Mmorpg.com released a youtube video which discussed Craglorn, an Adventure Zone in Elder Scrolls Online. Apparently the information was leaked from a forum post which was addressed to internal beta testers. Well, the information is now out there, and speculation has begun. Adventure Zones have been advertised as ESO’s equivalent of raids: they are large group PvE encounters, but differ from “traditional raids” in a couple of ways. The developers have specifically said adventure zones will not include bosses the size of skyscraper, with a large group of players hacking at its ankles to take it down. Adventure Zones are said to be more dynamic, but apart from that almost no information has been revealed about them yet.
There is no actual video gameplay footage of Craglorn, but what we now know about Craglorn is that it’s a big zone, roughly 2/3 the size of your average normal questing zone. It’s an outdoor area with multiple public dungeons, wayshrines, landmarks and other objectives. In many ways it’s just like a normal zone – except every living thing there is badder, bigger and comes at you with an even bigger and nastier group of friends.
A map of Craglorn, an Adventure Zone in ESO.
Since Adventure Zones are going to be scaled towards big groups, the mob groups you’ll encounter will simply have many more enemies in them than they normally would. The mobs will also be tuned to veteran ranks. The area is veteran rank content, meaning you’ll most likely need to have advanced into the veteran rank system before you can expect to be succesful in Adventure Zones. Once you hit level 50, you’ll still gain experience, but instead of levelling to 51, you’ll be veteran rank 1. This goes all the way to veteran rank 10, except it is also said that the Adventure Zones will extend veteran ranks even past this point.
ESOHead has listed a total of 11 quests so far for Craglorn. What’s also interesting is the dungeons listed in the zone. I would take all of this information with a pinch of salt, though.
| Dungeon Name | Dungeon Type |
|---|---|
| Rahni’Za, School of Blades | Dungeon |
| Buried Sands | Explorable Dungeon |
| Crypt of Tarish-Zi | Explorable Dungeon |
| Hero’s End | Explorable Dungeon |
| Mtharnaz | Explorable Dungeon |
| Rkhardahrk | Explorable Dungeon |
| Rkundzelft | Explorable Dungeon |
| Ruins of Kardala | Explorable Dungeon |
| Thalia’s Retreat | Explorable Dungeon |
I guess what we can gather from this is that there will be quests and dungeons in Craglorn. It would be logical to assume that Adventure Zone dungeons are going to be tuned towards large group sizes. It’s too early to speculate on much else, really. Hopefully Zenimax will release new information about Adventure Zones soon.
EDIT: New information on Craglorn and Trials in Elder Scrolls Online.