Today, ZeniMax Online Studios has released the 40th major update for its MMORPG, The Elder Scrolls Online, on PC and Mac. Console users will get the same update with the usual two-week delay on November 14th.
This free update (roughly 2.78GB in size) adds several community-requested features, such as:
- a Group Finder tool that lets people create groups and find fellow heroes interested in various activities;
- the Grand Master crafting stations that allow Grand Master crafters to replace the various crafting stations of each trade skill with a single one;
- a full rebalance of Jewelry crafting that brings the costs of this trade skill in line with the others;
- improved rewards from Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, and Undaunted daily quests;
- tweaks to gold and experience rewards for quests all across the game;
- a new Patron Deck for the Tales of Tribute collectible card game that was introduced last year with the High Isle Chapter.
Of course, Elder Scrolls Online’s Update 40 is also packed with bug fixes and balance tweaks. You can read about all that from the official patch notes. However, the star of the update is undoubtedly the brand-new Endless Archive, an infinite dungeon-type experience available to solo and duo players. In an interview with Wccftech, ZOS Lead Encounter Designer Mike Finnigan explained why the developers chose this party size:
We settled on two players because it’s been a feature that’s been requested by a lot of players. Ever since the Maelstrom arena came out, people were like ‘I’d really love to do this with a friend of mine’. We heard that feedback and we thought that this was the perfect opportunity to do that, one of the caveats being that you still also have to be able to do this solo.
We went into it with that kind of duo thought in mind, getting the tools and the backend support in order to make duo work was of prime importance to this. But honestly, it all stemmed from the years of feedback that we’ve heard players saying they would really love to have dedicated duo content.
Finnigan said the Elder Scrolls Online development team is always checking the community’s feedback, so if there was a strong desire to expand the Endless Archive to four-player groups, it might happen in the future.
