Line #76 YMMV/TheElderScrollsOnline


1	* AntiClimaxBoss:
2	** [[spoiler:Molag Bal]] is incredibly easy to defeat if you have a health-draining ability thanks to the fact that the Blessing of Akatosh makes them restore ridiculously large amounts of health. However, this is justified due to the story.
3	** [[spoiler:Mannimarco]] is also disappointingly trivial despite building himself up to being the biggest threat in Tamriel and that you are absolutely no match for him. [[spoiler:This is made even more anticlimactic since Molag Bal pulled him away before he could turn into lich form]].
4	* BrokenBase:
5	** The factions and the entire Three Banners War in general have split reactions from fans of the lore. Detractors state that the war was [[{{Retcon}} never specifically referred to in any lore]] prior to this game and decry that it's unbelievable that some of these races would work with each other. The Redguards, Orcs and Bretons, as well as the Dummer, Argonians and Nords, have particularly heated territory disputes amongst themselves that still invoke bitter feelings by the time of the original games. Other fans think the detractors are taking the lore too seriously, and that the main games have also changed lore to fit their own stories, anyway.
6	** Depending on who you ask, the Phasing System is either the most immersive thing to ever grace an MMORPG, or it is an unnecessary barrier with a complete lack of any kind of way to go back to previous phases, barring you from being able to help friends complete quests that you previously completed.
7	** Changing the game to buy-to-play and adding a cash shop for cosmetic items (costumes, vanity pets, and mounts): An excellent opportunity for those who cannot afford or did not want to pay a monthly subscription, or the start of a poor community and pay-to-win? (Ultimately it ended up being the former and part of what helped the game [[GrowingTheBeard grow its beard]].)
8	** The New Life Festival's debut in December 2016 brought about mud balls, a neat little consumable you can throw at other players to muddy them up... at [[http://i.imgur.com/djISRfi.png the possibility of getting banned for harassment]]. Some players think it is nonsense that one can be banned for a harmless stunt, while others say the mud ball spammers deserve it if they get told to stop or repeatedly throw mud balls at dye station users (as the mud covers up the character's model, preventing one from seeing armor colors).
9	** Cyrodiil being a mixed area of both [=PvE=] and [=PvP=] content wasn't very well-received by most players, but mostly the group who are interested in the former. As outer Cyrodiil and the Imperial City are dedicated [=PvP=] grounds, players are free to attack and kill those of other factions, including those who are just there to enjoy the [=PvE=] content. To make things even worse for the [=PvE=] crowd, there is no way to opt-out of the free [=PvP=], meaning every time they want to do anything at all in either of these maps, they'll run the risk of being ganked by some random enemy player(s) and be disrupted of whatever it is they're currently doing. As the cherry on top, being killed in these areas is especially annoying, since you can only respawn at base camps that are controlled by your own faction, which can be very far away from where you last died.
10	** [=ZeniMax=]'s core tenet of "play how you want" has also come under fire due to the series of radical gameplay changes that accompany the release of ''Blackwood''. For newer players, the general hybridization of most item sets and armor skills enables them to enjoy a much greater freedom of choice when it comes to gearing and approaching the game on their own ways, especially with how options that were not "meta" before can be used relatively freely post-patch (e.g. high elves receiving a stamina component to their passives, allowing them to break out of the mage rut, sets that used to offer only Spell or Weapon damage now give both and scale with whichever stat is higher, etc...). For experienced players, the mantra rings hollow when the "meta" is still all too present given how the game works, various skills and item sets clearly have a very defined "intended" purpose that the developers seem to be going out of their way to enforce (e.g. Vampire's Mist Form and its morphs were changed to only negate ''player''-sourced damage, making them useless in PvE), and all of their gameplay rework only serve to shift it in another direction instead of abolishing it entirely. Pleasing neither side is the rapid pace that [=ZeniMax=] is pushing out these significant tweaks, as it causes needless confusion and chaos when skills and entire hard-earned item sets will cease to work as they should come the next big update.
11	** One that also overlaps with CasualCompetitiveConflict is the issue of players faking roles to circumvent the dungeon queue system. By its design, the queue will attempt to put together a group of four players consisting of one Tank, one Healer, and two DPS, but considering the massive outnumbering of the third category compared to the former two, uncomfortably long queue times are to be expected if you're not a support player. This gives rise to the practice known as "fake tanking" or "fake healing", massively more so the former than the latter due to the lack of necessity for proper healing in normal dungeons, where DPS players will deliberately queue as tanks and healers to get an instant match, regardless of whether or not they're actually equipped to do the job, and this is where the main point of contention sits.
12	*** On the one hand, many DPS players simply want to be done with a random dungeon run as quickly as possible for the daily rewards of experience and transmute crystals, and sitting around for upwards of half an hour just to find a proper party is not very reasonable. This is also taking into consideration that even if a given player didn't fake their role, there's no guaranteeing the queue won't just match them with one who did. Also considering the fact that many of the base-game dungeons aren't necessarily hard enough to warrant an actual tank, anybody with a slotted taunt will do. The general consensus among the reasonable majority of the community is that, while fake tanking is not very practical and certainly not considerate of your groupmates, it's not the worst thing in the world as long as you get the bare minimum right.
13	*** On the other, there is also the issue of ''DLC'' dungeons that you might get from the random queue instead, which were implicitly designed to be done with an actual tank in the group to DrawAggro, so that bosses don't just OneHitKill your squishier teammates, and having a fake tank in this case is disastrous, especially so if they don't even have any way of taunting the enemy (which they don't most of the time), leading to group wipes and a generally miserable time for everyone involved. This is made worse by the fact that these fake tanks can sometime just quit as soon as they loaded in if it's not the content they were expecting, leaving the rest of the group high and dry as they try to find a replacement, which might ''also'' be a fake tank.
14	** Should there be a Veteran difficulty option for overland? While many players agree that the sweeping majority of overland content is stupidly easy for characters with any semblance of a decent build, the idea of a separate instance made for a challenge is a prickly one. Supporters of the idea claim such a thing would solve, or at least alleviate, the lack of tension in story quests, and think it being optional would be the best option as opposed to a general difficulty lift. Detractors say that such a thing would only serve to segregate the playerbase, and may point out that a "vet overland" did exist at one point; its name was Craglorn, and players hated it.
15	* CantUnHearIt: Many players couldn't help but always hearing Wes Johnson's voice coming out of Sheogorath's mouth, despite him being voiced by Creator/JBBlanc this time around.
16	* CasualCompetitiveConflict: One of the many reasons that can lead to a BrokenBase. Neither side is entirely wrong nor right about this debate, since both camps do make good points to support their argument.
17	** On the one hand, there's the camp who advocate for roleplaying and believe that a player's racial and class choice should not matter in the long run, as long as they're having fun with the game it's more than enough already. If anything, having an "off-meta" character can provide for a much better roleplaying experience than a "vanilla" one.
18	** On the other, there are those who firmly believe that your character build ''does'' matter, since it will affect your performance rather substantially in the late game whether you're playing [=PvE=] or [=PvP=] content regardless of min-maxing, as certain races lack some of the more vital bonuses that will make it very hard for them to do as well as the ones playing a role that's appropriate for their character (e.g. a Breton Vestige with their innate Magicka and spell bonuses will severely underperform as a Stamina-based class, whereas an Orc player typically won't make for a very good Magicka Sorcerer due to their stronger Stamina lean).
19	* CommonKnowledge:
20	** The Ascendant Order is sometimes called a cult; even [[https://en.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Online:Ascendant_Order#Notes the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages labels it as such]]. However, throughout the Legacy of the Bretons storyline, there's very little, if any, indication of them focusing on the worship of ''anything'', let alone a Daedra or miscellaneous entity that would justify the label.
21	* ComplacentGamingSyndrome:
22	** Despite the general flexibility of most classes, there are still character combinations that are considered the absolute meta for certain roles, and many players will run with these instead of settling for second-best. The no-brainer racial pick for tank classes will always be Nords, due to their innate beefiness and superior Ultimate generation, while those who want to heal will always go for Breton or Argonian Magicka Templars because of the insane levels of sustain those two races give. On the offensive side of things, nothing beats a pure Magicka High Elf Sorceror, an Orcs are a must-pick if you're serious about min-maxing as a Stamina damage dealer. Pretty much every other class and race combo would be regarded as niche or significantly inferior when compared to the abovementioned ones in the long run by the playerbase.
23	** Due to the immense popularity of ''Skyrim'', an immense part of the playerbase found their homes in the Ebonheart Pact, leading to a massive power skew in that faction's favor in both Cyrodiil and the Imperial City. As it stands, the Pact is always extremely powerful compared to the Covenant or Dominion in [=PvP=], both in terms of player strength and number, thus making it incredibly unfavorable to be on either of those sides at any time, leading to the inevitability of even more people joining the Pact to take advantage of its might to rise in Alliance War activities.
24	** Regardless of your level, dolmens or Dark Anchors remain a reliable source of experience, Fighters Guild reputation, and minor loot. In fact, they're so efficient as an experience grind for starting characters that dolmen camping is the most commonly-recommended way to power level a freshly-made Vestige. One of the most popular grinding zones is the Alik'r Desert, even for players who aren't aligned with the Daggerfall Covenant, since all three of its dolmens are within spitting distance to wayshrines, letting people zip back and forth around the map in rotations and sweep up Dark Anchors as they respawn, netting huge amounts of experience , stuff to sell and, for players with Summerset, jewelry to deconstruct later on. Many long-time players will remain in this rotation for ''hours'' on end before leaving to do something else.
25	** While the game at large is accommodating regardless of your build, Magicka DPS players tend to have a much better time (and grouping priority) than their Stamina counterparts in the long run, especially harder content like veteran trials, due to a number of reasons. For one, being Magicka-based gives one the benefit of range, as except for Dragonknights and Templars, every other class can stand safely at a distance and throw spells at the enemy, making mechanics and boss telegraphs much easier to spot, and also by not being forced into melee, it's much less of a hassle to form coordinated player stacks for optimal group buff distribution. For two, a vast majority of support sets in the game ''heavily'' favor Magicka builds, and it's much easier to put together a self-sufficient Magicka DPS than a Stamina one due to the consideration of critical and offensive penetration, which puts less stress on the tanks and healers who may not need to run niche setups to make sure the group hits optimal damage. That is not to say that Stamina DPS is inherently inferior, as with the proper group composition and buffs they too can punch well above their weight, but Magicka groups are significantly easier to build for and tend to yield much better results due to them synergizing better with support sets, therefore raid leaders tend to look only for the latter category when challenging hard modes or pushing scores on the leaderboard.
26	* CompleteMonster: See [[Monster/TheElderScrolls here]].
27	* DemonicSpiders:
28	** Literally, in this case. Spider Daedra summon miniature spiders, and have one of the most annoying DamageOverTime abilities in the game, because it is an area-of-effect. Storm Atronachs also get special mention, because not only are they a common headache at Dark Anchors, Sorcerers have an Ultimate ability in [[SummonMagic Daedra Summoning]] to summon them on you, too!
29	** Watchers. They are [[BuffySpeak big floating eyeball tentacle things]] that [[CycleOfHurting trap you with high-damage crowd control attacks]], and they're [[MadeOfIron unusually durable for how squishy they look]]. Whenever a sidequest involves Daedric influence of any sort, expect to fight at least two or three of these guys.
30	** Harvesters can be annoying to fight and sometimes challenging mainly due to fact they can immobilize you and heal themselves via orbs that you need to destroy, which can often leave you wide-open to attacks such as Black Winter that can deal ''massive'' damage if not interrupted or avoided.
31	** Titans are tough too, which is to be expected since they depict a dragon. They have a more unique moveset with a very high damaging fire breath that can potentially one shot you, although even if the attack is interrupted it will immediately turn into an area-based attack that needs to be dodged as well.
32	** Liches can summon multiple areas of effect around it that deals [[DamageOverTime damage over time]] and if you stand in it too long, it will explode and deal heavy damage that will most likely one shot you. Melee based characters will find this enemy exceptionally tedious due to the amount of red circles that limit the distance between them and the Lich.
33	** Clannfears. They hit hard, are surprisingly tanky, and come in large numbers on occasion. While fighting a single Clannfear isn't anything big, it gets very irritating when you're fighting something else and said Clannfear sees you, because it ''will'' use its leaping attack, which will knock you down unless you can anticipate and block it, which in many cases you can't. Later on, especially in Coldharbour, Clannfears will sometimes travel in groups, and them seeing you will typically result in a CycleOfHurting as they take turns pouncing on your head repeatedly, while those close to you basically delete your health in an instant with their obscenely strong bites and tail swipes, the latter of which ''also'' stagger you if they connect.
34	** In Infinite Archive, anything that leaves a [=DoT=] starts becoming aggravating to deal with on later Arcs, as their damage starts ramping up to ridiculous levels. One is manageable, but two or more become a near guaranteed death sentence without a purge ability.
35	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
36	** The Breton from the trailers, due to his sheer knife-throwing, acrobatic badassery.
37	** Razum-Dar from the Aldmeri Dominion is very popular in his own right, probably because he is the wittiest and most engaging support character in the Aldmeri Dominion. His expanded role in the ''Summerset'' was very well received in that he played a main role in the storyline.
38	** Naryu Virian from the Ebonheart Pact became so popular that players demanded she be brought back in a future storyline. She is a member of the [[MurderInc Morag Tong]], is witty and, occationally, openly flirts with the player character (regardless of gender). She returns for the tutorial and a city quest in the ''Morrowind'' expansion, starred in its reveal trailer in full cinematic glory, had a series of gameplay videos introducing you to different aspects of Vvardenfell, had her journal be part of the physical collector's edition, and there was even a Funko Pop figure of her released.
39	** The Daggerfall Covenant has Count Verandis Ravenwatch who only appeared in one story arc in the base game but is loved for being a ReasonableAuthorityFigure FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire Altmer noble who does a great job leading his vampire clan to live alongside mortals and is a big help to the player character. Fans were happy that he made his return in the Dark Heart of Skyrim arc.
40	** Alchemy from ''Summerset'' is getting praised for being [[spoiler: the first canonically transgender character]] in the history of the ''Elder Scrolls'' series and having a very sympathetic and well-written backstory.
41	** A lot of players fell in love with Eveli Sharp-Arrow, a young bosmer fresh from the Valenwood with cute looks, a cheerful, if slightly naive personality adding some much-welcomed levity to the Orisinium questline, and badassery that the game loves to show off. She was so popular, in fact, that she returned for the Deadlands chapter, slightly more mature but still cute and badass as ever.
42	* FanonDiscontinuity: To say that ''The Elder Scrolls Online'' is rather divisive within ''The Elder Scrolls'' lore community is a polite understatement. It is far from uncommon to find members cherry picking elements of ''Online'' which support their already held beliefs while dismissing anything that goes against them.
43	* GoddamnedBats:
44	** When it comes to Daedra, you will very quickly grow to loathe Banekin and Scamps. They're [[GlassCannon Glass Cannons]] that can hit you with area-of-effect [[KillItWithFire fire spells]], which, naturally, give you some DamageOverTime as well.
45	** NPC Nightblades. If you end up aggroing them and you're anywhere out of arm's reach from them, their first move is ''always'' Teleport Strike, which, if not blocked in the very short amount of time given, always stuns. They can also cloak, preventing you from attacking them unless you have an [=AoE=] trained on their rough location.
46	** Bodyguards. [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard They use variants]] of the Support skill Guard and the Dragonknight's Obsidian Shield that would be [[GameBreaker downright unfair]] in player hands. Their Guard causes much the same lifelink as player Guard, but if their charge's health is depleted, the two switch places and heal while unable to be damaged. Their Obsidian Shield raises rocks around a target, which, if attacked, explode and stun the attacker. It doesn't matter how far the attacker is, whether or not they can control the shielded target being damaged, or how recently the attacker was stunned, they ''will'' get stunned.
47	** If you're questing in regions that are part of greater Morrowind (i.e. Stonefalls, Deshaan or Vvardenfell), then basically all kwama can be this, especially the smaller ones. While most kwama warriors are actually manageable despite their high health and damage, lesser kwama will ''annoy'' you to death with their slowing spit that renews the binding effect with each hit, and workers will ram you constantly to knock you down to the ground, leaving you vulnerable to a DeathOfAThousandCuts, or being one-shot by a world boss if they so happen to accompany one. Unless you're willing to waste precious stamina dodge-rolling everywhere or breaking out of stuns, you're very liable to be killed by the occasional kwama ZergRush at any level of play unless you can reliably kill large numbers of them quickly.
48	** As of the One Tamriel update, enemy archers and mages. While they're not always annoying per se when you're actually fighting them, they become gigantic nuisances when you're trying to run past the area they're standing, since they can hit you ''through walls and map geometry'', and they almost never miss, so simply breaking line-of-sight won't work most of the time. At higher levels of play, they combine this uncanny accuracy with disturbing stopping power, allowing them to snipe you down very quickly, and mages will deal a lot of spell damage, even if you've invested considerably into magic resistance, making them extremely irritating to be around.
49	** Pack predators like wolves and hyenas can also prove to be huge nuisances if you're not paying attention. Despite their low individual damage, a small wolf pack can quickly shred through your health if all members attack at once, and they also periodically inflict you with slows, making it harder to run away from them. Worse still is their tendency to have one member bite on your leg, pinning you in place until you deal with it, which is not annoying by itself, but immensely frustrating when you have larger threats to deal with like dragons or bosses. A wolf or hyena that's pinning you will not let go unless it's killed, so you'll have to divert your attention from the real threat bearing down on you to get rid of it, which can cause unwanted deaths in many situations.
50	** While Stranglers don't do much damage, they have a tendency to pop out of the ground and pull you to them, which can be annoying when you're just trying to get somewhere.
51	* GoddamnedBoss:
52	** In Welenkin Cove in Summerset, you have B'Korgen, the Abyssal Cabal's alchemist. With a group, his Yaghra minions are no big deal, but B'Korgen himself boasts '''4.7 million health''', which is a lot even for a world boss. To make matters worse, he frequently conjures a damage shield that covers 10% of his health pool, uses a multi-target fear spell with little to no telegraphing, and moves Alchemical Globules into players to stagger them.
53	** And in Murkmire's Echoing Hollow, you have the miregaunt Walks-Like-Thunder. While it has a smaller health pool, at certain intervals it summons totems that heal it for a massive amount unless you destroy them ''immediately''. Even one totem standing could allow it to outheal the damage you and your allies dealt to it. Oh, and it has a damage shield spell.
54	*** At some point, the totems' health was buffed, so now it's practically impossible to stop its healing, so beating it without a ZergRush of players is a no-go. Whether this was [[FakeDifficulty intentional]] or [[GameBreakingBug not]] has yet to be seen.
55	** On a different scale, frost Dragons can very well be this when you're fighting them in ''Elsweyr'' and ''Dragonhold'' zones. For starters, frost dragons will always erect a wall of ice around them when they're on the ground that causes practically lethal damage if you stray into it, forcing you to get uncomfortably close to the very strong 15 million HP monster you're fighting that can basically OneHitKill you with its melee attacks alone, and it will also spam exploding crystals all over the place to nuke your health to Oblivion. Normal dragons are already very tough due to them being designed for large groups, but their attack patterns usually leave you with a lot of leeway to make mistakes if you're having a hard time, but frost dragons will make you rage due to how cheaply you will die again and again if you're caught in a bad spot, which is nearly everywhere with how much area-denial you're facing. Put simply, while most dragons are typically challenging, frost dragons are ''annoying''.
56	** Oblivion Portal events have a final boss in the form of the Havocrel Duke of Storms. First, to even ''fight'' him, players have to fight through three waves of increasingly stronger enemies. Then, he has no less than 3 invincibility phases to go through, where he hides behind a shield and throws [[ActionBomb suicide bombing Scamps]] with unblockable knockback and souped-up Fire Behemoths at the group. While he has an attack with a lengthy animation that prevents him from hiding, his invincibility phases happen at a set threshold, meaning, with enough damage done during this attack, he can have ''back-to-back invincibility phases''. On top of this, he has a charge attack with an unblockable ''and'' unbreakable stun effect, and a "Burning Field" effect with no clear area of effect that sometimes doesn't get disabled properly, leading to cheap deaths.
57	** While later bosses have made use of invincibility phases to prolong their fights, the Prime Cataloger in Apocrypha takes this practice to ludicrous extremes. After being damaged a bit, it vanishes and leaves four Prime Shades to fight the players, only reappearing when all four are defeated. And during this part of the fight, multiple Shades will put up a shield that, [[TheComputerIsALyingBastard despite their health bar indicating said shields as a mere armor boost]], makes them take no damage. You read that right; this boss has '''invincibility phases for its invincibility phases'''. And the boss does this at least twice, on top of throwing a platoon of Hushed, a few Watchers, and multiple tornadoes from the center of the massive arena at you.
58	* GoodBadBugs: See [[GoodBadBugs/TheElderScrolls here]].
59	* GrowingTheBeard:
60	** The game had a really rough launch, but it gradually gained traction through positive changes, such as the addition of the Justice System and no longer requiring a subscription. The "One Tamriel" update in fall 2016 - which made everything scale to your level like the downloadable contents were doing, enabling you to travel anywhere - was the main turning point that changed former naysayers' opinions on the game. Overall opinion went from mixed at best at launch to [=TESO=] becoming one of the most popular [=MMOs=] on the market.
61	** Since the release of the ''Morrowind'' expansion, the opinion of the TES lore community on the game, once very hostile, has become much more positive; ''Morrowind'' for bringing more focus on fan-favorite locations (and the patches shining light on characters previously little-seen) and ''Summerset'' and ''Elsweyr'' giving a ton of focus on areas that TES fans had wanted to see fleshed out for ''decades'' (both areas were last playable in ''[[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena Arena]]'', back in '''1994'''!)
62	* JunkRare: The War Tortes. The first recipe is randomly found in Cyrodiil, the second requires ''hundreds of thousands'' of Tel Var to acquire ''and'' craft, and the third is found very rarely after a Battlegrounds match, with its respective ingredient rarely dropping from crafting nodes in Cyrodiil. What do the Tortes do? They... increase the rate of a character gaining experience for the Alliance War skill lines. Experience that is already easily earned just by participating in Battlegrounds or tagging along in raids in Cyrodiil.
63	* LowTierLetdown:
64	** Among the ten playable races, Bretons are widely considered to be one of the weaker picks due to their racial bonuses. When it comes to racial traits, Bretons are the poster children of CripplingOverspecialization, in that they are blessed with superb Magicka regeneration and resist, cheaper spell costs...and nothing else, making them very magically defensive, but not so strong offensively. As they are, Bretons have subpar health, no Stamina or Health bonuses, and their spell damage is okay at best, [[SquareRaceRoundClass making them powerful healers, but unfit for most "aggressive" playstyles]], though they can be rather serviceable as Magicka DPS mains, and Breton tanks can be surprisingly strong in content with a lot of magical damage (e.g. Cloudrest). Still, even then, there are still so many other race choices that would do their job far better than they can (e.g. Argonians can theoretically achieve far better sustain than they can as either healer or tank, and they also have an innate bonus to healing strength, while High Elves can [[NotTheIntendedUse wield their naturally-high spell damage for insane healing bursts instead]]). As a whole, Bretons are not objectively bad, but they are so well placed into their niche that they are virtually OvershadowedByAwesome by just about anyone else in any other field. If there is such a clear-cut example of the SquishyWizard in ''Online'', the Bretons would fit this to a T.
65	** The Wood Elves are the Bretons' diametric opposite, being so highly specialized in stamina damage-dealing that they aren't good at anything else. In fact, most of their racial passives seem to be geared towards solo or [=PvP=] play, since stealth detection is pointless in most group content, and poison resistance is cool but niche at best given the rarity of such damage type. While they have good stamina sustain, their peak damage potential was hit hard with the {{Nerf}} bat in Update 29, which removed dodge-rolling as a trigger requirement but also slashing the buff strength by half, in response to Bosmer players being ''too strong'' in [=PvP=]. Without any other bonuses to magicka and health, Bosmer players would basically be stuck doing sub-par damage as Stamina DPS and nothing else, while Bretons at least can tank to a degree and are amazing at healing.
66	* MemeticBadass: The Ascendant Lord from the High Isle trailer (known as "Nameless Knight" or "Chad Knight" for viewers outside of ESO players) gained this reputation from both Elder Scrolls community and RPG fans in general for being a badass {{BFS}} wielding knight who easily trounces not one, not two, but three trailer characters working together against him. He uses nothing but raw strength and real-life greatsword techniques to overpower the Nord, Altmer Swordknight, and Breton Ranger, and he only loses by perfect coordination between the three, and an entire stone column dropped against him. And at the end of the trailer, he ''survives''!
67	* MemeticMutation:
68	** "Transcription Error" [[labelnote:Explanation]]Despite earlier games describing Cyrodiil, the heartland of the Empire and home province of the Imperials, as a tropical jungle, ''Oblivion'' showed it to be much more temperate. As described in the "[[AllThereInTheManual Obscure Text]]" ''The Many Headed Talos'', the DeityOfHumanOrigin Talos is said to have changed Cyrodiil to its current climate as a way of thanking the [[BadassArmy Imperial Legions]] who served him so well in life. The lore community largely accepted this explanation. However, when ''Online'' came out and showed Cyrodiil with the same temperate climate it has in ''Oblivion'', fans scoffed. The in-game book ''[[https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:The_Heartland_of_Cyrodiil The Heartland of Cyrodiil]]'' added fuel to the fire when it dismissed previous descriptions of Cyrodiil being a jungle as a "Transcription Error". Lore buffs largely settled on the {{Fanon}} explanation that Talos' changes were ''retroactive'', making it so that Cyrodiil had ''always had'' a temperate climate. Since then, "Transcription Error" has been used by the fanbase to mock any changes ''Online'' (which was written and developed by a Bethesda subsidiary instead of the usual ''Elder Scrolls'' team) has made to the lore which they do not like. [[https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1ydyj7/transcription_error_is_alive_and_well/ Example Reddit discussion here]].[[/labelnote]]
69	** "Oh, look at that! Two gold coins!" [[labelnote:Explanation]]For a while after launch, gold was hard to come by, and it became a thing to joke about when players looted a boss and found ''more'' than just a single gold coin. This has since been changed so you get more gold overall.[[/labelnote]]
70	** "Stay moist"[[labelnote:Explanation]]It is a phrase that Argonian non-playable characters say occasionally.[[/labelnote]]
71	** On the official forum, patch notes are often called "Natch Potes", even by the developers, due to a typo a user made.
72	** Community coordinator Jason Leavey's hair.[[labelnote:Explanation]]In 2014 a [[https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/134417/the-jason-leavey-hair-appreciation-thread thread]] on the official forum started a craze over his flamboyant hairstyle, and eventually it was [[AscendedMeme made into a purchasable hairstyle in-game that players could equip to their own characters]].[[/labelnote]]
73	** The January 4 2018 episode of "ESO Live" that was meant to be the first preview of the ''Dragon Bones'' contended with some technical difficulties that prevented them from using their normal streaming software/equipment, and ultimately they just decided to grab a webcam to stream and a monitor to show the gameplay on. Early on, Gina Bruno and Mike Finnegan gestured to the monitor, which spawned a series of photoshops of different things being displayed on it (one of them was even [[https://puu.sh/yWVAx/afac74ba51.png used]] for the next patch notes header).
74	** "Dragons! In your own homeland!"[[labelnote:Explanation]]Part of a conversation between Florentia Candidius and Zhiraz, two [=NPCs=] added with the ''Elsweyr'' chapter update, to serve as a second-hand introduction to the DLC zone of Northern Elsweyr. These two characters can be found in the capital cities of all three alliances near a central wayshrine and the local crafting guilds, spouting the same conversation ''[[WelcomeToCorneria every time you load into the area]]'' until you've completed the quest A Rage of Dragons, thus quickly becoming something of a nuisance for players who haven't explored Elsweyr yet, and a meme for basically everyone else.[[/labelnote]]
75	** "Do you know how long I've been looking for you?"[[labelnote:Explanation]]In a similar vein to the above entry, players who have purchased the ''Orsinium'' DLC, but haven't started it yet, will find themselves being seemingly stalked by its starter NPC, Stuga, all around the capital of their first major alliance zone (i.e. Davon's Watch, Glenumbra, Vulkhel Guard), saying the same line over and over again until her quest is accepted. Unlike the other DLC quest givers, Stuga is scripted to approach the player as they come near her area, which is pretty bloody large, so you will run into her several times just walking around town, causing her to become irritating ''very'' quickly, as she can't simply be avoided by not visiting a certain spot on the map. Most players who take her quest, simply do so to shut her up, as she won't stop stalking you otherwise.[[/labelnote]]
76	* {{Misblamed}}:
77	** One of the most common complaints about the game is the idea that Bethesda will not have any time or energy to make a new single-player ''The Elder Scrolls'' game if they are busy with an MMO. ''The Elder Scrolls Online'' is handled by Zenimax Online, Bethesda Game Studio's sister studio under the Zenimax LLC group. Bethesda themselves were busy throughout the 2010s and early 2020s developing ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' and ''VideoGame/{{Starfield}}'', with ''The Elder Scrolls VI'' not scheduled to leave pre-production until ''Starfield'' is released.
78	** Zenimax and Bethesda were also blamed for changing Alinor, in the ''Summerset'' expansion to a generic MedievalEuropeanFantasy-like city when the in-game lore described it as being made out of glass and insect wings. Turns out, this is not the first time Alinor/Summerset appears in ''The Elder Scrolls'' and its portrayal is actually rather accurate to [[http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Alinor_(Arena) how it appeared]] in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsArena''. Also, even the [[http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Pocket_Guide_to_the_Empire,_1st_Edition/Aldmeri_Dominion book]] (which, note, is [[UnreliableExpositor the same book that claimed]] the Altmer used YouAreNumber6 instead of names and that they had similar birth rates as humans but culled 9 out of 10 of their babies) that included the "insect wings" description pointed out that that summary came from humans who were not even allowed into the city, and the very next sentence dismisses it as "fantastical" and contains another, more realistic description that includes a mention of the sun shining on stone towers.
79	** Fans of the Bretons have aimed their ire at Zenimax for paving over the Bretons' elven heritage and magical prowess, reducing them to a "generic medieval race"... except the depiction of Bretons in this game is on par with them in other games, which had no shortage of Bretons not being mages, and references to their elven heritage are present in the Breton motif book, with more added with Antiquities. While there are a lack of Breton mages who can be said to have shaped history, that's more of an issue [[FranchiseOriginalSin with Bethesda's lore, not Zenimax's]].
80	* ParanoiaFuel: During [[PlayerVersusPlayer PvP]] in Cyrodiil. The map itself is huge and there are plenty of places in Cyrodiil to explore, but keep in mind that you can be ambushed by other players at any time... any time.
81	* QuestionableCasting: Creator/KateBeckinsale's performance as Queen Ayrenn was heavily criticized mostly for having a deadpan monotone that barely changes from scene to scene. Most notably, in the scene where Ayrenn learns about an extremist faction plotting to kill and overthrow her, Beckinsale read Ayrenn's lines with a bored inflection.
82	* RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap:
83	** To an extent, the High Elf race. After ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', where they were both InUniverse and Meta [[TheScrappy scrappies]], a lot of players enjoyed their quests due to the approach the Thalmor go to to win the trust of their allies.
84	** Mannimarco was widely disliked in his [[VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion previous appearance]], thanks to his strong VillainDecay. He makes a return here and is now appropriately threatening.
85	** In an example specific to this game, Ice staves had it rough for the longest time. They lacked the sheer damage that Inferno and Lightning staves had, and things only seemed to get worse when they were turned into a tanking weapon, with the taunt being attached to heavy attacks, making it clunky to execute and causing unaware people to become TheLoad through accidental overtaunting. Things started to look up with Markarth, which gave Ice staves a unique debuff; Minor Brittle, which makes enemies take even more damage from critical hits. The Gates of Oblivion year gave them more goodies, with the Frostbite set in Blackwood, which increases frost damage on top of increasing damage against enemies who are Chilled or have Minor Brittle, and the rework to Elemental Touch, which gives a guaranteed Chill/Brittle on enemies hit, immensely buffed upfront damage for base and the Reach morph, and the Clench morph being made the taunt. One final good thing given, with Firesong, was the Warden's Piercing Cold passive giving a general damage bonus, turned up when one is wielding an Ice staff. While Ice Staff DPS players are still infrequent outside of the occasional Magicka Warden, Minor Brittle has propelled Ice staves to become a mainstay in Dungeon and Trial groups.
86	** In another ''Online'' specific example is the rebalance to jewelry upgrade materials that came with Endless Archive, removing grains entirely and converting the old grains and platings to new platings on a 1:10 material ratio. Whereas before having legendary quality jewelry was a prohibitely expensive luxury, now it becomes more than possible to have without being a hardcore crafter or someone with more gold than sense.
87	* ScrappyMechanic: Several.
88	** The trait system for item creation. Nine different traits can be applied to weapons or armor when forging them. Per item type. For those that want to collect all the traits for all the items, you are looking at ''306''. Tedious but doable, you say? There is a timer that is required for researching those traits in the first place. Researching a trait for a specific item and slot doubles the research time of the next trait for that item & slot. Starting at six hours and going from there, you are looking at a total of '''sixty three days''' for mastering every trait ''on one item''. Even with skills, you can only dock the research down to a maximum of thirty days, so unless you have ''several'' Grand instant research tickets to burn, have fun waiting an entire month to get a trait, that you're probably not gonna need if you're simply trying to fulfill the quota to unlock set items.
89	** The Tel Var Stones currency that comes with ''Imperial City''. Most enemies in the Imperial City only drop a few and the prices for items range into the thousands. If you get killed while holding onto Tel Var Stones, you lose 50% of them.
90	** "Homestead" introduced Master Writs, crafting writs asking for a weapon with a certain trait, set attached to it, quality and style. What is the "Scrappy" part? The Master Writ has no problem asking you for an item from a crafting set from a [=DLC=] you do not have. Fortunately you can decline the writ and choose to sell it to others that have access to the required crafting set, though this wasn't a clear enough option when first added, which led to a lot of wasted writs with players accepting and abandoning quests they could not do.
91	** Stealth breaking every time you interact with nearly anything has made many a players blow a gasket. Unlike other ''Elder Scrolls'' titles, you're revealed to every NPC around you when you interact with most stuff in the environment while sneaking, be you looting a container, a dead body, or simply activating an objective prompt. In most cases, it will draw unnecessary aggro towards you even if you've been completely stealthy otherwise. Crimes, especially theft and trespassing, are made excruciatingly annoying at times, especially if you're trying to steal an item out in the open, and it also makes the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild dailies very annoying to achieve a perfect run of when doing just about anything invites attention from nearby guards.
92	** The design choice where city guards are made ''invincible'' wasn't very well-met. While it's ostensibly meant to deter wanton crime, since players can't just kill their way out of a bounty like in other titles, it also made it extremely annoying to maneuver around if someone caught you in the act, as any and all guard who see you will attempt to arrest you. Paying your fine gets rid of them, sure, but most of the time, you'll be carrying too many contraband on you to afford letting them take all of those away, which leaves fleeing the only other option, and you can't always get away easily, either, since guards have root abilities that immobilize you and cause you to waste a lot of stamina just to break free. Also, trying to evade a guard indoors is a nightmare, since there usually isn't enough distance between you and them for them to break pursuit (meaning you cannot open the door to escape), and the Eight Divines help you if you run into more than one at once inside a small building. To further rub salt into the wound, trying to flee guards also increases your bounty, making it very expensive to pay off at fences. There really is no way out of a fight if you don't have the Clemency skill from the Thieves Guild line, which takes some thieving around to unlock and will only work once a day, and only for one minute.
93	** Getting the right monster set shoulder from an Undaunted chest can give one an aneurysm. Prior to Update 28, these were obtained from the three now-open chests in the middle of the big tent in any Undaunted enclave, which gave you a ''random'' piece out of a possible twelve per chest, with randomized weight and traits, essentially giving you a one out of ''thirty six'' chance to get what you needed for your hard-earned keys, ''per chest''. Because of widespread complaints, this system was changed in Update 28 so that now specific chests are made to be purchasable from the three Undaunted pledge givers, which still didn't help matters since all that did was making the loot pool smaller, since the offered choices are categorized in groups of two (e.g. Maj al-Ragath's Banished Cells coffers can give you either Shadowrend or Maw of the Infernal shoulders). This means that even if you did purchase the intended coffer ''category'', it could still very well give you the shoulders from the other of the two dungeons included in that lineup instead, and getting the "correct" coffer still won't guarantee that you will get one in the ''weight'' that you need, and Traits will cause further headache if you can't afford to reconstruct or transmute them. And these specific coffers aren't cheap, either, costing five keys a pop, meaning that you'll have to have completed at least two of the outstanding pledges on hard mode and the last on normal, ''per character'', in order to be able to buy one coffer, that might just give you the wrong item.
94	** While the vampire rework announcement for Greymoor was met with praise, as vampirism was previously seen as one-dimensional and a must-have for Magicka DPS players, in practice, the new state of Noxiphilic Sanguivoria has numerous problems that make many see it as more trouble than it's worth:
95	*** Increasing your vampire stage also increases the cost of non-Vampire skills, as a trade-off for reduced Vampire skill cost. With the removal of the bonus regeneration, this essentially makes it so vampires have to use their exclusive skills or get no benefit.
96	*** At stage 4, most people will refuse to talk to you, ''including most Stablemasters'', excacerbating the maligned mount training mechanic. While Mesmerize allows you to circumvent this, not only is Mesmerize not all that useful as it's the only direction-sensitive stun, [[GuideDangIt this aspect of it is never mentioned, anywhere]].
97	*** Also at stage 4, vampires have 0 health regeneration. '''Period'''. Any sets or food buffs that provide health regen are thus wasted; this includes the Corrupting Bloody Mara, reducing it to, essentially, a Savoury dish that also gives an instant state 4.
98	** That some active abilities are marked as "Criminal Acts" can really get in your way sometimes. While most of these are highly avoidable due to being vampire and werewolf skills, respectively, meaning that you'd have to deliberately use these in full view of guards and town [=NPCs=] to get into trouble, many Necromancer class skills will also net you a bounty if people see you use them. Worse still, the lot of these abilities are summons, meaning that every [=NPC=] who look at your pet before they despawn will slap you with a bounty, and unlike Sorcerer and Warden pets, these cannot be manually deactivated, so trying to run around town with them active while being chased by guards will just tally more and more gold on your head, making quests with combat segments especially frustrating to deal with in populated areas.
99	** Losing terribly in a match-made game of Tales of Tribute? Thinking of conceding to save both your opponent's time and yours? Guess again, because the so-called "concede" option is apparently equivalent to an "abandon" option, as it carries a deserter penalty, like the other Activity Finder, well, activities. The difference between those and Tribute, though, is that there's no team to be dragged down by you leaving early, and in RealLife tabletop games, it's actually considered ''courteous'' to concede when you have no chance of winning. Not to mention that conceding already deprives the early leaver of the participation rewards, making the inability to queue again for a time feel like an unnecessary kick to the teeth that drags out the "Dueling Tributes" daily even longer. There is a cutoff period where conceding doesn't penalize a player, but it's still overly punishing for someone who would rather not spend the next several minutes in a near impossible situation.
100	** Infinite Archive was widely anticipated, and while there are people who enjoy it for the challenge, some parts add unnecessary tedium to it;
101	*** First and foremost, it's one of the few pieces of content that enforces a hard death limit, three strikes, and you're out. While this can be chalked up to [[AntiPoopSocking dissuading people from just running it all day]], even casual runs can end up getting quashed due to the difficulty ramping up, and achievements related to later Arcs can end up being overly frustrating when even "trash" mobs can do you in with a single mistake on your part. And that's not even getting into bosses that have one-shot mechanics. There are options to get further lives, but not only does it require luck to work in your favor, the Vision to get an extra life can only be selected ''once''.
102	*** There's no option to start at a higher Arc, or an option to put a pin in a run and return to it later, which puts later Arc achievements further into ThatOneAchievement territory.
103	*** While it's relatively minor, there's no option to reroll Verse or Vision choices. Good for averting ComplacentGamingSyndrome, bad when your choices end up all being out-and-out useless for your build.
104	* ScrappyWeapon:
105	** Out of each of the companion ultimates, one of the most finicky to use manually is Bastian's Unleashed Rage. While it's not that tricky to use if you have Bastian wielding a melee weapon, for whatever reason, he can't be made to use it with a ranged weapon, which includes his default Inferno Staff. As a result, he'll only ever use it when he gets cornered, and is the only companion with an ultimate that doesn't mesh with his default loadout at all.
106	** The Arcanist has a versatile and powerful toolkit, but one skill stands out as being... subpar; Apocryphal Gate. It's marred by several issues, such as a short range and duration, being finicky to place and being the only normal skill in the game with a consistent cooldown. And any support potential it might have gets crushed by the fact that it can only teleport allies when morphed into Passage Between Worlds, and even then, it can only be used by allies when they use a synergy. While this is likely in the interest of preventing Arcanist griefers from throwing allies into bad spots, it does make it clunky to use for anyone besides the Arcanist that cast it. What makes its uselessness even more frustrating is that it was shown off as an exploration tool in Necrom's pre-release, but was apparently neutered in the actual release.
107	* ThatOneAchievement:
108	** Signal Fire Zephyr from the New Life Festival; you have to light all 4 signal fires on the upper level of Bergama within 35 seconds. Does not seem too bad on paper, but in practice, it ends up being aggravating as you have to stay by the signal fires for three seconds each to count, and you may end up with a guard who decided to patrol your route at that exact moment. It is almost impossible without the Steed Stone perk and a skill that grants Expedition, or other players grouping with you, and even then, good luck.
109	** All the fishing achievements require you to sit still and hopefully catch all the various rare fishes in a zone. And you must repeat this over fifteen times - all of the base-game zones - to get an achievement furnishing. While not particularly ''difficult'', it's very time-consuming and not overly engaging (not to mention you need to gather enough bait to do all that fishing), so many players don't bother with it.
110	** The Emperor-related achievements are ones that most players will likely not complete unless dedicated to [=PvP=]. In order to be crowned Emperor, your alliance must hold all six keeps surrounding the Imperial City to begin with - which are constantly changing hands - and then you must have the most Alliance points in your campaign. Gaining this achievement typically takes teamwork, skill in [=PvP=] combat, and a large time investment. There are also two achievements awarded for killing an Emperor, which not only requires there to ''be'' an Emperor (they only hold their crown while their Alliance holds all six of the keeps), but for you to be in [=PvP=] at the same time and place as them and kill them (and for one of the achievements, they have to specifically be the Emperor of your home campaign.)
111	** The Trophy achievements. These require you to collect Trophies from various creatures across Tamriel - items that have a very low (e.g. less than 1%) drop rate, meaning that it can take ''years'' to complete without (or even with) grinding for them. Oddly, for being some of the most difficult achievements, they only give 10 Achievement points each (the hardest ones are typically worth 50), and the dyes they unlock (which can ''only'' be unlocked with these achievements) are classified as Common dyes.
112	** The veteran-level content achievements require skilled, coordinated teams with a good knowledge of the game mechanics, ''especially'' for the DLC content (which are generally at a significantly higher difficulty level and more mechanics-driven than the base-game dungeons/trials). As such, many of these are only attainable by teams of more hardcore players. The no-death achievements in particular can be a challenge, since a no-death run can be ruined by a single instance of bad luck with a one-hit kill.
113	* ThatOneAttack:
114	** Dragons, being group bosses, naturally have more than a few.
115	*** Just being near dragons is a huge hazard to your health. Their other abilities notwithstanding, dragons have access to two obscenely devastating melee attacks: Wing Thrash and Tail Whip. Basically, a dragon will violently smack a large number of players who are crowding around its tail or sides, dealing extremely high (potentially fatal to non-tanks) damage while also knocking them back. This makes melee classes with low health like Nightblades very liable to being [[OneHitKill killed in one swipe]] even with blocking, and considering a dragon's very large pool of health, this will happen several times per fight.
116	*** The Soul Tear shout, which will track a large amount of players in the dragon's immediate vicinity. If you're among those affected, Soul Tear will gradually damage your health at an alarming rate, which usually cannot be counteracted without chugging potions or spamming self-heal skills, which certain builds may not have access to. It's strong enough that even dedicated tanks will melt in seconds without healer support, and the GlassCannon damage dealing classes basically won't survive, and dragons ''will'' spam the crap out of this skill if they can, so be very afraid when you hear the "Rii Vaaz Zol" shout thundering across the battlefield.
117	*** Frost dragons are almost universally-loathed for their Freezing Winds ability, which creates a wall of RazorWind around them that very quickly kill any player who stray into them, essentially creating an InstantDeathRadius that's both uncomfortably large and hard to avoid. Making things even worse is how Freezing Winds will force you to stand dangerously close to the dragons, who will very swiftly crush you with the aforementioned attacks, on top of their ice crystal spamming, which leaves little to no safe ground to walk around without being smacked to death by a Wing Thrash or Tail Whip. And if the dragon smacks you ''into'' the Freezing Winds, which it will do a lot, you're as good as dead.
118	** Any ability that puts a huge snare on you, which include but are not limited to, Hamstring, Harry, Low Slash, Throw Dagger, and so much more. While they can be removed by cleansing, most of the time you will not be having a debuff purge handy depending on your class, thus reducing you to the speed of a crawling baby while the rest of the enemy group can gang up on you. Even more annoying is that blocking the attack that triggers these snares will still apply the slow down effect, even if you don't actually take the full damage of the hit, and these can stack on top of each other, which basically roots you in place entirely. And you can be sure enemies will be ''spamming'' the crap out of these attacks if they can help it, especially in large groups, making them incredibly infuriating to receive and deal with.
119	** Bear traps. No, not the skill Trap Beast from the Fighters Guild line that some [=NPCs=] also get, but rather the ability for enemies to actually place physical traps on the ground for you to step in, as indicated by an animation of them kneeling down to arm it. Getting your foot caught in one of these traps completely immobilizes your character for ten seconds, and unlike the similar Lightweight Beast Trap that some mobs have, these cannot be removed by cleansing or roll dodging out of them, as they will remain stuck on you until the entire duration expires.
120	** If a boss takes the form of a Wraith of Crows, chances are, it's packing Carrion Swarm. It starts out strong, but avoidable, albeit forcing one out of melee range. After a time, however, the swarm starts firing exploding crows that deal a frightening amount of damage and require one to be on the move constantly. While this attack is manageable with the Wraith of Crows trio in Clockwork City or the Crowborne Horror, it can be a constant killer in Harrowstorms, where there are plenty of enemies with the ability to stun or stagger.
121	** Several bosses have some variation of an attack where they pin a given player down and start rapidly draining their health. While the immediate reaction of the trapped person would probably be to break free, these attacks don't allow that, leaving them hoping that another player will interrupt the boss. This makes these bosses tedious, at best, to fight alone, but having another player around isn't a guarantee of help, as they might not know the mechanic and continue fighting the boss as if nothing were wrong. And while companions can bash enemies, they conveniently seem to forget how to do so when fighting a boss with this kind of attack.
122	** Maebroogha the Void Lich, the FinalBoss of Vateshran Hollows, is already a difficult boss on her own, but her deadliest attack involves surrounding you with Void Wraiths, all linked together with an energy chain, that slowly close in on you. Touching the energy chain in any way is a OneHitKill, and each Void Wraith has ''boss level'' health, meaning that unless your build is heavily kitted towards DPS, YouAreAlreadyDead once she uses this attack.
123	* ThatOneBoss:
124	** Aurig Mireh at Shivering Shrine. Definitely one of the more damage intensive and difficult world bosses in the game, mainly because of the small area you fight her in, plus the endless amounts of scamps and clannfear that all spawn near the boss to gang up on you. As if that was not enough, she can dish out an insanely high amount of fire-based damage with her special attacks, most of which were repurposed from the Dragonknight kit. Getting hit and stunned by a combination of Dark Talons and Lava Whip can mean a quick death, as the latter hits ''three times'' in rapid succession, unlike the player equivalent, and while it can be blocked, most of the time one won't be able to react to it in time due to the combined chaos of everything going on during said fight.
125	** Ri'Atahrashi and his Elementalist students in Southern Elsweyr will absolutely nuke the snot out of you if you don't know how to approach the fight. As the boss himself is accompanied by a small mob of students, most players will be conditioned to try and burst the squishier adds down first with a big [=AoE=] attack, only to then be instantly deleted when all eight of them start [[AttackReflector reflecting all of the damage dealt to them]] [[HoistByHisOwnPetard back at the attackers]], making it so that high-DPS players will be the bane of their own existence, on top of the boss leaping on them. Their combined damage can one-shot most players, even unprepared tanks, and will make short work of those who survived, making this boss an absolute chore to beat unless you know what to do. Ironically enough, Ri'Atahrashi himself is almost trivial to fight alone, [[MightyGlacier as he's slow and all of his attacks have very visible telegraphs to them]], which should clue you into the fact that to beat this boss, you should ignore all of the adds and focus your damage on him and ''only'' him. As soon as Ri'Atahrashi dies, all of his Elementalist students will despawn immediately. [[GuideDangIt Naturally, the game is shockingly bad at telling you about this]].
126	** Orryn Blackmarrow and Thurvokun are considered one of the hardest dungeon end bosses in the game, even on normal, and for good reason, as its one of the most mechanics-heavy fights in the game outside of Trials with ''very'' little room for error at any time. Thovukun itself is always surrounded by a poisonous aura that drains your health in seconds and can ''grow'' in radius, and as the fight goes on, Orryn will begin activating summoning crystals that will summon skeleton knights that just ''love'' to pin you in place. If the crystals aren't destroyed fast enough, they will summon a special Bone Collusus that possesses a unique OneHitKill attack that they can and will use liberally. Finally, the final phase involves Orryn summoning waves of ghosts that kill instantly on contact, and the sole area of the arena that's safe from them is ''very'' small and not always obvious with where it spawns.
127	** With the release of ''Blackwood'' and the Rockgrove trial, Flame Herald Bahsei, especially with hard mode on. Granted, every boss in that trial can be a handful with or without hard mode, but Bahsei racks this up to eleven with her undodgeable and uncleansable Death's Touch status effect, which she liberally applies to the tank holding aggro on her that deals upwards of ''27,000'' damage per second that scales with your max health, meaning that {{Stone Wall}}s will melt extremely quickly even with healers spamming their abilities like there's no tomorrow. The off tank doesn't get it any better in that fight either, as the Flesh Abomination adds that spawn also apply a nasty bleed on hit that does just as much damage over time to them as Bahsei does to the main tank. It's the one fight in the game where the oft-maligned vampirism [[SituationalSword becomes a massive crutch]], as the skill Blood Mist is absolutely vital for the tanks to survive such an onslaught of damage over time ticks, in an already high damage environment. The thing that annoys many endgame players the most about this fight though was that it was tweaked to become as hard as it is today, as the public test version of Rockgrove used to let you roll dodge away from Bahsei and her Abominations to avoid these [=DoTs=]. Such is the busted damage output of this boss encounter that the developers had to dial back a lot of numbers significantly with the release of Deadlands and Update 32, so that the typical raid group can stand a chance to beat it without having to resort to gimmicks like vampirism to get by.
128	** One of the ''Blackwood'' group bosses, Warchief Zathmoz, is definitely this. Not only does he start the fight with a band of minions and two EliteMook durzogs that can qualify as minibosses on their own, most of his attacks hit very hard and those that do ''don't even have a proper telegraph'' for you to react to, namely his lightning strikes that can OneHitKill most non-tank players if they aren't blocking which, due to the aforementioned lack of telegraph, will happen very often. While his trash minions can be killed relatively easily and the durzogs can be distracted by popping open one of the meat barrels around the arena, Zathmoz himself doesn't have any real "mechanics" beyond spamming negate spheres, and the fight boils down to players just throwing themselves at him until he dies or they give up from the unreasonably hard-hitting lightning strikes doing {{Total Party Kill}}s in an instant. That is not to say he ''can't'' be soloed, but you are ThatOnePlayer if you've managed to do that without fuss.
129	** Also from ''Blackwood'', Gloom-Tooth in the Library of Zenithar is one of the very few Public Dungeon bosses you really need to have a group to beat if you're underleveled, or if your solo DPS isn't very great, due to his incredibly high damage output and ''insane'' health regeneration that no other boss in the game (not even other trolls!) has. While he ''can'' be soloed if you can overwhelm his healing, having the damage output to counteract it basically makes you ThatOnePlayer.
130	** Vro-Kuul-Sha in Apocrypha. It hits like a truck normally, summons multiple Lurkers that also hit hard, and, on top of all that, has a Ground Quake attack like other Lurkers. The key difference here is that the areas affected by Ground Quake are large, with only enough leeway for the player to barely get out of said area, it has ridiculous damage if one gets caught, and Vro-Kuul-Sha loves overlapping damaging areas such that a player cannot reasonably escape before dying horribly. It is still beatable, naturally, but it either [[LuckBasedMission requires a hell of a lot of luck]] or a small army of players.
131	** Quite a few bosses were translated well into Infinite Archive. Others... not so much.
132	*** The most infamous example is Zhaj'hassa the Forgotten, originally from Maw of Lorkhaj. His curse mechanic works as expected, but with only two players in the mix, he ends up guaranteeing both players have to run to the edge of the platform to purge it. The real kicker, however, is his Void Explosion mechanic. For whatever reason, the transition to Endless Archive made this part of his fight a real crapshoot. Either the pillars don't show up and the players wipe, the pillars ''do'' show up, but don't protect the players for some reason, or a player ends up not behind a pillar, and somehow survives. It's telling that the best advice you might get for running into him is running a build that can nuke him before he starts Void Explosion.
133	*** Ghemvas the Harbinger, while far from a cakewalk in his "native" Blackwood, gets infuriating to fight in the Archive. To start with, his basic attacks deal heavy damage by themselves, but also leave a damaging bleed that can't be purged, a combo that can kill a DPS in seconds. If one can get past that, he eventually hides behind a shield while 4 portals to the Deadlands have to be destroyed, all the while he shoots devastating pulses from safety.
134	*** Lady Belain becomes this for one simple reason: Compared to the arena where you fought her as the FinalBoss of ''Markarth'', her arena in the Archive is much smaller and has ''zero'' cover, meaning that its much harder to avoid her cardinal-direction blood blast attacks in the second phase. And these attacks give you a nasty [=DoT=] proc that can kill you in seconds if you're not careful.
135	** Infinite Archive specific;
136	*** Tho'at Replicanum herself can become frustrating starting from ''Arc 2''. She's annoying on Arc 1, with her basic attacks leaving damaging spikes that linger and her Shards that can fire orbs that shred your health if not dealt with quickly, but manageable. Arc 2, however, she expands the arena, making the small Shards more of an issue, but she also summons larger shards with equivalent health that add more headaches to keep track of, with Arc 4-onward Tho'at pulling out a '''Dragon'''!
137	*** The Marauders in general. Starting in Arc 2, they can randomly intrude on any Stage (barring a boss Stage, thank the Eight!), literally appearing out of nowhere, instantly aggroing on you, and then bringing attacks that can shred you to ribbons. The worst of them is Marauder Gothmau, whose attacks hit like a freight train, and even ''dedicated tanks'' get torn apart by him in later Arcs. Infinite Archive Ruinachs are just built differently, it seems.
138	* ThatOneLevel:
139	** Veteran Maelstrom Arena. It is a solo-challenge, and it is an eight arena-long marathon where you are up against enemies that hit like a truck and deal a lot of damage. At launch, you could only resurrect 500 times, which sounds like it is plenty... until you find yourself dying every single round. To be fair, this is meant to be the ultimate test of a player's ability, and if you happen to get the title of "[[BraggingRightsReward The Flawless Conqueror]]" for clearing it without dying ''once'', congratulations, you are officially ThatOnePlayer.
140	** Then there's Vateshran Hollows, Maelstrom Arena's counterpart introduced in the ''Markarth'' DLC.
141	*** In general, the Hollows is a massive step up in difficulty from the relatively simple Maelstrom. Enemies, even the most basic ones, have ''much'' more health and hit a ''lot'' harder, powerup buffs are much less common, and the boss fights are much more mechanics-heavy, to the point where a single mistake at any point can lead to an instant wipe.
142	*** While it's not nearly as time-consuming as Maelstrom if you're skilled due to each section being an uninterrupted sequence that doesn't force you to wait for the next waves to continue, it is much more mechanic-intensive and making mistakes will more often than not result in you dying, on ''normal''. As a result, it is much more dependent on experience and your own finesse as a player to go through it without dying, whereas Maelstrom mostly just requires personal shielding and some self heal.
143	*** The learning curve of Vateshran's many bosses is steep due to there being little room for error, and the window for interrupts and exploits is brief, on top of everything hitting like a truck right from the get-go, which only become amped up as you clear the side wings of the arena. By the time you've reached the FinalBoss, the standard mob alone can do you in if you don't pay attention.
144	*** Speaking of the final boss, Maebroogha the Void Lich, just beating her alone probably requires its own combination of luck and skill due to the sheer amount of adds present at any time. While the boss herself is relatively harmless if you can stay out of her area-of-effect attacks, all of her minions hit hard enough that being wailed on by more than two at once will most likely kill you. Worse still is that Maebroogha effectively has four health bars, and the first three times you deplete her HP meter, you will have to contend with a miniboss with its own mechanic that will then become a permanent fixture in the later stages. This is on top of the new adds that show up with each miniboss, and the longer the fight goes on, the more of them spawn in, so being chased around by three to four incredibly strong void colossi while being pelted with arrows and fire balls at the same time is a common occurrence during the final leg of the battle. As such, Spirit Slayer is a much more coveted title than Flawless Conqueror, and having it ''and'' a high enough score to make the leaderboards is the mark of ThatOnePlayer.
145	* ThatOneSidequest:
146	** The "Hidden Harvest" quest in ''Orsinium'' requires you to destroy a Briarheart Tree, which sounds easy in theory but it's continuously healed by Briarheart Tree Tenders, which respawn as soon as you kill them. Add in being constantly immobilized and throw in a heaping helping of other enemies and you've got a recipe for an unbeatable quest.
147	** "Plucking the Crow", a new daily added in the Witches Festival from 2021 on. First, you're tasked with collecting feathers from Plunder Skulls, each skull dropping 5-8 feathers each. Tedious, but doable. Then, you're tasked with fighting the Crowborne Horror, which is basically a Harrowstorm Shrike with beefed up health, invincibility phases, and add spawns that can quickly become an unbearable flood, so the game itself recommends bringing a group. To make things worse, the only reward you got after that experience during the first year was 3 ordinary Plunder Skulls. '''That's it.''' No outfit style, no hat, not even a title, '''[[DudeWheresMyReward nothing]]''', but 3 Plunder Skulls you could've just gotten from public dungeons. Later years gave it its own unique type of plunder skull, making it at least worth a go. Funnily enough, 2023 saw the Crowborne Horror nerfed (almost certainly by accident) due to it apparently forgetting how to attack after a certain health threshold.
148	** Dueling Tributes, the second of the Tales of Tribute dailies, has an excruciating process. One would have to play Tribute against other players by matchmaking, which can eat up time by itself, and the quest only progresses by wins. Depending on the player one gets matched with, the game can take an agonizing amount of time by people who draw out the game and end up driving their opponent to concede (which causes its own frustration, see ScrappyMechanic). As a result, the quest, depending on luck (or lack thereof), can take ''hours'' to win the three games needed for the Master's Purse.
149	* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The fact that the game is an MMO instead of a main-series single player game was the biggest criticism amongst its fans. This is, however, a case of [[{{Misblamed}} Misblaming]], as it is being made by a different studio rather than Bethesda Game Studios, and therefore does not affect the release of the main-series single-player games.
150	* UnintentionallySympathetic:
151	** One side-quest in ''Summerset'' has you stopping a Bosmer from growing more plants he brought from his homeland to prove a point to the Altmer gardener, who reflects high elf philosophy that everything must be in control and planned, rather than grow naturally. The quest has you feel that the Bosmer is in the right by having more natural growth and the Altmer being a bit of a jerk, but the Altmer who gave you the quest has every right to act the way he acted and tell you to destroy all the plants, since not only did he do it in his property, but the plants have nearly caused the ecosystem in the area, possibly the entire island, to collapse because it is becoming invasive. Any environmental scientist can tell you that bringing an outside species of plants and animals can cause havoc to the local flora and fauna.
152	** Prince Naemon, Queen Ayrenn's younger brother. The one meant to inherit the throne suddenly runs away with no warning, forcing Prince Naemon to learn everything there is to learn about ruling in less time that Ayrenn had. When he enjoys it and prepares to take the throne after their father passes, Ayrenn suddenly returns and demands to inherit the throne like originally intended, despite being gone for a long time. While he is jealous and feels he deserves the throne more than her, and his wife is [[spoiler: the leader of a nationalist and racist organization]], one can still feel that he was in an unfair situation. Ayrenn seems to think so, as she [[spoiler:asks those present to his descent into madness to tell the public he died a hero, rather than a monster who tried to usurp her.]]
153	* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic:
154	** Shalidor. The entire Mages Guild questline can be summed up as him being on a maddeningly-obsessive quest to obtain four supposedly mythical tomes from Sheogorath (or rather, him having ''you'' be on this quest on his behalf), in order to free the long-lost sanctuary of Eyevea from the Shivering Isles, which he himself bargained away for a book filled with nonsense. While he does eventually succeed, his zeal in doing so further paints the picture of him as a man with an extreme obsession with hoarding any and all knowledge (which did lead to his wife Ulfsild leaving him in the past), and being more concerned with a supposed rivalry with Sheogorath, who's a known {{Troll}}, rather than the safety of his guild members, since poor Valaste may end up irreversibly insane from translating the tomes you've found and whisked away to the Isles at the end of the questline.
155	** Baron Montclair, the ArcVillain of the Rivenspire episode. While the gist of his story can be surmised as a WellIntentionedExtremist being driven mad with grief by his wife's illness and death, with blame being pinned on Verandis Ravenwatch for being the one who struck her down, the actual in-game story is a lot more complicated. For starters, Montclair hadn't the foggiest idea of how to cure his wife in the first place, willfully ignoring her desire to die naturally and be free of her physical torment. To this end, he employed the services of the Argonian necromancer Reezal-jul, who suggested a very sketchy plan to wield the power of the Doomcrag, a corrupted Ayleid artifact whose true powers are known only to him, which Ravenwatch repeatedly advised against doing. Instead of trusting his long-time friend Ravenwatch, Montclair instead derided him as an honorless coward, and after the activation ritual predictably went wrong, heaped all blame onto him for the heinous act of {{Mercy Kill}}ing his wife, whom he had transformed into a bloodfiend against her will. This gets worse after the liberation of Northpoint, where his daughter Lleraya is slain by the Vestige. MoralMyopia doesn't quite cut it, and Montclair [[NeverMyFault never seemed to grasp the notion]] that everything that's happened was the result of ''his'' idea to begin with, making it ''extremely'' hard to sympathize with him in any capacity. That he went out of his way to antagonize Ravenwatch, who is an EnsembleDarkhorse, didn't help his case either.
156	* UnpopularPopularCharacter: In-universe, Abnur Tharn is mostly loathed at worst and tolerated at best due to being a {{Jerkass}} InsufferableGenius with a touch of ChronicBackstabbingDisorder... however, his hilarious dialogue, character development (especially throughout some of the [=DLC=]s) and Creator/AlfredMolina's delightful performance have made him very popular with fans.

Context YMMV / TheElderScrollsOnline