The next major instalment to The Elder Scrolls Online, The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road, also marks the series’ 10th anniversary. Players will pick up where the Necrom cliffhanger left off, continuing the story and exploring locations last seen in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The Gold Road Chapter takes players to West Weald, a region situated on the borders of Cyrodiil, the Gold Coast, and Valenwood as they investigate the return of a Daedric Prince Ithelia, never seen in The Elder Scrolls Series. Until now.

MKAU Gaming was invited to try out an early access development build, so my main focus was to explore the upcoming Scribing quests, a new system coming with The Elder Scrolls: Gold Road, allowing players to manipulate the nature of magic itself, collecting and customising special skills to tailor their builds even further. The grimoires will bring new skills to existing trees, changing the behaviour of attacks and adding extra perks, such as being able to hit more targets with a single cast, or giving them more flare, like applying a different colour to the spell being cast.

While previous ESO content has never been level-locked, Scribing is. Kind of. Aimed more towards existing players, you will need to be around level 30 before you can start the Scribing quest lines. Even so, I found these to be nicely balanced, initially rewarding the player with Grimories to get them started with the feature.

A seemingly solid lineup of quests surrounds the new feature, introducing you to new characters as you seek to master the art of Scribing. Doing so will enable you to tweak how actions work and unlock the ability to change the style of your various skills, such as having a bright purple fire spell, making it a roleplayer’s best friend.

As players explore The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road, they’ll travel through West Weald, home to Imperial-controlled Skingrad, returning to the series after first being introduced in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. West Weald is host to a variety of different biomes, such as the jungles of Dawnwood, now home to the Wood Elves of Vashabar, the Colovian Highlands, a long-forgotten land that once belonged to Ayleid, filled with ancient and curious ruins.

You’ll find the Heartland High Elves scattered about this area, as well as an Imperial settlement. Finally, you’ll get to explore the deadly lands of Wildburn, warped and changed by magic, where even the twisted nature of the land has spread to the wildlife and made them even more threatening than before.

The new locations bring their own challenges and rewards, with The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road introducing a new 12-player trial, The Lucent Citadel. Your party’s skills will be tested as you try to find a forgotten Daedric vault, with new fight mechanics and a unique boss encounter that is sure to challenge you.

Explore new dungeons and delves, either solo or with friends, and take part in the new world event, Mirrormoor Incursions, my favourite part of the upcoming release where you’ll have to stand your ground as you fight against waves of Daedra invaders.

The world events are a great way to find other players to group up with, making it easier to find and collect the new achievements and trophies set to be included in the release. Earn new in-game loot and titles, demonstrating your skills to other players, or complete one of the ten new armour sets coming to the loot pool, and for the treasure hunters amongst us, find and earn the new and unique antiquities, originally added in the 2020 Greymoor DLC.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road is set to release to PC/Mac on the third of June, 2024, with the console release shortly after on June 18th. While returning players will most likely get to play around with Scribing when it’s released, new players aren’t being left out. As with other releases, the main storyline and episode drops aren’t locked behind a levelling system. You’ll be able to play them from the moment you create your character, and given I am still rather fresh to ESO, I can tell you that the community is always welcoming and helpful.