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Everything we know about the ESO Deadlands DLC

By Woeler | 18 Sep 2021 | Share

Visit the Deadlands DLC overview page for a detailed overview of all new content.

The ESO Deadlands DLC was announced on the 17th of September via an official Twitch stream of Zenimax Online Studios. The update contains a new zone in Oblivion. This new zone is the deadric domain of Mehrunes Dagon, the Deadlands. This new zone will contain new quests, delves, world bosses, skyshards and other interesting locations. Next to that, update 32 (which will contain ESO Deadlands) will release with a list of quality of life updates that players have been asking for for a very long time. We will go over every single detail below.

The Deadlands Zone

The Deadlands are a Daedric realm. It is a gloomy place. In the livestream two biomes were shown. As you may know the Deadlands from TES4 Oblivion, it has a biome with tall fortresses, lava and brimstone. This classic biome will be returning. However, next to this, a biome based on storm and lightning was shown. The reason for this variety is that Mehrunes Dagon is not the deadric prince of lava and fire, but rather the daedric prince of destruction. And destruction comes in many forms.

A spire in the storm biome of the Deadlands
The Deadlands will also contain a new form of world boss. The so called "Wandering Executioners". These world bosses do not have a stationary position on the map, but roam the map, and thus can sneak up on you. In terms of difficulty the team has said that they will be more difficult than classic world bosses.

During the stream, a delve in the lava biome was shown. It was named "Brandfire Reformatory". We do not know much about it, and we currently know nothing about the other delve(s) in the zone. (usually the small zone DLC's come with 2 delves)

The main hub or city in the Deadlands is called "Fargrave". It isn't a pretty place, but it is a safe haven for those roaming the Deadlands. Daedra, man, mer and beast live here. It will most likely be the central city, where you will have your crafting stations, bank, shops etc.

Item Sets

During the stream, it was said that there are three new mythic items in the Deadlands. They can be acquired via the antiquities system, which means you will need the Greymoor DLC in order to obtain them.

We currently do not know anything about overland and crafted sets. But it is safe to assume we will get 3 new overland sets (1 heavy, 1 medium, 1 light) and 2 new crafted sets.

Item Set Collection & Loot Improvements

A small, but welcome addition is that the item set collection menu will now have a summary page, which will show your progress for each zone or section of the map. It works similar to the summary screen in your achievements tab.

A big new addition is that farming set items will become a lot easier for everyone once update 32 launches. ESO will introduce a loot system that is no longer RNG. Whenever you kill a boss (dungeon, trial, overland etc) the game will have a look at the loot-pool for that specific boss and your set collection. If there are items in the boss' loot-pool that are not in your collection, you are guaranteed to drop an item you have not already collected. This will make farming gear a finite job. You are no longer at the mercy of RNG, and will eventually get the item you need. Below are some noteworthy facts listed about this new system:

The sources of loot are still the same. Dungeon endbosses will still drop weapons, and generic dungeon bosses will still only drop armor
The system works for Dungeons, Trials, Overland (zone), Arenas, Dark Anchors (and equivalent world events) and Monster Masks
The system only works for boss fights, base-pop (trash mobs) will still drop gear with simple RNG
If you have every item a boss can drop collected, the boss will revert to dropping RNG for you

The Armory - Build saving and swapping

The pain of having to manually swap builds on a single character is no more. ESO is introducting The Armory in update 32. The armory is a free furnishing that you can place in your house. When you interact with this furnishing you can save your entire build, and later load it again. You may save multiple builds here and swap between them, quick and easy. Each character will get 2 build slots for free, an additional 8 can be purchased in the Crown Store. Unfortunately, builds slots are per character, and not per account.

Visit the ESO Armory System Guide for a detailed walkthrough on how the whole system works.

The console UI for the Armory

Alongside the Armory furnishing, there will also be an armory assistant that you may obtain (we do not know how yet, but we assume it will be via the Crown Store). With this assistant you can swap builds almost anywhere in the game (except pvp areas, vet trials and vet arenas). Your allies may use this assistant too when they are grouped with you.

The Armory will be able to let you save the following properties of your character in a build:

Gear
Skills (including all your unlocked skills, passives, morphs)
Champion Points (slotted points and all unlocked stars)
Quickslotted items (potions)
Attribute Points
Outfit
Curse (Vampire or Werewolf, so yes, this means you can swap between those without having to re-do the quests)

One thing it does not save is your Mundus Stone, so you will still need to swap that manually. Swapping builds at the armory is free, and it will also not charge you the Champion Point/Skill/Attribute respec costs.

Performance Improvements

ESO will receive some performance improvements specifically for people running 2000 and 3000 generation RTX graphics cards from NVIDIA. From update 32 on ESO will be able to leverage DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). This can be a huge performance increase in terms of FPS. You can learn more about DLSS on the official website of NVIDIA.

Next to that, ESO will also use a brand new NVIDIA technology called DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing). This is a new anti-aliasing technology from NVIDIA that will smooth out rough edges and icky textures for you at almost no performance cost. The technology is entirely new, and ESO will be the first game to leverage it.

Other Quality of Life Improvements

Update 32 will come with some other, smaller quality of life improvements. They are listed below:

Dark Anchors and Abyssal Geysers will now show on the map whether they are active or inactive (just like Dragons and Harrowstorms)
You can now toggle combat music between "always play when in combat", "play only in boss fights" and "never play combat music"
Ingame mail delivery is now instant. You will no longer have to travel to a different zone in order to receive items you bought from a guild trader

All in all a big list of improvements for the final patch in the Gates of Oblivion storyline. We are definitely looking forward to playing the new DLC, and we will keep you updated as more info releases.

by Woeler

18 Sep 2021

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