During our visit of the GamesCom gaming convention we hovered around Bethesda’s booth and managed to get our hands on Elder Scrolls Online. While playing, we had several game developers hanging around, helping us with any questions we might have. We kidnapped Mrs. Maria Aliprando, Gameplay Designer (in charge of Creature design, Combat design and various other gameplay mechanics) and demand that she answers some of the questions the ESO community wanted answered (we sent out a call for questions here).
 
Now that I think back, I think it was more us begging her to talk to us and her being gracious enough to do so. We talked about the famous Elder Scrolls books, mounts, soulgems, endgame, best in slot items, dungeons and various other systems. In part 2 of this interview (that will be made available shortly) we talked about PvP and the Finesse system as well. We hope you enjoy these community questions and answers and we would like to take this opportunity to thank Mrs. Alipandro and all the developers present at the show floor for putting up with us.

 

We were playing the game and came across a bookscase, which made us ask our first interview question.
 
Q: How do books in Elder Scrolls Online work? In other Elder Scroll games some books would yield skill points. This is obviously not something we’ll see in ESO.
A: Books in Elder Scrolls Online come in various ways. There is a number of books you can collect that will randomly “drop” from bookcases you come across in the world. There are some books that are scattered around the world that stand by themselves and they obviously yield greater rewards. All the collected books will not go into your inventory as before, but there is an interface where you can browse all the books that you collected. What is special about books in Elder Scrolls Online is that if you join the Mages Guild you will advance some of your Mage Skills by collecting these “Mage Guild Books”. Mage skills can not be advanced like some other skills through usage, but instead you have to explore the world and find these books to upgrade your skills. There are also books not related to the Mages guild that you can collect for lore’s sake.
 
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