Update 9 – What We Know

With all of the talk about the Thieves Guild DLC coming up some of the important base game improvements and additions may not have been noticed. Update 9 is coming in the same patch as the Thieves Guild and will apply to all players even if you don’t buy the Thieves Guild DLC. There are lots of changes in there!

Oh, and if you didn’t know, Update 9 is due to arrive on the PTS in early February and might make it to the live servers for PC/Mac on March 7, XBox One on March 22, and PlayStation4 on March 23

Cyrodiil And PVP

ZOS have been keen to mention that they have been working hard on fixing performance and bug issues in Cyrodiil and PVP. There are some changes to the way that the sever handles abilities which may aid performance, especially when there are a lot of players around in the same area.

Siege Weapons And Equipment

ZOS will be adjusting damage and other effects from PVP siege weapons and equipment. This will go in conjunction with other changes regarding repair kits and keep upgrades, but the changes noted here are specific to player effects like damage, snares and damage over time effects.

• The damage dealt to enemy players by siege equipment will be increased by roughly 30%.
• The siege weapons which apply snares to enemy players will all now apply a standard 50% snare for 6 seconds.
• They are looking to make some secondary siege effects like reduced healing and snares immune to Purge.
• Oil Catapults will now also deal “Stamina Damage” which takes roughly 5000 Stamina from targets hit.
• Lightning Ballista will now also deal “Magicka Damage” which takes away roughly 5000 Magicka from enemy targets.
• Ballista will turn faster and won’t have any chance to stray off target.
• They are considering reducing the healing debuff of the Meatbag Catapult to a 50% reduction as opposed to a 75% reduction.

Champion Point Free PVP

A Veteran PVP Campaign, probably one that lasts 30 days, is being added which has the unique rule that Champion Points are ignored. This will mean that while you are in that Campaign your Champion Points are no longer applied to your character.

The non-Vet Campaign, Backwater Blade, will no longer apply Champion Points either. This was done to ensure that non-Vet players have a more reasonable level playing field. You can still play your non-Vet character in a Vet Campaign and make use of any Champion Points there.

Undaunted Cyrodiil Vendor

On ESO Live (Ep. 30) it was mentioned that in early 2016, with the Thieves Guild DLC, some new vendors will arrive in Cyrodiil twice weekly to sell Undaunted item sets in exchange for gold or Alliance Points.

These new vendors will only arrive twice per week, so they won’t be there all week long, but they will keep to a schedule. So once you know which days they arrive they won’t change. They will arrive at the same time for all three Alliances as well.

The cost for these items is unknown at this time, but it is expected to be substantial. You will be able to pay with gold OR Alliance Points.

The items for sale will change each week, so you can’t buy a full set at once. The Engine Guardian Helm might be available in week 1 and then the Engine Guardian Shoulders might not make it to the vendors for several weeks after that. Oh and the items that will be for sale include the Undatuned sets as well as the Monster Masks and Shoulders.

Campaigns

So we are getting a new Champion Point free Campaign and ZOS are also making it much easier to switch Campaigns. In Update 9 you will be able to un-assign a Home and Guest Campaign (which will trigger a cool down to prevent abuse) and then re-assign yourself to a new Campaign.

It also seems that you will be able to have characters on different Alliances set to the same Campaign.

Group Finder 2.0

In the Year Ahead article ZOS stated that a new Group Finder is coming with Update 9 which will “fix some long standing problems with our LFG system and allow players to create groups faster and more efficiently”. We hope so!

Scrolling Combat Text

This is definitely a big feature, especially for consoles! ZOS are releasing native Scrolling Combat Text to ESO with Update 9. This means that you will be able to tell how much damage you are doing, how much healing you are doing and get a feel for which abilities are doing well. You can also get a feel for a targets resistance to certain effects by comparing the ToolTip damage to your actual damage.

If you don’t want this, luckily it is optional and you can turn it off in your settings. It may in fact be off by default.

PC and Mac will get this as well, although there are already several AddOns which achieve this same functionality.

Universal Crafting Style Material

The Crown Store is going to start selling a new universal crafting style material in Update 9. This material can be used to make any style of gear (you still need to learn the Motif though) at a crafting station. So instead of having to collect Malachite Shards for Glass or Charcoal for Xivkyn you can now purchase this material instead.

64 Bit Client

PC and Mac users will upgrade to a 64-bit client with Update 9. This will generally improve performance as 64-bit programs handle large amounts of random access memory (RAM) more effectively than a 32-bit program. This will also allow Mac users to have the improved facial animations which came to PC users last year.

Trinimac Motif?

Ok, so a bit of speculation. ZOS answered a question on the recent Reddit AuA suggesting that there will be a Trinimac Style Motif added to ESO soon. The Trinimac’s Valor item set actually uses the Trinimac style so it is already in the game. It might come with Update 9, or it might not.