As The Elder Scrolls Online approaches its 10th anniversary this year, the 2024 ESO Global Reveal came with a fitting announcement: the game's latest major Chapter, Gold Road. As expected, this latest chapter of The Elder Scrolls Online introduces a new zone with several distinct biomes and plenty of quests, dungeons, delves, and world bosses to tackle.

The Gold Road chapter takes place in the West Weald zone to the west of Cyrodiil and is situated in the space between the Gold Coast, Reaper's March, and Craglorn. Those who have played The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion will probably already be familiar with this region and its central hub city, Skingrad. It's also worth noting that there is an additional series of "capper quests" available for players who complete both the Necrom chapter and Gold Road. Though Bethesda says that like most ESO chapters, Gold Road still works as a standalone story and doesn't necessarily require playing through Necrom to follow.

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The key feature arriving with this expansion is something players have been speculating on for years: crafting spells with Scribing. It's important to temper expectations, however, since the Scribing system is meant to be a "precursor" for Oblivion's spell crafting and won't be quite as freeform and potentially game-breaking. Initially, Scribing will allow ESO players to customize skills from weapon and world skill lines with a combination of up to three modifiers, and there are plans to expand on this further down the line.

Though players can't create a custom spell from the ground up, this system allows for a huge number of permutations, and it'll be interesting to see how Scribing impacts character builds in The Elder Scrolls Online. This also comes side by side with a new Styling mechanic which will allow players to modify the visual effects of their abilities. 22 styles will be available at launch, and Bethesda mentioned that styles can be earned through regular gameplay.

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Zenimax has also laid out a roadmap for much of the year's planned content:

  • In Q1 2024, two new dungeons are planned to arrive with Update 41: Oathsworn Pit and Bedlam Veil. Not much else was said about these, but a preview stream showing off Update 41 is planned for January 26 on Bethesda's Twitch channel. Update 41 is slated to hit the PTS on January 29 and should arrive on PC and consoles sometime in March.
  • Q2 2024 will see the arrival of Update 42 and the Gold Road chapter with all its associated content, including the scribing system and the new trial.
  • Q3 2024 will be introducing something major that has to do with ESO's player houses, but Bethesda is tight-lipped as to what that specifically entails.
  • Lastly, in Q4 2024, PVP will be seeing a significant update, the details of which are again not clear at the moment. Bethesda did, however, point out that this PVP work is not related to Cyrodiil's PVP. It also looks like Gold Road was initially intended to include two new companions, but their release has instead been pushed back to Q4.