As promised, today marks the launch of the The Elder Scrolls Online’s Seasons of the Worm Cult, with its new lore-rich island, new adventures that continue the story from the base game, a cast of fan-favorite characters, and the introduction of the anticipated subclassing feature.

But not everything is smooth sailing, as this release also kickoffs the switch from the old chapter system to seasonal system and an annual content pass, a cadence switch-up that has garnered mixed reception and anxiety from the community. Last week, I attended ZeniMax Online Studio’s second press preview for the content drop, which kept a positive spin on the change but made an effort to not spend much time on it. I’m not going to rehash the monetization changes in this article, so you can check out our earlier coverage if you aren’t up to speed, but I do want to talk about the content I previewed so you’ll fully understand what you’re leaping into when the update arrives today.

The island of Solstice

The press preview kicked off with a zone preview and history. Adventurers will be traveling to the isolated island of Solstice, located far off the southern coast of Blackmarsh. The devs made a point to say that its isolation is why people on the mainland don’t talk about it, which I translated as “requires minimal retconning.”

The devs say designed the island with a Mediterranean theme in mind, and I think they do a pretty good job of it. It’s bright and sunny, with scattered trees and fields. As someone who spends most of my down time in Northern Elsweyr because it is pretty, I am excited to see what Solstice has to offer, and I’m hoping for some good, reasonably priced housing there. Maybe it can become my new hangout in the game.

The ZOS team went into a fair amount of history about Solstice for us. It was originally inhabited by two different tribes of ancient Argonians, who lived there by themselves until an exiled house of necromantically inclined Altmer showed up and started a war to take over the island. After the end of this war, the Worm cult showed up, presumably attracted by the necromantical Altmer, which sets the stage for when players reach the island.

The capital city of this Season is called Sunport, which for whatever reason has stuck in my head as Sunspot. The architecture of Sunport is different than we’ve seen before too; it’s a mixture of Altmer and Argonian style architecture, which makes sense given the history of the island.

Upon reaching the island, players will immediately notice one thing: a giant glowing wall called the “Writhing Wall” that bisects Solstice into the West and East sides. It’s big enough that it’s visible from anywhere on the island, so it’s kind of a big deal.

The Seasons of the Worm Cult will be broken into two parts over the course of the rest of the year. Part 1 will be spent on the West side of the island as players are trying to figure out what’s going on with this huge glowy wall while also figuring out what’s going on with the Worm Cult. Part 2 will arrive by the end of the year, and then we’ll be adventuring on the East side of the island.

The mega event

The ZeniMax team was very excited to bring up the mega event that bridges the gap between Part 1 and Part 2 – basically, when we get past the Writhing Wall and explore the Eastern side of the island. But the devs are still keeping most of the details under wraps, only saying that it is very different from anything else they’ve done in ESO to date. It wasn’t clear based on the preview whether the wall will still be in place after the mega-event, but the team did say that the story will still “make sense” after the mega event; they promise they have thought through those situations. The way they were talking about it made me think it was a Gates of Ahn’Qiraj level event – that seems like clear cognate.

The team also talked about the new types of questing we can expect, giving examples of how we’ll be collecting rubble to rebuild bridges to access previously unavailable areas or possessing suits of armor to trigger traps in order to continue through a dungeon. That could be fun, as ESO’s questing is generally fairly cookie-cutter, so having new ways to interact with the world will be a welcome addition.

The other notable thing is that this is the first time in ESO’s history that time is moving forward. All the other expansions happened at the same time as the base game, but Seasons of the Worm Cult will finally push along the chronology. But the team wouldn’t tell us how far in the future, only saying it will be a surprise.

Subclassing

After our lore deep-dive, we got into the details about subclassing. Subclassing will be a base game feature, so you don’t have to purchase Seasons of the Worm Cult to get access to it. You need to have at least one level 50 character, and swapping skilllines is the same as skill respec. So if you have a few of the skill respec scrolls, you can use those to subclass or pay the gold price. Investing skill points in subclassed lines is twice as expensive, so every ability purchased costs two skill points instead of one. There’s no minimum level to be able to subclass as long as you have at least one level 50 character.

Once you get into the subclassing, there are a few restrictions. You always have to retain one of your native class’s skill lines, and you can subclass only one skill line from each other class. So for example, let’s say I’m a Nightblade: I have to keep one Nightblade skill line, and then I could have a Warden subclass and a Dragonknight Subclass. But I couldn’t have two skill lines from Warden or two skill lines from Dragonknight.

Subclass skill lines must be leveled separately. That means if my Nightblade subclasses in Dragonknight, I have to level that Dragonknight skill line from 0 to 50, which seems like a hassle except that subclass skill lines are account-level. So if I level my Dragonknight skill line to 50 on my Nightblade, then decide I want my Sorcerer to subclass into that same Dragonknight skill line, I don’t need to relevel it; it’ll start at 50.

Other than that, the skills will work exactly the same as they do on the originating class. Scribing continues to work as it does today, and subclassing works with the Armory System. However, you get class master only on your original class, and class-specific itemsets work only with your original class.

The team considers subclassing to be on the same level as the One Tamriel overhaul years ago – it will be that impactful to how the game is played. I know there’s concern in the community about the folks who will min/max the fun out of the game, so we’ll have to see how it shakes out. But that’s an issue with every MMO, subclassing or not, so I’m personally not too concerned.

The team wrapped up with a brief Q&A session. Most of the answers I’ve just included above, but two questions stood out to me. First, someone asked about the over-world difficulty slider, and while the devs wouldn’t give any specifics, they did say it is actively being worked on, and they know overland gameplay is an issue in the playerbase. The second was my question; I asked if there are any plans to sell additional skill lines in the crown store with the introduction of this system. This question went entirely unaddressed, so read into that what you will.

Seasons of the Worm Cult arrives today on PC and Mac, with console to follow June 18th. The Writhing Wall event was originally slated for Q3 but is now apparently targeting Q4, followed by Seasons of the Worm Cult part 2 also in Q4. While the update 46 base game patch is free for everyone, players will have to pick up the 2025 content pass to access the SOTWC content.