Although it is a very long process to find and complete the Oblivion Portal event in Elder Scrolls Online. However, if you’re lucky, you’ll have a chance to find some decent loot from these portals.

What Are Oblivion Portals?

Oblivion Portals are the world events associated with Blackwood and the Deadlands.

In order to access them, you have to find one of these iconic portals somewhere in the Overland. They spawn in a set number of locations, but active portals are not indicated on your map like all other world events. So, good luck finding one of them.

Upon loading into the events through a portal or reporting to a friend that is already in the instance, players have the choice of defeating loads of ads or running past them like an absolute coward all the way to the final encounter. The chest that appears after the final fight can reward players with gear, leads, furnishing plans, and most importantly, the Annihilarch’s Chosen Motif.

Do keep in mind that this Motif only drops from the Deadlands portals, not the Blackwood ones. This Motif sells for a fair amount and rightly so, it’s kind of a pain in the ass to find one of these hecks and portals. And then, you have to defeat a bunch of bozos to even make it to the final encounter and then once there, you may not even get a Motif. They aren’t guaranteed drops after all.

The other day, I parked my character at this final spot here for something like three hours. Every time the final encounter was active, I would tab back to dunk on the final boss and then loot the reward chest. Guess how many Annihilarch’s Chosen Motifs I got? The answer is Zero!

But at least I was basically AFK farming, and I did get some expensive Hexo’s Ward gear to boot. But if I wasn’t AFK and was instead actively trying to farm these portals for valuable items, I would have done something slightly different, something that I don’t think a lot of players are even aware of.

Also Read: 10 Essential Insights For Every Elder Scrolls Online Novice Player In 2023

The Secret Encounter

After you defeat the Ash Titan encounter on your way to the final area of the instance, you’ll gain access to the Havocrel’s Tower. You’ll notice that there are four or five fire Behemoth standing guards at different points of the room. While these lads look like they’re just simply minding their business, they are actually the key to accessing a secret encounter.

If you quickly run past one, it will light up red with flames. Quickly run past all four of them and you will awaken them from their Slumber and they’ll begin to attack you. Kill all four of them and the Ruinach Count of Cataclysms will spawn.

Clap his cheeks in order to access another reward chest that you can then go ahead and loot for more potential goodies. Thus, you can run between this area and the final encounter to open up more chests and get more drops from your time spent in an Oblivion Portal. Trigger warning for the console players in the audience, I use an add-on called Item Cooldown Tracker to help me track which Motifs I’m on cooldown for.

Do recall that some motifs drop on cooldown. Thus, when you’re on that cooldown for a specific Motif, your chances of receiving another one of that same Motif are greatly throttled. Whenever I pick up one of these Annihilarch’s Chosen Motifs, my add-on pops up to inform me in the chat that I’m now placed on cooldown for them.

So, if I decide to farm some Daedra for this Motif, I typically do so until I receive one, and then I call it for the day to do something else. Rather than continue to farm with significantly reduced Motif drop chances, I will say I have yet to receive an Annihilarch’s Chosen Motif from this secret chest.

Despite this, I still like to hit this secret encounter for an additional chance at receiving expensive Hexo’s Ward items, like Divines gear or Lightning Staves. And I can sell duplicate or unwanted loot for tons of ESO Gold. Also, the encounter goes by much faster than the final boss fight.