Back in April 2025, I had the chance to watch the Elder Scrolls Online Direct early and get some questions answered from the developers, you can discover all that news here. The Direct revealed a lot of new information about the game, but there were two things that really stood out, Seasons of the Worm Cult and Subclassing and thanks to an invite from Bethesda, I got to discover more about both via a developer walkthrough.

While Seasons of the Worm Cult is something I am very looking forward to, I mean it does continue the story that was started back in April 2014, Subclassing is something that will have far reaching impacts for the game. At its simplest form, Subclassing lets players take their existing character and class and then mix in skill lines from other classes. Think of it like you only watch one streaming service, but now you can mix in two more services, and it won’t cost you anything more, crazy right. Subclassing does have a few restrictions, the first is the biggest one, because in order to access Subclassing, you must have one character that is at least level 50 on your account. This just means if you have a level 15 Templar, a 38 Arcanist and a 60 Warden, then you are good to go. It does not matter if you have one character or several, your account just needs one single character to hit level 50 to unlock this new feature. Once you have unlocked it, you can create a new character and that one will also be able to use Subclassing.

The other part is that once you have hit level 50, each character on your account must complete an on-boarding quest in order to unlock the skill. There are three ways to unlock this quest line, the first is via the Crown Store, which is the Elder Scrolls Online’s store. The quest here is called ‘A Study in Discipline’ and is a free quest, there is no need to pay or even be an ESO subscriber. The second option is to get it from the user interface, just selecting it will trigger the quest, and the final option is by wandering the world and finding those quest givers. One such location is in Evermore, in northwestern Bangkorai, the others you will have to discover on your own. The locations in the world are marked by a new icon on the map, a ribbon and the NPC at each location is the same called Bahtra at-Hunding. Right, that all is a lot, but it’s all about just finding Bahtra, once you find her, that is when you get to choose your new skills.

Once you are ready to choose your new skills, you will notice that there are now new icons next to each of the class names, the Dragonknight for example as a little picture of a dragon next to the name. As there are seven classes, six will be new to your character, so the icons will come into play. If on your account you have no history of a particular class, the Nightblade for example, you will have the option of undertaking a subclass skill line, this will give you the experience in the class. For those players who do have that experience, you don’t need to worry about any of that, you can just start to pick from the other classes. Just be aware that once you have selected a new class skill line, that will be at the beginning, they don’t match your existing level. The other change is that for your non-dominate class skill lines, those will cost 2 skill points per ability, as opposed to 1 for your main class.

Assuming that you are not confused, there is one final group of restrictions that you need to understand, once Subclassing is active, you will always need to have three skill lines active, no more, no less. The other restriction is that one of your skills must always be from your characters existing class, so if you are a Dragonknight, you have to have at least one skill line from that class. But that is it, with the system you can have a Templar as your base, but they can have the power of a Arcanist and a Warden, you can do it now. If after a dozen hours of that combination, you don’t like it, you can just swap out the Warden skill for another DragonKnight and get back into the action.

Having seen the UI, I can say that swapping out the skills is fairly easy, next to all the available skill lines is a giant plus and once you click it a menu appears and then you get a pop up asking which one you want to replace. The system is also fairly nice in terms of highlighting ones you can’t replace, in order to avoid any issues and if you don’t own the three extra classes, Warden, Necromancer and Arcanist, the game will prompt you to buy them. The big question is clearly going to be around its long-term use, because I know this won’t be for me, but I know a number of hardcore ESO players who will love the extra flexibility the system offers. For now, we need to wait and see how it all shakes out, thankfully there is a new place to try out the new system, Solstice.

Solstice is a new location for the series and is actually the most southern point in the world. It is located beneath Murkmire and the lore of the world describes it as quite a treacherous journey to reach, which is why it has remained mostly undiscovered by travellers. Due to its location, it features a more tropical climate, but unlike Summerset in the West, this island is less tropical beach vibes and more tropical dense jungle. Because Solstice is such a unique biome, that has impacted the architecture and the people that live there, yes there are countless familiar looking Elder Scrolls buildings, forts and castles, but there are some Aztec inspired ruins all over the place. This is not a place teeming with trees, it is an island, and such there are a lot of beaches around, with many of them covered with the skeletal remains of some very large creatures.

There are perhaps two things that excite me about exploring Solstice, the first are the Voskrona, ancient Argonian constructs that were imbued with magic years and years ago but are now waking up. These Voskrona are made from stone and the magic that essentially gave them life, also gave them elemental abilities and while some are on their own, there are others that will be in groups. If you have played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, they remind me a lot of the Flux Constructs, just smaller and with more power behind them. There are also a trove of new enemies, including one that popped up in the ESO Direct, so those looking for a fight will find them here.

The other exciting addition is the Writhing Wall, which is a veil of souls that quite literally cuts the island into two, well stops players from venturing to the other half of it. Later this year, each server of the game will have a quest where players will need to come together in order take it down, if they fail to do so, the rest of the island won’t open up for them. The wall was created by the Worm Cult, so it is tied directly into what is happening, but the team are not saying much beyond that, for obvious reasons. Why I like the idea of the wall, is because it adds something to the world, something unlike we have ever seen in any ESO region. Yeah, each place has a theme, a conflict or something happening, but it never impacts players on such a scale and if they can pull this off, it could be the start of some really big changes.

For those looking forward to picking up Seasons of the Worm Cult, then good news the Seasons of the Worm Cult Content Pass is available now and the content is out now for PC and Mac players, with Xbox and PlayStation getting it on June 18.