Elder Scrolls: Heroes of Tamriel preview

0:00 Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneTop Co-op Shop. And today I'm doing a preview of some of the new content coming for the new Elder Scrolls expansion campaign. And as always, we accept no money from publishers for our coverage. We just want to help you make an informed decision. And if you like the content on the OneStop Co-op shop, consider supporting us through Patreon. You get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can't see anywhere else. You can also listen to our weekly podcast for reviews and design discussions, or join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, originally, I thought I just got the prototype stuff yesterday. I was planning to record a playthrough with whatever they sent me because honestly I thought I was gonna get different stuff. Like I thought I might even get I don't know a new region which is silly because I don't even know if they're making a new region for this expansion. But what I got instead as you can see are a bunch of new skill lines. Uh alternate race abilities one of the drich princes of five that are going to be in the new game and some new what are these called?

0:54 Classes. And I I was thinking that, you know, usually I would do a playthrough, but in a playthrough of Elder Scrolls, even if I two-handed it, you would see what, two of the new races, two of the new classes, maybe like three or four of the new skill lines. So, what I thought might be a little bit more useful maybe for those of you wondering like how the new content is looking is for me to just kind of go through all this new stuff and tell you what I think about it. Uh, so hopefully that's interesting. Let me know your thoughts in the video if you're like, "Darn you, Mike. I wanted to see you play more Elder Scrolls and read more flavor text." But we're going to try this out. So, let's start with the DRI Prince. So, I don't uh fully understand the mechanics of this because all I got is this card and like a very brief description, but the basic idea, I believe, is that you can use one of five DRI princes in your game and they kind of give you an ongoing different thing, which is great because uh Elder Scrolls, you know, can sometimes feel slightly sy because you always have Desandre as the final boss and you know, the regions do change, but like the enemies tend to be pretty similar. That was also a complaint for Hoplamakus Vtorum where the bosses there didn't really change that much except for like the main dice that were in things. But for this one, the changes seem to be a bit more farreaching. Now, this is supposed to be the simplest one, Hermes Mora. Haven't played any Elder Scrolls games in a while besides Skyrim back when, but basically, you add these extra nasty watchling hushed and seeker lurker chips to the bags. And from what I understand, it's kind of hard to tell from the uh like text here without knowing the full rules, but from what they described to me, it sounds like they are tougher enemies than average for level 1, 5, 10,

2:24 and 20, but they get you better rewards at the same time. So, you know, that doesn't seem huge. It's hard for me to judge from this one example if the DRI princes are actually going to serve the purpose of making the game feel more varied each time you play, but I certainly like the concept of them, and this one seems super easy to integrate. Uh, so we'll see how the other ones turn out later on. Well, let's get into the nitty-gritty. So, we've got a new race powers. So, the stats, as far as I can tell, are identical. You just get a new ability you can use once per combat. So, the dark elves now have ruination once per battle. Deal true damage to an adjacent enemy equal to its defense stat. Pretty dang good, especially, you know, later on when you're facing people with like three or four defense. Just doing three or four true damage that cuts right through that. Uh, kind of awesome. The Nords now have rugged. Once per battle, when a party member will be defeated, gain over fatigue equal to that unit's hit point. The unit loses no hit points and is not defeated. I mean, that's pretty good. Uh, it's definitely nice to save somebody, and it could be you or somebody else. Uh, over fatigue, though, like a lot of over fatigue, you know, I don't like that one as much as the dark elves. Okay, the new Argonian one is resourceful. Once per battle, after you use a food item or expand a potion, you may draw one.

3:37 That's trove loot, isn't it? Place it into your pack. Then you may move any one item from your pack into a ready slot. Okay, so you can like do a little re-equipping. You get a bunch of items. You're just kind of cycling through things. And honestly, food and potion items are the type of items I use the least. So, it's kind of interesting to have something that encourages you to dig into that more. Okay, with Kajit, we have Lunar Blessing. Once per battle at any time, heal party members in sight for a collective total of five hit points. Wow, really powerful in solo. Clearly not quite as good in higher player count games, but that one's pretty decent. Uh, orc unflinching rage once per battle after being dealt damage. Gain bonus hit points or recover level one melee. I think that is type skill dice equal to the damage dealt. Maybe split between the two. So, that's pretty cool. If you take like a big hit, like three or four or more damage, getting a ton of dice back and then getting a bunch of hit points so you don't die. I like that one a lot. Okay, Breton gets spell atunement. And once per battle, after dice are rolled for any reason, gain one over fatigue to set one rolled die to the side of your choice. If the die you set is one you rolled, gain one light fatigue instead.

4:42 What What does that mean? If the die you set is one you rolled, I'm get uh I'm trying to parse this here. Do they mean that like if you rolled two of the same type of dice and one got a face you want and the other one didn't and you then make that second die match the first die, you get life fatigue and I don't know that that definitely needs to be explained better. But I mean it's awesome to be able to set dice to the exact thing, especially when you're trying to get like one of those amazing like only one out of six faces on a die. But again, over fatigue not my favorite. Uh wood elves, what do they have? I always love their ability. Resist affliction. Once per battle, at any time you remove up to three status dice or over fatigue from your cooldown track, maybe split, gaining one. Oh my gosh, one tenacity for each die removed. This could be fun with uh I'm trying to think like what gives you over fatigue. It's been a little while since I played. Like I think some of like the the heavy weapons things gives you over fatigue to do cool stuff. So I I like that one a lot. Uh Red Guard has marshall training.

5:36 Once per battle, when an enemy engages you, gain one tenacity. You may overtax and armor disengage without discarding it. Okay. I mean, it is cool to, you know, be able to use those overt taxes that you usually avoid so much because you don't want to lose your armor. And one tenacity seems certainly more uh situational, like you need to get a really good armor for that to be worthwhile before you can use it. But once you do, pretty cool. High Elf, Elemental Talent. Once per battle, when performing an engage, add one status die to your role for that engage. You may play this die to any unit in sight. If you apply it to yourself, gain one tenacity. That's fun if you get some stealth or you get to like baiten somebody or something. I dig that. And then finally, diplomat for Imperial. Once per battle, on your turn, choose an adjacent level one or five enemy. You becomes an companion controlled by you until the end of the round. So, you'll get them to activate and they won't attack you. Pretty cool. Uh could be kind of fun with a speech build or something, I guess. Yeah. Uh nothing like crazy amazing, but you know, these aren't supposed to be game-breaking effects anyway, and they seem pretty fun. And it's just nice, I think, to be able to pick different illustrations and uh different powers even when you play as the same species or race. So, that's cool. I'm going to save the skill lines for last cuz I think those are the most complicated and the most interesting.

6:49 But, let's look at these new again. Were they classes? Uh, we got two for each color, blue, red, and green. First, we've got the witch hunter for the magicka type one. So, they get to draw a level one enemy and place it on the sheet. And then when engaging an enemy of the same type, add combat dice equal to the combat stat of the chip on this card. That could be two or even are there a few three combat level ones? I think there are. That's pretty great. And then uh when you level up, which requires you to expend three potions in a single battle? That's weird. I don't know if I'd ever do that. But with the level up thing, you get to draw two level one enemies and pick one to place. Now, it does say start a battle. So, I think it's before you would draw from the enemy bag and know which types are most prevalent. So, unless it's like a quest or something where you know which enemies are going to come out, that's not quite as good as it could be otherwise. So, let's see then. Silver bolts. After dealing damage to an enemy with the same type as enemy on the sheet. Oh, that's cool. Roll a status die. You can place it on the enemy you dealt damage to. You may. I guess if it's positive, it's still pretty good for one. Uh, draw. Oh, this lets you replace your level one enemy. Evil hunter. Chemistry lets you refresh expended potions. I guess that makes this not feel as bad cuz it could be the same potion. You could uh expend it, use chemistry, expend it again. And then this one's crazy. This is kind of I think the key of the class. While you have five tenacity, skill dice must be rolled in magic or range battle form can be rolled in either form. You know, I'm not quite sure what the implications of that are, but it sounds pretty cool. And yeah, mostly the same on the other side.

8:15 It does become a four instead of a five. And then banish the wicked. Deal a targetable enemy true damage equal to its health stat. The enemy must be the same type and the same level or lower as the enemy on the sheet. Then discard the enemy on the sheet and draw a new level five. Oh, okay. I mean, I don't see being able to use five tenacity consistently to get to like a level Oh, and it only goes up to level five. Okay, so yeah, that's what it will do. It'll let you pretty much murder a level one pretty easily. And then you get a level five, which is going to give you a bunch more potentially uh free enemy combat dice if the type matches. So, you know, pretty uh pretty luck based, but fun. That's cool. And then we've got the mage, the other magic one. Fill an entire attribute row with spell type skill dice. So, you could come from left and right and then meet in the center.

9:03 That's uh doable. Definitely doable. Okay. While engaging in magic, you may roll one more dive in your maga stat. Okay, that's not super impressive. And then you may roll one more die than your magic stat. You may treat your magic stat oh as if it is your stamina stat. So you can move. And I guess that would also just mean it doesn't say while you're in magic stance. So you could like suddenly be a lot better. You could just raise up your maga a ton and it would like cover everything both magic and non-magic stances. That's cool. All right. So what do we have for actual abilities? Okay. After you roll a dice, reroll a dieice. Okay. Ignore sight restrictions if you have at least two. H take a free movement action. That could be useful. Time stop. Before a non-qu quest enemy's turn, skip its turn. Oo, I like that a lot. And then meteor. Deal true damage equal to your magika stat to a targetable enemy. Pretty solid. Pretty solid. And those are all identical except you can trigger the undo multiple times. But this is the big thing, I guess, that uh you can Well, is it that big? I don't know. Yeah, the mage doesn't impress me that much, but seems okay. Right. How about the warrior?

10:07 Okay. In a single battle, defeat an enemy while in each of the following battle forms. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, I'm I'm going to talk about this with the skill lines. There seem to be a lot of things in this uh new set that are trying to push using more combat dice, which I'll be honest, I pretty much never use in any of my games. So, I like that they're kind of expanding that repertoire of combos. So, yeah, this would clearly be easiest with combat dice where you don't have to have like skill lines for each of these things. You can just roll a ton of combat dice. And when engaging in anything except magic, even defense, you may add one free available combat skill die to your role. Free available. Free available. I think that means you still have to have it and it still goes your cooldown track. So, it's kind of just letting you uh go one above your stamina. That sounds not as great. If it means you just get to like grab a combat die from wherever, that would be way more amazing. Uh what's the flipped version?

10:57 one free available level one skill die to your role, which again I think I mean that's pretty cool, but if all it's doing is letting you um Yeah, I'm not sure I'm understanding that correctly. Doesn't seem that great if it's just kind of letting you go above your stamina. I mean, for this one, could you like pull from a skill that's not within your current stance? Probably not, right? Okay, we got slayer. Roll one enemy combat die and deal the damage to an adjacent enemy. Damage ignores one defense. I mean, not bad for one, but Oh, but you have Oh, this is interesting. Look, they each use a different one of the uh forms that you're in. So, this is the range one. Roll an available combat die and apply it to a targetable enemy as a status die. Uh the enemy's defense stat is reduced by this value. That's really good. So, you can just like for everybody lower somebody's defense for a while by potentially up to two. Okay.

11:43 When you're dealt damage by an enemy, prevent one damage is every time. Whoa. As long as you have two, that's not even hard to get. Uh, for the two-handed, deal two damage to each adjacent enemy and heal hit points equal to hit points lost by those enemies to each. Oh my gosh, if you set that up, that is a great ability. And then no ground given over fatigue, you return. Oh my god. Overt recover is return of the supply. So you it doesn't, you know, overtat like just keeps on cycling back and you can survive in like the fatigue rounds much better. I mean, clearly except for combat skill dice, it's going to be tough to make any skill lines like work consistently with this, but that's freaking cool. Does anything change? I don't think anything needs to. Oh, that's three damage each adjacent enemy. And you heal hit points equal to Oh my gosh. And you can prevent one damage or remove one light fatigue from your cooldown track with enduring. I think that's the only change. Oh, the slayer ignores two defense. But yeah, that one that one's neat. Like I would want to play with that. I don't know if I would do well with it, but I like all the ideas from it. All right. Berserker, you feel a level 20 or quest enemy while you have one hit point. Get out of here, Berserker.

12:48 That sounds challenging. Uh, but at the start of your turn, if you're not a full hit point, you must roll the rage die. The result of a free class ability with a tenacity cost matching the rolled result if possible. An ability triggered by the rage die must still be triggered. So, yeah. So, I saw this die, it goes up to four. So, if you roll a four, you have to do a charging maneuver if you can. And if you roll a three, you have to do a combat friend who are reach if you can. That sounds pretty cool. I mean, let's see. So, continuous attack. Deal one damage to each adjacent unit. Okay, so I guess you could accidentally hit your friends with that, which fits the berserker thing. You may gain light fatigue your current hit points to ignore defense on all enemies for this. What? I guess that's good if you're at one hit point and trying to kill a level 20, but otherwise that seems like a lot of light fatigue. Vigor gain one bonus hit point. The weakest adjacent unit also gains one hit point. Oh, yeah. So the this is fun. This is fun. I mean, this is what a berserker should be. You could accidentally give an enemy next to you one bonus hit point if you get the rage with a two. Move an adjacent you as many hexes as possible in the direction directly opposite you. Then deal it one damage for each hex it moves. So you don't want to be near your friends when you're berserker, but that's an amazing one if you roll it for the enemies. Uh while engaging in either melee or two-headed, you may target opposing enemies up to two X's away. Oh, that's great. And then charging maneuver.

14:05 Choose a direction and move as many hexes as possible in that direction. You must choose a direction would let you move if possible. If you would move into a unit, stop moving and deal that unit one damage plus one damage for each hex you moved. Then deal yourself damage equal to half of this rounded down. Okay. Um it's pretty awesome. I mean hitting yourself is I guess going to get you ready for the vigor. Yeah, I I like this. I like this. Uh anything major change on this side? Uh oh, I guess two bonus hit points instead of one. Uh yeah, that seems about the same. Oh, after defeating an opposing unit, gain one bonus hit point. It's really cool, too. Yeah, I like Berserker a lot. And especially true solo, there's almost no drawbacks except I guess sometimes giving enemies hit points with vigor. Okay, almost to the uh skill pads, but let's talk about the two green ones.

14:52 Thief. Uh oh, there's there was another one that was like item based. Uh, while you have at least one yellow uh subtrauge type skill die trained of each of the four levels, successfully resolve a steel from the shop town square action. Okay. Um, when deploying yourself at the start of a class, you may gain a light fatigue to deploy to any occupate hex. It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool. And then you may gain light fatigue deploy to any and if you deploy adjacent to a level 10 or 20 enemy, draw a weaker item. Okay. Uh, you know, that's fine. Extra pockets. After any adventure discards an item due to steel, gain that item. That's kind of nice. If I mean, again, situational. How often are people going to steal from you? When you be dealt damage, discard a lower item to prevent half the damage. That's cool. Draw an item for each enemy adjacent. Do you choose one to keep and discard the rest? Okay, so I like that they're like using items for tenacity.

15:40 Poison injection. Place a maim status die into an active slot. After you're engaged by an adjacent enemy, you may apply the status die to that enemy. Okay, so let them come to you and then remove up to five life fatigue from your cooldown track. Then deal true damage equally. Oh man, that's good. So like totally revitalize your cooldown and do a ton of damage in the mix. Um just trying to see if anything changed. Oh, night thief. Place yourself on an occupied cash in sight and gain a stealth status die. That's pretty cool. Uh it becomes maim or bane. Uh you get more for more enemies. Uh you can discard an additional item to gain a stealth die. Okay. So, uh, cool. Yeah. I mean, not my favorite. I don't like, uh, things that kind of deal with items and cashes as much, but it seems on brand for a thief. Okay. Last, we've got the assassin. If you defeat a quest Oh, that Yeah, this one's kind of special. So, to complete their upgrade, you need to fight this unmarked marked target. So, you add them to the bag, and when they're drawn, they don't count against the EP, so you just keep on drawing. And then, if you can defeat them, then you get to level up. and their five just lets them put the marked target in next class. You don't have to wait for the bag luck. So that's not too impressive.

16:51 But gaining a stealth for three, moving a hex and doing a free engage, ignoring a defense for two. Deal one true damage, but only to a level one for one. Eh, I mean, really, I feel like you got to get to the other side. After you gain a stealth status die, place one hit point here. That's your focus stack. Yeah. So, this class really comes to life after you kill your target. So, ambush gets you another focus. Again, that's a stealth uh whenever you get stealth, you get this. Move one X to gain to focus. Perform a free engage. You may ignore one defense. Okay. Two. Remove one chip from your focus to defeat a level one enemy or five chips to defeat a level five enemy in sight. The level five is pretty great if you built up to it. Uh relentless focus. Gain one focus to gain a stealth die. So you got multiple ways to gain focuses plus of course just gaining stealth. Drich mines if you're in archery. So stealth archer. That's what I played in Skyrim most of the time. Remove any number of chips from your focus stack to roll that many status dice. Place each result into a different unoccupied hex in range. when he moves into one of those hexes, they gain the status die.

17:46 That just sounds like good chaotic fun. And then master assassin, if you have four, when dealing damage to an enemy, you remove any number of chips from your focus stack to ignore that much defense on the enemy. Eh, honestly, I'm not that impressed with that last one. I like the other stuff on here better. So, yeah, not my favorite either, but pretty fun. But let's get to the thing that I'm most excited about. I don't know about all of you. Those are the skill lines. And the one that I had the most excitement for was werewolf. I want to be a werewolf. And then they also have vampire. So, let's talk through these. The big thing, at least as far as they've told me, is that for these, you need to either start with werewolf or start with vampire as your very first skill line or you need to like get it through a special event. You can't just train it with a trainer, you know, which makes thematic sense, but it does mean that you're probably going to start as a werewolf when you want to try it. And werewolf's a little weird. So, first of all, you'll see you can use it in any of the main like melee or defense stats. Um, and it's all level one. It's all level one, which, you know, on the positive side means you get a lot of flexibility and like doing whatever you want to do with it. On the negative side, it means that you're starting out a scenario with werewolf and you immediately have all the options, which could be good or bad. Uh, and then here's a very big thing. So, you got transformation. You gather with two of them. This die must be the only die you roll during this engage. I'll read that again. This die must be the only die you roll during this engage.

19:08 Now, it's just engage. The first time I read it, I thought it was like the entire round, but you could of course do like another engage first, take one light fatigue, and then do this. If you get it five out of six, then you get to become a werewolf. And while it's active, you can only roll werewolf and combat dice, and you cannot use items. Ouch. So, these werewolf dice have to be crazy good, right? Cuz you're you're wasting a whole engage just become a werewolf. But then you can immediately engage again. That's the nice part. So you could like do this as your first die, take one life fatigue and then go crazy. You don't have to like waste an entire turn to become a werewolf. But let's look at these because they are pretty awesome. You know, are they awesome enough for that restriction and then you can only use combat dice in addition? I'm not sure yet. But feral pounce is great. Look at this. Gain up to three life fatigue to place yourself in an unoccupied hex up to a number of hexes away equal to double the amount of life fatigue gained. So you can move up to six. Then deal damage equal to your current hit points to an adjacent non-quest enemy. Now it's nonquest pretty limiting. You can only have one of each of these dice except for transformation. They're all limited to one, but that could be five damage. That could be six damage. That could be seven damage for a single die. Heck yeah. And all of the ones besides transformation have this little symbol as one face where you gain two tenacity or roll a free combat skill die from anywhere on your mat. So, it could be in your cooldown track and add it to your engage. So, you know, pretty cool. The two tenacity is certainly nice. In fact, I think werewolves just get tenacity kind of more quickly than most things in general. Okay. Clause of anguish is also crazy. Deal yourself any amount of damage to deal double the amount of damage to your target. Say if you got

20:39 like seven, you could use feral pounce, deal seven damage, and then deal yourself six damage and deal 12 damage to them. I've never seen that much kind of damage output before from a single die. So that's definitely great. Uh on a two out of six chance, you deal yourself true damage and deal an equal amount of true damage. Not quite as good sometimes, but pretty cool. And then yeah, same thing there. Savage strength gets that tenacity result twice. Roll enemy combat skill dice equal to your target's defense, adding them to your engage. After this engage, roll a status die and gain the results. That's that's pretty hit or miss right there. I forget what percentage of the status die faces are positive. I think two or three. But getting three free combat enemy skill dice that aren't going to go in your cooldown. That's pretty nice. You know, if you're going to get somebody with a lot of defense. Okay, blood moon. You got to drain it, but you gain an overt and heal yourself for three and he accesses bonus hit points. uh or gain two overtat and heal yourself for seven ADXes to gain his bonus hit points. So, a little rough with the over fatigue, but hey, if you got feral pounce or claws of anguish, getting all that hit points is pretty great. Okay, then another drain how of agony. Resolve any number of the following, losing one hit point for each resolve. Now, only once.

21:44 So, defeat a level one enemy for free. Apply a bane to a level five. Deal three true damage to a level 10. Apply a maim to a level 20. pretty dang cool, especially just like killing, you know, uh, a level one immediately is nice. Although, again, it's getting drained and you're getting hurt. And then finally, last one, devour. Discard an item to recover one combat skill, then heal yourself for three if the item was that, or four if it was a trove. They are trove chests, right? Any excess hit point is gained as bonus hit points. Freaking great. Like, I like that one better than Blood Moon because you're not getting over fatigue. still drains itself, but again plays in great with Claws of Anguish and Feral Pounce. So yeah, werewolves, they're a little bit more niche than I kind of hoped they would be. I just wanted to be like a killing machine, and you kind of are, but I think you got to work at it. But that should be exciting to try out. It's certainly like an entirely different build than anything else in the game.

22:32 But now, vampires, they do have the standard one through four level stuff, and they have the same thing that you can't start with it. They got a special rule about blood scion, which seems a little bit niche. I don't know why that's not just in the blood scion section, but anyway, their big thing first to call out, kind of like the werewolf, they have a die results on everything except their basic die, but here it's negative. You get a Bane status die or you drain the die and you have to resolve this. You can't just choose to put it back in the cool down. But then look, feed deal one damage to a enemy. It's true damage if they are a skeleton undead type and then you remove a bane status die from your cool down track. So, I think you're just supposed to like kind of keep feeds in reserve until you need to uh get yourself back after a bad luck result. But what does the good luck do for you? So, you got misform, which let you swap with a targetable enemy. And and you're going to see this, by the way. Most of these reference targetable enemies, and vampires have no restriction, although they are a stamina trait. But I believe, if I'm not wrong, that you could use this with magicka and have really long range and or with archery. And with magicka, you could use like all your magic and also use your stamina separately to roll vampire dice. So I can see like some, you know, mystical magical vampires working really well.

23:40 But anyway, yeah, you can swap hexes with a targetable enemy. Gives you a ton of movement, especially like in delves and stuff. And then you also get to deal one or two damage if you get this first result with an newly adjacent enemy. So you'd have to swap with somebody that has another enemy next to them. Mesmerize lets you apply a dazed status die to that many targetable enemies. Uh, and even quest enemies can get dazed. pretty awesome. Um especially if again if you're like in magicka or range stance have really long range and you roll a five or six that's crazy. Okay then blood scion is a cooldown one the only one they have. I'm going to look at the bat one first cuz this one excites me the most. When this guy is placed in your cooldown track if it's in the draw bag deploy the level 10 giant bat unit to hex as close as possible. They are companion controlled by you. Freaking great. A free level 10 enemy helping you out is going to swing some battles pretty quickly. uh the weaker ones.

24:31 While this dies in your cooldown track before rolling your dice, you may select a gathered skill die and make that dy's damage true damage. Eh, you know, I mean, if you combo this with like some really nasty attacks, that could be pretty cool, but unless they have a lot of defense, you know, so what? And then while this dies in your cooldown track, your stamina magic stats are increased by one. Pretty good. I mean, the bad is definitely my winner here, but I like those. Although, I guess actually this works well with increasing your range for all the other effects. Okay, last two. Blood frenzy is also level three. heal for hit points equal to the amount of hit points lost by your target this engage. If this heals you to full hit points, apply a maim status die to a targetable enemy. So again, like I don't feel like you're mainly doing the vampire dice just by themselves, whereas werewolf is clearly like a one-trick pony once it transforms. These seem to combo well with other things, which makes vampire a bit more interesting to me. Um yeah, and just, you know, getting to heal a whole bunch and giving a main status die is nice. And then finally, vampire drain. does drain itself. While you're adjacent to any nonqu quest unit, heal to full hit points. Then choose an adjacent non-qu quest unit to lose hit points equal to the amount you healed.

25:34 That's great. Like, wow. If you are really hurt, it is just a straight up recharge to max hit point level. I think that's a lot of fun. Uh, can you be a vampire werewolf? Doesn't seem like it would work very well at all, but uh, you know, cool to think about. All right, those are kind of their own special things. Let's get to the other ones. So, we've got two magical ones. Soul magic is really nice. Uh, so it's all about the soul trap. So you can deal X damage to your target, one or two, or one true damage if you roll that. And then if you defeat an enemy during the engage, you can put one of the soul trap dice into an active slot. It becomes a soul gem that you can keep between battles. Okay, so that's kind of the really cool thing. All the recipes use that in some way. So soul lock, you recover all soul trap dice from your cool down. Well, never mind. That just uh gets you back your soul stuff for doing more soul trapping.

26:21 But for the other dice, you'll see they all have bonus effects that let you use your soul gems that you got in active slots. So, consuming trap, heal yourself for hit points equal to your target's combat stat or move your target a number of hepexes up to its range stat. You know, pretty cool. And you can exhaust a soul gem. Deal true damage equal to its attack stat. Oh, I thought it was the soul gems attack stat. I think it's the unit's attack stat. That's awesome. You know, especially like against nastier guys who are doing like four or five attack. Soul strike. Roll 2d6. Deal damage equal to one result to a party member in sight. to deal damage equal to the other result to your target. Great if you roll a one and a six. After rolling them, you choose a result result reduce both results by two, which is nice. You know, if you get like a double six, you don't want to kill your friend. Or deal five damage to your target and one true damage to yourself, which is fabulous. And if you have a soul gem, you can remove all status dice from one adventurous cooldown track. Potentially very nice. Okay, soul assault. Deal three or four or five damage to your target. Oh my gosh. Uh and then you can exhaust two soul gems to apply a fear status die to a targetable enemy. Pretty cool. And then finally, soul shatter, the level four, deal true damage to your target, each of the hit points you are missing when compared to your health stat. So yeah, kind of like that vampire one. Very nice. And if you have any number of soul gems for each one exhausted, also deal true damage from this die to an additional targetable enemy. Oh my god. From this die. So if you're like dealing six damage to the one you can Oh man, I love this. This is just like wipe the entire board ultra like attack. See, I think this is a really cool quest line, Soul Magic. And

27:52 I really like the other new magical one, too, Storm Calling. Honestly, uh the the like non werewolf vampire ones are the ones that I've enjoyed the most looking at. Uh which is not what I expected when I came in. But yeah, so the big thing is a lot of these storm calling things have a special placement and you put them on your chip and they have an ongoing ability and then at the start of your turn you have to drain them unless you pay a cost. But Mage's Fury is the basic one. So you have to drain it. A lot of draining, but you'll see a lot of ways to get him back. You deal X true damage. So up to three for a level one is crazy. But then you also get to place a drain storm calling die in the leftmost spot of your cooldown track, moving all other dice to the right. So it could kind of messed up your cooldown, but you can get back other mages furies or these other things that you've let lapse from their effects. But let's go into the ongoing effects cuz they combo with non-maga stuff in really cool ways. This is what uh why I think this is a really cool uh skill line cuz look, hurricane, when an enemy deals damage, you ignore the damage from any enemy combat die result that hits you with a two. So, the worst results suddenly become the best results, but you got to gain a light fatigue every turn. Pretty interesting.

28:53 Lightning flood, the other level two. When engaging in melee or two-handed, you may ignore one defense on your target for each combat skill dice you roll, not including enemy combat skill dice. You know, pretty good, but again, it's free once you get it on. You just got to lose one hit point to maintain it or let it drain him and hit him with Mage's Fury. But yeah, you do a magic engage to get this stuff going. And then you switch to your melee attacks and just ignore tons of defense. Really cool. And uses combat skill dice. Like I said, you're going to see a lot of things that kind of emphasize combat skill dice more. I like that. The werewolf does it. The storm calling does it. And there's more coming. Uh two level threes. Ball of lightning. Before performing an engage in again melee, you may place yourself in an unoccupied hex exactly three hexes away from your current hex. If you do so during the engage, add one enemy combat skill die to your roll for each enemy adjacent to you and then divide the damage dealt from these dice among adjacent enemies as you choose. And keep in mind this is before each engage. So if you do multiple engages if you can suffer the light fatigue to do that. You can just like teleport around as a little lightning boy all over the place. But you do have to gain a stay status die to keep this instead of draining it. Okay.

29:55 Overload. When engaging again in melee, you may deal all damage from combat skill dice to all enemies in a straight line away from you in the direction of your target with no range or sight restrictions. Just I mean, you know, I'm not sure if you're going to be able to set this up, but just imagine the carnage if you can get like a line of enemies, especially like in a delve or something. Oh my gosh. But gain an over fatigue to keep it. Yeah, I think I would just let it drain and then try to get a mage's fury to get it back. Then finally, critical surge two through four. It always hits recover X drain storm calling skill dice. You may choose to roll any number of them adding them to this engage provided you still have available magicka. So you just get them back, baby. Let them drain. Get them all back at once and then go back into insane melee combos. I mean, look at this. What if you had all of them? So you're ignoring defense, you're uh teleporting around, getting bonus attacks, and then uh when you attack, you also do like damage in a line. I mean, I don't know if you need all the three of those at once, but the the concept is freaking cool. So yeah, the storm calling magicka mixed with melee.

30:57 I love it. But let's get to the more basic melee ones. So dual wield, another one that is very heavy on the basic combat dice. I think it looks really neat. So the basic level one twin slashes deal one or two damage to your target. And then after this engage, deal one or two damage to your target. Again, great. Just, you know, two or four damage from a level one. Wow. But it does exhaust itself on one six of the thing. Doesn't even get you a tenacity. Boo. Okay. Then dual wield expert. So this is kind of one of the key things. Before rolling dice in an engage, if dual wield and combat skill dice are the only dice you have gathered to roll, you may use two weapons this engage. During an engage, you may exhaust this die to treat any other rolled dual wield skill dies if its X value is one higher. So you could get to 36 damage with one die.

31:44 But yeah, so you can use double weapons. I mean, you know, you're dual wielding. Cool. Uh, you know, actually it's not the most impressive thing about this thing, but it is thematically on point. And then flying blade. This one's really neat. Level two. Apply this die to a non-adjacent enemy up to three hex's away from you. You may increase this die by any amount to deal the same amount of damage to the enemy. While this dies applied, the enemy's defense stat is reduced by one, but then it ticks down by one at the end of each enemy turn. So, you can do four damage straight up. Just throw a knife in their face. Makes me think of like the axes from Too Many Bones or didn't uh dart or duster, what were they called? Didn't they have like a blade like long range attack thing? Yeah. So, really neat. Or you can just lower defense, kind of like uh that other one we looked at. Okay, we got another level two. Whirlwind. Deal X damage to each adjacent enemy. After this engage, at least one enemy was defeated. Recover this die. Look, you are usually going to do two damage to every adjacent enemy. And if at least one died, you just get it right back to do it again later, but it can exhaust one six of the time. Okay, level three's shrouded daggers. Deal two or three damage to an adjacent enemy. Then deal two or three damage to up to two enemies within two hex's of that enemy. And the damage from combat skill dice disengage will be dealt to any enemies damaged by shrouded daggers rather than your targets. So again, roll a bunch of daggers, roll a bunch of combat skill dice, and you can just spread that out and like murder a bunch of weak or close to dead guys freely. Awesome. Rapid strikes deal 0, one, or two damage to your target, then choose to either roll this die or exhaust it. So you can just keep on going. Uh but if you get the

33:15 six, you gain two light fatigue. So you could I mean, yeah, you can see what this does. You can just get endless damage if you get lucky, which is awesome. And then thrive in chaos. Treat the X on all dual wield skill dice you roll as one higher even to a value not available on the dice. Like you know that zero on the rapid strikes. Psych. It's a one. Uh and the twos are threes. Oh my gosh. But you must resolve all results of all rolled skill dice. Uh that could be annoying. And after an enemy is defeated on your turn or if this die would be exhausted from your active slots during battle, drain this die. So, you really want like I can see shrouded daggers being awesome for this for example because you can just like spread tons of boosted damage among anybody without finishing them off. Whirlwind a whole bunch of people without finishing them off. You know, rapid strike somebody down to one life and then stop rolling it. Yeah, just lots of fun tricks you can do before you'll eventually have to drain this and stop getting the plus one bonus to everything. Love this one. Uh probably the coolest. Like I like this a little bit more than werewolf for a very melee focused basic combat die focus build.

34:13 And this one's kind of similar except it sort of goes the opposite of the storm calling. So it is a two-handed heavy skill. Before rolling dice ring engage, if you gather at least one Adri Spear guy and gather only Adri Spear in basic combat dice again, you may change your target to a non-adjacent enemy as if you were in magic stance, which means you want to boost your magic and your stamina. Interesting. But the level one is biting jabs. For each biting jab j you gather, and can be six, you may add one free available combat skill die to your engage up to your magika stat. Again, I think that comes from your board, which makes it not as cool, but it's dealing one or two damage, just like a basic combat die. But hey, if you're boosting your magic up to get a lot of range, you could use lower stamina and still hit a lot. All right, Radiant Ward. This die can be used in defense and two-handed. When engaged by an enemy, drain a combat skill die from anywhere on your mat, even in cooldown, to prevent one damage. Then, after the engage, deal one true damage to the enemy. Pretty awesome. And with the one out of six chance you blind them instead of doing one true damage. Nice. Piercing Javelin works amazing with the range boost from the magic. Deal damage to your target equal the number of hex's away your target is from you. So if you're attacking at like range four with the magical boost four damage. There you go. Then move your target up to that number of hex's further away from you.

35:25 So you can just blast them again and delves way out of the way so they'll never catch up or in a regular combat at least far enough so they won't be able to hurt you. I mean just think of like the kiting possibilities if it's like you and one enemy left at the end. This one is deal damage to your target equal number of hexes and then apply a day status die. So, pretty good. Although the pushing is fun. All right, focus charge. Move to three hexes. Then deal two or three or four damage to each adjacent damage or sorry, each adjacent enemy. You may drain this die along with a combat skill die from anywhere to treat this damage as true damage. You know, great if uh they just happen to have a ton of defense and you're about to win anyway. And this one's really interesting. Spear shards. Place this die. There's only one in your in the hex occupied by your target and deal three damage to your target and one damage each enemy adjacent to it. You just like do a bomb awesome spear attack. When an adventurer ends their turn in or adjacent to the hex containing this die, they can drain an available combat skill tie to recover two or three or four leftmost dice in their cooldown track.

36:17 And you know, pretty much everyone has like some random combat die sitting around. So fun. Nice way to boost your people and do lots of explosive damage. And then look at this man. Look at this radial sweep. Give me a break. Recover all drained adri spear and combat skill dice. Deal damage equal to the number of dice recovered to each enemy adjacent to you. Although, unless I'm missing something besides focus charge, which can drain it and another combat skill die. Are there any other things? Yeah, none of the rest of them drain automatically. I might be missing something. So, it seems like you really need focus charge and radial sweeping. There's only one focus charge. Yep. So, I don't know. Maybe that's not as good as I think or maybe I'm just misunderstanding how it's used. But besides that, Adrix beer really cool. Again, I like the combination of magic and physical. That was not really necessarily a viable thing in the original game like everything going on with this one. Okay, only two left. Man, this ended up being a longer video than I thought without me actually playing the game. But assassination. Uh-oh. So, you can mark your target for level one.

37:12 So, after this engage, apply this die to your target when you deal damage to the enemy and ignore up to two its defense until it's defeated, then you exhaust a die. Now, it is only unfortunately when you deal damage, not when anybody does. So, it's not quite as good. Um, and it can be applied to a quest unit though, so that's nice. So yeah, lots of ways you get true damage and ignore defense. Maybe they thought that was a little bit too hard in the original game. Okay. Or you can apply a bane status die to the enemy and you gain a stealth die, but it does uh drain the die, so oh well. Level two. After rolling your dice for grim focus, you may exhaust this die to change a stamina based dice to anything of your choice. There was something like that in DRI, I think, and I always loved it. I think it was a level two as well. So having it now for stamina based dice is great. And then you can change it to two stamina skill dice to whatever you want if you drain it. But clearly that's not great. Killer's Blade only hits three, you know, 50% of the time, but exhausted die to defeat an adjacent enemy with exactly one, two, or three life left. And it's an active die, so you just roll it, you put it to the side, you wait until somebody's almost dead, and then immediately kill them.

38:10 Don't even need to engage or anything. Pretty cool. All right, teleport strike. Place yourself in an occupied hex adjacent to your any enemy in sight. Then you remove a stealth status die from your cooldown track or exhaust an available assassination skill die to deal up to true damage to that enemy. I mean, the teleportation effect is probably the best thing here, but two true damage for, you know, not too much cost if you're going to attack and lose stealth anyway is nice. Reaper's Mark. After an enemy is defeated, increase this die by one. Okay. At the start of your turn, you may drain this die to defeat a targetable enemy with a level equal to or lower than X. Now, you do roll it initially, so if you get like a four or five, it's going to be a lot easier to kill a level five enemy. But here's where it's key. If the enemy has a status die applied to it, treat this die as double its face value. So you can auto kill by draining this to kill a level 10 straight up. I don't know if anything else in the game kills a level 10 straight up. Um, so pretty awesome.

39:00 Although it does take some doing, you know, you're really going to want to get lucky. Like you probably don't want to slot it into active until you roll at least like a four or five and then kill like a few level ones to get it to five. Put a status die on the guy. Bam. Oh, and I guess they they do need to keep the status die because it's at the beginning of your turn, so it can't be one they get rid of. But yeah, pretty cool. And last, we get hemorrhage. Deal one true damage to your target. You may drain any number of available assassination skill dice. Increase this true damage by two for each die you choose to drain this way. So, you know, if you've gone up to level four, you should be able to get at least seven true damage. And then this one is just true one true damage and apply a bane status to your target, which is still pretty great. And hey, then it'll come back and you can do it again. Whereas hemorrhage, the the other one probably you're going to be a little bit unable to use it in a meaningful way after that. But that's a fun one. And last one. Honestly, this is one of my most uh the ones I like the best is because it's a really cool armor thing. You know, we had light armor and heavy armor. Uh this is medium armor. And this is all about, as you'll see, if you keep your cooldown track not too full, you get the dice for free. Look at what I mean. Evasion. When you're dealt damage by an enemy, you may exhaust this die to prevent one of that damage. And then if your cooldown track has four to six dice or fewer, recover this die instead of exhausting it. Okay, so you can just get that ready to block some damage and get it right back. And you'll see they kind of all do that.

40:17 Shuffle. After you're dealt damage by an enemy, you may exhaust this die and move to three hex's away. Hey, might prevent you from getting hit by somebody else. And then if you have four, five, or six fewer dice, recover this die. This just gets you one tenacity and removes two light fatigue from the cool down track. Great. Makes it easier for the other things to trigger with uh the cooldown being lower. Okay. Elude. When you're dealt damage by an enemy, you die to prevent two damage for each miss rolled by the enemy. It's your own version of dodge. If your cool down track has five or six dice or fewer, recover it. Yeah, you're getting the idea. And then you can also after an enemy rolls enemies combat skill dice against you, recover this die to change one result to a miss. So you can go from two to a zero. So blocks, yeah, two damage and a few more, but they're all kind of along the same lines. When you're selected as a target, you may exhaust this die to immediately roll and resolve up to two available or exhausted medium armor skill dice, even if you're not in defense stands. I love this. So if you do have too much of a cooldown and you know like your evasions or your eludes are in your cooldown track, you just get two of them back and block the damage immediately. Or this one lets you roll up to three available exhausted combat skill dice. Combat skill dice preventing damage equal to the result rolled and exhausting all the rolled skill dice which is going to, you know, gum up your works a little bit for the other things. Again, wants you to have more combat skill dice which I think is fun. Almost done. My voice is running out. Athletics medium armor skill dice can be rolled in any battle form. I'll read that again. Medium armor skill dice can be rolled in any battle form while this is active. You don't have to go into shield and get extra light fatigue. And when this one's crazy, too. When resolving other medium armor skill dice, ignore yellow

41:49 subtrauge type skill dice when counting the number of dice in your cooldown track. So suddenly, you know, getting to four dice or less or five dice or less, heck of a lot easier. Now, it also has an optional thing when you're engaged by an enemy may exhaust this die to prevent gaining any fatigue or status dice for the rest of that turn if you know they're going to do something nasty to you. But you know what? Combos with athletics being dextrous. When you're dealt damage by an enemy, you may exhaust fist die to then roll 1d6 for every two dice in your cooldown track. If you roll no sixes, prevent all damage dealt. And remember, you can ignore yellow type dice. And if you have one or zero dice in your cooldown track after the athletics, you just automat I mean, you can't roll a six with zero dice. You automatically prevent all damage dealt. You know, I you'll have to have enough cool down to get that dexterity back.

42:34 But that is one of the best uh defense abilities in the game. I think it's awesome. Hope that was interesting to watch. I hope you all appreciated like looking at all the things in detail and my thoughts. Uh let me know which ones seem coolest to you if you disagree with my reads on any of these. And I definitely want to see more of these DRI princes because again that could give a lot more variety and replay to the game in general. But yeah, I don't know if I need more Elder Scrolls. It's already a ton of stuff and but it's already a great game and this just gives you more builds to try, more characters to try, more uh fun abilities to use. It looks like it's going to make a good game even better. So, thanks for watching everybody. Check out the campaign once it's live. And a special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Jay Williamf, Steve Ren, Pedro Lucas, Miles, Casey W, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next