Shortly after setting out into Skyrim’s wild West, I was approached by a mortally wounded Bronhold the Nord, who hands me a journal just before he takes his last breath. The journal contains investigative entries about the coven that kidnapped me, and the quests branch off from there. The conspiracies surrounding the coven bleed into the conflict between Skyrim’s kingdoms and the menacing red harrowstorms ravaging the landscape, turning people into Harroweds (essentially zombies) and Bloodfiends (raging vampires).
I enjoyed what I experienced of the sinister storylines that look to define this year’s event. The permeating whispers of the coven around Solitude created an ominous vibe that was pleasantly hard to shake. Even the side quests, like one involving a man who was turned into a vase by a curse, have an air of dark magic that’s appealing. One of the shining lights piercing through the darkness of the story is Lyris Titanborn from Elder Scrolls Online’s main questline, who accompanies you for a time and feels like a breath of fresh air in a bubbling sea of morbidity.
Another respite from the doom and gloom is the new Antiquities feature, which adds an Indiana Jones-like sense of adventure to Elder Scrolls Online, as well as a brand new way to play the game. After joining the game’s Antiquarian Circle, a guild of historians dedicated to finding relics buried across Skyrim, you set off on an adventure to find these items. Throughout Elder Scrolls Online (not just Greymoor), you can collect “leads” through various means. The leads vary in rarity and are discovered by playing a match-3 puzzle game, using an “Antiquarian’s Eye” to find the precise location of an artifact. You have a limited number of turns to match symbols and work your way across the board, and depending on how well you do, you’ll be given a number of areas on the world map where the artifact may be buried. If you do well in the minigame, one area on the map will be highlighted, where you can head to start digging. If you do poorly in the minigame (or you just don’t like puzzles), several areas on the map will be highlighted, and you’ll be forced to explore each one to find the correct dig site.
Once at the correct site, you enter another minigame, in which you use a variety of tools to excavate the relic. It’s like a cross between minesweeper and battleship, with the relic revealing itself as you deduce where on the grid it’s buried. There are also other items buried in the dig site that you can take with you so long as you can excavate them in time.
While I wasn’t able to play around with it during my playthrough, the vampire skill tree has been expanded, and there’s a 12-player trial called Kyne’s Aegis. The powerful Mythic items that are uncoverable via the Antiquities minigames will likely be incredibly helpful in the trial, which sees players sail to a remote island and battle sea giants.