Fresh Account, Fresh Adventures, in Elder Scrolls Online
Last night, I went ahead and purchased a new account in Elder Scrolls Online along with a year's worth of ESO plus in an effort to commit myself to a new adventure with a fresh start. I have been yearning to find a game to stick to so that I can build a community around my twitch channel, and I have decided that Elder Scrolls Online is as good a game as any to do so. Having played Elder Scrolls Online before, I know what to expect, but this time around, I plan to take things a bit slower and enjoy the journey to the fullest. My inclination is to set up a series of goals as I progress in the game, with the largest goal of all being to create a guild and community to play the game with.
Elder Scrolls Online has recently gone through a bit of a transformation in how it operates. Instead of a chapter and DLC based approach to development, they are moving more towards smaller updates and season passes and have made a large portion of the game that previously was behind a paywall, free. As a result of this, many people have been returning to Elder Scrolls Online with the start of their first season called Season 0: Dawn and Dusk, which runs from April 2nd to July 8th, 2026. There are a number of new things coming with the first season, including Elder Scrolls Online's first ever event zone which opens to the public on April 29th through June 17th, 2026 called the Night Market.
Season 0 also has refreshed the Dragonknight class, a class that I personally have loved to play when I previously played the game in my prior playthroughs. Different skills and skill animations have been added, and so I decided that I as well will create a Dragonknight once again to enjoy the class refresh. My character name is of course Blackboa and will be a Redguard for my race. Since I will be playing this through a new account, a lot of my previous purchases will not be available as well as my champion points, but this only motivates me to grind and play the game so that I can get back to and surpass where I was previously.
The in-game store has also drastically changed. It is now known as "The Bazaar" and it is described as follows: "Choose from hundreds of unique and returning rewards with the Gold Coast Bazaar, a new type of in-game store. Browse seasonal and evergreen collectibles, consumables, and items for purchase with Trade Bars, a new in-game currency earned by playing the game". I am curious to see how the Trade bars work as I play through the game from the beginning and seeing what else there is to purchase should I care to add more convenience to my playthrough. Part of me does not however since it will cost a decent amount of money to buy my old items, and sometimes the inconvenience of certain things may lead to other adventures and interactions with others.
A much-anticipated feature that many are waiting for is coming in June 2026: Challenge Difficulty. This will allow players to adjust the difficulty of the landscape or open world content to make it much harder than it currently is. The game currently is considered very easy for open world content as of right now, so I am curious to see how Elder Scrolls Online will do to make it more of a challenge and allow players to work together when doing the harder content. It will likely be whole new layers of instances that will be available for players to join when they adjust the difficulty upward, allowing multiple layers of the same zone to exist.
The seasonal part of the update also includes unlocking Tomes that have both a free and premium track. This track provides rewards to the players for completing it and includes an assortment of items to help adventurers in their journey. I am curious to see exactly what rewards will be available and how different these rewards will be from Season to Season. There has been some skepticism with this new model, but time will tell if Elder Scrolls Online has made the right decision on their gameplay loop involving the seasonal aspect of things. I look forward to streaming these adventures and documenting the journey both in this blog, on twitch, and perhaps even on YouTube if I can get my act together.
Until next time,
Blackboa