General:The Elder Scrolls Online: Deadlands & Update 32 Preview

Originally published September 21, 2021. The original article can be found here.

Preview the cataclysmic conclusion to the Gates of Oblivion adventure coming soon with the Deadlands DLC and Update 32.

Battle for Oblivion

Arriving later this year for PC/Mac, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, you can take the fight to Mehrunes Dagon's own realm of Oblivion in The Elder Scrolls Online: Deadlands.

Featuring a new story that ties into the larger year-long adventure, fantastic new worlds to explore, and bonus quests that bring the Gates of Oblivion epic to its inevitable and disastrous conclusion, the Deadlands DLC will be available via ESO Plus™ membership or for purchase with crowns from the in-game Crown Store.

Finally, arriving in tandem with Deadlands is Update 32, a free base-game update that provides a host of fixes, balance changes, and new features that all ESO players can enjoy.

Explore the Deadlands & Fargrave

In Deadlands, you can explore both familiar and new parts of Oblivion, including some that have never been seen before in an Elder Scrolls game.

The Deadlands

You may recognize parts of the Deadlands zone known as the Burn if you’ve previously played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or ventured into one of Blackwood's Oblivion Portals. Home to towering metal spires, molten rivers, and flame-infused beasts, the Burn is Dagon's will made manifest, a hellish landscape in his own image.

In addition to the Burn, you can also discover a brand-new part of the Deadlands previously unexplored in the Elder Scrolls known as the Sever. This treacherous territory is wracked by massive, churning storms and shredding winds, where the environment itself is in a constant state of change and volatility. This is not the Deadlands you’ve experienced so far in ESO, but it's no less dangerous.

As you explore this new zone and its two unique regions, you'll come across new delves and public dungeons, plus confront powerful world bosses. This includes the new Havocrel Executioners, roaming Trial-level encounters that stalk the Deadlands and require a large group to overcome—you’ve been warned!

Fargrave

A city at the nexus of multiple planes of Oblivion, but outside their control, Fargrave is a desert metropolis surrounded by the enormous skeletons of mysterious entities long-since dead. Multi-leveled and sprawling, this trading hub is governed by a strange magic called the Stricture, and it is a place where mortal and Daedric cultures collide and, occasionally, erupt.

While this prosperous melting pot of a city might be a place of near-unlimited opportunity, it is also a realm of great danger and mystery, and new visitors quickly learn that Fargrave has its own rules and customs that they’ll need to respect if they are to survive and prosper.

The Gates of Oblivion Concludes

While featuring a unique stand-alone zone story, this new release also includes three additional Gates of Oblivion quests, unlocked by completing the main storylines in both the Deadlands DLC and Blackwood Chapter.

In these bonus Gates of Oblivion quests, you finally conclude the adventure that began with the Flames of Ambition DLC in January and confront Mehrunes Dagon directly. Finally, you have an opportunity to battle the threat within Oblivion itself and bring this year-long saga to its cataclysmic conclusion.

Update 32

In addition to the Deadlands DLC zone and story, this release also includes Update 32, a new base-game patch comprised of balance changes, fixes, and some new features free for all ESO players. These new features include two exciting additions to help you switch between your builds and collect gear.

Armory With the new Armory system, you can swap custom character builds in an instant. When Update 32 arrives in November, acquire the Armory Station furnishing item from the Crown Store for free and place it in any of your homes. From this new furnishing, you can save, load, and customize your character's unique builds.

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Previously, swapping a character’s build would take time and require you to make use of various respec shrines and scrolls, each with their own costs. Now, with the Armory, you can quickly and effortlessly switch your character's gear, Attributes, Abilities, and Champion Points.

Curated Item Set Drops

To help you collect complete gear sets, we’ve also made some changes to how item set drops work. Now, for most of the drops you receive, the system tries to provide the set pieces that you don't already have in your collection first.

Say you’re missing that Crushing Wall Destruction Staff from Veteran Maelstrom Arena. Now you know that each time you run it, you'll have a better and better chance for it to drop—no luck required! After you’ve earned every piece in the set, your drops are randomized as before, although if a boss only ever dropped specific parts of a set, it will continue to do so. Note that in some cases, certain drops won't be curated, so keep an eye out for more details on this update in the future. Finally, to help with your collecting, we’ve also added a summary page to the Item Set Collections UI, making it easier than ever to track your progress.

We'll have much more on these exciting new additions leading up to Update 32's launch, so keep an eye out for more on Elderscrollsonline.com in the coming months.

Deadlands on PTS Now!

With dangerous new worlds to explore, exciting stories to experience, and some incredible base-game additions that all ESO players can enjoy, both Deadlands and Update 32 cap off another amazing year for The Elder Scrolls Online. If you can’t wait until November to delve into the Deadlands and Update 32, you can check it out on the PC Public Test Server right now. Simply enable "Show Public Test Environment" in your PC launcher settings to begin downloading the test version of the game—have fun!

What are you most looking forward to when the new DLC and update arrive later this year? Let us know via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook!

(Article is tagged with Previews, Deadlands, Update 32)