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This week, I joined Elder Scrolls Online’s developers to preview the Endless Archive mode of the hit MMO. I played alongside Mike Finnegan (Lead Encounter Designer) and spoke to Rob Garrett (Senior Combat Designer) to try out what is essentially a randomizer within ESO. If there’s anything I love, it’s a randomizer or a roguelite. I feel like there’s a lot to love about this mode, even outside of just a new way to farm exp and get amazing items.
It will expose players to a new way to approach the game and potentially show them bosses they’ve never seen before. Elder Scrolls Online’s Endless Archive is coming in Update 40, and you don’t want to miss out on it. It can be played solo or in groups of two, so grab a friend and get ready to dive into an endless randomizer.
How Elder Scrolls Online’s Endless Archive works
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Set in ESO Necrom’s Apocrypha, Elder Scrolls Online’s Endless Archive has a formula that is fairly easy to understand. The mode goes in Cycles, each containing four stages. The fourth stage will feature a boss pulled from a list of about 60 from throughout ESO’s rich history. They could be from virtually anywhere, and that makes it exciting.
After you complete four cycles, you move on to the end of the Arc. This is likely where you’ll see the new boss for this mode: Tho’at Replicanum. From there, the cycle begins anew, and the challenge slowly begins to ramp up.
Thankfully, you have extra tries if you wipe. These come in the form of Threads, and both solo and duo players get these. You can also occasionally head into optional stages, where you can receive fantastic rewards for completing objectives like herding wisps and other different things.
Another thing I love about Endless Archive in Elder Scrolls Online is that you can grind experience in this mode. You can get EXP virtually anywhere in the game anyway, but what if you don’t want to push forward in a story but just want to kill enemies? Here’s a great mode to play.
It’s also worth noting that this mode does not rebalance for a solo player. To compensate for that, there’s a separate leaderboard for solo/two-person parties. It’s going to feel very much like a roguelike in that every try will be different, and you never really know what’s going to come next. You also get interesting buffs in this mode: Verses (temporary) and Visions (permanent for this run).
Verses, Visions, and Set Bonuses
Visions are temporary but incredibly powerful buffs that only work for the next stage. Planning for these is crucial—if you know a boss is coming, that may change which of the two buffs you pick up. Verses, on the other hand, will last for the entire run.
Whether they heal, create a fire aura, or summon an ally, there are plenty of great effects. Verses aren’t as powerful, but they do last much longer. You can also get Visions that belong to a set, like a gear set bonus.
Collecting all three gives you an incredibly powerful new ability, such as the Ice Avatar Defensive Verse. For that next stage, in that case, you’ll become a mighty Ice Avatar and be able to demolish foes with incredible new power.
That’s what makes modes like this so fun to me: Making the most out of what you have and overcoming great challenges. Unfortunately, we didn’t get as far as I’d like in our playtest because I held the team down. That didn’t change how fun it was.
Anyone can access this content - it’s not locked behind an expansion/DLC
Even if you don’t have the Necrom chapter of Elder Scrolls Online, you can open the map and teleport to Apocrypha to take part in this mode. That’s honestly one of my favorite parts. A base game player who hasn’t purchased any DLC can tackle this mode. Will it be much harder for them?
Potentially, since that means a good chunk of the bosses may never have been encountered before. That changes nothing, though. If you want to go tackle the Endless Archive, no matter what you have or don't in Elder Scrolls Online, it’s possible for you to enter this mode.
Endless Archive gives plenty of worthwhile items to purchase for ESO players
There are a few vendors in this mode for the Archival Fortunes (currency) you unlock. Opening chests gives you a variety of drops, and that includes the above currency. Filer Tezurs, for example, has some important items for this mode, like Account Unlocks.
For example, you can purchase Aramril’s Training, which increases the strength of your Visions. Another option is Filer Kor’s Truesight, which gives you a third Vision to choose from.
These all make playing this mode easier, but it’ll take some time and skill to farm enough currency. Some of those unlocks also require certain achievements as well, so you’ll really have to get good at Elder Scrolls Online’s Endless Archive.
This merchant also gives some great housing cosmetics too, and some consumables. You can unlock mystery Visions and Verses, which gives you a random buff based on the grouping you selected.
If that weren’t enough, you can also unlock class sets for the first time in Elder Scrolls Online. These are class-specific, and each one is focused on a particular ability line for that class in the game.
There are cheaper chests that randomly bestow one of the class set pieces for your class to you, and a more expensive version—the more expensive version respects the unlocks you’ve already accrued and won’t give you duplicates. This makes getting the last few pieces of a set so much easier.
One other way you can unlock these class sets is by defeating optional boss monsters in a cycle. These are incredibly challenging, but if you can overcome them, you will receive a class set piece. Tho'at also drops a class set piece upon defeating her, so there are multiple ways to unlock them.
Is Endless Archive worth doing in Elder Scrolls Online?
This might be my favorite mode in Elder Scrolls Online, to be honest. I love a good randomizer. It’ll take some time to really dive into and get good at, and I’m curious to see what the most powerful solo/duo builds will be.
Endless Archive brings something new to the world, and while it is a fun, cool mode, it makes thematic sense and connects seamlessly to the ESO world at large. I love that it’s available to everyone, on top of that.
Elder Scrolls Online’s update 40 releases on October 30, 2023, for PC and November 14, 2023, for console players. You can learn more about the update here.
