Arriving as part of The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road Chapter (landing June 3 on PC/Mac and June 18 for Xbox and PlayStation consoles), the Scribing System allows you to create your own custom-made abilities from a variety of initial options, called Grimoires. Be it to better serve a specific role, increase overall strength or utility, or create new opportunities for roleplay, this system grants you the power to further tailor your builds to your heart’s content.

But how will ESO’s developers make use of Scribing when the Gold Road Chapter launches in June? We reached out to a few key members of the development team behind the new system and asked them for their favorite custom-made abilities.

Gilliam—Combat Designer

As someone who spends a lot of their time tinkering and iterating, I have a very hard time picking favorites, especially from this system. That said, I am particularly fond of the Elemental Explosion Grimoire, as it leans heavily into the super powerful mage archetype where you cast a high-risk, high-reward spell with a longer commitment time.

Due to this high amount of commitment, it changes how I view many combat encounters, where I need to plan and adapt to opportunistic moments to activate and land it. Being able to charge up a super powerful area effect attack that rewards thoughtful activation and placement nails a really satisfying feeling that you can’t get with a lot of other abilities. 

“Repelling Explosion”

Pairing this with the Knockback Focus turns it into an ultra-satisfying disruption tool, letting chaos abound, which brings me some simple joy and lots of laughs. Tack on the Warmage’s Defense Signature for a scaling damage shield based on the number of targets I hit, and the Cowardice Affix to reduce the unlucky victims’ Weapon and Spell Damage, and I can now tank plenty of damage from all the aggro it’ll generate from the people I’ve displaced in PvP. 

Cullen Lee—Senior Systems Designer

One of the Grimoires I’m most excited for is Soul Burst, which you earn at the end of the Scribing quest line. This unleashes a powerful burst of soul magic around you, providing an instant point-blank area of effect. Simple and flexible!

When I’m playing Infinite Archive on my Necromancer tank and things get hectic, sometimes I’ll spot an Infuser about to empower their buddies and I’ll struggle to target them with a bash in time. So, I’m really excited for the Interrupt Affix–even if an Infuser tries to hide behind their friends, I can still easily interrupt their cast thanks to Soul Burst’s eight-meter radius.

“Shocking Burst”

For Signatures, I’m a big fan of the Necromancer Class Mastery script. This increases your Magicka, Stamina, and Health based on the number of nearby corpses. And if you don’t have any nearby corpses, it’ll make one instead! Once we’ve killed each wave of enemies, I can use their corpses to empower myself for the next group (before gobbling them up for Ultimate with Necrotic Potency!).

For the Focus, I’ve been keeping it simple with Shock Damage, but I do find the Immobilize script tempting. I’ll probably bounce back and forth at least a few more times before I make up my mind!

Caleb Noffsinger—Senior QA Tester II

Traveling Knife! Simply put, you toss out a knife toward the enemy, and it returns to the player, hitting your foes on the way back. This can be a great way to apply debuffs to multiple enemies, something dual wield abilities traditionally don’t do.

I use it on my Dragonknight, having it deal Poison Damage as my Focus with Wayfarer’s Mastery Signature and Minor Berserk Affix. I chose Poison Damage because it plays well into Dragonknight as a baseline. The Wayfarer’s Mastery (Ruffian) Signature is stronger than you might realize. It boosts my damage when using Rending Slashes and Rapid Strikes, but it also increases the damage of my allies who are using dual wield while it is active.

“Venomous Knife”

This all completely changes how my build is set up. I went from using Stone Giant as a spammable to Rapid Strikes and got a considerable DPS increase. Putting Minor Berserk on the ability also opened the opportunity for me to swap out Camouflaged Hunter with Torch-Bearer’s Sweep, another scribed ability, and still have those all-important bonuses and passives active without any overlap.

Radacal Alexander—Animator

I chose the Grimoire Shield Throw, which launches your shield at your enemy and deals physical damage. When animating this particular skill, I wanted to create the sense of the full body of motion required when literally hurling a shield at your enemies, and it makes me feel like Captain America!

Because it’s awesome to bounce your shield around a bunch of enemies, I picked Multi-Target as the Signature and added Lingering Torment as the Focus with Cowardice as the Affix. Lingering Torment uses your weapon’s enchantment to deal more damage, along with adding damage over time. This in turn allows the sword-and-board playstyle to have some mid-range damage threat.

“Shattering Throw”

Cowardice works well with the close-range nature of sword-and-board fighting, lowering the enemy’s threat. Pairing that with the shields in the weapon skill line makes for an extremely tanky character. I also used this with the Torug’s Pact item set so that it procs weapon enchantments more often.

Of course, these are just some of the unique combinations you can try with the new Scribing System, and we hope this inspires you to try out different Grimoires (and their myriad combinations) with your own builds when Gold Road launches in June. How are you going to make use of Scribing? Let us know via X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.

The Elder Scrolls Online: Gold Road arrives for PC/Mac on June 3, 2024, and for Xbox and PlayStation consoles on June 18, 2024. Pre-purchase Gold Road now to receive unique bonus rewards at launch and immediate access to the Welkyndstone Ruins Wolf mount. Don’t miss out.