Welcome to The Tank Club: ESO Aetherian Archive Trial Guide for Tanks.

Aetherian Archive is a base game 12-person trial located in Craglorn. It was one of the first three trials that was introduced into The Elder Scrolls Online with the Craglorn update in May 2014. Originally this trial was scaled to Veteran Rank 12 and only had a normal and a hardmode but was later updated with the One Tamriel update in October 2016 to include a Veteran version and increased to CP160 difficulty.

This trial has 4 bosses and has a normal and veteran difficulty along with the option to activate a last boss hardmode, once activated you cannot turn it off.

This guide will focus on the Tank role and the mechanics and strategies for successfully completing this trial.

For more Tank advice please ask in the Tanking-Help channel on The Tank Club Discord

The Aetherian Archive trial is a very low damage trial, and is usually completed by just one Tank. The damage is so low in fact that you can play as a bulky Damage Dealer up until the last boss.

This is the perfect place to practice maintaining your buffs and debuffs while dealing with very minimal incoming damage.

The last boss poses the biggest challenge and it’s a fight where you’ll really learn about sustaining in a Trial environment. You’ll mostly be dealing with axes that spawn and these need to be kept on you throughout the fight without you getting stunned, so it can be a sustain challenge especially for new players.

• Boss 1: Lightning Storm Atronach: This boss will use a lightning storm attack that can deal a lot of damage. To avoid this attack, stand on one of the golden pads that will appear on the ground. All other mechanics can be simply ignored by a Tank, keep boss turned away from group and focus fully on debuffing and buffing.
• Boss 2: Foundation Stone Atronach: One of the few bosses in ESO where the group typically stand stacked on the Tank. When the boss slams the group, everyone stacks, when the boss curls up it throws rock at people and they need to be blocked. Adds will spawn in, taunt the melee adds but you don’t really need to do anything other than buff and debuff for the whole fight.
• Boss 4: Varlariel the Wispmother: This boss drops AoEs on the ground, you need to not stand still because the more you are hit by them the more damage to receive and this might kill you during the explosion mechanic. Turn boss away from the main group stack and once again focus on buffing and debuffing
• Last Boss: The Celestial Mage: The final boss is the only boss that poses any real challenge and this is most difficult on your sustain.
  • Your job is to keep taunt of the axes that spawn into the room by the boss and this can be done easily by taunting the boss, taunting each axe when it first appears, and then only maintain taunt on the boss will keep the axes on you.
  • You have to ensure you don’t get knocked down by the axe heavy attack, when you’re stunned the axes will retarget to someone else. When dealing with multiple axes it can be hard on sustain, using Immovable Potions and heavy attack while you have immovability active is a great way to deal with this.
  • Darkness AoE will cover a lot of the floor, don’t stand in it.
  • Watch out for the AoEs, if an add spawns and you’re stood in it, you’ll get knocked back whether you block or not and lose taunt of the axes.
  • Stand by the boss with the axes NOT on the rock, this is an ancient method which actually makes the trial harder and you can’t put and buffs or debuffs on the boss, and it’s better for sustain.
• Hardmode: This trial only has one hardmode and it’s the last boss. The only real difference is once you instigate combat Storm Atronachs start spawning. You need to stack these on the boss so they can die in cleave damage. The other thing is splashing AoEs now happen all over the arena and they need to be blocked.