So here’s the thing about the Elder Scrolls franchise’s spellcrafting systems: Whenever I get my hands on them, imagination kind of flies out the window. You go big or go home; you build the biggest honking damage spells, and then you build something crazy overpowered with invisibility and night eye and levitation or something, and then you lose interest. Or maybe it’s just me!
Elder Scrolls Online’s dev team anticipated all that with Gold Road’s much anticipated Scribing system. First, you’re not going to be able to nuke enemies from perfect stealth with these spells; this is Scribing, not spellcrafting. But second, ZeniMax Online Studio has put together a dev blog with the developers’ suggestions for creative grimoire combos, so if you’re short on ideas, you could just copy theirs – or better yet, be inspired by them.
For example, one proposed spell combines Elemental Explosion with a knockback effect, debuff, and self-shield. Another mixes Soul Burst’s PBOAE shock blast, an interrupt, and the Necro-oriented buff based on nearby corpses (festive). My favorite of the bunch is Caleb Noffsinger’s boomerang poison dagger, which deploys Traveling Knife for a crapton of multi-target poison damage and also grants minor berserk to you, obviously because you still gotta catch that knife.
Check out the whole blog on the official site, then practice patience, since we’re still a coupla weeks out from Gold Road’s PC release.
