Glossary

Terms are listed alphabetically. A term in bold inside a definition has its own entry.

§A to F

Affix. A number on a Magic, Rare or Legendary piece, such as +10% damage or +5 Agility. A Magic piece rolls one or two, a Rare three or four. See Item affixes.

Aspect. The element of an Oblivion Gate Warden’s blows (fire, frost, shock or poison), one per gate. See Oblivion Gate marks.

Boss. For loot, a Daedra, or any foe of level 18 or more. It rolls on the full loot ladder with a 2.5 times multiplier, where a plain foe uses a lower ladder. See Item rarity.

Eligible piece. A weapon (not ammunition), a piece of armour or jewellery, or a garment: the kinds of item that can roll Magic, Rare or Legendary.

Expertise In. A class advantage that adds to hit chance and damage with one kind of weapon, worked out from your attributes. See Combat basics.

Family. The group of foes and dungeons a Legendary is found among: undead, Daedra, dragon, beast, orc and giant, spell-casting, rogue, or warrior. A source of the right family weighs the record five to one against the others that fit the same piece.

Finder. Something that makes a Legendary likelier: the Foxglove piece, or a long dry spell. They multiply.

§L to R

Legendary. The second rung from the top of the loot ladder: a named piece with fixed bonuses, an enchantment and a special power. See Legendary items.

Loot table. The list of chances a foe or a treasure pile rolls on: gold, weapons, armour, ingredients and so on. After each success the game rolls again at half the chance. See Loot tables.

Luck multiplier. Your Luck moves every loot threshold by 1% for each point over 50, from half at Luck 0 to half again at Luck 100.

Plain foe. An ordinary foe with no title that is not a boss. It uses a lower loot ladder and carries at most three items, gold included.

Quality. A shop’s rating from 1 to 20. It sets what the shop can stock and how it prices. See Shops and haggling.

Rarity (of an item). How hard a kind of item is to find on a shop shelf. A shop stocks it only if its quality is at least the rarity, and the chance falls as rarity rises. Not the same as the loot ladder’s Magic, Rare and Legendary.

§S to Z

Spawn share. How much of a place’s random spawns a foe takes at your level. Each place has a table of 20 foes, weakest first, and the game picks a band of slots near your level. See the farm finder.

Spell points. What a cast costs. Each effect is priced by what you ask of it, the whole spell is multiplied by its target, and the cost falls as your skill in the school rises, to a floor of 5. See the spell maker.

Tier. How rich a source of loot is. For a corpse it is the foe’s level; for a treasure pile it is the dungeon’s tier, from 3 (cemetery) to 18 (dragon’s den, volcanic caves).

Titled foe. A foe that carries a title in its name: an elite, a champion, a revenant or a named one. It uses the full ladder, not the plain-foe one.

Treasure pile. A heap of loot lying in a dungeon, as against what a foe carries. It rolls the dungeon’s own loot table at its tier, and 1.3 times as often as a plain corpse.

Trial. A rule that changes how an Oblivion Gate Warden fights; each gate has two. See the gate cycle.

Unleveled Loot. The default loot rule: drops do not grow with your level. Materials depend on your Luck and the kind of dungeon, and a corpse’s gold is divided by your level and multiplied by your Luck. See Loot and drops.

Wild Zone. The open area online where fights between players are allowed and loot is better. See PvP and the Wild Zone.