Dungeons and Expeditions

Claiming a dungeon

There is one world and one copy of each dungeon, so a dungeon is claimed, not shared. The first party to use its door has it for an hour, and everyone else is turned away at the door until the claim ends.

• Form your party first. /party invite asks a player to join, and they have two minutes to /party accept. Only the leader can claim, and the party is set at the moment of the claim: anyone who joins later waits outside. On your own, you are a party of one.
• Choose a difficulty. At the door the leader picks Novice, Adept, Expert or Master (below), or turns back.
• Go in together. Party members near the door go in with the leader. The others can follow through the same door while the claim lasts.
• An hour, then out. You are warned 5 minutes before the hour is up, and when it ends everyone still inside is put back at the entrance. Kill every enemy and open every big chest and the claim ends early; take your time leaving.
• Leave it empty and it ends. Once nobody from the party has been inside for 3 minutes, the claim is over.
• Then it rests. When a claim ends, the dungeon rests for every member for 60 minutes, and a party cannot claim a dungeon that still rests for any one of its members. /dungeon shows what is claimed right now and what rests for you, and the Status section of your journal’s Profile tab (F3) lists the dungeons resting for you.

The chests and bodies inside belong to the party that claimed it. Coin you take from a chest or a body is shared out with the party members who are inside with you.

Parties and raids

A party holds up to six. Invite a seventh and it becomes a raid of up to twelve: while it lasts, every member’s skill gain is halved, except inside a raid ruin (see Expeditions, below). The Leveling Guide explains skill gain.

One at a time

Three Ayleid ruins, Niryastare, Bawn and Rielle, let a party in one at a time, 30 seconds apart, so that nobody’s game has to load in alongside everyone else’s. The game tells you when your turn comes.

Crashes and logging out

If you log out inside a dungeon, you are moved out to its entrance. If your game crashes inside a claim, you wake at the entrance when you log back in, so you do not land in the same fight again. You are still in the party and can go back in while the claim lasts, but if nobody else is inside, log back in quickly: an empty claim soon ends.

Difficulty

The leader chooses the difficulty when claiming. The harder it is, the stronger and more numerous the enemies, the more chests are locked, and the better what you find.

• Damage. The softer hits on the easier difficulties count for enemies’ weapons and claws, and for most of their spells.
• Strength. Enemies follow the highest character level in the party at the door, moved up or down by the difficulty, though never below the weakest: a party whose best is still level 1 meets enemies of the same strength on Novice as on Adept, only fewer and softer-hitting. A boss stands a step above the rest.
• Party size. The table’s numbers are for a party of three. A bigger party meets more enemies, but each extra member adds only a few: alone you meet about seven in ten of them, and a party of six about half as many again.

Big dungeons wake as you go

In a dungeon of a dozen enemies or more, the ones by the entrance and in the boss’s room are waiting when you arrive. The rest appear in their own rooms, a group at a time, before you reach them, so a small party never has the whole dungeon awake at once. Nothing you have met disappears again.

Expeditions

Far to the south, in counties not yet open, lie Ayleid ruins that no road from Bruma reaches. Parties set out for them from the expedition boards in three halls: the Synod Conclave and the Fighters Guild in Bruma, and Frostcrag Spire.

• Setting out. Use a board, pick a ruin and claim it as you would any dungeon: the leader chooses the difficulty. Party members anywhere in the hall, its other floors included, come along.
• Coming home. The ruin’s main door leads home, and /expedition leave takes you home from anywhere inside (not while you are down). You always come home to the hall you left from.
• The masters. Each ruin has a master, or two. When every master has fallen, the expedition heads home 10 minutes later and takes anyone still inside along; you are warned 2 minutes before. A master’s body is searched like a boss chest.
• Contracts. Each board’s Contracts tab shows the hold’s hunting work: bring down a number of one kind of creature in the hold, and the hold pays you from its treasury. You can hold up to three contracts at a time.

A boss dungeon is built for a party and takes six at most. A raid ruin is built for a raid: inside one, a raid’s skill gain is not halved, its masters stand a step stronger and bring guards of their own, and their bodies and boss chests give more.

Around Bruma

The alpha is held in the Bruma region, and these caves, forts and ruins inside it can be claimed: Anga, Beast’s Maw, Boreal Stone Cave, Bruma Caverns, Capstone Cave, Fingerbowl Cave, Fort Coldcorn, Fort Cutpurse, Fort Horunn, Freezewind Hollow, Frostfire Glade, Gutted Mine, Moranda, Northfringe Sanctum, Outlaw Endre’s Cave, Plundered Mine, Red Ruby Cave, Rielle, Sedor, Serpent’s Trail, Silver Tooth Cave, Toadstool Hollow, Underpall Cave and Unmarked Cave.

Moranda

An Ayleid ruin near Bruma, claimed at its door like any other dungeon. Skeletons and Ayleid undead guard its halls, and an Ayleid lich waits at the end beside its treasure. On Novice a lesser undead takes the lich’s place.

The ruins of Sancre Tor

The ancient fortress of Sancre Tor, where the Reman emperors were laid to rest, is a world dungeon: open to everyone at once, with no claim. Its dead have risen. Skeletons and zombies walk the ruins in greater numbers than the minotaurs who once held them, with stronger zombies where the Minotaur Lords stood. They attack on sight, hit hard and take a great deal of punishment, and they come back about half an hour after they fall.

The ruin has eight chests, and each one has a fresh find for every player every hour. The risen dead hold Minotaur’s Rest too, with a chest of their own.

Camp chests

The chests of Sancre Tor, Minotaur’s Rest and the goblins’ Dusk Thorn Camp hand their finds straight into your pack, once an hour for each player: 4 to 10 gold, common ingredients only, and now and then materials, a gem, a small soul gem or a plain weapon. Rare ingredients such as Jarrin Root and Nirnroot stay out in the world and in the dungeons.

Worth knowing

• Echo Cave holds nothing living, so it is never claimed and anyone may walk in. Pulling its chain drops the magic barrier, which comes back after the next server restart or update.
• Serpent’s Trail runs under the mountains towards Skyrim, but its far exit is closed for the alpha: walk into it and you find your way back to the Bruma side of the border.
• Fingerbowl Cave has been rebuilt where its rooms were out of place, and has a map marker now.
• Frostiron Mine by Mountain Watch is a working mine, not a dungeon. Gathering and Labour covers the mines.

What you find

Every chest and urn in a claim is filled for your party when you claim it, and the harder the difficulty, the better the finds.

• Weapons and armour stay at steel. Gear from chests, bodies and camps is iron, steel or their like, enchanted or not. Anything better is forged, not found. On harder claims more of it is steel, more of it is enchanted, and the enchantments are stronger.
• No faction gear. Imperial Legion gear, Vampire clan, Dawnguard and Orcish pieces, crossbows, and the robes of the colleges and the Synod never drop, enchanted or not; their factions make them or give them out. Nor do Ebony, Daedric, Stalhrim or dragon gear. The guard armour of Cyrodiil’s cities never drops either: Bruma’s is the work of the County’s own smiths, and that of Anvil, Bravil, Cheydinhal, Chorrol, Kvatch, Leyawiin and Skingrad is neither found nor forged for now, because it does not show properly when worn. No giant’s club drops any more either.
• Metals are mined. Ingots and ores above steel never come from loot. Arrows are rare, and none above steel. Torches are a rare find too, one to a chest at most.
• Linen wraps turn up in chests, twice as often in Nordic tombs, for the tailor’s linen.
• A locked chest always holds something once you get it open.
• Bodies. Press E on a fallen bandit or other foe to search it: a little coin now and then, a potion or an ingredient, and sometimes a plain piece of what it fought with. In a claimed dungeon, skeletons and zombies can be searched too: they often carry bone meal, and sometimes a few coins or an ingredient. Out in the wild, a fallen goblin gives up each piece of its gear only about one time in four, and a goblin shaman never gives up its staff.
• Ayleid treasure. In the expedition ruins, chests and masters can hold Ayleid mage clothing, jewellery and staves, by difficulty: plain pieces on Novice, enchanted jewellery and lightning staves from Adept, stronger ones from Expert, and the finest jewellery only from the masters and boss chests of a Master claim.
• Schematics. Smithing schematics are rare finds in the big chests of the ruins their craft comes from, and boss chests sometimes hold one. Crafting and Trades lists where each kind is found.
• The Draught of Revival. Its recipe is a rare find in boss chests.

Coin

Coin is kept scarce, so that a house, a tax bill or a new look is worth working towards.

Imperials get a tenth more from dungeon chests and bodies, camp chests and contract pay; the Racial Guide has every race’s gift.

Locks

On Adept and harder, some big chests are locked. Anyone with a lockpick may try a Novice or Apprentice lock, and picking them is how Lockpicking is first found: once the work adds up, your skills menu (K) offers the skill. Adept, Expert and Master locks need Lockpicking at that tier; the Wheel of Skills has the rest.

Picking a lock means finding where each pin gives, and the better your Lockpicking, the clearer the signs. A wrong guess can snap the pick.

Open Lock spells work on the locked chests of your claim: face the chest within about 12 metres and cast. Each spell opens locks of its own level and below. They work on dungeon chests only, not on jail cells or house doors. Schools of Magic explains how spells are learned.

In most dungeons, the chests of your claim that still hold something are outlined, and so are the locked ones, so you can spot them.

Dangers

• The dead of Sancre Tor and Minotaur’s Rest attack on sight, hit hard and shrug off much of every blow. Go in numbers.
• Champions. Now and then a foe is a champion: it carries a grim name, is marked with a glow, and takes about twice the punishment to bring down.
• Falling. A player brought down lies wounded for 60 seconds before waking at the temple; after the first 15 seconds they may Give up (or type /respawn) to go at once. A Priest of Expert rank or higher can raise them where they fell with a healing spell, and so can a Draught of Revival.
• Friendly fire is softened, not gone: a blow between members of the same party does a fifth of its damage.
• Beasts and blood. Werewolves and vampires fight by their own rules: the Supernatural Guide covers lycanthropy, vampirism and the Great Hunt, and Schools of Magic the spells worth carrying into the dark.
• Fire, silver and spells. Vampire creatures and NPCs take 50% more damage from fire and 25% more from silver. Ash Rune’s paralysis holds creatures and NPCs in place as it holds players, and spells that burn, freeze, poison or drain over time deal them their full damage; Schools of Magic has more.