I wasn't sure if there were styles that you could find other than the races. I know that there are certain stations that allow a special sets to be crafted but not alternate styles. I added an "all" option for the unknown.

Granted, I play with the speed of a dieing sloth. Still, in ~70hrs of beta, I never once had one in any of my character's inventory. I read early reports of claims of having them all as they would farm the last room of the Cold Harbor tutorial and reload. This last beta, I tried just that and found them not instanced to the player and completely empty. I'm afraid that reloading at this point wasn't going to reveal any of the already illusive mystery books.

Starting a new character in the January to test an alt concept, I was one of the fortunate that happened to try and log in early. At 1PM, I found myself alone and all of the containers were full. Sadly, this was before the revelation of utilizing a reload at that point.

Others, talk about finding them in random chests, barrels and crates, throughout the game world.

If you have found any, please share how you came about the book(s).

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I found 1 in the last room of Cold Harbor in my first beta experience a few weeks ago. I played an Argonian, and dropped the Redguard design.

I found that they were common in the coldharbour tutorial zone containers, so with I made alts to run through the zone, collect books and then store in the bank for my main. doing this for 2 betas I got all 9 default styles and came to the conclusion that the other 5 were not available in the beta version I played. I did report this as I hope it doesn't happen come launch.

from what I gathered they are very rare drops from random containers and likely mobs

They're random drops, so random is random. I think the reason more people found them in Coldharbour is that if you went back to create a character after the first day, no one else was there (seriously, it was spooky). And there are a ton of containers in Coldharbour. If you're like me (psychologically disturbed), you went through every room and opened every container. Which greatly increases the chance of you finding a fun random drop. Like style books.

i found the one for Dunmer, so i could craft my weapons in dunmer style. I was around lvl 16 and i found in in a barrel.

I found 3, and a friend sent me a couple they had found for styles they already knew.

I got one in cold harbour (altmer style). Haven't seen any since.

7-9, but only like 1 outside of Coldharbour. Pretty sure it has to do with a combination of number of containers and level lists. Meaning, there is naturally a higher chance to drop the books since they can't drop much else.

If it isn't changed, I may be in Coldharbour for a while My Argonian will use Argonian style, because I like it, but my Dunmer... I don't really care for the Dunmer styles. They could have been done so much better. Anything from Daggerfall would work.

That's an interesting concept. I can see why it would be rather vacant. However, if remains this way, it will obviously exploited by everyone. Like many others, I have always been a loot monger. Out of the sheer nature of gaming habit, I diligently make the effort to explore every container available.

it wasn't that, the chests in coldharbour (except for the gear ones) were all instanced to your character.

Are you sure of that? I didn't see any containers that others couldn't open, including chests. And I know that all the containers I came across on the first day of beta were empty. When I went again the next day, they were all full of goodies.

All the standard racial books with a single character from Cold Harbour by using a reported exploit.

Not using the exploit:

1 character found 1 style in Cold Harbour, 1 style in a treasurechest on Stross Mkai

2 character founds 2 styles in Cold Harbour

1 character found 1 style in a treasure chest on Bethnik, nothing in Cold Harbour as all the containers there were empty. That was before I knew about the exploit.

The chests in Cold harbour are supposed to be instanced, but there was something iffy going on, like the instances were being reused.

Yeah, I imagine it will be changed though. Because in addition to those books you can also get a few hundred lockpicks. I mean nothing game-breaking, but at the same time I doubt it was their original intention for you to leave the tutorial with all the crafting books, more lockpicks than you will ever need, and a ton of food/recipes.

Now se... that is where I get lost. I know that is the report, but it is not what I experienced. I have taken the character I made in January and two more in the last beta. Only my first character in the last test was able to search every container. Both the January character and the last one were not fortunate at all as all of the containers were empty.

Yeah, I would guess that too.

Also, I forgot to mention that I only found one style book in Coldharbour. On that same character, I found two other style books in the world from random containers/chests.

I only ever found one. It makes me sad. I want to use any style I want and if it is a random drop andd cold harbor is like it was, with all those delicious containers, I may do the run through until I get them all. I want to be able to mix-and-match as I please dang-nab-it!

Im wondering how some of you was able to find ANYTHING in ColdHarbour?

I checked like hundreds of urns and crates in there and they all was sooooooo empty,

In total i found 3 styles, 2 argonians and much later an orc style.

I was playing as argonian (also its woth to note that their racial style is hillarious -aztec culture inspired, and even heavy armors are visualy based on leather -.-' )

What a relief when i switch to orc Full Plate

I found pretty much 1 book per char (3 total), all of them in Cold Harbour iirc.

During my 1st beta test the CH chests were filled, during my second test they were empty the 1st day or so but filled again when i made a new char.

Again, that was because you were running with other people in the zone. When I came back, I was alone, and every container was full again.

Not all instances of Cold Harbour were empty

My most annoyed find was finding Breton with a Breton and not finding any other styles

the emptiness of chests has to do with class, oddly enough. I made mutiple characters on different classes and the only one I found had chests that weren't empty was the nightblade class. and not once did I find players beating me to chests on there.

at least this was how it was 2 betas ago.

Found 2 outside Cold Harbour from last 2 betas. I still think every chest urn barrel crate etc should be character bound even though there are players running all over. So to me I should loot every container once and move on since I think they shouldn't replenish.

That has to be absolute chance coincident. I cannot accept that containers are instanced to classes.

it was likely changed, I haven't made any farming alts that weren't nightblades afterwards so I don't know. but when I did the experiment I made 5 of each class. and while all the other classes found empty containers every time, nightblade found full ones all the time.

my only explanation for finding all the containers empty is a bug, because I have run into that in the latest beta, logging out then back in usually fixed it for me. but what I know is that it is NOT because other people emptied them first. because thats impossible.

I didn't find any sadly. I didn't look around Cold Harbour.