A decade on from its Tamriel Unlimited relaunch and with fistfuls of major expansions and new stories already told, The Elder Scrolls Online is doing something it’s never done before. The Seasons of the Worm Cult launches today for PC and in a couple weeks for consoles on 18th June, and for the first time ever, the timeline of this game is moving forwards. Not only that, but it’s a direct continuation of the story told in the original game.
That pesky Worm Cult from the game’s original main questline has returned, taking players off to the cult’s new base on the tropical island of Solstice. What they’ll find here is a new region with its own history, and a truly remarkable, inescapable monument to the Worm Cult’s power. Solstice isn’t some untouched paradise, but has instead been split in two by the Writhing Wall, a huge arcane barrier that blocks out half the sky, living up to its name as a shimmering pattern wriggles around, almost always in view wherever you are on the island.
But there’s plenty more that’s new and distinctive about this land. The island was originally inhabited by ancient Argonians, who will appear rather different to the ones found on the mainland of Tamriel, and who split into two tribes, the Tide-Born and the Stone-Nest. But their heritage has been buried under the city of Sunport, as the Corelanyan High Elves, who were banished from the mainland in ancient times, came to Solstice and thought “Hey, you know what? Let’s do some more evil stuff,” waging war on the Argonians, ransacking Sunport and stamping their own architecture on top of everything. A tentative peace did eventually emerge after all-out war… but that was shattered by the arrival of the Worm Cult.
And so that’s where you come in, arriving alongside the Stirk Fellowship and all manner of returning names and faces from the earlier years of this game, time rolling forward to tell a new story that’s specifically set after prior events. This is a pretty significant change to the philosophy of how Zenimax Online Studios has gone about building each expansion and story up until now. They’ve always held that every story should be standalone, that each questline can be played in any order, and that events take place concurrently while building up to the final encounters. But now, with the timeline stepping forward, this new tale can have characters directly reference prior actions, characters can return and already know you, and there’s a more linear structure to the new tale.
From this, Seasons of the Worm Cult Part I is based within Western Solstice, and will build up to a server-wide event that will breach that Writhing Wall, opening up the Eastern side of the island to adventure in later this year.
Importantly, this doesn’t affect how you need to play the game. New players, or old hands with new characters can still venture to Western Solstice, but they’ll also be able to go all the way back to the original story afterwards. The timeline will be jumbled, if you do that, but I think we can all get our heads around consuming stories out of order.
Those older hands will certainly appreciate some of the changes that are coming to this game, both in the expansion and with Update 46. There’s new and refreshed quest mechanics – for example, encountering a broken bridge will have you collect rubble with a magic wand to reconstruct it, or you could have to control magical armour remotely to navigate a trap-filled room – and there’s new enemies as well. Argonian-made golems have reawakened to guard certain parts of the island, though their true purpose is unknown, and there’s a new Vahath Behemoth, a wholly new enemy from character artist Bobby Foster, which came from an internal game jam and has now been fleshed out with abilities and attacks to make for a fun world boss.
The impactful change for all players, though, is the new Subclassing system. Free as a new base game feature, this is available for anyone that has levelled any character to level 50, enabling the feature account-wide.
Subclassing breaks up the established structure where each class consisted of three set skill lines and fixed playstyles. Now, once a character has taken on the sub-classing quest, you’ll be able to mix and max skill lines, creating a huge number of new possibilities and combinations to try out, blending together the 21 skill lines from the 7 character classes currently in the game.
There are some limits, though. You will always need to have at least one skill line from your original character, and you can’t have two skill lines from another class, though you could have one skill line each from three different classes. You do still always have three skill lines active, but skills in non-native skill lines will also cost more, making them more taxing to level up and fill out.
Oh, and you will have had to buy any of the DLC character classes in order to use their skill lines.
Seasons of the Worm Cult promises a bold new era for The Elder Scrolls Online, advancing the MMO’s story in a way that could lead to many more significant changes in the years ahead. And with the new sub-classing feature, there’s a fresh shot in the arm for speccing out your characters and trying new things as you explore this new and unfamiliar land.