ESO Update 51 Ultimate Guide

Latest Update: September 27, 2026

Here is everything we know about ESO Update 51, scheduled to release this Fall and including major player experience improvements, new game systems, and solo dungeons.

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ESO Update 51 Overview

Update 51 is the mid-season patch for Season One, with its PTS now starting August 3 instead of July 6 and a current target launch of September 28, 2026 across PC, Mac, PlayStation, and Xbox. The patch finally wraps up ESO’s long-running hybridization project, consolidating Mundus Stones, the Major and Minor buff system, class passives, and Alchemy so weapon and spell builds work consistently across the board, while also adding achievement pinning, a PC-only Edit HUD beta, and some new content including Rumors, The Nowhere Vault, Solo Dungeons and the High Seas of Tamriel event. Some new content will be available at patch release while other content will be dropping later in the season. More info in our video review below.

The Rumor System

Rumors are a new type of content found throughout the world that invite you to investigate mysteries and uncover the hidden secrets of Tamriel. Unlike quests, Rumors do not provide step-by-step objectives or direct you through the UI. Instead, you will need to interpret clues, explore the world, and determine how each mystery can be solved.

To receive an introduction to the Rumor System, accept the quest “Rumors Abound” from the Quest Starters section of the Crown Store. You can also travel to the southern docks of Daggerfall and seek out an Orc known as Tilli the Gossip, who will help you get started.

Rumors are divided into three categories based on their difficulty and complexity: Whispers, Plots, and Conspiracies. Each entry in the Rumors section of the Journal includes a hint about where that Rumor can be acquired. Any clues you collect while investigating a Rumor will be tracked within that Rumor’s journal entry, allowing you to review everything you have uncovered at any time.

High Seas of Tamriel in-game event

During the High Seas of Tamriel event, the Gold Coast plays host to a ghost! This first run of High Seas of Tamriel includes two quests, the Raising the Riotous Redress and the Bounty of the Abecean Sea.

There are various rewards/plunder to be found in the High Seas event. Completing quests for the event net you Deep Plunder boxes. The first box you receive each day will be legendary. Opening this box will earn you three hundred Trade Bars and a chance at a number of other exciting rewards. When you complete a subsequent High Seas of Tamriel quest on that same day, once per character, you’ll receive an epic Deep Plunder Box. Deep Plunder boxes can net you new outfit style pages, progress towards earning a new unique mount, treasure maps, furnishings, and more!

Additionally, the High Seas of Tamriel event will also include antiquity leads for new nautical items directly, as well as – for the first time ever – tradeable antiquity leads. You can also now discover furnishing crafting recipes as antiquity leads. Successfully excavating these leads will net you a recipe that you can then craft as many times as you like.

The Nowhere Vault

The Nowhere Vault is the second of two permanent new game systems coming to ESO with Update 51. A strange creature known as Urli has appeared within Daggerfall’s Thieves Den, inviting anyone in possession of Wonderous Nowhere Keys to enter the Nowhere Vault. Those who accept must face the trials of Urli’s master, Sage Voernet, for a chance to claim the treasures hidden within.

The Nowhere Vault is a sprawling collection of rooms suspended between realms. Three distinct wings await within, each featuring a randomized selection and order of challenges. Puzzles, stealth encounters, navigational obstacles, combat challenges, and more stand between you and the rewards found in each room.
But there is more to the Vault than its challenges. Secret objectives are hidden throughout its rooms, each connected to the Sage’s greatest treasure. Only by uncovering these secrets and discovering how they relate to the Vault can you hope to claim the prize for yourself.

Accessing the Nowhere Vault

To enter the Nowhere Vault, you must have at least one Wonderous Nowhere Key in your inventory. Once you have acquired a key, travel to Daggerfall’s Thieves Den and seek out the portal leading into the Vault. You can also accept the quest “Invitation to Treasures” from the Quest Starters section of the Crown Store to be directed to the Vault’s entrance. The Nowhere Vault can be explored alone or with a group.

Playing the Nowhere Vault

Upon entering the Vault, you can choose from three different wings, each containing its own randomized selection of challenges. Using a Wonderous Nowhere Key unlocks one room within the selected wing. Only one player needs to use a key to open the path forward for the entire group. Once opened, all group members can enter the room and attempt its challenge together.

In addition to standard challenge rooms, two special types of rooms may appear during your journey:

• Story Rooms: These rooms reveal additional information about the Vault and its inhabitants. They may also contain treasure chests and clues connected to the Vault’s secrets.
• Jackpot Rooms: After completing a wing, you have a chance to enter one of two Jackpot Rooms while exiting the Vault. These rooms are filled with valuable treasures, crafting resources, or other rewards.

Story Rooms and Jackpot Rooms do not require a Wonderous Nowhere Key to exit and continue your journey.

Wonderous Nowhere Keys

With the opening of the Nowhere Vault, all existing Unformed Planar Keys will be converted into Wonderous Nowhere Keys. Wonderous Nowhere Keys are tradeable and can be sold through Guild Stores. Keys can be acquired uncommonly from a variety of activities throughout Tamriel, including:

• Heists
• Thieves Troves
• Delves and World Bosses
• Treasure Chests
• Favors
• Dynamic Encounters
• Rumors
• Solo Dungeons

Secrets and Rewards of the Nowhere Vault

Hidden throughout the Nowhere Vault are special Nowhere Chests containing unique treasures. Opening a Nowhere Chest requires a Wonderous Nowhere Key, so keep an eye out while exploring each room and decide whether the rewards within are worth spending an additional key.

Additionally, you’ll want to keep a careful eye on each of the Vault’s rooms, as nearly all of them contain a hidden secret objective. These objectives are tracked through associated Rumors, allowing you to review your progress and see which secrets you have already uncovered. You may also discover additional hints throughout the Vault that can help you understand its mysteries and determine how its secrets are connected.

Solo Dungeons

The March of Sacrifices and Moonhunter Keep dungeons now can be played in solo mode! You can enter the solo version of these dungeons from the world map or their entrance in their corresponding zones.

You can now experience the story at your own pace with or without an NPC companion. Choose optional Meted Misfortunes to add additional challenge and rewards.

• 0 Misfortunes – comparable to overland difficulty.
• 1 Misfortune – comparable to a normal solo arena.
• 2 Misfortunes – comparable to a veteran solo arena.
• 3 Misfortunes – harder than any comparable solo experience.

Earn Undaunted Crests and purchase rewards from vendors in the Undaunted Enclaves outside Wayrest, Mournhold, and Elden Root. Earn new Tarcyr and Mylene Moon-Caller Item Sets and corresponding Style Pages.

Mundus Stone Changes

The Warrior and Apprentice Mundus Stones are being changed in Update 51. Both stones date back to a time when Weapon Damage and Spell Damage were actually separate stats. That separation no longer holds, and the two stones had effectively overlapped since the initial hybridization push. Rather than let that redundancy sit, ZOS is resolving it by giving each stone a unique purpose, which is great!

The Warrior Stone previously provided a bonus to Weapon Damage only. In Update 51, the Warrior Stone increases both Weapon Damage and Spell Damage at the same time. For builds focused on raw damage such as PvP Builds, this might be an interesting option.

The Apprentice Stone previously provided a bonus to Spell Damage only. In Update 51, the Apprentice now provides increased Experience and Inspiration gain. This is a huge change, and makes the Apprentice a viable Mundus for anyone looking to level up faster, grind CP, or unlock new skills more quickly for subclassing.

Major and Minor Buff Changes

Update 51 also aims to get rid of some of the redundancy and confusion surrounding a few overlapping buff effects.

Brutality and Sorcery

Major Sorcery and Minor Sorcery will be removed from the game in Update 51. This means Major Brutality and Minor Brutality will also be updated to provide both Weapon Damage and Spell Damage together rather than Weapon Damage only.

Savagery and Prophecy

The same logic applies to ESO’s critical chance buffs. Major Prophecy and Minor Prophecy are removed. Major Savagery and Minor Savagery are updated to provide both Weapon Critical and Spell Critical chance together. Savagery now covers both, but again, you need an active source of Savagery in your build to benefit.

New Debuff: Vexation

Update 51 also introduces a new debuff called Vexation, initially available through Alchemy. Vexation reduces the target’s healing done and acts as a counterpart to the existing Mending buff. This is a PvP-focused addition in particular, since healing reduction effects have historically been among the most impactful debuffs in Cyrodiil and Battlegrounds. Watch for Vexation to appear on new potions once Alchemy changes go live.

Alchemy Changes

Speaking of which, alchemy also gets an overhaul in ESO Update 51 to go along with the game’s hybrid systems updates.

Trait Consolidation

The four traits previously used for power and critical buffs in Alchemy are being reduced to two. Increase Spell Power and Increase Weapon Power are merged into a single combined trait. Increase Spell Critical and Increase Weapon Critical are merged into a single combined critical trait. This directly mirrors the changes to Major and Minor Sorcery, Prophecy, Brutality, and Savagery in the buff system.

The ripple effects of this mean that there will be a number of new traits, as well as several new reagents.

Note: ZeniMax has confirmed that most existing potion recipes remain unchanged after Update 51. Daily crafting writ recipes are also unaffected. Master Writs that are impacted by the ingredient changes are being updated simultaneously to ensure they remain completable. Previously earned Alchemy achievements stay unlocked, though the effects of individual ingredients need to be discovered again by players who have not yet completed all relevant achievements.

New Traits and Effects

Several new traits are being added to Alchemy to fill the gaps created by consolidation and to introduce effects that were not previously available through crafting:

Existing Traits:

• Increase Spell Power and Increase Weapon Power are now consolidated to a single Increase Power trait.
• Increase Weapon Critical and Increase Spell Critical are now consolidated to a single Critical trait.
• Maim is no longer sourced, in favor of the new traits below.
• Enervation is now the counter-trait to Force, instead of being the counter to the consolidated-away Weapon Critical.

New Traits:

• Mending adds:
  • Major Mending to potions.
  • For poisons grants Minor Vexation to your target and Minor Mending to yourself.
• Vexation adds:
  • Minor Vexation to potions.
  • For poisons applies Minor Vexation to your target for a longer duration than Mending poisons apply.
• Damage Shield adds:
  • A significant damage shield to potions
  • For poisons applies Heal Absorption to your target and a damage shield to yourself.
• Heal Absorption adds:
  • Heal Absorption to potions.
  • For poisons applies Heal Absorption to your target.
• Force adds:
  • Major Force to potions.
  • For poisons applies Minor Enervation to your target and Minor Force to yourself.

Four New Reagents

Four new Alchemy ingredients are being added to ESO and can be found throughout Tamriel. These new reagents carry the new traits and work in combination with existing ingredients to create entirely new potion and poison formulations. ZeniMax has not released the full list of new reagents or their exact locations at time of writing, but they are intended to support all roles including tank, healer, and damage dealer builds.

New Reagents:

• Cultivated Cryptpods can primarily be found in Solo Dungeons, and possess:
  • Heroism
  • Increase Power
  • Mending
  • Damage Shield
• Daedra-Blood Maggots can primarily be found in the Imperial City Sewers, and possess:
  • Defile
  • Heal Absorption
  • Cowardice
  • Entrapment
• Fossilized Verminous Bones can primarily be found in Treasure Maps in the original Alliance zones, and possess:
  • Heroism
  • Restore Stamina
  • Force
  • Detection
• Winter’s Grave Tongues can primarily be found in icy zones, either on wood or carried by the undead, and possess:
  • Vexation
  • Heal Absorption
  • Defile
  • Breach

• Updated Reagents:
  • Blue Entoloma
    • Cowardice -> Heal Absorption
  • Stinkhorn
    • Increase Power -> Force
  • Namira’s Rot
    • Critical -> Enervation
  • White Cap
    • Cowardice -> Enervation
  • Blessed Thistle
    • Ravage Health -> Heal Absorption
  • Lady’s Smock
    • Increase Power -> Force
  • Bugloss
    • Cowardice -> Mending
  • Nirnroot
    • Enervation -> Heal Absorption
  • Water Hyacinth
    • This had two copies of Critical after the changes, one is now Damage Shield.
  • Torchbug Thorax
    • Vitality -> Mending
  • Spider Egg
    • Lingering Health -> Damage Shield
  • Butterfly Wing
    • Uncertainty -> Damage Shield
  • Scrib Jelly
    • Ravage Magicka -> Vexation
  • Mother of Pearl
    • Lingering Health -> Mending

Potion Naming Updates

The visual presentation of potions is being improved in Update 51. Potions are labeled according to the priority of their effects, and the priority system is being reworked to better communicate what a potion actually does. If a potion provides Heroism, it will be identified as an Essence of Heroism rather than an Essence of Magicka even if magicka restoration is also included. This makes it significantly easier to identify potions with rare or high-value effects at a glance, which matters most when organizing large inventories or quickly grabbing consumables before a trial pull.

New Class Passive Changes

The four original ESO classes, Dragonknight, Nightblade, Sorcerer, and Templar, are having their passives updated in Update 51 as part of the same hybridization changes as well. Each of these classes currently provides a Minor buff through their passive skills, but these buffs are the same ones being consolidated or removed. Expect the following changes in update 51:

• Dragonknights keep Minor Brutality from their class passives. Since Minor Brutality now covers both Weapon Damage and Spell Damage, Dragonknights retain their group utility without losing value.
• Nightblades keep Minor Savagery from their class passives. Since Minor Savagery now covers both Weapon Critical and Spell Critical, Nightblades retain their group utility in the same way.
• Sorcerers previously provided Minor Prophecy through their Dark Magic skill line. Since Minor Prophecy is being removed, Sorcerers are receiving a replacement in the form of a new unique Offensive Penetration buff for their group.
• Templars previously provided Minor Sorcery through their class passives. Since Minor Sorcery is being removed, Templars are receiving a unique Armor buff for their group. This reinforces the Templar’s identity as a defensive and support-oriented class.

Warden Class Identity Refresh

The Warden is the second class to receive its Class Identity Refresh, following the Dragonknight overhaul earlier in 2026. However, due to the layoffs experienced by the company the Warden refresh has now been pushed back to 2027 and will not be part of Update 51.

ZOS’s Class Identity Refresh initiative is a long-term project working through all seven ESO classes in sequence with the goal of making each class feel distinct and rewarding in both its individual gameplay rhythm and its group contribution. The full order is Dragonknight, Warden, Sorcerer, Templar, Nightblade, Necromancer, and Arcanist.

Full details on specific skill changes have not been released at time of writing. With the change in release schedule, more specifics for the Warden should likely not be expected until later this year at the earliest.

Class and Combat Changes

• Dragonknight
  • Ardent Flame
    • Lava Whip
      • Flame Lash: Reduced the healing of the Power Lash activation by 50%.
      • Flame Lash/Power Lash: Reduced Power Lash’s damage by ~18%. This morph now grants 3% damage done to monsters for 45 seconds after generating charges.
  • Draconic Power
    • Earthspike Mantle
      • This skill and its morphs’ now grant damage done to monsters, rather than any damage done. This is to account for Landslide buffs.
    • Dragonfire Breath
      • Engulfing Dragonfire: Reduced the cost of this skill to 3510, down from 3780. This skill now reduces damage taken by 15% while it is being channeled.
  • Landslide: This passive now stacks up to 12 times, up from 10. Adjusted how this passive stacks to generate once every 5|4 seconds, reduced from 10|5 seconds. The stacks now last for 6 seconds and decay by 1 if you fail to generate a stack once every 6 seconds, rather than decaying every 2 seconds if you fail to deal damage.
  • Core of Flame: Reduced the resources granted from this skill and its morphs to 12% missing resource, down from 15% missing resource.
    • Hearth of Flame: Reduced the healing from this morph by 20%.
• Nightblade
  • Assassination
    • Assassin’s Blade
      • Impale: Fixed a rare issue where you could get stuck pointing aggressively at your foes after slaying them with this ability.
  • Siphoning
    • Strife: This skill and its morphs now deal 1% more damage for every 2% Health you have. Reduced base damage by 33% for Strife and Funnel Health. This effect replaces the previously mentioned effect where casting the abilities would increase your damage done by 1% for every 10% Health you have. This skill and Funnel Health now cost 2700 Magicka and Health, rather than 4050 Magicka. Fixed an issue where these abilities would not break Invisibility when cast.
      • Swallow Soul: Reduced the base damage by ~17%. Paired with the new damage increase effect, this will increase the damage to be just shy of Concealed Weapon’s maximum damage threshold.

• Sorcerer
  • Dark Magic
    • Exploitation: This passive now once again triggers when you attempt to activate a Dark Magic ability, rather than when you successfully cast one, in efforts to ensure it properly interacts with all abilities it should when paired with Font of Power and to reduce its performance strain in run time.
    • Crystal Shard: Fixed an issue where your sheathed weapons would sometimes move strangely on your back while casting this ability and its morphs.
    • Crystal Weapon: Increased the number of charges this skill has to 3, up from 2.
    • Blood Magic: Reduced the healing of this skill to 3|6% of your Max Health when activated, down from 5|10% to reduce how passive the healing can become in many cases.
    • Conservation of Energy: Reduced the resources granted from this passive to 1.5% of your Magicka and Stamina, down from 2%.
    • Static Reverberation: This passive now triggers off Sorcerer ability damage, rather than any damage. Increased the base proc chance to 20%, up from 5%. Reduced the cooldown to 100ms, down from 300ms.
• Necromancer
  • General: Fixed an issue where many effects that allowed you to treat an entity as a corpse could confuse other Necormancer clients into thinking a corpse was available to consume or would sometimes interfere with using their own corpses. Individual corpse effects such as Malevolent Promise or Nobility in Decay should no longer interfere with other Necromancers.
  • Bone Tyrant
    • Bone Goliath Transformation
      • Pummeling Bone Goliath: Fixed an issue where the special Bash animation failed to play for this morph.
    • Death Scythe: The scythe FX should no longer linger on weapons when quickly swapping between weapon bars for this ability and its morphs.
  • Frozen Colossus: Reduced the cost of this Ultimate and its morphs to 150, down from 175. Increased the damage of this Ultimate and Glacial Colossus by 12.5%. These buffs are temporary and will be reverted in Update 52 to make the bonuses higher but restricted to PvE.
  • Pestilent Colossus: Increased the damage of this morph’s first hit by ~12.5%, its second hit by ~18%, and the final hit by ~23%. This morph now only guarantees Diseased on the final hit, rather than each hit.
  • Nothing Wasted: This passive’s stacks now last for 12 seconds, down from 15, but decay two at a time, rather than 3. Overall this will add slightly more time before the stacks fully fall off after they have been maxed.
• Templar
  • Balanced Warrior: This passive now grants bonus Armor per Templar skill slotted (1|2% + 1|2% per Templar skill slotted), and Weapon and Spell Damage based on your total Armor and how many Templar skills you have slotted (.2% of your total sum Armor + (75 * the # of templar skills / 2) | .4% of your total sum Armor + 75 * # of Templar skills). This effect no longer has a cap.
  • Judgment’s Brand: Increased this passive’s bonus to 1600, up from 1400.
• Warden
  • Fetcher Infection: Increased this morph’s secondary cast to 75% bonus damage, up from 60%.
  • Arctic Blast: Increased the damage over time portion of this morph by ~20% per tick.
• Arcanist
  • Curative Runeforms
    • Arcanist’s Domain
      • Zenas’ Empowering Disc: Fixed an issue where this morph failed to grant its effects if the target entered or left its area while Sprinting.
    • Herald of the Tome
      • Tome-bearer’s Inspiration: This skill and its morphs now only trigger off Arcanist skill (a skill is an ability that is placed on your Hotbar, also referred to as Action Bar or Ability Bar) damage, rather than any class ability (an ability is effectively any action a player can take – including item sets, passives, etc) damage.

• Weapons
  • Destruction Staff
    • Weakness to Elements
      • Elemental Susceptibility: This morph now has a 3240 Magicka cost, rather than being free, to account for how much stronger status effects have become over time.
  • One Hand and Shield
    • Shield Charge: This skill and its morphs now cause you to automatically block for .5s after activating. Note that automatically blocking is free of cost (similarly to Shield Wall or Light Weaver)
  • Two Handed
    • Cleave: Fixed an issue where the damage shield from this ability and its morphs’ visuals did not last the full 6 seconds.

• Guild
  • Fighter’s Guild
    • Expert Hunter: This skill and its morphs now increase the caster’s Stealth Detection Radius (how far they can see Stealthed/Invisible Targets) equal to that of a detect potion. They no longer function as area of effect reveals that actively check if there are Stealthed or Invisible targets nearby and make them unable to benefit from concealment for a duration after, if they were revealed.
  • Psijic Order[
    • Imbue Weapon: This skill and its morphs now also increase your damage done with weapon attacks by 5% for 6 seconds after casting.
      • Crushing Weapon: This morph improves the new damage bonus to weapon attacks to 8%, up from 5%.

• World
  • Werewolf
    • General: Updated many active skill costs to make for a more balanced experience and to better account for and highlight the existence of the Rampage effect. This will result in making Magicka and Stamina sustain more relevant for the Werewolf experience, while still offering reduced costs compared to most active play styles.

• • Pounce: Increased this skill and morphs’ costs to 3213, up from 1071.
    • Carnage: Increase this skill and morphs’ costs to 1188, up from 995. Fixed an issue where Carnage and morphs’ ranged activation requirements did not properly respect monsters with large hit boxes, forcing you to get much closer than expected to activate the skill.
  • Hircine’s Bounty: Increased this skill and morphs’ cost to 4590, up from 4320. Reduced the healing of this version by ~13%.
    • Hircine’s Fortitude: Reduced the healing of this morph by ~10%.
  • Roar: Increased this skill and morphs’ cost to 3443, up from 1071.
  • Gnash: Increased this skill and the Rip and Tear morph’s cost to 1800, up from 765.
    • Bloody Gnash: Increased this morph’s cost to 1620, up from 765.
  • Rending Claws: Increased this skill and the Bloodclaw morph’s cost to 2340, up from 995.
    • Claw Fury: Increased this morph’s cost to 420 per tick, up from 383. This morph now also heals you for 0.1046667 of your Max Health when dealing damage, up to once every second.
  • Insatiable Hunger: Fixed an issue where this synergy failed to play its blood visual effects in some situations. Updated this synergy to have the following rules to help reduce its frequency of overriding other synergy use:
    • Reduced the priority of the synergy from the highest combat priority rating to the lowest priority rating (Synergies from player abilities are rated values 6, 7, and 8. The higher the value, the lower the priority. Previously this was a 6 (which most defensive synergies have), now it is an 8 (which most offensive synergies have).
      • Why these numbers? We build our priority system in tandem with encounters and content – where often times special synergies sourced for content need to take priority over all other combat actions (to prevent situations where normal skill synergies prevent you from activating a content driven synergy to succeed a mechanic). This gave rise to use creating our own band of prioritization for synergies that grant priorities over others, in efforts to create cases where the synergies most likely to save you are prioritized over things that you generally want (hence why we value defensive actions > damage. Something something, “A dead DPS does no DPS.”)
    • Put 3 unique stipulations on the synergy in addition to their regular stipulations (looking at a consumable corpse, etc)
      • The caster is at or below 66% Health
      • OR the caster is at or below 200 Ultimate
      • OR the caster is out of combat
  • Slaughter: Instead of striking fear into the hearts of your enemies with a howl during certain Slaughter animations to cause a sheer heart attack, you will now summon a spectral wolf from Hircine’s realm to take down your foes with a deadly blow.

Alliance War and PVP Changes

• General
  • Leaderboards will now show the current character’s ranked AP, even if there is another character on the same account that is on the leaderboard with a higher value of AP.
• Battle Spirit
  • We have made some general adjustments to Battle Spirit, which are as follows:
    • Damage shield strength is now limited to 300% of Max Health when between the group sizes of 1 (solo) and 4.
    • Battle Spirit now reduces per group member beyond 4, reducing to 220% at 5 group members, and decreasing by an additional 20% per group member until 10 group members are reached (80% at 10), then reducing by 10% per group member between 11 and 12 (60% at 12 players).
      • These numbers are not final and we are expecting to adjust them based on feedback. Initially we are avoiding any penalty to small groups, and then ramping up a penalty that starts to further taper off as it reaches the group size limit.
    • Updated Battle Spirit and IC Battle Spirit tooltips to reflect these changes.
• Battlegrounds
  • Two-sided and Three-sided Battlegrounds have now been combined into one queue called ‘Big Team Battles’. To make this possible, team sizes have now been changed to 6v6v6 and 9v9.
    • The competitive queue still remains two-sided and 4v4.
  • New medals have been added to all Battleground types, rewarding players who grant players damage shields, major and minor buffs, and major and minor debuffs. To earn a medal, you must:
    • For damage shields, grant at least 20% of your maximum health and have absorbed 50% total damage before expiring.
    • For buffs and debuffs, the duration must last at least 4 seconds or longer.
  • Multiple help defs have been updated to include the new medal information, as described above.
  • Battleground scoreboards have been updated with three new fields – damage dealt, healing done, and ‘objectives contributed towards’.
  • The Zone Guide is now disabled in Battleground zones.
  • Fixed an issue where some 10-49 Battlegrounds did not have proper battle scaling activated.
  • Fixed an issue where you could accidentally push the Battleground scoreboard off the screen if you were using max UI scaling.
  • Added abbreviated number formatting (and time formatting for Chaos Ball) to the damage, heals, and game type scores in the Battleground score screen.
• Cyrodiil
  • Updated harvest nodes inside Cyrodiil to have their survey variants.
    • Example: An ore node will now be listed and yield the same rewards as a “Rich” ore node. A lumber node will list and yield the same rewards as a “Pristine” lumber node. Etc.
    • Known Exceptions
      • The following harvest node types do not have a survey variant, thus they have not increased while in Cyrodiil, which we are actively discussing:
        • Water nodes
        • Oil drop rates
        • Leather drop rates (as Cyrodiil does not normally have fur trap nodes)
        • Mushroom and water-based plant nodes
  • Archer guards have had their Health decreased by 30%.
  • Honor guards have had their Health increased by 33%.
  • Honor guards, Melee guards, and Menders have had their Physical Resistance increased to match their Spell Resistance.
  • Puncture: The guard version of this ability has been renamed to Perforate, to indicate it is a separate ability from the player version and has its own unique effects.
  • Several guard abilities that applied Stun to the player will now properly apply CC Immunity.
  • Fixed an issue where the wrong character could be chosen as Emperor if the account becoming Emperor had multiple characters in the same Alliance and Campaign.
• Imperial City
  • Fixed an animation issue where your feet would slide around while using a Sigil of Imperial Retreat.
  • Fixed an issue where the queue for Battlegrounds did not properly update in response to your carried Tel’var amount after withdrawing or depositing from a bank.
  • Fixed an issue where the Imperial City Battle Spirit tooltip was incorrectly stating a range bonus where no bonus existed.
• Vengeance
  • General
    • Vengeance is now an option in the Group and Activity Finder.
    • Updated the Siege vendors to no longer display Cyrodiil-specific items that cannot be used while in the Vengeance campaign. This includes siege weapons, forward camps, and keep recall stones.
    • We have introduced new siege weapons that can now be purchased with Alliance points at the standard Siege vendors. These deal increased damage to players based on their respective item quality level:
      • Green quality (higher than base siege)
      • Blue quality (higher than Green quality and below)
      • Purple quality (higher than Blue quality and below)
    • Updated damage abilities to have a maximum target of 12, up from 3.
    • Updated defensive and crowd control abilities to have a maximum target of 6, up from 3.
  • Abilities
    • Battle Medic
      • Spirit Bolt: Fixed an issue where your sheathed weapons would sometimes move strangely on your back while casting Spirit Bolt.
    • Assault
      • Rapid Maneuvers: Ability now provides Gallop in addition to Major Expedition.
• Veterancy
  • General
    • Fixed an issue where the arrows used to navigate the Veterancy menu would sometimes not appear properly based on your UI scaling.
    • Fixed an issue with Veterancy rank achievements not being granted if you progressed past multiple ranks at once.

Player Experience Improvements

The player experience team explained a shift in their approach for Update 51. Update 49 focused on a high volume of smaller fixes that mostly benefited newer or more casual players. Update 51 instead targets long-term, dedicated players, while the studio continues working on larger, multi-update projects behind the scenes.

More Transmute Stations

Major guild transmute stations are expanding further across Tamriel in Update 51, continuing the rollout that began in Update 50.

Easier Home Navigation

When you travel to one of your houses from the map or a wayshrine, your primary home will now appear at the top of the list, with your favorited homes listed right below it. You won’t have to scroll through your entire house collection just to find the one you actually want.

Pinning Your Achievements

In Update 51, players will be able to pin an achievement so it tracks on screen alongside your quest journal. The pinned achievement shows a progress bar, and if it’s a category with multiple sub-goals, you’ll see the top three incomplete entries at once.

For now, you can only pin one achievement category at a time. ZOS said expanding that to multiple pins is something they’re considering for a future update, but it’s not part of Update 51.

Antiquities Joins the Base Game

This is a big one. Once Greymoor folds into the base game with Update 51’s second incremental release, Antiquities comes along with it, meaning every player will have access to scrying and digging for antiquities without owning a single DLC. However, this inclusion in the base game won’t occur until after the High Seas of Tamriel is concluded.

A new quest starter, available through the Crown Store, will now send you straight to the antiquities introduction quest. Lead chase time has also been cut by roughly half for green leads and by about a third for blue and purple leads, so you reach your best antiquities faster. The Antiquarian’s Eye will also be updated to prompt you to use it as soon as you reach a dig site, which should cut down on confusion about how to actually find your dig location.

ZOS also audited older antiquities, since drop rate standards had drifted over the years as new content came out. Antiquities released before High Isle are being brought up to match the more generous drop rates used today, and antiquity leads will now drop at full chance until you finish the related codex, rather than only on your first attempt.

The New Edit HUD (PC Only For Now)

Update 51 introduces an Edit HUD beta, accessible from the escape menu. It lets you drag, drop, split, and recombine your UI trackers, including pulling your pinned achievements out from your general quest tracker so you can position them separately. You can nudge elements with precise X and Y coordinates, and a reset button brings everything back to default if something goes wrong. The system won’t let you accidentally drag an element completely off screen.

To start modifying your HUD, open your Systems menu, ESC on keyboards, and select “Edit Hud (BETA)”. From here you can hover over the boxes to see what they are and click on them to see more details.

Combat and Abilities

General

Fixed: Some skills on your hotbar appearing as if they were not able to be cast if a Scribed ability was edited while actively slotted. Fixed: Some visual effects (such as Werewolf Transformation) to persist on group members if the effect was removed by rezoning. Addressed an issue where other player’s equipped weapons could visually desync. This update has many changes to behaviors with how certain player skills, item sets, and passives interact with Stealth and Invisibility, in efforts to make a more consistent, immersive, and fairer experience (sometimes these will conflict due to this last point!). In general, almost all skill activations will remove Stealth or Invisibility upon activation. Some high level exceptions;

• Most Nightblade skills, unless that skill offers tremendous burst (i.e Death Stroke, Grim Focus, which both already remove these effects when activated) or they heal allies, will not break Stealth or Invis upon activation.
  • Note that dealing direct damage with a Nightblade skill will still remove Stealth and Invisibility. We’re not changing core behaviors to allow them to remain Stealthed or Invisibile – just leaving most of their abilities to function as they currently do, so they feel a bit more identity driven after this pass.
• By extrapolation, many “sneaky” coded skills will also not remove Stealth or Invisibility, also in efforts to retain that more fantasy/identity driven sensation. These skills make low amounts of noise upon activation and do not produce a significant amount of light. Includes things such as Trap Beast, Expert Hunter, Evasion, and Bow skills.
  • This is less of a hard rule and more of a “what is believable/makes sense for Tamriel?” while also trying to maintain a sense of balance (to avoid burst focused or layered attacks from being maintained while unseen). When you activate a skill, if you ask yourself, “Would this realistically alert enemies of my presence based on what I see and hear?”, the answers should largely align with what you experience. If they don’t, we’d love to hear your thoughts and reasoning!

The following skills now break Stealth and Invisibility, to ensure they are consistent with other skill type activations and align with their visuals for a more believable/grounded experience.

• Bone Shield and morphs when cast
• Blood Mist when damaging enemies. Fixed an issue where damage was treated as direct damage in some cases.
• Rally’s heal
• Annulment and morphs when cast
• Unstoppable and morphs when cast
• Shield Wall and morphs when cast
• Defensive Posture and morphs when cast
• Bone Armor and morphs when cast
• Venom Skull when cast (the other versions already behaved as expected)
• Feral Guardian and morphs when casting
• Flacon’s Swiftness and morphs when cast
• Cutting Dive when cast (the other versions already behaved as expected)
• Blazing Shield
• Relentless Focus when cast (the other versions already behaved as expected)
• Earthspike and Earthshield Mantle

The following skills will no longer remove Stealth or Invisibility from their caster, to feel more appropriate for their skill source identities & activations

• Trap Beast and morphs cast
• Expert Hunter and morphs cast
• Strife and morphs cast

Fixed an issue where many damage over time effects sourced from ground area effects would incorrectly remove Stealth and Invisibility from their caster when they dealt damage.

• Note that “sticky” DoTs that apply to enemies also should not break Stealth or Invisibility from their caster – but “sticky” DoTs that turn the caster into an area effect damage over time will!

The following skills will now actively prevent Stealth and Invisibility while they are active on their caster;

• Imbue Weapon and morphs
• Crystal Weapon (morph of Crystal Shard)
• Magelight and morphs
• Overload and morphs
• Sleet Storm and morphs

Proc based (effects that trigger from another effect, such as item sets, passives or status effects) attacks no longer benefit from Sneak’s bonus damage or guaranteed critical strike. They also no longer benefit from Shadowy Disguises guaranteed critical strike. These changes also mean that proc-based attacks should no longer inconsistently remove Sneak or Invisibility.

The following skills have been adjusted to be considered proc events, to prevent recursive behaviors and overloading damage results from singular actions;

• Molten Weapons and morphs’ damage
• Tome-bearer’s Inspiration ad morphs’ damage

Updated the terminology on player related abilities (skills, item sets, etc) to use the verbiage “summon” when referring to a summoned pet entity (Shadowrend item set, Unstable Familiar skill, etc) and removed this terminology from other player related functions that do not actually “summon” a pet entity (Icy Conjurer set, Dive skill, etc).

Buffs and Debuffs

• Major/Minor Slayer and Aegis: These effects now apply to all monsters, rather than only when inside a dungeon, trial, or arena. These changes were made to ensure they work while inside solo dungeons, as well as reducing their validations during damage calculations (these checked 22 unique lines of logic, every damage calculation). This will result in allowing them to work in the following instances;
  • Against player pets
  • Against non-player characters in PvP enabled areas (guards, monsters in Imperial City, etc)
  • Against monsters in overland zones, public dungeons, delves, etc

Dragonknight

Ardent Flame

• Lava Whip
  • Flame Lash: Reduced the healing of the Power Lash activation by 50%.

Draconic Power

• Earthspike Mantle
  • To better embrace your inner dragon, the spike model for Earthspike Mantle and its morphs now more closely reflects the original design for the ability.
• Dragonfire Breath
  • Engulfing Dragonfire: Reduced the cost of this skill to 3510, down from 3780. This skill now reduces damage taken by 15% while it is being channeled.

Nightblade

Assassination

• Assassin’s Blade
  • Impale: Fixed a rare issue where you could get stuck pointing aggressively at your foes after slaying them with this ability.

Siphoning

• Strife: This skill and Funnel Health now cost 4050 Magicka, up from 2700. Increased their damage by 35%. Both skills now heal for 40% of their damage done, down from 50% (~8% increase in healing per tick if dealing true damage).
  • Swallow Soul: This morph now heals yourself for 40% of the damage done, up from 35%.

Sorcerer

Dark Magic

• Exploitation: This passive now once again triggers when you attempt to activate a Dark Magic ability, rather than when you successfully cast one, in efforts to ensure it properly interacts with all abilities it should when paired with Font of Power and to reduce its performance strain in run time.
• Crystal Shard: Fixed an issue where your sheathed weapons would sometimes move strangely on your back while casting this ability and its morphs.

Necromancer

General: Fixed an issue where many effects that allowed you to treat an entity as a corpse could confuse other Necormancer clients into thinking a corpse was available to consume or would sometimes interfere with using their own corpses. Individual corpse effects such as Malevolent Promise or Nobility in Decay should no longer interfere with other Necromancers. Bone Tyrant

• Bone Goliath Transformation
  • Pummeling Bone Goliath: Fixed an issue where the special Bash animation failed to play for this morph.
• Death Scythe: The scythe FX should no longer linger on weapons when quickly swapping between weapon bars for this ability and its morphs.

Arcanist

Curative Runeforms

• Arcanist’s Domain
  • Zenas’ Empowering Disc: Fixed an issue where this morph failed to grant its effects if the target entered or left its area while Sprinting.

Herald of the Tome

• Tome-bearer’s Inspiration: This skill and its morphs now only trigger off Arcanist skill (a skill is an ability that is placed on your Hotbar, also referred to as Action Bar or Ability Bar) damage, rather than any class ability (an ability is effectively any action a player can take – including item sets, passives, etc) damage.

Weapons

Destruction Staff

• Weakness to Elements
  • Elemental Susceptibility: This morph now has a 3240 Magicka cost, rather than being free, to account for how much stronger status effects have become over time.

One Hand and Shield

• Shield Charge: This skill and its morphs now cause you to automatically block for .5s after activating. Note that automatically blocking is free of cost (similarly to Shield Wall or Light Weaver)

Two Handed

• Cleave: Fixed an issue where the damage shield from this ability and its morphs’ visuals did not last the full 6 seconds.

Guild

Fighter’s Guild

• Expert Hunter: This skill and its morphs now increase the caster’s Stealth Detection Radius (how far they can see Stealthed/Invisible Targets) equal to that of a detect potion. They no longer function as area of effect reveals that actively check if there are Stealthed or Invisible targets nearby and make them unable to benefit from concealment for a duration after, if they were revealed.

Psijic Order

• Imbue Weapon: This skill and its morphs now also increase your damage done with weapon attacks by 5% for 6 seconds after casting.
  • Crushing Weapon: This morph improves the new damage bonus to weapon attacks to 8%, up from 5%.

World

Werewolf

• General: Updated many active skill costs to make for a more balanced experience and to better account for and highlight the existence of the Rampage effect. This will result in making Magicka and Stamina sustain more relevant for the Werewolf experience, while still offering reduced costs compared to most active play styles.

• Pounce: Increased this skill and morphs’ costs to 3213, up from 1071.
  • Carnage: Increase this skill and morphs’ costs to 1188, up from 995. Fixed an issue where Carnage and morphs’ ranged activation requirements did not properly respect monsters with large hit boxes, forcing you to get much closer than expected to activate the skill.
• Hircine’s Bounty: Increased this skill and morphs’ cost to 4590, up from 4320. Reduced the healing of this version by ~13%.
  • Hircine’s Fortitude: Reduced the healing of this morph by ~10%.
• Roar: Increased this skill and morphs’ cost to 3443, up from 1071.
• Gnash: Increased this skill and the Rip and Tear morph’s cost to 1800, up from 765.
  • Bloody Gnash: Increased this morph’s cost to 1620, up from 765.
• Rending Claws: Increased this skill and the Bloodclaw morph’s cost to 2340, up from 995.
  • Claw Fury: Increased this morph’s cost to 420 per tick, up from 383. This morph now also heals you for 0.1046667 of your Max Health when dealing damage, up to once every second.
• Insatiable Hunger: Fixed an issue where this synergy failed to play its blood visual effects in some situations. Updated this synergy to have the following rules to help reduce its frequency of overriding other synergy use:
  • Reduced the priority of the synergy from the highest combat priority rating to the lowest priority rating (Synergies from player abilities are rated values 6, 7, and 8. The higher the value, the lower the priority. Previously this was a 6 (which most defensive synergies have), now it is an 8 (which most offensive synergies have).
    • Why these numbers? We build our priority system in tandem with encounters and content – where often times special synergies sourced for content need to take priority over all other combat actions (to prevent situations where normal skill synergies prevent you from activating a content driven synergy to succeed a mechanic). This gave rise to use creating our own band of prioritization for synergies that grant priorities over others, in efforts to create cases where the synergies most likely to save you are prioritized over things that you generally want (hence why we value defensive actions > damage. Something something, “A dead DPS does no DPS.”)
  • Put 3 unique stipulations on the synergy in addition to their regular stipulations (looking at a consumable corpse, etc)
    • The caster is at or below 66% Health
    • OR the caster is at or below 200 Ultimate
    • OR the caster is out of combat
• Slaughter: Instead of striking fear into the hearts of your enemies with a howl during certain Slaughter animations to cause a sheer heart attack, you will now summon a spectral wolf from Hircine’s realm to take down your foes with a deadly blow.

Legerdemain

• Clemency: Fixed an issue where this passive’s cooldown could fail to apply in certain situations.

Alliance War and PvP

General

• Leaderboards will now show the current character’s ranked AP, even if there is another character on the same account that is on the leaderboard with a higher value of AP.

Battle Spirit

• We have made some general adjustments to Battle Spirit, which are as follows:
  • Damage shield strength is now limited to 300% of Max Health when between the group sizes of 1 (solo) and 4.
  • Battle Spirit now reduces per group member beyond 4, reducing to 220% at 5 group members, and decreasing by an additional 20% per group member until 10 group members are reached (80% at 10), then reducing by 10% per group member between 11 and 12 (60% at 12 players).
    • These numbers are not final and we are expecting to adjust them based on feedback. Initially we are avoiding any penalty to small groups, and then ramping up a penalty that starts to further taper off as it reaches the group size limit.
  • Updated Battle Spirit and IC Battle Spirit tooltips to reflect these changes.

Battlegrounds

Two-sided and Three-sided Battlegrounds have now been combined into one queue called ‘Big Team Battles’. To make this possible, team sizes have now been changed to 6v6v6 and 9v9.

• The competitive queue still remains two-sided and 4v4.

New medals have been added to all Battleground types, rewarding players who grant players damage shields, major and minor buffs, and major and minor debuffs. To earn a medal, you must:

• For damage shields, grant at least 20% of your maximum health and have absorbed 50% total damage before expiring.
• For buffs and debuffs, the duration must last at least 4 seconds or longer.

Multiple help defs have been updated to include the new medal information, as described above. Battleground scoreboards have been updated with three new fields – damage dealt, healing done, and ‘objectives contributed towards’. The Zone Guide is now disabled in Battleground zones. Fixed an issue where some 10-49 Battlegrounds did not have proper battle scaling activated. Fixed an issue where you could accidentally push the Battleground scoreboard off the screen if you were using max UI scaling. Added abbreviated number formatting (and time formatting for Chaos Ball) to the damage, heals, and game type scores in the Battleground score screen.

Cyrodiil

Updated harvest nodes inside Cyrodiil to have their survey variants.

• Example: An ore node will now be listed and yield the same rewards as a “Rich” ore node. A lumber node will list and yield the same rewards as a “Pristine” lumber node. Etc.
• Known Exceptions
  • The following harvest node types do not have a survey variant, thus they have not increased while in Cyrodiil, which we are actively discussing:
    • Water nodes
    • Oil drop rates
    • Leather drop rates (as Cyrodiil does not normally have fur trap nodes)
    • Mushroom and water-based plant nodes

Archer guards have had their Health decreased by 30%. Honor guards have had their Health increased by 33%. Honor guards, Melee guards, and Menders have had their Physical Resistance increased to match their Spell Resistance. Puncture: The guard version of this ability has been renamed to Perforate, to indicate it is a separate ability from the player version and has its own unique effects. Several guard abilities that applied Stun to the player will now properly apply CC Immunity. Fixed an issue where the wrong character could be chosen as Emperor if the account becoming Emperor had multiple characters in the same Alliance and Campaign.

Imperial City

Fixed an animation issue where your feet would slide around while using a Sigil of Imperial Retreat. Fixed an issue where the queue for Battlegrounds did not properly update in response to your carried Tel’var amount after withdrawing or depositing from a bank. Fixed an issue where the Imperial City Battle Spirit tooltip was incorrectly stating a range bonus where no bonus existed.

Vengeance

• General
  • Vengeance is now an option in the Group and Activity Finder.
  • Updated the Siege vendors to no longer display Cyrodiil-specific items that cannot be used while in the Vengeance campaign. This includes siege weapons, forward camps, and keep recall stones.
  • We have introduced new siege weapons that can now be purchased with Alliance points at the standard Siege vendors. These deal increased damage to players based on their respective item quality level:
    • Green quality (higher than base siege)
    • Blue quality (higher than Green quality and below)
    • Purple quality (higher than Blue quality and below)
  • Updated damage abilities to have a maximum target of 12, up from 3.
  • Updated defensive and crowd control abilities to have a maximum target of 6, up from 3.
• Abilities
  • Battle Medic
    • Spirit Bolt: Fixed an issue where your sheathed weapons would sometimes move strangely on your back while casting Spirit Bolt.
  • Assault
    • Rapid Maneuvers: Ability now provides Gallop in addition to Major Expedition.

Veterancy

• General
  • Fixed an issue where the arrows used to navigate the Veterancy menu would sometimes not appear properly based on your UI scaling.
  • Fixed an issue with Veterancy rank achievements not being granted if you progressed past multiple ranks at once.

Combat Quality-of-Life

Prioritize Damage Shield Visibility

• A new optional setting has been implemented that allows you to change the prioritization of damage shield visibility when multiple shields are active on you at once. This setting can be found at the following location:
  • Settings – Gameplay – Combat – Prioritize Damage Shield Visibility
• Within this setting, there are three options:
  • Off
    • This offers no change from the current experience – all damage shields will show at the same level of visibility. This is the default option for this setting.
  • Current Shield Health
    • This will prioritize the visuals of the damage shield with the most health, keeping it at full visibility, while other active damage shields have their visuals reduced.
  • Start Time
    • This will prioritize the visuals of the earliest cast damage shield, keeping it at full visibility, while other active damage shields will have their visuals reduced.

The Final Word

Update 51 is shaping up to be a great patch for ESO Players, combining and simplifying potions, buffs, and passives while also adding in two new game systems as well as solo dungeons. More changes are likely coming as Update 51 hits the PTS, so make sure to bookmark this page to see what’s coming next!

ESO Update 51 FAQ

1. When does ESO Update 51 release?

Update 51 is currently scheduled for August 31, 2026 on all platforms including PC, Mac, PlayStation, and Xbox.

2. Is the Apprentice Mundus Stone still worth using after Update 51?

No, not for endgame damage builds. The Apprentice Stone now provides Experience and Inspiration gain rather than Spell Damage, making it a leveling and crafting progression tool rather than a combat choice.

3. Are existing Alchemy recipes broken by the Update 51 changes?

Most existing recipes are unaffected. ZeniMax has confirmed that daily crafting writ recipes are fully unchanged, and impacted Master Writs are being updated simultaneously. You may need to rediscover ingredient traits if you have not completed all relevant Alchemy achievements.

4. What do Sorcerers gain to replace Minor Prophecy?

Sorcerers gain a unique Offensive Penetration buff for their group through their class passives. Offensive Penetration bypasses a portion of enemy armor and directly increases damage dealt by everyone in the group.

5. What do Templars gain to replace Minor Sorcery?

Templars gain a unique Armor group buff to replace Minor Sorcery. This reinforces the Templar’s identity as a support and defensive class and gives groups a concrete reason to include a Templar beyond their individual output.

Check out more ESO Updates and Guides!