Bethesda has released a new update for The Elder Scrolls: Blades and it’s pretty significant. Update 1.5 removes one of the most egregious annoyances with the game – chest timers. That’s right – from now on, chests will open immediately and the developer is looking to refund Gems to those who upgraded their chest capacity.

Other major changes include more Gold found in chests, enemies dropping more loot and the ability to join Guilds. You can also visit towns belonging to other guildmates. If that weren’t enough, the update also adds the Arena for PvP combat. It’s unlocked at level 5 and offers a best of three rounds match against other players.

Check out the full patch notes here with some highlights below. The Elder Scrolls: Blades attracted heaps of criticism when it first released due to the abundance of microtransactions and timers. However, it now seems Bethesda is taking major steps to fix the game. Available for iOS and Android, it’s coming to Nintendo Switch in early 2020.

New Features and Improvements

Loot Overhaul

• Chests: Open Chests immediately now that Chest timers have been removed!
• Chests: Claim back all the Gems you spent upgrading your Chest capacity.
• Chests: Find more Gold in Chests and a guaranteed Gem in every Wooden Chest.
• Loot: Collect much more loot from enemies.
• Loot: Defeat a boss in every job to get even better loot, including Legendary equipment. Boss rewards replace the mystery chests and materials given out previously for completing jobs.
• Chests: Look for Silver, Golden, and Elder Chests in jobs’ secret rooms.
• Enemies: Beware the tougher, optional bosses guarding some of those secret rooms!
• Loot: Smash open new breakable objects and discover more loot inside. The bigger the object, the better the reward.
• Materials: Discover which materials are more likely to drop from which breakable objects. There’s more Lumber in forests and more Crystals in caves and Ayleid ruins, for example.
• Equipment: Equip yourself with a wider variety of items, now that Chests and enemies can provide lower-tier, higher-rarity gear.
• Jewelry: Craft more brass and gold jewelry thanks to more Brass and Gold Ingot rewards.
• Loot: Carry all this new loot with 20 more free inventory spaces.

PvP

• Arena: Unlock the Arena automatically at level 5.
• Arena: Fight other players in best-of-3 matches.
• Arena: Change your equipment, spells and abilities between rounds.
• Arena: Equip a potion or poison and use up to one per round.
• Rewards: Earn XP and Gold whether you win or lose.
• Rewards: Win matches to earn trophies and climb the ranks from arena to arena, culminating with the Imperial Arena!
• Rewards: Win rounds over multiple matches to earn Chests.
• Rewards: Reach new arenas and arena levels to earn rewards, including the new Blades Sword, Shield, and Armor set.
• Leaderboards: Fight for glory on the global leaderboards.
• Arena: Enjoy Arena-only combat enhancements: tripled Health and improved blocking. In the Arena, high blocks can be held longer, refresh faster, and stun opponents for 2.5 seconds. All blocks are also more effective against elemental damage and much more effective against physical damage.

It’s going to be a long, long wait for the next mainline Elder Scrolls game. I’ll probably be dead before it releases, most reading this will be dead, but I’m sure our children and grandchildren are going to love it. Okay, maybe it won’t be quite that long, but you’ll be waiting all the same. In the meantime, there’s a lot of other games in the franchise to chose from, such as The Elder Scrolls Blade, the mobile title. The game was scheduled to also hit the Switch, but it seems Switch owners will have to wait a bit.

In an official blog post from Bethesda, it was confirmed that version of the game had been pushed back to next year. It’s mentioned that the delay was due to changes being made but nothing was specified. It did confirm that PvP would be crossplay between the Switch and current mobile versions.

The Elder Scrolls Blades is available now for all compatible iOS and Android devices with the Switch version now coming early 2020.

The Elder Scrolls: Blades brought a bite-sized version of Bethesda’s popular RPG franchise to mobile devices earlier in the year, and was met with mixed reception upon launch. Though it was a success in terms of the number of players it attracted, it drew plenty of criticism for its monetization. Regardless, later this year, Bethesda will be bringing the game to even more players, as The Elder Scrolls: Blades launches on the Switch.

If, however, you were hoping that the Switch version of the game would have an offline mode, unlike the mobile version – given that the Switch, unlike phones, cannot be connected to the Internet the whole time – you might be a bit disappointed. Speaking with Nintendo Everything, project lead Craig Lafferty confirmed that the Switch version won’t have an offline mode- though it is something that Bethesda could consider adding in later.

“Yes,” said Lafferty when asked if the game would have to be online constantly. “It will, but having an offline mode is something we definitely hear from a lot of people for the game in general, so that’s something we always constantly look at – like how would we do it. We want to make sure – the online game, we’re adding PvP in the fall, we want to make sure cheating isn’t an issue. So it’s like, how do we do an online mode that makes sense? Right now we’re requiring an internet connection, but in the future it’s something we may add if we can have a good solution for it.”

Well, let’s hope Bethesda does add it in. If someone is using the Switch as a portable system and can’t access Wifi or connect to the internet while they’re, say, on the bus, that would mean they would be unable to play The Elder Scrolls: Blades– which sort of defeats the purpose.

Bethesda E3 Crowd

Audience plants in general are annoying. There’s polite applause and then there’s loud cheering for mundane announcements, which gets old quick. But Bethesda’s crowd took it to a whole other level, yelling and screaming after almost every sentence. It was a small contingent, for sure, but you just know that they had mics next to them to drown out any potential boos. Shout out to that one guy who cheered after every sentence. You earned your paycheck for sure.

During their E3 press event, Bethesda announced that their mobile title The Elder Scrolls Blades has become their second game running to become the no. 1 mobile game- and they followed that up by some big announcements for the game. For starters, the game has now exit early access, and all iOS and Android users can download it for free right now.

Bethesda also announced that The Elder Scrolls Blades will be releasing on Nintendo Switch as well, in Fall of this year (so the leaks were correct here, too). It will support motion controls, and of course, players will be able to play it in handheld and console mode. It will still be free (obviously), but most importantly, it will feature cross-play and cross-progression with the mobile versions of the game.

An Arena mode will also be coming to the game later this year, and will add PvP content to the game. Stay tuned for more information as E3 carries on.

Well, E3 is here, and boy, the alleged leaks are pouring down like nobody’s business. Bethesda’s E3 conference is later in the day and an insider that goes by the name Sabi has leaked what they alleged to be basically the entire conference. They already spilled two new IPs, and now they’ve spoken about what to expect from established IPs at the show.

First up, they say that we’ll get more information about RAGE 2 DLC. We know the company has plans for post-release content, particularly an expansion called Rise of the Ghosts. We could be seeing details at the show.

Next, another entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise is coming to Switch, they claim, but it’s not one many expected probably. They claimsthat the mobile hit, The Elder Scrolls: Blades, will make it’ way to Nintendo’s console.

Last, but definitely not least, Sabi says that we can expect details on the next major Fallout 76 update, called Wastelanders. They say that it will see the return of NPCs, something many thought was lacking from the online focused game. Along with that? Something called Nuclear Winter, which they say is a 52 player battle royale mode. You can check out all the tweets below.

As always with leaks, particularly with ‘insiders,’ take all of this with a grain of salt, and we will file this under rumor for now. Nothing here seems too out there, though, to be honest. We’ll find out soon, as Bethesda’s conference is later tonight.

https://twitter.com/New_WabiSabi/status/1137774250079555586

https://twitter.com/New_WabiSabi/status/1137742706908602369

https://twitter.com/New_WabiSabi/status/1137774159507759105

Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls: Blades, their upcoming full-fledged mobile adaptation of their beloved action RPG series, has apparently managed to do extraordinarily well, considering it’s not actually out yet. Analyst firm Sensor Tower reported today that the game has managed to hit 1 million downloads on iOS alone in the week since it went live in Early Access.

There are some points to note here—since the game isn’t actually out, it’s not being advertised or marketed right now, so this is entirely on anticipatory word of mouth. A strong showing in that regard. The other thing is, 1 million downloads is a meaningless number here, because most people who download the game aren’t allowed to play it, and are just greeted with a splash screen telling them that the game will be playable eventually.

As stated however, this indicates strong interest in the game, and when it finally is out, it should do well. Unless it is absolutely awful, which, based on impressions, it doesn’t seem like it will be.

Bethesda's Elder Scrolls: Blades Hits 1 Million Downloads in First Week of Early Access: https://t.co/FPYYR2vtoz pic.twitter.com/ex8DAqsqQP

— Sensor Tower (@SensorTower) April 4, 2019

A proper first person dungeon crawling Elder Scrolls RPG on a mobile screen is a huge deal- it’s not a full-blown Elder Scrolls experience, but it comes close enough to emulating it on mobile devices, allowing you to jump in and anywhere and at any time. That said, being a free-to-play mobile titles comes with sacrifices of its own- like microtransactions, of course.

With The Elder Scrolls: Blades recently having entered early access on Android and iOS devices, monetization in the game has come to light with people getting to go hands on with it (via Kotaku AU)- and it’s a little on the steep side. The Elder Scrolls: Blades rewards players with chests at the end of its dungeons, chests which are full of loot for you to gather and use. But while in the early goings, these chests come with no strings attached, after the game’s opening sections, the chests require gems to be opened. It’s either that, or, in typical mobile game fashion, you wait for a timer to count down to zero to be able to open the chest.

Of course, you can purchase the required gems with real world money, if you don’t want to wait around for the timer. And the pricing for said gems? A little steep, as I mentioned. Gems can be bought in various increments. $2.99 buys you a collection of 160 gems, $7.79 gets you 500 gems, $14.99 gets you 1200 gems, while $30.99 gets you 2500 gems. You can also spend $79.99 to get 6,500 gems, or go all-out and purchase 14,000 gems for a price of $159.99.

How much gems do you need to open chests? That’s where it gets interesting. Golden Chests cost 250 gems, Elder Chests cost 750 gems, while one Legendary Chest will set you back 2500 gems. Of course, you get better loot with each of those progressively- but that essentially means that to get one chest full of the highest tier loot available (that being a Legendary Chest), you have to spend $30.99 (which is how much 2500 gems cost). For $159.99, you get enough gems to open five Legendary chests (and then have enough gems left to open two Elder chests).

As I said, that seems a little steep. That said, The Elder Scrolls: Blades is currently in early access, so there’s always the chance that Bethesda will revise these rates before the game’s full launch.

After some delays, The Elder Scrolls: Blades is now available in Early Access, exactly as was promised by Bethesda, and right in time for the 25th anniversary of the Elder Scrolls franchise. You can download the game for yourself from the App Store (for iOS users) and Google Play (for Android), although bear in mind that people are reporting mixed success in being able to actually play the game.

Owing to the fact that this is supposed to be an early access title, as well as server issues, the game is apparently currently not letting a lot of players in. If you signed up for the beta, you will have to keep an eye on your email inbox to see whether or not you have received the invitation code.

As for the game itself, well, it’s a dungeon crawling Elder Scrolls game, much in the vein of Arena, the original Elder Scrolls game, with some base building elements, as well as true combat and role playing. It looks like a great translation of Elder Scrolls for mobile devices, so make sure to get it (it’s free!) if you are interested in the IP.

It will run on the following devices:

• iPhone 6s and newer
• iPhone SE
• iPad Pro
• iPad Mini 4 and 5
• iPad Air 2 and 3
• Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+
• Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+
• Samsung Galaxy S10/S10+
• Samsung Galaxy Note 8
• Samsung Galaxy Note 9
• Google Pixel 2/2XL
• Google Pixel 3/3XL
• OnePlus 5 and newer
• Moto Z2 and newer
• Essential Phone
• HTC U11/U11+
• HTC U12+
• LG V30
• LG G7 One
• Xiaomi Mi 6
• Xiaomi Mi Mix 2
• Xperia XZ Premium
• Xperia XZ1
• Razer Phone
• ZTE Nubia Z17
• Nokia 8
• Sharp Aquos R
• Asus ZenFone 4 Pro
• Huawei P20/P20 Pro
• Huawei Mate 20 Pro
• OnePlus 6T

The surprisingly good looking The Elder Scrolls: Blades, the newest entry in the fantasy RPG series that was announced for smartphones at E3 last year, was delayed into this year, and then we heard nothing more about it. Now, however, Bethesda has announced a closed beta for the game.

The closed beta will be available only on iOS, will feature the full game, and be NDA’d. It’s separate from the Early Access that was already announced (which will be available to iOS and Android users alike), which is still coming in Spring this year. We don’t have many more details about the beta yet—such as when it will be held—but at least this indicates the game may be nearing completion, if nothing else.

Announced at E3 last year, The Elder Scrolls Blades is first out on iOS and Android devices, though Bethesda has stated a desire to get it on PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PC, and VR platforms as well, and have it feature cross-play and cross-progression across them all.

We’re running a closed beta for The Elder Scrolls: Blades prior to Early Access. Find out what this means, plus the answers to various #Blades questions, here: https://t.co/onalmoSTUt pic.twitter.com/7b0jcGDy1H

— The Elder Scrolls (@ElderScrolls) March 1, 2019