The New Life Festival is an annual event that comes to ESO in December. Players get various bonuses during the event and can earn festive rewards that are not available at other times of the year. This year's New Life Festival will begin on December 15th, and last until January 3rd.
This is also your opportunity to obtain the last fragment needed to create the Sacred Hourglass of Alkosh, a unique special furnishing which will allow you to set a custom time of day in your home - especially useful if you have made a thematic house that looks best at a certain time of day!
Below we will explain pretty much everything there is to know about this event, including how you can participate and what rewards you can earn.
Double XP
You can acquire a 100% XP buff collectible by completing a simple quest called “Breda’s Bottomless Mead Mug“, you can obtain this quest from Breda at the event location. This XP boost will stack with any other XP bonus. You can use the mug again when your XP buff expires to get it again - but this will only work during the New Life Festival! If you need help with optimizing grinding/ leveling please visit the ESO Grind Guide.
Before you start with the festival, you need to obtain the New Life Festival Scroll from the Crown Store, The scroll is free, you don't have to spend any crowns or gold for it. Now make sure to use the New Life Festival Scroll in your inventory to unlock “The New Life Festival” quest. After you have done that you need to speak to Breda, more about her in the next section of the guide.
Location of the New Life Festival Event
You can find the New Life Festival tent in Eastmarch, close to the Kynesgrove Wayshrine. There you can find Breda, who will give you the quests for the festival. You can also receive the New Life Festival quest from the in-game Crown Store and use it to find your way to Breda. There are 9 different quests and they can all be done every day of the event. If you are having trouble traveling to Windhelm:
- You can take a boat or cart from the Alik'r Desert (DC Alliance) or Malabal Tor (AD Alliance), travel by road from The Rift, or teleport to a fellow player or guildmate that's already in the area.
- You can teleport directly to the New Life festival tent via the portal found at Impresario (Event Merchant) locations.
Rewards from the New Life Festival
Every time you complete a New Life Festival quest, you will earn a New Life Festival Box, which can contain the following rewards:
- Guaranteed parcel of alchemy, provisioning or enchanting crafting materials.
- A Runebox containing a reward from the 2016 or 2017 New Life Festivals
- A recipe from the 2017 New Life Festival
- A New Life Furnishing
- Skinchanger style page
- Imperial Writ
- Skaal Master Writ
- Snowball Buddy pet runebox
- Powderwhite Coney pet runebox
- NEW Evergreen Style Page
- Nord Carved Style Page
- Frost Miriam or Bervez Juice
- A bundle of consumable festival toys
Impresario & Event Tickets
The first time you complete a New Life Festival quest each day, you’ll receive three Event Tickets in addition to your Gift Box and other rewards. With Event Tickets, you can purchase the following goods from the Impresario:
- All fragments of the Soulfire Dragon Illusion pet - Hallowed Hourglass Basin, Illuminated Dragon Scroll, and Kvatchian Incense - 5 Event Tickets each
- All fragments of the Scales of Akatosh skin - Aureate Anointing Oils, Lustrous Ritual Sand and Sacred Scale - 10 Event Tickets each
- All fragments of the Aurielic Quasigriff mount - Aurelite Gryphon Feather, Gilded Gryphon Barding, Sacred Seeds of Akatosh - 10 Event Tickets each
- All fragments of the Daggerfall Paladin costume - Blessed Rubedite Metal Enamel, Captured Dragonflame and Sanctified Metalworking Tools - 10 Event Tickets each
- All fragments of the Sacred Hourglass of Alkosh furnishing - Engraved Glassblowing Tools, Hallowed White-Gold Ingot and Mysterious Time-Lost Sands - 10 Event Tickets each
- Bound Style pages of the Evergreen outfit style - 5 Event Tickets each
- Companion Guild Commendations - 3 Event Tickets each
- Impresario's Group Repair Kits - 2 Event Tickets each
- Powderwhite Coney pet - 5 Event Tickets
You can also spend Event Tickets at the Indrik Vendor. During the New Life Festival, Nenuluare will sell the following Indriks:
- All feathers for the Nascent Indrik mount - 5 Event Tickets each
- All berries for the Crimson Indrik mount - 10 Event Tickets each
- All berries for the Pure-Snow Indrik mount - 10 Event Tickets each
- Frost-Light Indrik pet - 10 Event Tickets
- Rosethorn Indrik pet - 10 Event Tickets
Quests and Achievements
The Quests will send you all over Tamriel, there's a quest for each playable race. For example, the Khajiit themed quest will send you to Reaper's March. Finishing a quest will reward you with a “New Life Gift Box” which can contain provisioning recipes, pages of the Skinchanger Motif as well as rare hats, costumes (like the Nordic Bather's Towel), mementos and Charity Writs.
Note: All these quests can be done on every character that you have. Doing every quest at least once will reward you with the “New Life Cerulean” dye. There are several additional achievements, earning them all will net you the “New Life Magnanimous” title for your character. For that title, you will have to do several special achievements for each quest, learn the full Skinchanger Motif and all the New Life Provisioning recipes.
Crystal Frost Skin
The Crystalfrost Skin can be obtained by completing the “Newly Charitable” Achievement. For that Achievement you will have to complete 12 New Life Charity Writs (any Charity Writ type works). Those are unique Crafting Writs, only obtainable during the New Life Festival. You will need to craft some basic furniture to complete the writs.
Charity Writs & Imperial Charity Writs
Additionally, when you open a New Life Festival Gift Box, you can also receive one of these two different types of Charity Writs.
- Deep Winter Charity Writs—Complete to unlock pages from the Skaal Explorer outfit style.
- Imperial Charity Writs—Complete to unlock pages from the Rkindaleft Dwarven Weapon Style.
Housing Items
You can find the holiday achievement furnisher Heralda Garscroft in Grahtwood, Stormhaven, Deshaan and Vvardenfell. If you’re unsure whether you’ve completed the required achievements, check the achievements section of your journal for more information. The New Life Festival achievements can be found under "Holiday Events".
Furnishings:
- The New Life Bonfire – Available for 10,000 gold once you complete the “Snow Bare Plunge” achievement
- The New Life Celebrant's Standard – Available for 2,500 gold once you complete the “New Life Celebrant” achievement
- More items such as: Banner of Mayhem, Corpse of Mayhem, Argonian, Corpse of Mayhem, Khajiit, Corpse of Mayhem, Orc, New Life Bonfire, New Life Celebrant's Standard, Probably-Not-Punch Bowl of Mayhem, Standard of Mayhem, Tree, Jester's Large, Tree, Jester's Small, Witch's Festival, Cursed Totem, Witch's Festival, Plunder Skulls, Witches Remains, Hagraven.
How Do I Obtain The New Life Festival Writs?
Every time you turn in a New Life Daily Quest by talking to Breda, you have a chance of getting one of the Writs as a reward. They are tradeable between players, so make sure to help your friends out if you have spare ones and they are still working on earning that skin, spread the Christmas and New Life spirit!
How To Craft Furnishings & How To Get The Blueprints?
The writs will ask you to craft very basic, cheap furnishings. The blueprints, patterns and schematics for those furnishings can be bought for small amounts of gold from Crafting NPCs.
The NPCs you are looking for are Carpenters, Blacksmiths and Clothiers. They will offer the following blueprints, patterns and diagrams, buy them according to what the writ asks you to craft:
Note that some of these furnishings can only be crafted if you have a certain level of the respective crafting skill line and have put skill points in the required passive. The maximum requirements are:
- Tailoring 4 (unlocked at Clothing Level 15)
- Woodworking 3 (Unlocked at Woodworking Level 10)
- Metalworking 2 (Unlocked at Blacksmithing Level 5)
As you can see, these requirements are pretty easy to reach. To craft a furnishing, access the crafting station and click on the tab to the far right. If you need help to understand the crafting system, check out the crafting guides.
You can find NPCs who sell those blueprints, patterns and diagrams in the crafting areas of most cities, here’s a map of Rawl’Kha as an example of where to find those traders.
Crown Store Items & Motifs
There is a wide variety of Crown Store items available during the New Life Festival.
Enchanted Snow Globe Home
Skinchanger and Frostcaster Motif
The Skinchanger Motif is obtainable through the New Life Festival Gift Boxes.
Stahlrim Armor Pack
The Stalhrim Armor Pack for the Stalhrim Outfit will be available in the Crown Store on all platforms during the New Life Festival.
Now you know everything about the New Life Festival in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game developed by Zenimax Online Studios.
