Summary
- DLCs like Hearthfire, Dawnguard, and Tribunal transformed gameplay in Skyrim and Morrowind.
- Skyrim's expansions added domesticity, vampires, a new city, and cosmic horror.
- Morrowind and Oblivion's DLCs expanded lore, introduced werewolves, a vampire hunt, and a realm of madness.
The Elder Scrolls series has never been shy about going big. Big worlds, big lore drops, big cheese wheels. But where the series truly shines is in its DLC. These content expansions don’t just pad the runtime, but rewrite and revamp how players engage with Tamriel.
Whether it's moving into a house the player built with their bare hands or descending into the mind of a cheese-loving Daedric Prince, these DLCs often feel like whole new games tucked inside the ones we already love. Some pushed technical boundaries. Others expanded lore in ways the base game never dared to. All of them gave players something new and exciting.
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6 Skyrim: Hearthfire
A Simple House...With A Bandit Raid Every Morning
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition
- Released
- October 28, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
There’s something oddly charming about watching a Dragonborn — someone who can literally scream a man off a cliff — spend hours hammering nails and collecting clay. Hearthfire wasn’t the flashiest DLC, but it added a gentle domestic layer to a game best known for decapitations and dragon slaying. With this add-on, players could purchase plots of land in Falkreath, Hjaalmarch, and The Pale, and design a home from the ground up. Not just choose a house — design it. Wings could be customized into greenhouses, enchanting towers, trophy rooms, and more depending on how nerdy the player wanted to get.
Adoption also entered the picture here. Two kids could be brought home, assuming players childproofed their death fortress with some beds and a chest of toys. The whole thing felt like Skyrim decided to take a breather and let players live a post-retirement life, even if that life involved killing giants before breakfast because they wandered onto the property.
The DLC wasn't perfect. The steward AI had a death wish and bandits apparently thought homemade soup and goat cheese were worth dying for. But Hearthfire gave the world of Skyrim something no other DLC did: a sense of permanence.
5 Skyrim: Dawnguard
The Vampire DLC That Made Every Fort a Buffet Table
Dawnguard let players embrace their inner Dracula or go full Van Helsing. Either way, someone was getting disintegrated. This expansion was Skyrim’s first major DLC, and immediately justified its existence by finally making vampires more than annoying NPCs in caves. Join the ancient vampire clan of Volkihar, and players unlock the ability to turn into a grotesque flying bat-creature with teleportation powers. Side with the Dawnguard, and they get to build a faction from the ashes and wield weapons specifically crafted to take vampires down.
The DLC introduced Serana, arguably the most beloved character in the series, with actual backstory, dialogue depth, and sass. She wasn’t just another follower — she had stakes in the plot, deep ties to Molag Bal’s twisted mythology, and she wasn’t afraid to call out the player’s decisions. The Soul Cairn, an eerie dimension filled with lost souls, undead dragons, and giant soul gems, was another standout. It was a rare moment where Skyrim leaned fully into cosmic horror.
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Though some parts of the DLC felt padded with radiant quests and filler dungeons, Dawnguard delivered a lore-rich, mechanically fresh storyline. It made vampires scary again — or made being one extremely fun, depending on the Dragonborn's moral compass.
4 Morrowind: Tribunal
A Capital City That Wasn't Falling Apart
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
- Released
- May 1, 2002
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen due to Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Bethesda Game Studios
- Genre(s)
- RPG
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox (Original)
Before Oblivion streamlined cities and Skyrim gave players smaller hubs, Tribunal introduced Mournhold: a segmented, vertical, beautifully rendered capital city that felt alive in a way few places in Morrowind did. Unlike the mushroom towers and ash storms in Vvardenfell, this city was clean, filled with politics, clockwork soldiers, and god-tier drama. Players were no longer the outsider in a strange land, but a force tangled in a divine conspiracy featuring Almalexia, one of the Tribunal gods.
The writing was sharper here, less abstract than the base game and more steeped in moral ambiguity. Almalexia wasn't a cartoon villain. She was layered, dangerous, and tragic, especially as she descended into paranoia. It also introduced the Fabricants, biomechanical monsters that looked like they escaped from Numenera and dropped into Tamriel. And they fit perfectly.
Players got to dive deep into the politics of the Temple and were rewarded with a clearer picture of how the Tribunal maintained power — through manipulation, religious authority, and deadly secrets. It may not have had open-world sprawl, but Tribunal doubled down on narrative density, offering structured, urban storytelling.
3 Morrowind: Bloodmoon
Where The Northern Lights Meet Werewolves And Island Survival
Before Skyrim was even a whisper in Todd Howard’s mind, Bloodmoon gave players the chance to explore icy wilderness, build their own colony, and turn into a werewolf. Solstheim was a brutal, snowy frontier filled with frost trolls, Nordic ruins, and Stalhrim — an ice-like material that would later become a staple in Skyrim. What set Bloodmoon apart wasn’t just its new setting, but how dynamic it felt. Raven Rock, a barely-there mining settlement at the start of the DLC, could be developed into a bustling colony. Choices actually changed the world. And then, of course, there was Hircine’s Hunt.
At a time when Daedric Princes were mostly associated with weird fetch quests, Bloodmoon gave players a full-on werewolf survival arc, leading to a deadly game hosted by the Daedric Lord of the Hunt himself. Becoming a werewolf wasn’t just a throwaway gimmick — it transformed how players moved, fought, and survived. It came with drawbacks, too. Transforming meant losing access to gear and, if caught mid-maul in town, losing any chance at a normal life.
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Bloodmoon didn’t just expand Morrowind geographically; it expanded its tone. It was colder, more primal, and filled with long silences broken only by blizzards and the occasional scream in the woods.
2 Skyrim: Dragonborn
Players Returned To Morrowind, And Had No Idea What Hit Them
Everything about Dragonborn screamed nostalgia — then immediately slapped it out of players with tentacles. Set on the island of Solstheim, the same icy outpost from Bloodmoon, this DLC brought Skyrim full circle. But instead of leaning on familiarity, it introduced Miraak, the first Dragonborn, who had no problem brainwashing entire villages and building Lovecraftian towers with the help of Hermaeus Mora.
This was the DLC where players got to explore Apocrypha, a plane of existence made of writhing books, green slime, and floating squid-robots. It was surreal, creepy, and unlike anything Skyrim had done before. Learning the Black Books gave players new shouts and powers, often in exchange for a trip through something that felt more like Silent Hill than The Elder Scrolls. Dragon riding was also introduced here, though calling it “riding” might be generous. It was more like awkwardly hovering while hoping the AI would figure out what to attack. Still, having the ability was cool enough.
What made Dragonborn essential wasn’t just the new content; it was the way it rewrote what players thought they knew about their powers. Suddenly, being Dragonborn wasn’t unique anymore. There were deeper, darker roots to it all, and Hermaeus Mora was whispering in the background.
1 Oblivion: Shivering Isles
Madness Never Looked So Stylish
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Released
- March 20, 2006
WHERE TO PLAY
It started with a door in the middle of Niben Bay. Not a quest marker. Not a main story push. Just… a door. Open it, and players are whisked away to the domain of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness, in what is still considered one of the boldest expansions in RPG history. Shivering Isles wasn’t just new content; it was a new game within a game.
Split between the unsettling perfection of Mania and the grotesque decay of Dementia, the Isles were a visual and tonal masterpiece. Every NPC was slightly (or extremely) unhinged, and every quest twisted expectations. A paranoid man who wanted players to kill everyone in town before they killed him. A museum of oddities. A festival of forced suicide. It was dark humor served on a silver platter with eyeballs for garnish.
The main quest slowly transforms the player into the new Sheogorath, in a rare example of an RPG DLC completely rewriting the protagonist’s identity. The transformation wasn’t just cosmetic either. It shifted how the world reacted to the player, cementing them as a literal god of chaos by the time the credits rolled. No other Elder Scrolls DLC has dared to go this far, this weird, or this wonderfully mad.