The Elder Scrolls Online News

Slay Tamriel’s most horrific monstrosities to obtain unique in-game rewards during 2023’s Witches Festival in-game event!
[h2]The Festival of Frights Returns![/h2]
This year’s Witches Festival in-game event begins next Thursday, October 26 at 10AM EDT, and runs until Tuesday, November 7 at 10AM EST. During this spoopiest of occasions, you can claim terrifyingly awesome event-specific rewards including Plunder Skulls, XP gain boosts, Event Tickets, and more!

During the Witches Festival, all adventurers can enjoy a passive 100% boost to XP gain at all times. To collect the Witchmother’s Whistle and down ladles of hag’s brew, simply follow the steps listed below:

• Open the Crown Store and acquire the free quest, “The Witchmother's Bargain.”
  • You can also pick up this quest by speaking with the Crow Caller, who you’ll find outside of each Olyve's Brewery in Stonefalls, Glenumbra, or Auridon.
• Complete the introductory quest to receive the Witchmother's Whistle tool.
  • You won’t need to acquire the Witchmother’s Whistle if you finished the quest in a previous year’s event.
• Blow the whistle to summon the “Witchmother's Cauldron,” which you drink from to polymorph yourself into a spooky scary skeleton.
  • You cannot summon the Cauldron in Cyrodiil.

Take a sip from the Witchmother’s Cauldron
[h2]Acquire Cursed Rewards[/h2]
During the Witches Festival event period, whenever you defeat a boss monster, you’ll be offered a Plunder Skull container in addition to any regular rewards.

When you open a Plunder Skull, you have the chance to receive the following items:

• Alchemy reagents
• A festival-themed furnishing recipe
• A festival-themed provisioning recipe
• A complete festival-themed furnishing
• A festival-themed treasure
• A small chance for one of the following:
  • A Hollowjack style item
  • A Dremora style items
• Worms, Crawlers, Guts, Insect Parts

What’s more, whenever you fell a different unique type of boss for the first time each day, you’ll be rewarded with a special Dremora Plunder Skull that contains some of the above items in addition to these:

• Dremora motif chapter
• A chance for one of the following items:
  • A Witches Festival Writ
  • A Glenmoril Teasure Map or Glenmoril armor outfit style page
  • A Grave Dancer weapon style page
  • NEW A Tome of Forbidden Appetites Memento Runebox
  • NEW A Witches Festival Ghost Netch pet fragment
  • NEW A tradeable style page for the Crowborne Hunter outfit style

The different types of bosses that offer these Dremora Plunder Skulls include arena bosses, invasion bosses (from Dark Anchors, Harrowstorms, Volcanic Vents, etc.), delve bosses, final dungeon bosses, public dungeon bosses, and world bosses.

Reap a host of haunted rewards

Monsters of all shapes and sizes lurk throughout Tamriel this time of year, but there is one creepy beastie that is feared above all: The Crowborne Horror. To locate and slay this living nightmare, acquire the daily quest “Plucking the Crow” by speaking with the Witchmother Taerma, located inside of Olyve’s Brewery and at every Impresario tent found throughout Tamriel.

For your courage, you’ll be rewarded with a Dremora Plunder Skull that has a small chance to grant you an incredible offering of tradeable Witches Festival valuables instead of regular Dremora Plunder Skull items, including:

• 10 Witch-Tamed Bear Dog fragments
• The FULL style book for the Dremora motif
• A folio of ALL Glenmoril Treasure Maps
• Runebox: Tome of Forbidden Appetites
• A random Crowborne Hunter outfit style page

[h2]Impresario & Event Tickets[/h2]
During the Witches Festival, you can collect two Event Tickets from the first boss you defeat each day, earning up to 26 tickets by the end of the event. But don’t forget: You can hold up to 12 Event Tickets only.

For this event, the Impresario will stock the following items:

• All three Passion Dancer Blossom pet fragments:
  • Chartreuse Lily Petals
  • Enchanted Silver Flute
  • Mystical Sheet Music
• The first fragment for Hoardhunter Ursauk mount:
  • Blessed Honeycomb
• Crowborne Hunter outfit style pages
• Witches Festival Ghost Netch pet fragment
• Tome of Forbidden Appetites memento
• Assorted Spooky Witches festival-themed Furnishings
  • Webs, Cone furnishing
  • Hollowjack Lantern, Ouroboros furnishing
  • Specimen Jar, Spare Brain furnishing
  • Ruby Candlefly Gathering furnishing
  • Vampiric Lamp, Azure Tall furnishing
  • Vampiric Lightpost, Azure Single furnishing
  • Vampiric Container, Yellow Liquid furnishing
• Group Repair Kit
• Companion Guild Commendations
• Witches Grab Bag (This is purchasable only if you haven’t yet collected all the items contained within)
  • Skeletal Marionette memento
  • Spectre Mask collectible
    • There are four variations of this collectible
  • Apple-Bobbing Cauldron fragment
  • Throw Bones Memento fragment
  • Marshmallow Toasty Treat emote
  • Witch's Bonfire Dust
  • Ghastly Visitation memento
  • Witch-Tamed Bear-Dog pet fragment
  • Witchmother's Servant outfit style pages

Of note: The Witches Festival will be your first opportunity to begin gathering the fragments for the final event morphing collectible of 2023, the Hoardhunter Ursauk mount!

Hoardhunter Ursauk morphing collectible

Additionally, the Impresario’s colleague, Nenulaure the Indrik Vendor, has the following items available for purchase using Event Tickets:

• Nascent Indrik Feathers
• Pure Snow Indrik Berries
• Crimson Indrik Berries
• Frost-Light Indrik Pet
• Rosethorn Indrik Pet

Lastly, the Impresario’s Assistant is offering the following, which you can acquire with Event Tickets:

• Unstable Morpholith fragments
  • Deadlands Flint
  • Rune-Etched Striker
  • Smoldering Bloodgrass Tinder
• Dagonic Quasigriff fragments
  • Smoke-Wreathed Gryphon Feather
  • Black Iron Bit
  • Bridle Black Iron Stirrups

The spooky season has returned, and Nirn need heroes to help bring Tamriel’s terrors under control. Will you come to their aid and enjoy the XP boosts, collectibles, and other rewards during the 2023 Witches Festival in-game event? Let us know via X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.

The Witches Festival in-game event begins Thursday, October 26 at 10AM EDT, and runs until Tuesday, November 7 at 10AM EST.

Learn more about two of the big new additions arriving as part of the Update 40 base-game patch.

Dive deep into Update 40’s two major base-game additions with two members of the development team responsible for the upcoming Group Finder tool and Grand Master Crafting Stations. These changes, along with everything else coming in Update 40, will be free for all players!
[h2]Group Finder Tool[/h2]
“Group content can be difficult to break into when you don't have a social circle or are just stepping into it,” says Bobby Weir, ESO’s Lead UI Designer. “We aimed to create a tool that would help bridge that gap and make it easier for folks to meet others with similar goals. This is especially true for content that requires a group but doesn't have an easy way to find one.”

Arriving in Update 40, the new Group Finder tool allows you to quickly jump into ESO’s various activities, from Trial or Dungeon runs, World Boss zone tours, or social events like roleplaying or fashion contests.

Group up to take on almost any challenge

To ensure the Group Finder covered as many needs as possible, the team started with major content categories that typically require a group, such as Dungeons and Trials, but they did not stop there. They also included content where players generally group together, even if it’s not required.

“Cyrodiil and the Imperial City are good examples of activities where there's safety in numbers, as are the game’s world bosses and world events,” explains Bobby. “We also looked at activities that may have only small gameplay benefits while grouped, but potentially strong social benefits. You may not strictly need someone to quest or explore with for example, but it can be more enjoyable with a friend. We also added a Custom category to fill in any of the gaps.”

Because the tool needed to cover these many different activities, the development of the Group Finder proved to be a complex process for the team.

“It can be difficult to strike a balance between usability and a wide variety of functionality,” says Bobby. “With most new features, we look back at similar things we've done in the past, either for learnings or to leverage UI paradigms from it. Guild Finder was a common reference point for this feature, since a lot of components are similar. With our UI, we focus on consistency across features so that if you learn it in one place, you have a good idea of how it'll work in this new place.”

Group Finder helps you find like-minded adventurers

“The trickiest part was finding ways to fit all of the niche requirements for each content category together in a way that flowed well,” explains Bobby. “The UI design consisted of over 260 mockup screenshots!”

All that hard work has translated into a new tool for players to come together and explore Tamriel in any way they choose.
[h2]Grand Master Crafting Stations[/h2]
Since their introduction in 2017, Attunable Crafting Stations have been highly sought-after by Tamriel’s master crafters. Perhaps even too sought after—as new sets have been added to the game over time, the space required for a full set of these desirable furnishings has ballooned. Now, with Update 40, a new feature resolves the issue for good.

“Grand Master Crafting Stations build on our prior Attunable Crafting Stations and help to solve a fundamental problem with the way they expand over time,” says Senior Systems Designer Cullen Lee. “If you’ve got 75+ sets for four different professions, that’s 300+ crafting stations to organize. They also eat up a huge chunk of your home’s furnishing budget, and that problem gets bigger with every zone. With Grand Master Crafting Stations, you can squish all those sets down into a single station per trade skill, so instead of 300+ stations, it’s just four, forever.”

Grand Master Crafting Stations distill the essence of a craft

Players can feed their Attunable Crafting Stations to Grand Master Crafting Stations, giving them access to the function of any consumed station. Of course, getting your hands on these new stations won’t be easy, as they require the Unsurpassed Crafter Achievement* and significant resources. 

“Grand Master Crafting Stations represent the top end of crafting mastery. As such, they have a significant cost associated with them while still making up a relatively small fraction of the overall cost of building a collection of set stations,” Cullen notes. “These are something really special, and they’re not something most folks should feel pressured to spend Vouchers on early in their Master Writ career.”

For those who do make the journey as a Grand Master crafter, the new stations appear visually distinct from regular Attunable ones. 

“We wanted people with a large collection of set stations to feel proud when they looked at their station,” says Cullen. “After some iteration, we landed on a design where the station grows physically more complex at certain thresholds as you add sets. There's also a visual projection of the tradeskill symbol above the station once you’ve unlocked every set.”

Refined designs for refined work

These exciting new features should be a great boon to the ESO community, with one assisting in forging new bonds in battle, and the other with forging new gear with which to undertake those challenges! Which Update 40 feature are you looking forward to the most? Let us know via X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or Facebook!

Update 40 arrives free for all players on October 30 for PC/Mac and November 14 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

*Requiring the completion of 100 Master Writs to unlock—no easy task!

Discover the unique in-game rewards you can earn during your expeditions into the Infinite Archive.

The new Infinite Archive PvE activity arrives October 30 for PC/Mac and November 14 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles. While this new arena-like experience pits you against waves of monsters and boss encounters, creating endless challenge, it also provides near-endless rewards in the form of unique currencies, item sets, and collectibles.

Discover some of the in-game rewards you can earn during your expeditions into the Infinite Archive below!
[h2]Archival Fortunes[/h2]
An all-new currency introduced exclusively within the Infinite Archive, Archival Fortunes can be found within Muniment Chests (appearing at the end of each Cycle, Arc, and bonus encounter) along with assorted gold, items, and soul gems.

With Archival Fortunes, you can trade with the Endless Archive’s merchants to acquire a host of useful items and boons, including treasure maps, rare Antiquity leads, class set gear (more on them below) and Companion gear, and even style pages and other collectibles.

Trade Archival Fortunes for unique boons and fragments

Most notably, Archival Fortunes, along with the accompanying Achievement, allow you to acquire upgrades, which provide permanent buffs to your future Infinite Archive runs. These include Filer Kor’s Truesight, which gives you access to a third Vision choice, or Tentacular Motivation, which grants you a bonus to move speed while in the archive.

The more times you run the Infinite Archive, the more Archival Fortunes you’ll earn. The more Fortunes you earn, the more you can empower your future Infinite Archive runs!
[h2]Collectibles & Achievements[/h2]
In addition to Archival Fortunes, the Infinite Archive is home to a wealth of unique Achievements and collectibles for you to unlock. For example, while exploring the archive, you may acquire fragments for the Maligraphic Mount when completing its daily quest, or fragments of the Maligraphic Skeever pet from chests.

Earn these rewards in Endless Archive

There’s also a host of body and face markings, mementos, furnishings, titles, an emote, and fragments of the Hermaeus Mora Tales of Tribute deck. Many of these can be earned via Achievements, such as the Malkhest’s Accursed Mirror memento, which is rewarded upon collecting all the Infinite Archive’s many visions, or the Inkslayer title, which requires you defeat the final evolution of Tho’at Replicanum. Others, however, can be acquired in fragments from traders in the Archive Index (the entrance hub).
[h2]Class Item Sets[/h2]
In addition to the above collectibles, consumables, and other boons, the Infinite Archive is also your first and only opportunity to earn an all-new type of gear: class item sets. When wearing one of the seven new sets, you can unlock powerful buffs to specific class skill lines.

For example, the Basalt-Blooded Warrior set for the Dragonknight grants a buff to either your Ultimate generation (if on your front bar) or your healing and damage shields (if on your back bar) when casting an Earthen Heart ability.

Another good example is the new class set for the Arcanist, called Reawakened Hierophant, which provides a unique buff for your allies when you cast Curative Runeform abilities on them, with the effect changing depending on how much Crux you have at the time.

Uncover new Class Item Sets

With the new class item sets, you are encouraged to find all-new ways to play certain roles for each class, creating new and unique builds. Don’t forget, these powerful new items are available ONLY while touring the myriad halls of the Infinite Archive.
[h2]Infinite Challenge, Infinite Rewards[/h2]
You can unlock these rewards and more for yourself by completing the Infinite Archive’s Achievements (with 77 in total!) and opening Muniment Chests. Simply completing your first Arc and turning in the quest will grant you Experience Points, Gold, 500 Archival Fortunes, Mystery Verse scrolls, and a Skill Point!

Which unique rewards will you be hunting in your expeditions into the Infinite Archive? Let us know via X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, or Facebook, and good luck!

The Infinite Archive is a new PvE activity free for all ESO players that arrives with the Update 40 base-game patch on October 30 for PC/Mac and November 14 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

Take a sneak peek at the all-new Tales of Tribute deck and patron arriving alongside Update 40 and the Infinite Archive!

With the arrival of the Infinite Archive and Update 40 (launching on PC/Mac October 30 and November 14 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles), Tales of Tribute is getting an all-new patron and deck: Hermaeus Mora. We sat down with Senior Systems Designer John Carlson, one of the leads behind development on this new addition, and picked their brain regarding the deck’s design and mechanics. 



Hi, John! Thanks for joining us today to discuss Tales of Tribute. To start, we’d love to know how you approached designing this new deck.

John: When we examined the game state of recent Tales of Tribute releases, we knew it was time to add a deck that focused on fast games and raw power instead of calculated action sequences.

With that goal in mind, we looked back to an early design from before the game launched where you would give your opponent resources in exchange for playing a more powerful card.

What are the new mechanics that the Hermaeus Mora patron and cards introduce?

John: Hermaeus Mora introduces the “setback” mechanic, where players give their opponents a resource in exchange for the card being significantly cheaper to buy.

We paired this with the new patron ability to acquire any non-contract cards in the Tavern, but your opponent receives a copy of it as well.



That sounds like two very powerful abilities. What kinds of elements from the design and lore of Hermaeus Mora did you draw upon when designing this deck?

John: The Prince of Knowledge is all about bargains and tradeoffs. The concept of “power at a price” particularly resonated with the core design of the deck and how we could bring that to life.

What sort of playstyle can be expected while piloting this deck?

John: Games with Hermaeus Mora should go fast, and those who find the most success with the deck must be experts in timing. Deciding when to use the patron power or if you should skip playing a card when the setback isn’t worth the reward are the decisions that elevate the masters above their competition.



From your perspective, which other patrons does Hermaeus Mora pair best with?

John: There are a handful! Pelin and Red Eagle both help with accelerating the game to a close which plays into the aggressive nature of Hermaeus Mora. While Hunding and Almalexia both help you make the most of the patron power with Refresh.

What sorts of matchups would you expect Hermaeus Mora to perform best against? Where might the Prince of Knowledge struggle?

John: Hermaeus Mora cards are looking to accumulate a game-winning amount of Prestige before the free resources and cards you’ve given your opponent begin to pile up against you. With that in mind, players should be prepared for their opponent to use decks like Rajhin to slow them down, or Hlaalu to turn the free Coin and cards into a patron victory.


How might players acquire the full new Tales of Tribute set?

John: Players must venture into the new Infinite Archive and collect all the fragments within to unlock the new deck. Good hunting!

Thank you, John, for taking the time to discuss this upcoming addition to the Tales of Tribute patron roster! You can discover the fragments of the new Hermaeus Mora set by exploring the infinite wings of the Infinite Archive, which is available for FREE to all players with Update 40. Are you ready to make risky deals in exchange for power beyond your imagination with the Hermaeus Mora patron? Let us know via X (Formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook!



The Infinite Archive is a new PvE activity free for all ESO players that arrives with the Update 40 base-game patch on October 30 for PC/Mac and November 14 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles.

Try not to scream (in excitement) at the collection of terrifying and terrific new items arriving in the Crown Store this October.

Check out the complete list of contents arriving in the Crown Store in October 2023 below. Don’t forget you can always review everything on sale right now by heading over to the Crown Store page. Before that, be sure to open the Buy Crowns page to pick up however many crowns you need. Certain items and offers will be time-limited throughout the month.


[h2]Crown Store Showcase—October 2023[/h2]

UPDATE 10/13/2023: In celebration of Crown Store gifting returning, we're adding one additional house and furnishing bring-back to the Crown Store offerings each week in October. The first items, the Varlaisvea Ayleid Ruins home and the Ayleid Furnishing Bundle, went in yesterday. Keep an eye on the in-game Crown Store each week for new house and furnishing bring-back offerings!