ESO News

New Zone Guide and Guild Trader UI Overhaul Review and Preview!

Wrathstone DLC and Update 21 are just around the corner, and while  most people are excited about  the dungeons I am more excited about the 2 quality of life improvements that will be included in this update.  

I recently hopped onto PTS to check it out and *queue girly squealing* OH MY GOSH I CAN’T EVEN DESCRIBE HOW MUCH ZONE GUIDE WAS NEEDED IN MY LIFE!!!  In my 5 years of playing ESO, I have always taken pride in the fact that before I left a zone, I would finish EVERYTHING.  No stone left unturned, no mudcrab unkilled, no NPC’s left who require my assistance solving a murder or finding their missing loved ones or mementos.  I logged in on my main character expecting to find many of the zones at 100% completion, and found that many zones I had missing items!  In my shock I found new life in my game play.  I was wondering zone to zone finding those last items hoping to get the coveted 100% completion.

Zone Guide

The Zone Guide itself is sleek, and can be accessed by the Group & Activity window by pressing J on the PC.  It brings up a window showing you various achievements in the zone, a list of items to find, story quest progress, dark anchors and your current progress in the zone.  Alternatively you can access some of this information by opening your map by pressing M on the PC, and   you will now see a list on the left hand side showing you items left.  If you press the “Open Zone Guide” button, it will open the Group & Activity Finder for you.

One of the most wonderful features of this is the Start Zone Story button.  I cannot tell you how many times while on the main story I would find myself lost, confused, unsure where to pick up the next part of the story quest especially when I started working on the Cadwell’s Silver and Gold Quests.  If you have not yet completed the story quest in the zone you are currently viewing, pressing that button will ping your map, and show you where to pick it up.  This will also show you the new story quest markers for NPC’s.  They no longer have the old diamond icon showing over them, but a new icon that is different indicating that they are not normal quests, and are part of the zone main story.  

If you have completed the main story in the zone you are currently viewing, that Start Zone Story button now says Explore Zone.  When you press it, it will pick something from your unfinished zone items, ping it on your map, and direct you where to go.  Unfortunately you cannot track specific items; it just chooses items for you.  When you arrive at the location it led you to and complete the steps needed to fulfill the completion, you will receive a notification on screen and ask you if you want to continue to the next item on your list of missing items by pressing F.  

As you can see, this was something that was so completely needed in game not just for newer players, but even veteran players!  This will be keeping me busy for a long time!  This will be on both PC and Console!

Guild Trader UI Overhaul

Console players…I am not sure how after all this time you have retained even the slightest bit of sanity. I applaud your ability to stay in this game without one of the most basic needed functions. The PC players at least had an add-on called Awesome Guild store to clumsily search the guild stores, but you all had nothing. Bravo for making it this long.


The guild trader UI overhaul is long overdue, and is one of the best items we’ve had to look forward to in a long time. This will be available for both PC and Console players! Whaaatt? That’s right console players, your days of sifting through hundreds of pages of unfiltered random items on the traders is over! Gone are the days of shrieking curse words as you try to find some way to locate the item you want, and throwing your controller across the room in a fit of rage.


If you do play on PC, and have used the Awesome Guild Store add-on in the past, it looks a little similar to that, but better. It not clunky, and even though I appreciate Awesome Guild Store, you always had to sort through hundreds of filtered pages to get to the items you had found.


It was bug free, searching was a breeze, it was easy and straightforward, and it actually returned accurate results! You can use a text search, which will bring up an auto complete option should you choose to use it.

On the right, there is a recent searches box, so if you are running around to several traders trying to find a few different items, you can easily click there and it will apply all the filters and text of that search, to search with ease and efficiency.

There  were a few missing filters I would loved to  have seen, such as the ability to search by known or unknown  motifs, or sell directly from your crafting bag but hopefully down the road those  could  be added should enough people provide good feedback.

All in all, I am very much excited for the release of Wrathstone and Update 21, because these quality of life items are such a tremendous improvement to the base game!  I’ve included a preview video below so you can see both of these in action!  

Have a great day, and I’ll see you in Tamriel!