The Elder Scrolls Online announced its upcoming expansion Gold Road at the 2024 ESO Global Reveal, and its key feature is something ESO fans have been hoping to see for years. The Scribing system arriving with Gold Road is a skill customization system reminiscent of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion's spellmaking system, though it does have a few key differences. After all, a perfect copy of Oblivion's system would be an unmitigated balancing disaster in an MMORPG like ESO.

Fictionally, scribing is meant to be a "precursor" to the spellcraft techniques employed by mages a millennia later in The Elder Scrolls 4:Oblivion, so there's narrative justification for things not being quite the same. The system is introduced through a multiple-quest story arc involving Arch-Mage Shalidor's wife Ulfsild and her research into the precursors of magic, likely unlocking the system toward the end of the quest similar to how Shalidor bestows players with the Eidetic Memory ability.

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Initially, scribing is limited to modifying abilities from weapon and world skill lines like the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Soul Magic, Assault, and Support lines as opposed to abilities exclusive to each class, though hopefully the system will be expanded later to include class abilities. Scribing is divided into three resources: Grimoires, Scripts, and Ink. Grimoires represent baseline skills to be modified, while up to three scripts can add primary, secondary, and tertiary effects. Lastly, Inks are the consumable resource required for the whole process, though it's unclear at the moment how the economy around inks will be handled.

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The primary scripts seem to deal mostly with the more direct aspects of the skill, either its damage type like fire or poison or an important gameplay consideration like taunting, healing, and immobilizing. Meanwhile, the secondary and tertiary scripts are mostly related to buffs and debuffs. For example, the Vault grimoire modified with Venomous, Hawk Eye, and Vulnerability scripts becomes Venomous Vault. This ability has Elder Scrolls Online players shooting the ground with a poison arrow, leaping backward, and applying the Hawk Eye buff to themself while afflicting enemies with Minor Vulnerability. There are an enormous amount of possibilities here, as even the Vault grimoire from Bethesda's example could be modified with Restoration, Restoration over Time, and Lifesteal to turn it into a powerful survivability skill.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions regarding this system, and Bethesda plans to share some deep-dive content in the near future to go into more detail on what's next for ESO.