Developer Deep Dive—Season Zero’s Challenge Difficulty
Learn about the new Challenge Difficulty system, coming later this year, via this developer deep dive.
Arriving late as part of Season Zero, Challenge Difficulty is a new way for Tamriel’s veteran heroes to experience The Elder Scrolls Online’s overland content. If you’re the kind of adventurer who likes a challenge while questing and exploring, this new optional system is for you! Interested? Read this breakdown on the first iteration of Challenge Difficulty direct from Associate Design Director Mike Finnigan and the ESO content team.
Hi everyone!
With the January Reveal fresh in everyone’s mind, we wanted to give an update on one of the most anticipated features announced, Challenge Difficulty (previously Overland Difficulty).
[h2]Challenge Difficulty[/h2]
First things first, why the new name? This name more accurately reflects the goal of the feature and allows us to be more flexible with this system overall. Challenge Difficulty will initially be applicable in overland and overland-adjacent zones (delves, public dungeons, story instances, etc.), but we wanted flexibility to apply wherever it makes sense in the future. Challenge Difficulty will not affect zones that already have bespoke difficulty balance (Dungeons, Trials, Arenas, Infinite Archive, and the new Night Market).
Experience greater challenge while adventuring
At launch, we plan to have three Challenge Difficulty options, along with the current difficulty. These options will increase the damage you take from monsters and reduce the damage you do to monsters. Your gold and experience from monsters will also increase based on the level of difficulty you have chosen. The current planned difficulty options are:
Adventurer
This is the current Challenge Difficulty and default within the game. There is no associated effect, and all rewards are as they are now. If you like how Overland currently operates, then this is the difficulty that is right for you.
Seasoned
You will take 100% more damage from monsters and do 20% less damage. You will receive 50% more gold and 20% more experience from monsters.
Master
You will take 300% more damage from monsters and do 50% less damage. You will receive 100% more gold and 75% more experience from monsters.
Vestige
This will be the most difficult option at launch. You will take 600% more damage from monsters and will deal 80% less damage. You will receive 200% more gold and 100% more experience from monsters.
These numbers are the initial stab (see what I did there) and are subject to change based on feedback once the system reaches the Public Test Server. You will be able to opt-in or out at your leisure, and there will be an indicator on your UI so you know what difficulty you have selected.
When entering a zone where Challenge Difficulty is not in effect, the icon will be suppressed, but it will take effect when leaving, so you do not have to keep selecting your difficulty every time you enter a new zone.
[h2]Design Thoughts[/h2]
To understand some of the choices made with the current version of Challenge Difficulty, we want to talk about some of our core points of consideration during the design process.
First, we are making a choice to make sure players are not separated by difficulty. We want to ensure you can engage with any player you want regardless of difficulty. To do this, the choice to opt-in or change your difficulty is up to you. If you like Overland the way it is, great! No change is needed. If you want it to be far more punishing, then opt-in to Vestige Difficulty. You can still play with friends, all while having the bump in challenge.
Whatever the difficulty, you can still play together
Another pillar of design is around the rewards for participating in Challenge Difficulty. At launch, we will start with additional experience and gold rewards only. We are doing this for two core reasons. Based on feedback from various in-person events and player discussions, we believe starting with experience and gold is a good way to gauge player engagement. We also want to avoid potential exploitation and make sure Challenge Difficulty works without the incentive to exploit for a valuable reward.
That said, we are building Challenge Difficulty to be expandable in the future and layer with other existing systems to help reward players for taking on the challenge. For example, we could have Golden Pursuits with Challenge Difficulty-specific pursuits. If you complete those, you could get a specific tiered reward for your efforts. Expanding the rewards for Challenge Difficulty will be an ongoing discussion after launch, but we want to make sure you know why we are starting with experience and gold.
That’s the nuts and bolts of Challenge Difficulty. We still have some work to do before you get your hands on this feature, and hope this gives you a better understanding of what a more challenging ESO overland will look like in the future!
Challenge Difficulty is scheduled to arrive in the latter half of Season Zero, so keep an eye out for more information about the system, how it works, and when you can experience it for yourself in the coming months. Don’t forget, starting with Season Zero, all new systems and adventures will be free to ESO players. Are you excited to take on a tougher Tamriel? Let us know via Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.