The Elder Scrolls Online just doesn’t stop evolving with the developer’s continued effort to update Zenimax Studios’ original MMORPG. The next chapter is called Flames of Ambition which is currently online for PC/MAC players and the console players will have to wait until the 16th of March before they can dive in. I had a chance to meet up with the developers and explore one of the new dungeons called “The Cauldron”. “The Cauldron” is exceptionally well figured out and will make veteran players feel at home. Let’s explore, shall we?
“Flames of Ambition” is the beginning of a year-long story full of explorations, unique items, and interesting characters. The Cauldron is one of the first dungeons to appear but many more will follow due to the fact that the dungeons have an important role to play in the unfolding of this latest adventure. We start off a quest in Deshaan that gives us info about the situation that needs to be dealt with and Lyranth comes around to help, at least that’s what she’s saying but what about the things she’s not saying…
“Only Lyranth knows what’s in the box and doesn’t tell you anything about it…”
It seems that cultists of Mehrunes Dagon have been killing and abducting dark elves from the environment, trying to please their master. Of course, these practices don’t go unnoticed and that’s why the heroes of Tamriel are at the site. Eventually, throughout the sitrep, you begin to gain information about Lyranth’s true purpose of helping out the hero squad. Drathas, a dark elf who is in search of his family, has been hired by this evil mistress to acquire a mysterious lockbox. Only Lyranth knows what’s in the box and doesn’t tell you anything about it. You only know that the box or the thing that’s inside is well protected against the Daedra.
After a run-through of what players can expect from this dungeon such as new equipment and some of them even add weapon damage to your attacks or give an area of effect, a new enemy, a bunch of achievements, easter eggs, … we join the group leader and venture further into the dark mines of Deshaan. I can already say that the mines have a great dark/ twisted atmosphere that I kind of like. You truly feel like you’re in this mysteriously abandoned cavern with lots of secrets to unfold. There’s even mist running through the stalagmites and stalactites on the ceiling.
“If the dungeon’s been completed, there’s also a hard boss mode…”
It doesn’t take long before you’re surrounded by Flame Cultists which play a big part in this upcoming journey. There’s also a new Dagon type of creature that took the known enemy to a higher standard with its energetic fire beams and pirouetting combat skills. These are of course you’re veteran-type enemies to overcome but you’ll quickly notice that the dungeon is built like any other classical dungeon where you’ll have to battle against 5 different bosses in order for you to progress. If the dungeon’s been completed, there’s also a hard boss mode which heightens the difficulty level of the end boss.
First, you’ll encounter Oxblood the Depraved which is a jailor that surrounds himself with cages that are suspended from the ceiling to keep an eye on his captives. With his delightful set of combat abilities, he makes up for a funny but challenging boss indeed. The guy vomits green slimes that eventually crawl back to him to make him enraged and do extra damage. He also farts around to keep us at bay and sometimes he will also cage one of the players which become detained unless another player can break him/ her out. It was a great battle with enough mechanics to keep the game entertaining and not static.
We have kept the jailor in place and moved forward into the dungeon. The way between the first boss and the second one started to become a bit more populated as a new enemy (giant Daedric Eye) flew over to keep us in check. There were also different red circles appearing on the ground. These red circles are indicating that something bad will happen when you stay in these circles.
“It’s great to see NPCs from the story joining the fray…”
In other words, these were telegraphic markers to indicate that a lightning bolt will hit the floor and do damage to everyone within the circle. It’s a genius way for the developers to let players familiarize themselves with indicators that will probably be used by the next boss in line. Speaking of our next opponent, it was Taskmaster Viccia that rose to the surface and placed traps all over the room. These traps are similar to the red indicators from the previous road. The Taskmaster also uses AOE attacks to push us towards the dangerous traps. The dark elf Drathas helps us by disarming these traps and therefore was a great asset in this battle. It’s great to see NPCs from the story joining the fray, it’s a great addition for the immersion.
After this battle, we ventured through a lava cave filled with familiar creatures but much more unpredictable than the creatures you find outside the dungeon. It’s great to implement familiar creatures along the way as it strengthens the connections with the outside world. The next boss was a Molten Guardian, also a familiar creature but with more difficult mechanics to overcome. You step on this smaller platform which is surrounded by lava. The Molten Guardian uses a lot of AOE attacks and splits up into different Molten Guardians. It’s up to the group to defeat them as quickly as you can and finding the true Molten Guardian, so it will take on his original form again.
“The developers called it a non-classical/ non-linear boss fight…”
After Downing it, we went towards a mysterious gate where we met the end boss called Baron Zaudrus. After a small dialogue, he abducts Lyranth, and the gate before us opens up. After a couple of times of mowing down enemy creatures, we found ourselves in a big arena-like environment with a glowing ball in the middle. This glowing ball is the mystic cage where Lyranth is imprisoned. The developers called it a non-classical/ non-linear boss fight with some amazing mechanics where a bit of tactic is needed.
The mystic ball draws its energy from a couple of emitters and it’s up to your party to destroy these emitters as quickly as you can. Lyranth will help your party by channeling her power and create a lightning bolt outside of her cage. One of your party members will have to pick up some flammable oil and spill out a connection between one of the emitters and just outside of the bowl where Lyranth’s lighting ball will strike. If done correctly, the spark will ignite the oil and destroys the emitters. If you’re quick enough, you can even try to connect more emitters to fasten up the process. This will take a decent amount of stamina and insights to pull this one-off. With each emitter destroyed, more enemies will join the fray and try to kill you. After the last destroyed Emitter, it is up to the party to clear out the enemies in the arena.
“From what I’ve seen, I can already tell that his dungeon will be played often….”
The end fight is a great fight to end the dungeon run. The end boss is called Baron Zaudrus and this fight includes moving walls of death, breakable rocks, AOE attacks, and different horde enemies. This mechanic is all about moving around the pillar while doing damage towards the end boss and hold your ground. The circle of death can also come from the other direction, so you’ll have to be on your toes. Lyranth will sometimes put up a circle where players receive a buff. This is helpful to destroy the rock formation fairly simple.
Conclusion:
From what I’ve seen, I can already tell that his dungeon will be played often. The dungeon offers a good variety of environments and all with their twisted familiar creatures. The dungeon feels like a smooth transition between environments. It’s great to see some of the NPCs deliver some context about the quest/ dungeon but on the other hand, they suck at defending the object. There’s also a good balance between simple mechanic bosses and a bit more difficult monsters. Other mechanics were top-notch and if you haven’t Tried ESO yet, now’s the time to start!
For more about ESO, we turn over to Matt Firor (game director) who got interviewed by Nika Tufnel and had some fun details to share. Here are some snippets of the said interview:
Nika: Obviously you developed this successful game that we all know now. What was there before Elder Scrolls Online for you; how did you get into the game development?
Matt: Well, first I’m old. So, I basically got into the game industry back when the industry was so small it was much easier to just do your own thing. So, I did a couple of little things in the mid-1980s but not for money, just more for school projects and things like that.
But, in the 1980s some friends and I were playing what you call a ‘multi-user game’ – this was before the internet – a multi-user game where you called in over modems, on phones, and ten people could play together. And we decided to license that game, because we liked it so much, mostly because we wanted to play it without paying for it. And, also, we were going to put it in Atlanta where a friend of mine was going to college.
So, that game was called Scepter of Goth, which was kind of an early M.U.D.. The funny thing was, we didn’t actually know what M.U.D.s were, we just knew we liked this game. So, we licensed it, we worked on our own kind of world for it, and then it never happened. The company, the big company that we licensed it from, went out of business. So we decided to just write our own. We were like, ‘We can do this! How hard can it be?’ So we wrote our own multi-user game using Coherent, which was an old version of Unix from the late 1980s, early 1990s. This is pre-Linux too, that’s how long ago it was.
We wrote this game and we put it in our friend Rob’s house in Vienna, Virginia. We got twelve phone lines installed and twelve modems, and we set up this game – originally called Tempest. Then Microsoft didn’t like the idea that we’d named it Tempest because they had an arcade game called Tempest, so we renamed it to Darkness Falls and that game ran for a couple of years; enough for us to start a company.
That company grew into, by merging with another company, Mythic Entertainment. And then we made a whole bunch of little games which lots of people don’t remember, but our biggest one at Mythic, of course, was Dark Age of Camelot, and that’s how the road happened. From the 1980s to the late 90s and Camelot came out in 2001, we’re coming up on the twentieth year anniversary, and I worked there until 2006 or so and then I came over to Zenimax to start Zenimax Online and start working on ESO.
Nika: The time came for Elder Scrolls Online. Do you remember the initial pitch you made for it? What was the genesis of The Elder Scrolls Online?
Matt: Yeah, so Bethesda and Zenimax were looking for someone to start a studio around 2007 that had ‘MMO experience’ and multiplayer experience. They wanted to make Elder Scrolls Online. They wanted to take Elder Scrolls … Oblivion had just came out, it was very successful. Of course, there were lots of successful fantasy MMOs out there at the time and they wanted to build a multiplayer game based on the Elder Scrolls license.
So, the pitch I gave them … I mean they told me to make a multi-user game, MMO-based on Elder Scrolls. My original pitch was setting up the PVP alliances: this is the way the world is set up, so is the battleground – because it’s kind of in the middle. Oblivion had just come out and everyone was super familiar with it, so we wanted to turn it into a space that people PVP-d in. So, we didn’t have to go in and do a lot of quests and stuff, because players had just gone through it. And, of course, then Skyrim came four years later and changed everything. But, the initial pitch of the game was very much based on what Oblivion did, and then what other MMOs at the time were doing.
Nika: When it comes to Chapters, as we’re talking about the Chapters, what is it like deciding on revisiting or introducing new areas?
Matt: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, some are obvious. We knew we didn’t have enough ‘Morrowind’ content in the game because we only had two zones, I think. So, when we did that year that was Morrowind, and then I think it ended with Clockwork City, which made a really good set of content for players that wanted to go back to Morrowind. Because the Morrowind we had before the Chapter Morrowind was not really the same area that players were used to and it was different.
So, we liked doing that when we did the base game because it was different and then we gave them the nostalgic one. And then we just look at areas of the map Summerset was obvious because we had Auridon in the base game, but players had really never gone to the homeland of the Altmer, so that was obvious. And then Elsweyr was obvious. Skyrim – western Skyrim – was because we didn’t want, in the base game, to go all in on Skyrim because players had just played through it. But with Dark Heart of Skyrim, last year in 2020, that was nine years after Skyrim. Elder Scrolls V launched. So we thought that enough time had passed and we could start telling some Skyrim stories again. And then, as you know from the Gates of Oblivion, we picked Blackwood which is this area which half the players remember from Oblivion but then it has a whole area which players have never been to before, which is western Black Marsh in the city of Gideon. It’s a good example of … players hadn’t been there in a while, to part of it, but there’s a whole new area which is brand new which they haven’t been to. We look at the map, look for fun areas that tell great stories.
Nika: For the player as well, stepping into the world for the first time that it’s just been opened to you, I remember feeling … not entirely lost, but being ‘Oh, there’s so much to explore. I can do emotes.’ I remember typing out all the emotes that I could find and just being absolutely mind-blown that my character can do so much. And being torn over what I wanted to do first, where I want to see because there are zones that I haven’t seen and I wanted to know their stories as well.
It was definitely very exciting to step into the stories of Elder Scrolls Online, especially for fans who really wanted to experience the game, together with their friends. And being able to say, ‘Have you seen this?’ with your friends, and friends going, ‘Yes, this just happened.’
Following the highs, what was, you would you say, the low points?
Matt: It’s a great question. If you step back and look at it, I make virtual worlds for a living and it’s all good but there have been some stressful moments.
One of them, that’s interesting, is that early on one of the design guidelines that we followed for the game was we want the players to be able to change the world. Because you could not do that in any other MMOs at the time. But you could in Skyrim, you know your actions had consequences and the world changed because of it, a little bit.
So we had many, many quests and POIs in the game where I started and the POI, let’s say a town, is in one state and when I’m done it’s in another state. Like, it’s on fire when I start and I help it and put I it out and it’s not on fire anymore. It’s dangerous when I start, and it’s not dangerous when I end. And you’re thinking, ‘Wow, that’s great. It’s an Elder Scrolls game, of course you could do that.’ But, the problem was that the way you do that technically behind the scenes is you have two different versions of that town: one that’s in the first state, and one that’s in the second state. Once you complete the quest it changes states for you, so you see the changed version. The problem is, if you’re adventuring with someone and they haven’t done the quest and you walk into the town, you get separated and they are on the dangerous layer and you’re on the happy layer. And suddenly you don’t see them anymore. So, if you think back to 2014 and players complaining about player separation, it was because we designed it to do that so that you as a player could see the results of your actions. But, obviously, if I played the game for two weeks and then I tell my friend to come join me and then my friend starts, my friend is going to see a different world than I see because I’m ahead of them. And I won’t be able to help them in those quests where we disappear from one another.
So, we very quickly realized that was a bad decision and it took us almost a year to go in and change all of the areas of the world where we had it. And there’s still some, we just couldn’t get them all. We minimized the impact of that, but it was a lot of work to change that.
If you look at Bleakrock Village in the Ebonheart Pack starting area, that I think still has the state change where the Covenant is attacking in one layer but it’s not attacking in another layer and you still get separated. So there are still some. But that was in a beginner zone, and we didn’t feel like a lot of high level players would be going back to adventure there, so hopefully the impact isn’t quite so bad.
For everyone listening and watching this, that is what happened when you were adventuring in 2014 and early 2015 and then the person you were adventuring with suddenly disappeared but you could see their icon hovering over their head but not actually see them. That’s what was going on.
Nika: From everything that we have seen last night that you mentioned, what are you most excited about in the new chapter?
Matt: That is a great question. So, I did say that Orsinium is my favorite Chapter-size piece of content. Very close second is Murkmire. I loved Murkmire. It’s not just because Argonians are awesome but it’s a really different feeling part of Tamriel than any other part of Tamriel. So, I’m really excited to go to the parts of Black Marsh that are in the Blackwood Chapter. Like Gideon.
For listeners and viewers who aren’t so familiar with Elder Scrolls lore, that part of the world is actually a giant battleground between, oh for centuries, between the Imperials trying to take over Black Marsh and the Argonians trying to fight them back. It’s an interesting cultural melting pot where there’s these really old things that are Argonian-related and then there’s a lot of Imperial things. Imperials in ESO generally have been kind of evil Daedra-worshipers, because that’s what they were in this time in history.
But this gives us a chance to go into some other aspects of Imperial lore as well, and kind of piggy-back off the Oblivion stories and the things that went on there. And obviously, Mehrunes Dagon is a great adversary, we remember him as stomping through the Imperial City at the end of Elder Scrolls IV. You get to spend some time with him and go to the Deadlands, and that’s really cool.
