Tamriel comes alive with new emergent experiences and stories in the form of Favor quests and the Dynamic Encounters system.
Among the new systems coming in Season One (launching on July 8) are two new ways to find adventure—Favors and Dynamic Encounters. Favors are a story-based twist on classic daily quests, while Dynamic Encounters expand your opportunities for emergent adventures. Together, along with the new Rumors system coming later this Season, they create new and exciting ways to explore and experience Tamriel.
Favors
When you first encounter the Favors system, it might be easy to mistake it for another set of daily quests, such as those you might acquire from the Fighters and Mages Guilds or other groups throughout Tamriel. However, while there are some similarities, Favors are designed and themed around an entirely different narrative structure.
Favors appear through job boards maintained by the Freerunners, a new organization in Tamriel that serves as couriers for important figures across the continent. They work as brokers to connect such movers and shakers with go-getters who can accomplish the things they need—a role ably filled by adventurers like you!
When you take a quest for one of the Freerunner’s clients, you enter that character’s employ and confidence to a degree. Complete your first quest, and you might get an introduction in your in-game mailbox (and in the Correspondences section of your character’s Lore Library). Continue to work for the same client, and you’ll experience a story told over their continuing messages. This storytelling method is similar to what we’ve done with tradeskill hirelings in the past, so if you’ve kept abreast of the hijinks of Valinka Stoneheaver, Zukki-dar, or Gavin Gavonne, you’ll be broadly familiar with how this works.
Find new adventures with Favors
Once the Freerunners begin offering jobs, you can take Favors for Lady Arabelle Davaux through a board found in Glenumbra, Battlereeve Urcelmo in Auridon, and Holgunn One-Eye in Stonefalls. You can work on Favors for each character independently and simultaneously, progressing through all three storylines at once if you wish to. However, the stories depend on the jobs available from the Freerunners, and important dignitaries need time to deliberate on their affairs—check back the next day if you want to continue your work!
These quests are curated to match the jobs each client needs done for their storyline, and once you’ve completed all the tasks they need, they don’t rotate like other daily quests. Instead, think of them as narrative experiences more like a zone’s storyline.
Each Favor completed grants a reward coffer with rewards from base game zones associated with the Alliance of the client character. The contents include curated set gear, chances for antiquity leads and furnishing plans, and more. Improved coffers are available at the tenth and twentieth quests completed, and these milestones also award Unformed Planar Keys that may prove useful later in Season One (hint hint!). There’s an additional reward for completing a Favor storyline—in the case of the three clients available in Season One, you can expect a furnishing depicting the character in question.
Dynamic Encounters
Like Favors, Dynamic Encounters have also taken classic ESO elements and changed them to open up new possibilities. Most zones in ESO have incursion events, such as Dark Anchors, Abyssal Geysers, Siege Camps, and other types of battles that recur as you explore them. Dynamic Encounters take this idea to the next level. While Incursion events are focused experiences, they typically draw on the overall Main or Zone story for narrative context. Dynamic Encounters instead capture a specific occurrence in Tamriel and explore it more deeply, with more varied gameplay and objectives.
Find emergent adventure with Dynamic Encounters
Over the course of a Dynamic Encounter, you may have to complete multiple stages that each have their own goal. Further, each of the initially available Dynamic Encounters—Farm Aflame in Auridon, Vampire Hunt in Glenumbra, and Bilsa’s Delivery in Stonefalls—functions differently. For example, in Farm Aflame, even after you drive off the initial bandit attack, the damage and chaos left behind still need to be dealt with, while both Vampire Hunt and Glenumbra move across the zone. These stages are each timed, so you’ll need to be efficient or team up with other players to see them through.
If you participate in one of these encounters and see it through to completion, you receive rewards for your intervention, with a mix of shared rewards and those specific to a given event. For example, the pieces of the Alessian Rebel outfit style are distributed across the Dynamic Encounters, and both Vampire Hunt and Bilsa’s Delivery have associated Skill Styles for the Blood Scion and Werewolf Transformation skills respectively. You can collect plenty of additional rewards, so get ready to explore Tamriel and find these events!
Dynamic Encounter rewards
Are you ready to immerse yourself in Tamriel’s ongoing stories? Are you ready to offer your support to those in need of Favors, or do you prefer to wander the world and perhaps happen upon a Dynamic Encounter? Let us know via Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.
Favors and Dynamic Encounters arrive as part of Season One on July 8.