The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road Hands-On Preview

The Elder Scrolls Online Gold Road Hands-On Preview. I was recently able to go hands-on with The Gold Road, a major expansion to The Elder Scrolls Online that is set to unleash a whole heap of fresh content to the long-running MMORPG, including locations, enemies, side quests and more. The preview build was running on PC, and though I can’t comment on how the visuals look on consoles, I will say that The Elder Scrolls Online is still stunning for being close to a decade old. You can see the effort and love that has been put into making each new area look and feel unique.

During the preview weekend, I experienced a variety of different content for the Gold Road, including story, open-world exploration, and even finishing the scribing story questline. I put tons of hours in, and I feel like there are many, many more hours ahead of me that I just didn’t have the time to get to. You can tell they have taken the essence of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, on which this chapter’s location is based, and expanded on it, making it their own.

Location, Location, Location!

Bethesda has added multiple new zones in this chapter; from desert areas to forest-based locations, you have a rich and varied environment to explore on your travels. West Weald, for example, has some beautiful autumn/fall-style trees and environmental detail, and even this one location has so many different places ripe for exploration.

Locations, just like in previous chapters, have so much life in them and have many different things to find and look for when exploring, whether it’s a tough enemy encounter or perhaps a small settlement. Or maybe you find a chest that you have to unlock; the Gold Road rewards you for exploring these areas thoroughly. And every part of the zone feels slightly different and looks really pretty, even on my old laptop.

During my hands-on, I was able to unlock incursions on the map. They seem to be designed around a group of players, but I was able to at least do a few parts of them, and I got to say the enemies looked really cool. The first part had me kill some trash mobs, then a small boss fight, which eventually ended up with a much bigger boss fight. I tried my best to take it down, but it was almost one shot, and I am just not skilled enough. The game kept telling me to come back with friends to attempt the fight, but of course, due to the limited number of players in the preview, this would have been difficult to achieve. But when the full game comes out and loads of players are running around the zone, they will be able to group up and tackle these challenges.

The locations are stunning and varied, and inside the delves are just the same with so many different layouts and designs. I think my favourite ones are those that incorporate the crystals and mirror creatures, as they look really interesting (although they are just reskins of other monsters). Despite this, I just love the colours and the effect that the mirror skin gives the enemies, with the Chimaera mirror and slime-coated monstrosities being among my favourites. Not always, but a lot of the times when there are crystal monsters, I find the area itself is covered in metallic-style crystals, which adds to the effect that these shouldn’t really be here, it seems.

The new main hub town is called Skingrad, which fans of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will no doubt be familiar with. This is the new hub town in which you will get access to many different quests, as well as all the different NPCs that facilitate crafting and guild supplies. The town is very open, with many different alleys to explore, but is presented in a way that isn’t confusing to navigate; I didn’t really get lost at all while exploring the city. Overall, it’s a standard hub-style area that has been added with new chapters, and is packed full of people hanging around chatting. There is also a new room that you can purchase in the town if you feel so inclined.

During the preview, I snuck into the trial area, though all I did was die due to being on my own and not having a clue what to do. I also managed to get into the first mini-boss, and the boss arena is pretty unique with its Daedric castle-style vibes. I was getting some FFXI flashback feelings to Castle Zvahl; if anyone ever played that game, that’s kind of what you can expect for this location. While I wasn’t able to take on the boss, I did work out part of the mechanic, and it’s really unusual for a Raid fight. If this is only the first fight, I look forward to seeing the mechanics for future bosses in this trial.

It’s A Kind Of Scribing

The quest chain is located inside a new area called the Scholarium; this area can be quickly travelled to once unlocked. You can unlock the Scholarium by completing a quest in Skingrad, which in my preview build was right outside the Mages Guild and would teleport you to a small quest location – featuring the best new character, Nahlia. You will also have access to a training room, which you can use to practise your new scribe abilities or just get up to speed with the combat again if you have been away from the game for a while or are just feeling a bit rusty.

Though this simple quest just unlocks the feature of scribing, you have a much longer quest chain in which to unlock more spells and styles. The time needed to do this quest depends on whether you are much of a lore person and if you enjoy reading or listening. As for some people who skip cutscenes, it will be slightly shorter. Most of the scribing quest line involves a character named Nahlia, and I am going to take a moment to mention how much I really love this character, and her design is just stunning. To be honest, one of the reasons I kept going on with the quests was just to see what she gets up to and how she keeps improving herself over time. Nahlia boasts a cool-looking armour set too, which hopefully we can get in the game as either a glamour piece or as usable armour. I am a bit of a sucker for glowing gear!

Each door has different types of quests you have to do, but they often follow the same sort of pattern: you must break the sigils, then do a set of challenges, then finally find the item. Some of these quests were kind of confusing at first, and I did struggle with them, but the character joining you will eventually help you out with some tips if you get lost or confused.

For a story about unlocking a new skill, the amount of lore and depth involved with the whole thing is staggering, and it brings you on a really solid and emotional journey. The characters have a varied backstory and all have a reason in their own way to both challenge you and help you.

To edit spells you must interact with the alter; this is not spellcrafting, but instead a new mechanic added to ESO with Gold Road. First, you must select the grimoire, the wielding soul, and a new ability from your soul magic skill line. These cost Luminous Ink, which is a new currency you must collect in the game. You can edit spells you have already created, and this will also cost Luminous Ink. The cost is based on the amount you are changing, so if you are only changing one item, the cost will be lower than if you are creating a whole new effect or skill.

Focus scripts: these define your scribed skill and set the main function of the skill.
Signature scripts add a unique effect to the script and make it your own.
Affix Scripts: add a final benefit of your choosing to the current skill.

You’ll also get a key item named the key focal lens. This item allows you to read text that is hidden in grimoires that you don’t normally have the ability to read. This will guide you to new items for scribing and other things.

Once you have collected all the fragments in this quest, you have to go to a door that is only visible with both the fragment and the focal lens item. This will then open an invisible door, leading you to a new location.

You must complete two different challenges to prove your worth to the quest-giver. There are multiple different challenges, so you can decide which ones you want to do. In this quest, I was required to complete different tasks:

Complete a delve or dungeon (any will do in Auridon).
Kill 15 undead in the area of Auridon.
Participate in a Battlegrounds match. Although I was unable to do this due to the limited number of people in the preview, I don’t believe you have to actually win a match; just be part of it. Of course, you should still do your best to win.

Some of the latter door quests will actually involve a larger selection of challenges, but you still don’t need to complete them all, so this allows for a more varied and unique approach to each door. As such, if you’re not a fan of PvP, you could technically avoid this and just focus on PvE. One of the challenges in this build involved gathering, for instance. I don’t think the rewards are any different for the challenges you complete.

Once you have completed the scribing quest and gotten the rewards, an NPC opens up a shop that sells grimoires, allowing for new abilities to be scribed. In this build, they are roughly 50k each, though prices may vary depending on the full version of the game (some were cheaper it’s worth mentioning). I’ll admit I had trouble finding this NPC after the first visit because there is no icon on the mini map. As someone who is directionally challenged, I hope that this is changed in the retail build.

While I didn’t find any new scribing upgrades in the open world, you can unlock some different styles by completing achievements that will unlock from doing different things in the game. One example is that if you find all the skyshards in the new chapter, you will unlock a skill style for the scribe system. Having said that, I do hope they add achievement rewards or just rewards in general from holiday events to give spells some unique flair, such as maybe snowballs from the New Life festival event or maybe pumpkin orange colouring from the Witches Festival event. This would offer more incentive to participate in events and add some flair to the scribing system, although I really hope Bethesda makes them earnable in-game. I have nothing against the Crown Shop, but it’s always nice for players to feel like they earned the item.

Some skills cannot be combined together, so if you want to put a damage-over-time effect on a healing spell, the game will stop you. If you try to combine things that are not supposed to be in the game, it will make the effect red and unusable. This allows you to see what you can and cannot do without having to waste any precious ink.

Combat With The DualSense Is A Gripping Affair

Though it could be because I am a novice at this game, even simple boss fights can feel like a slight challenge. Not super hard, but even the most basic of bosses have mechanics that need to be blocked or even stunned. You also have to make sure to keep an eye on adds during the fights.

Though I was playing on a PC build, I was using the PS5 DualSense with no issues ; the combat felt great on a controller, and due to the amount of skills equipped, it felt pretty simple just to battle. The scribing spells take the place of some of the other actions you would normally have, so they don’t add extra buttons to your bar. One issue I noticed is that it would show me Xbox controller buttons despite me using the DualSense, so sometimes I died due to being confused about what LT+RT are on the controller (though this could simply be due to it being a preview build).

Elsewhere, I was able to access a lot of different armours and weapons in the preview build. The style of some of the new armour is really cool, and I think some will be used by people as future glamour pieces. I can’t talk about the potency of armour because this is not the final build and there’s a chance that everything could change before release.

This is also the same with the spells and abilities; some things have been changed, and especially with the new scribing system, some of the potencies will be different in the full game, so though I could say what skills felt good or bad until we actually get the final build in June, there is no real way to tell. I spent time with some staves/bow/sword and shield/greataxe in the preview, and they all felt fun to use with the new scribing actions. The shield toss, which can stagger enemies but also put on a DoT, was particularly useful.

Quests and Story

The main story continues right after the previous expansion, Necron, so if you haven’t completed it, you might want to watch some catch-up videos on YouTube if you don’t have the chance to play it yourself. Some of the sidequests have you go into delves. Delves are single-player-based dungeons that give you a slight challenge compared to the open-world gameplay. The delve often has a boss at the end of it, or at least from the ones I encountered during my time. These bosses were quite challenging and are tied to specific mechanics, and I should mention that the overall enemy variety in Gold Road is excellent, with many different archetypes to battle.

Speaking of side quests, an example of one that I encountered focuses on an individual manufacturing something illegal, and an NPC wants you to go investigate what’s happening and try to stop the item from going to auction. So, first you have to investigate the location, and then you enter a delve; this is a single-player-style dungeon. Once that is done, you wrap up the story with the NPC. Of course, due to the preview, I really don’t want to spoil any details on the story or what exactly you do in the delve, but this is a rough example of some of the really cool side quests that are scattered all around the map.

Some sidequests, at least for me, don’t even appear on the map until you are close to them, giving you a sense of exploration. I was wandering around a forest area when suddenly I bumped into a couple that were trying to get married and ended up having to help them out. If I hadn’t been exploring, I might not have experienced this particularly wholesome quest.

One unique thing about ESO compared to any MMO I have played, and one of its greatest strengths, is the unusual way that it deals with levelling. Unlike other MMOs in which you and your friends have to reach a specific level to access content, the One Tamriel system will scale your character automatically to match the content you want to play. As someone who has friends who might not be able to play the game as often as me, or even when I am busy and unable to play often, this system is a godsend and allows people to play together.

First, I’d like to say thanks to the lovely folk at Zenimax Online for allowing me to go hands-on with this incredible expansion. From the side stories to the main storyline, all of it seems to have been crafted with love and passion for the Elder Scrolls universe. You can tell they really enjoy working on this game and have many more things to come in the future. I had a blast exploring, and the scribing system is very interesting, and I really look forward to what might be added in the future. Of course, that isn’t to say the current system isn’t robust already, and with so much customisation, people will be able to make spells feel unique and personal to them.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is due out on June 18, 2024 for PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.