Everything We Learned About Elder Scrolls Online's Necrom Expansion In Yesterday's 1 Hour Presentation

Yesterday The Elder Scrolls Online put on a special live event previewing the Necrom chapter expansion coming to the MMORPG in June.

Right off the bat, Studio Director Matt Firor announced that next year will be the 10th anniversary of ESO, and said that special plans are in the works to celebrate. There weren't details given, but they will be announced in the future.

Next on the stage was Elder Scrolls Online Creative Director Rich Lambert who introduced the panel after saying this year's chapter story is Elder Scrolls meets cosmic horror. He talked about a new location called Chroma Incognita as well gave a brief introduction to the new Arcanist class.

From there Senior Community Manager Gina Bruno led a panel to take a deeper dive into what Necrom will look like going forward. Loremaster Michael Zenke, Combat/PvP/Arcanist Lead Brian Wheeler, and Project Art Director CJ Grebb made up the panel.

The panel talked about the cosmic horror aspects of the chapter and how much the artists enjoyed working on the project. Hermaeus Mora is the Daedric Prince of forbidden knowledge, and he came into the story due to the chapter being about a secret so powerful mortals were not meant to know it.

The Arcanist class was up next, and the team talked about making it different from anything else they have made. The panelists talked about how unique the Arcanist is as they showed some footage of Arcanist gameplay in the background that looked really cool and the audio did a great job of giving off a dark caster vibe.

Arcanist skill lines were created similar to how Warden and Necromancer skill lines were grouped with one skill line for Tank, one for DPS, and one for Healing. They also spoke about the Crux ability, which can increase the effectiveness of abilities, and how the Crux shows up around the character instead of having to add another UI element. It shows up as up to three runes that float around the character and you can spend them to affect your abilities.

The chapter story takes place on the Telvanni Pennisula in Morrowind which the team says is a nice fit, especially since Apocrypha is being revisited, and that made the city of Necrom a natural choice for an area in the game. There will be similarities to what players saw in the Dragonborn DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but it will be updated for ESO. The story needed an overland area in Apocrypha, so they had to expand and shape the ideas of what the zone would look like for ESO players and the way exploration plays into the game.

The new Trial is called Sanity's Edge and will come in the usual 12-player format with Normal, Veteran, and Hard modes. This Trial isn't a space in the actual world but is instead a space in a mage's mind who experimented with a Daedric artifact and of course, it all went wrong. There is a new Dark Ram mount for players who complete all of the achievements in the Trial.

There was also this tweet from a different panel that briefly touches on the upcoming endless dungeon slated for release later this year:

BREAKING: From the Dev Panel AMA--The upcoming endless dungeon feature will be systemically endless. Randomness of bosses and boons will be a feature, and players can play duo or solo. pic.twitter.com/8I9h4eOYXo

— The Elder Scrolls Online (@TESOnline) April 13, 2023

Overall it was quite an entertaining show, and worth a watch if you've got some time to kill. You can can check out the full VOD below.