The Elder Scrolls Online Patch 1.5.2: New Facial Animations, Dungeon Scaling and Chat Bubbles

A new patch is coming to The Elder Scrolls Online and will make a huge host of improvements to the game. While the patch notes can be found in full here, we've brought over some of the more juicy tidbits.

Veteran City of Ash

• Join an Undaunted expedition to assault the Deadlands, realm of the Daedric Prince Mehrunes Dagon. Veteran City of Ash continues the story begun in the original dungeon.

Improved Facial Animations We have

• We have completed the implementation of the basic FaceFX pipeline, processed over 100,000 lines of dialogue and completed the phoneme creation for all of the races in the game. Facial animations will now synchronize with the dialogue they are speaking. There are some specific monsters that are not updated yet because they do not share the standard “human” animation rig, but these will be updated in the future.

Dungeon Scaling

• Dungeons will now scale to the level of the group leader, with some caveats:
• Non-veteran dungeons will not scale below the level they are currently introduced, but will scale up to Veteran Rank 12.
• All veteran dungeons (with the exception of Veteran City of Ash) are now available from Veteran Rank 1 to Veteran Rank 12.
• Dungeons will not scale up to Veteran Rank 13 and 14 at this time.
• Dungeon scaling is determined by the group leader upon the group entering the dungeon. This scaling does not change if the level of the group leader does, or if the group leader changes, once the dungeon has been set.
• Item drops will also scale up either to the level of the monster or the receiving player character, whichever is lower.

Veteran Rank Improvements

• We have been tracking Experience gains past maximum Veteran Rank on accounts in preparation for the Champion System. Veteran Ranks are now earned by Experience Points instead of Veteran Points. From this moment on, Veteran Points shall be banished from the land of Tamriel.
• When a Veteran Rank is earned, you will be rewarded with an Attribute Point and a Skill Point.
• Reduced the amount of Health, Magicka, and Stamina rewarded on a Veteran Rank gain by 35% to compensate for the new Attribute Points rewarded.
• It takes 1,432,550 Experience Points to gain a Veteran Rank. We expect this to reduce the amount of time it takes to gain a Veteran Rank.

New Crafting Style: Dwemer

• The secrets of crafting Dwemer equipment have begun to be recovered. Those searching Dwemer ruins may find lost chapters detailing the construction of specific types of equipment, and if you are extremely lucky, may find an intact book detailing every aspect of Dwemer armor and weapon construction.
• The crafting style component will require you to collect Dwemer scrap metal from automatons, and refine it into a Dwemer frame item.

New Crafted Item Set: Twice-Born Star

• If you have researched 9 traits in a given item type, you will be able to craft items in the Twice-Born Star item set. When worn in at least five different item slots, this item set will allow you to receive two different mundus stones buffs. The crafting stations for this item set are located in Upper Craglorn.

Chat Bubbles

• Chat bubbles are now in beta and available! These are off by default. To turn them on, go to the Settings menu. Scroll to the bottom of the Interface tab, and you’ll see different options for chat bubbles.