Overview of all new features and changes coming to ESO in Update 44

Here you can find a complete overview of what we can expect from the Free base game Update 44 launching in October 28 for PC and November 13 for Consoles. Keep in mind that this information is from the ESO PTS (Public Test Server) and is subject to change before launch.

We go over everything coming in the ESO U44, including: Two-Sided Battlegrounds and their rewards, Imperial City vendor changes, Tutorial Quest rework, Golden Pursuits, New Skill Styles, the Two new companions, Scribing changes and additions, Combat and Gameplay changes, Notable fixes and improvements, Collectibles, New Homes and list ALL the obtainable furnishing for Update 44.

Keep an eye out for more in depths articles on some of the topics!

Two-Sided Battlegrounds

Forget Storm Lords as they are being dropped for now and The Pit Daemons and Fire Drakes will continue battling in the new 2-Sided Battlegrounds! The Battlegrounds will be divided in two different kind of matches: 4v4 and 8v8. Players below level 50 will be in their own 8v8 matches.

4v4 matches. A Competitive mode between two teams of four without powerups.
4v4 Game Modes: Team Deathmatch, Domination, and Crazy King modes. They also have Rounds, Lives and Spectator Camera.
8v8 matches. The standard mode featuring powerups and two teams of eight.
8v8 Game Modes: Capture the Relic, Team Death Match, Domination, Chaos Ball and Crazy King modes.

New Competitive Leaderboard replaces all old battleground leaderboards. Leaderboard is only available on 4v4 Competitive matches.

Battleground Powerups

When Battlegrounds were first introduced, we had powerup Sigils that boosted damage which is now being reimplemented with the 8v8 battlegrounds (not available for 4v4). Keep in mind that sigils activate in an area which means all buffs go to enemies and friends alike.

Damage boost (Red )
Super speed (Green)
Increased damage mitigation (Blue )
One time burst Ultimate grants (Yellow)

7 New Custom Built Battleground maps

Four of the Battleground maps are tailored for 8v8 and three of them are meant more for 4v4 battles as they are smaller.

Left: 4v4 oriented map and on the right: 8v8 oriented map.

Battleground Rewards

All Battleground Rewards have been re-structed

Battleground Daily Quests will give

Green, Blue or Purple coffers that contain: Battlemaster Token, Alliance Points, a Battleground Set Item, Soul Gems and a Battleground Style Page depending on the container quality. Purple containers have a guaranteed curated Style Page in them (limited to 1 a day).

Battleground Mail Rewards will give:

Alliance Points, Pvp Item set (either a new battleground exclusive set or a still current Rewards for the Worthy set), Battleground style item, Soul Gems, Transmutation Geodes, a Battleground Style Page and a chance of the rare Chef Arquitius's Lost Thesis. Chances depend on the game mode (competitive/standard) and if you've lost.

Style pages awarded by battleground mailers are limited to one per day (separate from daily quests).

Leaderboard Rewards will give:

A new battleground set piece in gold quality. A battleground set piece in purple quality. One style page, curated: Galeskirmish Gladiator style pages (exclusive to the leaderboard). A purple transmutation geode.

6 New Pvp Reward Item Sets

6 new Pvp reward item sets are being added to ESO at U44 launch. Three of the item sets come from Rewards of the Worthy and the other three from Battleground Reward Item Sets.

Rewards of the Worthy Item Sets

Battleground Reward Item Sets

PvP Item Set Reward Cadence

PvP item sets have had their reward cadence reworked. New sets will start in Rewards of the Worthy and will be added to Cyrodiil Vendors later.

When new sets are added to Rewards of the Worthy, an older set is moved to one of the following: Cyrodiil Town Merchants, Cyrodiil Delve and Dolmen drops, Imperial City Vault Vendors or Standard Battleground Rewards

Imperial City vendor changes - Imperial Fragments

Imperial Keys and Imperial Key Fragments are being converted to a new account-wide currency called “Imperial Fragments”. Keys and Key Fragments will be automatically converted from your inventory, or when they first go into your inventory. Unlike Tel Var, you do not lose this currency on death.

Tel Var Armourer and Tel Var Grand Armourer sell Item Set containers, similar to the Elite Gear Vendor found in Cyrodiil. All Imperial City item set coffers are now curated.

Tel Var Rotating Merchant sells:

Gold PvP Jewelry, Mythic Antiquity Leads, Skill Styles and Skill Style Fragments, Treasure Map Containers and Scripts for Scribing

Tel Var Collectibles Merchant sells:

Xivkyn Polymorphs, Siege of Cyrodiil Glue Items (for combining with Siege of Cyrodiil Merits into other collectibles), Dragonguard Berserker Style Pages, Red Rook Garb Style Pages

The Tel Var General Merchant sells:

Crafting Materials, Glyphs, Soul Gems, Style Items, Furnishings

Imperial City rotating merchant in the Aldmeri Dominion Base.

U44 Tutorial Quest rework

New Characters in ESO will start with the original Tutorial Main Quest, "Soul Shriven in Coldharbour" in Update 44. If your character is currently on another tutorial quest, you can still finish it. After the Wailing prison, your character will be sent to your alliance's "starter island".

You will not get the "Soul Shriven in Coldharbour" tutorial if you have finished another tutorial, but will be greeted with the Hooded Figure as it is right now.

The combat tutorial has been updated to the current standards. The tutorial will always start in third-person and give your character appropriate "archetype fantasy" weapons.

Golden Pursuits

A new way to earn in game rewards "Golden Pursuits" being added to the game sometime after Update 44 releases. Golden Pursuits in ESO are time-limited activities that you can complete to earn individual rewards while working towards milestones and a final reward. The final reward on the Public Test server is a Shor's Fox mount.

HDR (High Dynamic Range)

ESO U44 introduces HDR for PC players that have monitors capable of using HDR.

There will be new Video Settings on PC:

HDR enables or disables in-game HDR.
HDR Mode allows for you to change between the "default" look of ESO and a much more "vibrant" mode.
HDR Peak Brightness controls the overall brightness of the game. The higher the slider is, the brighter ESO will appear.
HDR Scene Brightness controls the brightness of the game, but not the brightness of the game's UI.
HDR Scene Contrast controls the contrast of the game, but not the contrast of the game's UI.
HDR UI Brightness controls the brightness of the UI, but does not affect the game's brightness.
HDR UI Contrast controls the contrast of the UI, but does not affect the game's contrast.

Four New Skill Styles

Four new skill styles are being added to ESO in U44. Two of them are not just styles but a completely new visual:

Puncture, Lavaburst skill style requires you to find 5 Fragments to get the Skill Stylist: Puncture achievement.
Force Shock, Wildburn Skill Style requires you to find 5 Fragments to get the Skill Stylist: Force Shock achievement.
Accelerate, Lilac Purple can be rarely found within Psijic Portals.
Undo, Lilac Purple Requires you to complete the Tracker of Temporal Tomes achievement.

ESO Puncture, Molten Skill Style.

Two new companions

ESO's two New Companions Zerith and Tanlorin can be unlocked in two different ways in Update 44:

Buy them with Crowns from the Crown Store.
Unlock them from the Crown Store for free with a ESO Plus Subscription.

Companions Tanlorin and Zerith-Var.

Tanlorin

Brash and energetic, Tanlorin finds themselves in a plot that could change the course of the Aldmeri Dominion. Once unlocked from the Crown Store, you can recruit Tanlorin from Auridon.

Perk: Garland Ring Humming Pick. Benefits to lockpicking: increased duration time to pick a lock and a higher chance to force lock. Reduces your chance to lose a lockpick on fail to pick a lock.

Zerith-Var

Zerith-Var is a member of an ancient order of Khajiit priests, harnessing necromancy to redeem fallen souls. Once unlocked from the Crown Store, you can recruit Zerith-Var from Reaper's March.

Perk: Ja'kh's Bell of Bounty. Keen-Eye for Heavy Sacks. Heavy Sacks will glow and have small paw prints from a spirit cat.

Scribing changes and additions

New Grimoire: Banner Bearer in ESO

A new Scribing Skill: Banner Bearer can be found in the Alliance War Support skill line. It is a toggleable AOE skill that affects your whole party with the scripts effects you have chosen. As an example: Minor Heroism buff will be applied to all allies. You need to have it on both bars for it to stay when you bar swap.

Banner Bearer Works With the following Scripts:

Focus Scripts: Magic Damage, Flame Damage, Immobilize, Mitigation, Multi-Target, Physical Damage, Restore Resources.
Signature Scripts: Sage's Remedy, Cavalier's Charge, Class Mastery, Crusader's Defiance, Druid's Resurgence, Thief's Swiftness, Warmage's Defense, Wayfarer's Mastery
Affix Scripts: Resolve, Berserk, Brutality and Sorcery, Courage, Heroism, Intellect and Endurance, Protection, Savagery and Prophecy.

New Focus Script Options

Vault - Bleed Damage
Smash - Poison
Elemental Explosion - Physical Damage
Traveling Knife - Frost
Wield Soul - Bleed, Disease Damage, Flame Damage
Soul Burst - Bleed, Disease Damage, Flame Damage
Ulfsild's Contingency - Bleed, Shock Damage
Torchbearer - Frost Damage
Trample - Frost Damage

Combat and Gameplay changes

Dragonknight

Inferno > Cauterize This morph now heals up to 4 nearby allies every 3 seconds, rather than healing 1 nearby ally every 5 seconds. Reduced the healing per tick by ~33%, resulting in a ~11% increase in healing per second with the new faster tick rate. Increased the cost to 3240, up from 2160.

Templar

Focused Charge This ability and its morphs will now also taunt the enemy hit for 15 seconds. Increased the duration of Major Protection granted from this ability and the Toppling Charge morph to 7 seconds, up from 4. Increased the cost of all versions of this ability to 3780, up from 3510.
Explosive Charge This morph's taunt only applies to the first enemy hit. Increased the duration of the Major Protection granted to 15 seconds, up from 10, to match the taunt duration for easier management.
Toppling Charge This morph now ranks up in cost reduction, rather than 1.1% damage per rank. This results in retaining the 3510 cost from before, while reducing its damage by 3.3% at rank IV. Note to make up for this, the Major Protection lasts longer from the base duration increase!

Nightblade

Teleport Strike Fixed an issue where this ability and morphs' initial hit was missing the 15% damage increase that cast and channel time abilities are meant to receive.
Lotus Fan This morph now deals its initial hit in an area around the caster and applies the damage over time effect to those enemies hit. The damage over time effect has been adjusted to operate more closely to the power of Burning Talons or Acid Spray, rather than a standard DoT effect, to help differentiate it from other effects. This results in reducing the duration to 5 seconds, down from 20, increasing the tick rate to every 1 second, up from every 2, and increasing the damage per tick by ~22%. Overall, this results in less damage per cast, but more damage per second – rewarding more frequent activation.
Shadow Cloak This ability and the Shadowy Disguise morph are now toggled abilities, rather than duration-based ones. While active, the ability will drain 3240 Magicka (base cost) every 2 seconds and disable your Magicka Recovery until disabled or removed, rather than costing 4590 base Magicka cost and persisting for 3 seconds. In addition to this, these abilities will now grant Born from Shadow for 10 seconds when the ability is activated and again when the abilities end, which increases your damage done against monsters by 10%.

Sorcerer

Conjured Ward Reduced the heal scaling of this ability and the Hardened Ward morph to match the scaling of the Regenerative Ward morph, which is 10% of your Max Health or Magicka, down from 15%.
Daedric Curse Fixed an issue where this ability and the Haunting Curse morphs' visual effects could fail to play if the cursed enemy died.
Expert Summoner This passive now checks for permanent pets for its conditional effects, rather than any active pet. Note that non-Sorcerer based permanent pets will still count towards this check.
Overload Fixed an issue where using a Heavy Attack while this Ultimate or its morphs were active could become stuck if cast while attempting to Sprint.

Warden

Feral Guardian Fixed an issue where the morphs of this Ultimate could cause some monsters to reset if the bear engaged them before their owner did.

Necromancer

Bitter Harvest Fixed an issue with this ability and its morphs would appear to be castable when near a corpse that was not consumable.
Grave Grasp > Ghostly Embrace This morph now deals Frost Damage, rather than Magic Damage. This morph no longer applies Minor Maim on each hit, and its areas now apply new effects instead of their original crowd control-oriented effects. The first area now guarantees the Chilled status effect (which also applies Minor Maim) instead of snaring enemies. The second area now applies a Frost Damage over time effect for 5 seconds, similar to Burning Talons or Acrid Spray, rather than Immobilizing enemies. The final area now generates a corpse if at least one enemy was hit, rather than stunning enemies. Fixed an issue where this morph's damage was not properly receiving many positive modifiers such as Critical Damage bonuses.
Sacrificial Bones Fixed an issue where the corpse left behind this ability and its morphs could sometimes cause corpse consuming abilities' visual effects to not appear in some cases.
Grave Lord's Sacrifice Fixed an issue where this morph's area of effect damage and corpse generation added to the 3rd cast of Flame Skull and its morphs would fail to work if the initial target died from the cast.

Arcanist

Runespite Ward > Impervious Runeward Reduced the size of this morph's shield after the 1 second window by ~56%.
Runic Defense > Runeguard of Freedom Reduced the healing granted by this morph by 50%. Increased the Armor granted to 3300 at rank IV, up from 3000. Increased the duration of the Armor and Crowd Control Immunity granted to 7 seconds. Fixed an issue where the Crowd Control Immunity failed to apply until after the Armor effect ended.

Item set fixes and changes

Pyrebrand Fixed an issue where this set could Critically Strike, despite having built in damage modifiers. Reduced the damage from the damage over time effect by ~18%. Increased the damage from the area effect by ~5%. Fixed an issue where the damage over time effect had a higher chance to apply Burning than intended. Reduced the flashing visual effects on the explosion from this set.
Beacon of Oblivion This set now checks for permanent pets, rather than any pet – similarly to the adjustments made to the Expert Summoner passive, for the same reasons!
Dragon's Appetite This set's stacks now last for 5 seconds, rather than permanently. This results in fixing an issue where the set could be maintained indefinitely after unequipping the set, while simultaneously ensuring it can still be one-barred for some period of time.
Gossamer Increased the duration of the Major Evasion granted from this set to 4 seconds, up from 1 second.
Tarnished Nightmare This set now has a 1.3 second delay before it deals damage, in order to allow for more warning and potential counterplay.
Stormfist Fixed an issue where this set's final damage hit was adding damage based on its item level in addition to scaling with a percentage of your Weapon or Spell Damage. This fix will result in a damage decrease of a maximum of 8470 base damage.
Syrabane's Ward Fixed an issue where this set's effects could become stuck if the wearer was silenced while Blocking.
Enervating Aura Fixed an issue where this set failed to activate when hit by some direct damage abilities.
Peace and Serenity Fixed an issue where this item set actively prevented the Unnatural Movement passive from applying Invisibility.

New Collectibles in U44

Outfit Styles

Psijic Psion from Tales of Tribute
Eld Angavar from Battlegrounds
Galeskirmish Gladiator Battleground leaderboard exclusive
Pit Daemon from Battlegrounds
Fire Drake from Battlegrounds
Storm Lord from Battlegrounds

Other collectibles

Drakes and Daemons Mask 20 Battlemaster Tokens + Battlemaster's Powerfrom
Dragonclaw Imperial Warbear complete the Imperial Warbear Seeker achievement

New earnable Dragonclaw Imperial Warbear mount and Psijic Psion outfit style.

Notable fixes and improvements

This list does not include all the bug fixes and improvements, just the ones that we feel are worth mentioning.

ESO Plus members now receive a 10% increase in all Alliance Point sources and 10% Tel Var Stone gain from monsters.
Increased Drop chances of: Mundane Runes, Heartwood and Decorative Wax.
"Joining Encounter in Progress" has been added to all dungeons and trials. You will now always be pulled to a boss fight.
Added a center screen message that displays when you unlock a new Title or Dye.
Golden Vendor PvP Sets available during Whitestrake's Mayhem have been reduced in price from 500,000 AP to 375,000 AP.
You can now put these items into your bank: Gloomspore Agaric, Grand Amnesty Edict, Sigil of Imperial Retreat, All Trophy Fish, All Monster Trophies, Prophet’s Gear, Big Book of Houses, Luciana's Codex of Mastery, Sotha Sil's Codex of Infinite Possibility and Monk’s Disguise.
Fixed an issue where changing zones while previewing furniture could break the skybox of the destination zone.
All Imperial City item set coffers are now curated.
Companions will no longer robotically mirror your every move! They will now respond to you crouching with a bit of a delay. (Note: This slight delay has no impact on you being detected or witnessed participating in questionable activities.)

New Homes

Two new homes are able to be tested in the U44 PTS: Kthendral Deep Mines and Grand Gallery of Tamriel.

Grand Gallery of Tamriel

Grand Gallery of Tamriel is a notable home available sometime in 2025, possibly as an event collectible. It is located on located in Rift-Cyrodiil border. On stream Gina mentioned it's loosely modelled after a museum in Baltimore.

Once the primary museum for collections curated by the University of Gwylim, this stately structure and its grounds provide a perfect setting for the display of art, curios, and more. Show off favored possessions in a refined locale!

Grand Gallery of Tamriel house in ESO

Kthendral Deep Mines

Kthendral Deep Mines is a notable home and will be available for purchase sometime later. it is located in Blackreach: Greymoor Caverns. The house also comes with a new kind of anvil that you can use for blacksmithing.

Glowing crystals dot the walls of this abandoned Dwarven processing facility perched over fathomless mines in Blackreach. Smiths and others who require steady heat for forging materials can use the active furnace to craft wondrous creations.

Kthendral Deep Mines house in ESO

New Furnishing

10 Recipes that drop from monsters, containers, stealing etc. across all of Tamriel.

16 New Ayleid themed recipes which are bonus loot from West Weald, Gold Coast and Blackwood antiquity excavating when done on blue (intermediate) or higher difficulty.

25 Recipes from monsters, containers, stealing, and more across West Weald.

5 Recipes that drop from West Weald’s Mirrormoor World Events.

Recipe which drops from the “Dismantler the Dwarven Colossus” world boss in Blackreach.

Dwarven Glass Armonica

Skingrad Home Goods Furnisher has 10 new furnishings.

24 Furnishings that you can get from battleground reward containers: “Battlemaster Rivyn's Reward Box” and “Battlemaster's Spoils”.

9 new furnishings can be purchased for Tel Var from the Tel Var Collectibles Merchants in each alliance's safe area in the Imperial City Sewers.

Daedric Chest, Molag Bal 15,000 Tel Var
Imperial Archway, Stone 500 Tel Var
Imperial Chest, Reinforced 1,000 Tel Var
Imperial Dais, Raised 20,000 Tel Var
Imperial Door, Diamond 15,000 Tel Var
Imperial Firepit, Round 8,000 Tel Var
Imperial Pedestal, Siege 4,000 Tel Var
Imperial Tent, Large 50,000 Tel Var
Imperial Tent, Meeting 40,000 Tel Var

2 new Companion Furnishing can be purchased once you've completed their required achievements

Empathic Portal Remnant Tanlorin
Sky Spirits Reflection Pool Zerith-Var

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