP!


I'm excited about these animation ones!

These updates are Awesome! I really hope one of these lets us change our character's voice; and I'd really like to be able to just peek at what voice set I have used on one character (Formerly known as "Pantsless Calia;" who has the absolute most adorable voice EVAH) so I'll know which one I want to use on the other two Imperial girls; (who sound like grunting pig farmers or something)

July's crown store showcase is up.

Costumes
Priest of the Green - July 7th
Breton Hero Armor - July 21st to July 25th
Rumare Waterfront Casual Wear - July 28th
City Isle Tunic Dress - July 28th

Mounts
Doom Wolf - July 21st to July 25th
Doesn't have the Hist Guar listed, so perhaps it's only available in the collector's bundle.

Pets
Colovian Badger - July 7th
Turquoise Nixad - July 7th




They're also removing a load of stuff from the store on August 1st:

Costumes
Desert Garden Gala Overdress
Priest of the Green
Song of the Night Ensemble
Toxin Doctor
Treasure Hunter
Treethane Ceremonial Dress
Tribal Shamans Pack
Winterborn Reach Costume Pack
Winter Scouts Pack

Mounts
Banded Guar Charger

Pets
Baby Netch
Banekin
Blue Nixad
Blue Oasis Frog
Bravil Retriever
Sanguine's Black Goat
Windhelm Wolfhound

Those baby goats are adorable, have you seen them?

The drunk personality is hilarious. When the guy barfed into his mug, Jerric said “Nice catch.� I guess I know what I’ll be shopping for in August!

Looks like there will be some outrageous beards and hair walking around.

The Hist Guar looks awesome. Can’t wait to see Haa-Rei on a glowing guar!

Lots of changes in the base game. Looks good.



mALX, voice change is part of the appearance or race plus appearance change coins you can buy. I forget which one, maybe both.

Oh, that will be great! Now I just have to find a way to peek at "Pantsless" Calia's voice to know what to set the grunting girls on that one!

WOO HOO!

Today Zenimax announced ESO Gold Edition, which will be coming later this year.

Gold Edition features the base game + all 4 DLCs + a Palomino Horse mount + 500 crowns.

Oh, man! It would be nice if they sold it in a package for people who already own the game!

Alliance style crafting motifs have been added to the Crown Store, costing 5000 crowns each.

I've already found some "Pact" ones in game! I can't use them, of course; need nine traits and be able to craft more than just iron,

Yeah, they've been in the game for a little while now. I already have the full set of Pact armour and a couple of weapon motifs.

You shouldn't need traits to craft though. Alliance motifs work just the same as regular motifs do, only higher level, as you mentioned.

I know I wasn't able to open them at all to "learn" them; so I sold every one I found.

That's tied to your crafting level, not number of learned traits. Dwemer, Primal, Barbaric, Ancient Elf etc. motifs are all the same - you have to have upgraded your crafting skill to a specific level, for Blacksmithing it's the 'Metalworking' skill, for Clothing it's the 'Tailoring' skill and for Woodworking it's the 'Woodworking' skill.

You can find Alliance motifs in guild stores quite cheap these days, so if you ever want to buy them again then it shouldn't cost much. Just don't buy them from the Crown Store. 5000 crowns is...too much.

BOLD: Yes, it sure is too much! I think the motifs I sold went for about 1400 gold, but they are easy to find in loot. (and my skill level in smithing/clothing/and woodworking is still at the base level; I kept it low deliberately so I could do writs quickly and easily daily while still building up my skill level in it).

Actually, now that I have completed all the quests and achievements for all the provinces in the Ebonheart Pact; I can jump my skill level in all the crafting as soon as I am able to get more skyshards to skill up with. I can't get any more skyshards till I'm able to start exploring the other Alliance territories.

Finally got some pricing info for the Style Parlor:

"Appearance Change Tokens: These tokens allow for complete modification of one character's appearance, including but not limited to hair styles and colors, adornments, face and body markings, facial features, eye color, age, body and face shape, as well as selected voice and even gender. One Appearance Change Token can be purchased for 1000 crowns.

Race Change Tokens: These tokens grant you everything the Appearance Change Tokens do, plus the ability to change one character's race to one available for that character and account. Those that have the Explorer's Pack will be able to choose any race from any alliance; otherwise, you can choose any race from your chosen alliance. You'll be able to purchase one Race Change Token for 3000 crowns."




Significantly more expensive than I thought it would be.

Oh my goodness! Wow, 3000 is too much for me to ever bother with, but I’d swing 1000 to keep a fully trained mount. I wonder if either includes a name change, or if that will be more points?

I also wonder how much the hair pack will be. I know an elf who sometimes likes to wear a dress and put her hair up.

Thank you, hazmick! I have been wondering about this.

I'd swing 1000 to get rid of the grunting!


Thanks, Hazmick!

Looks like the hair pack will be 1000 Crowns and a name change 2500.

There should be some bundles coming for the name/race/appearance tokens. I am amazed that a name change does not seem to be included in the race + appearance overhaul. Maybe that’s an oversight.

The Crown Store showcase for August is out:

COSTUMES

Dark Shaman - all platforms - from August 25 to August 29.

MOUNTS

Hist Guar - available RIGHT NOW for PC/Mac, and will be available for Xbox One and PS4 August 16.

Masked Bear - all platforms - from August 25 to August 29.

PETS

Haj Mota Hatchling - available RIGHT NOW for PC/Mac, and will be available for Xbox One and PS4 August 16.


There are also three new personalities and a bunch of cosmetic 'stuff' that arrives with the style parlour.


As usual some items are being removed from the Crown Store on September 1st to 'make room' for new stuff:

Costumes

Ashlander Pack
Dragon Priest
Dragon Warrior
Ordinator Armor Pack
Woodland Scouts Pack

Pets

Bal Foyen Nix-Hound
Fennec Fox

Thanks for the update hazmick. It is great fun looking at all the ESO goodies!

I love your screenshot of the month with Haa-Rei relaxing on the farm. His waist sash and outfit look fabulous - perfect for him. The setting looks like the Gold Coast near Anvil.

Thank you, hazmick!

The Masked Bear looks adorable! It’s always fun to see more variety in people's mounts and pets. I saw a pet badger today. It looked like it was biting its, er, “rump.� I’m sure Haa-Rei has his eye on that awesome Hist Guar!

I’m looking forward to the Style Parlor. A lot. (It's all about the hair.)

I’ll second Acadian’s love for your Haa-Rei farming picture. He looks so relaxed basking in the sun against that fence!

Acadian - It is indeed the Gold Coast The farm is located north of Kvatch.

Grits - Heh, yeah, the only thing better than a Guar is a Guar that is literally covered in Argonian lore. I hope I have enough crowns.

The hair pack could be interesting if it has more sets of hair than just what is showing. Oh, I am dying to try those personality packs, but do you buy them separately or buy one pack and get a bunch of diff ones?

I didn't like the drunk one, but the Assassin and some of the mood ones look Awesome! I've seen the Assassin one, this guy I play with has his girl character doing the knife thing A LOT, lol. Haven't seen the moods yet!

From the article, "Three new Personalities will be released in the Personality Emotions Pack. Get the Cheerful, Melancholy, and Furious Personalities to fit your every mood!"

Does anyone remember what the Drunk personality will be a loyalty reward for? I'll keep trying to find where I saw it explained.

I had J'Shanji (dual-daggers Nightblade) using the Assassin personality for a while, but he kept flipping his knives all the damn time so I took it away again. It's an idle that the character does by himself, which is neat but also sometimes mildly alarming.



EDIT: This thread was not very informative, but it was amusing. Lol.

Looks like the 3-pack is 500 Crowns.


EDIT 2: People are saying Drunk will be in the Crown store. I'm guessing since it's not in the pack, the price will be YIKES.

Now there's a surprise

I want whatever personality Hildegard from the Dark Brotherhood has. That might be melancholy, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for the info Grits!

What about the houses?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BOuIMMDKgQ

New Hair; tattoos; body markings:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdnyM6DTSSA

Here it is:


http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Personalities

Looks neat. Since there are stable areas, maybe our mounts will be there. That Glenumbra castle looked promising. Maybe for a Guild Hall. With a dolmen next door. The Reapers March houses were my favorite. I like the combination of water, trees, and desert rocks.

I really like that the houses are integrated into the existing areas and not off in some player house neighborhood thing.


Ooo, they have Lagertha braids!! And glitter lashes! Note to self: no wine before browsing through the Crown store.

Thank you, mALX!