Coming Back Guide needed - Its too hard to come back to the game!

Nolphi

Hi All, my wife and I left the game about 10 months ago but kept our paid accounts alive. So we have a lot of crowns we can spend, huray! We just downloaded the 25GB update (!) and just signed in. Overall we just feel overwhelmed by the changes to the game and all the things we no longer understand. We will start researching but it would really help if people could point us in the right direction beyond just advising us to read through 100-pages of old patch notes to understand what happened. Good up to date links on character builds would also be helpful as most of the googles we do result in outdated character tips for previous versions of the game.

For the developers: If you want to encourage more people like us to make the come-back then it would really help if you made a 'Coming Back' to ESO guide of sorts. Its something you could even send out to your old player base in an attempt to entice them to come back. It could just be a short bullet list of the patches and the major new game elements introduced in each patch with links to more detailed guides on how those new elements work. Leave out anything that is minor and just focus on the stuff they need to know to respec their characters and get back into actually playing the game as soon as possible! This would enable people like myself to just look up the date I left the game and then read up on what happened. Right now it just feels like way too much effort to make a come-back. We need to completely respec our characters, learn about the champion system, justice system and all the other stuff. All our guild mates are gone and we also have no idea how to just get back to creating fun groups.

Summary: you dont want to force old players to do 10 hours of research and work before they can get back into things again!

Vegaroth

check on websites for information (like deltieasgaming, dungeoncrawlernetwork...) they usually have builds, game guides etc.
That will help to get idea of what to do, expect or what is going on. Anyway with Imperial City lots of mechanics, skills and other things are going to change so be better prepare for that .

Prof_Bawbag

Whilst probably not the best, I found deltias gaming to be the most noob (in your case a returning player) friendly and straight forward site to use. They explain everything clearly, in simple terms and include any in-game changes within the build description rather than creating a separate page.

It's the site I used as I initially found the likes of Tamriel foundry aimed more towards specific end game gear and in-game jargon. It's a bit overwhelming for someone who initially doesn't know their Crystal shards from their Sky Shards.

Frawr

Just start playing. You will pick it up

Olivierko

If you've been gone for ten months I can summarize some of the changes that have been made:

- The possibility to morph certain class abilities to cost stamina
Each class has been given 2-3 morphs which now will cost stamina and scale of your maximum stamina, weapon damage and weapon critical chance.

- Ultimates now scales based on your highest stats
If your stamina pool is higher than your magicka pool; the ultimate damage will be scaled by your maximum stamina and weapon damage.

- Ultimate regeneration has changed
You will no longer be able to use your ultimates as frequently as you have been before, using light and heavy attacks will start restoring your ultimates at a slow rate, healing a player who has light attacked will also start the restore process.

- Daily undaunted pledges
You are eligible to pick up two daily undaunted quests (with some level restrictions), these quests will challenge you to complete a dungeon with a optional step to receive a completion bonus, each veteran dungeon has a unique headpiece set item that can drop, the sets contain of two items per set, head pieces can be obtained by killing the last boss in a veteran dungeon, the shoulder piece can be obtained by completing the veteran undaunted pledge, given that you've completed the optional step and are lucky enough to receive the shoulders.

- New dungeons and trials
Veteran mode for the dungeon City of Ash and Crypt of Hearts has been added, a new 4-man trial named Dragonstar Arena has been added to the zone Craglorn.

- A new character progression system
The Champion System is a completely new progression system that will allow you to progress your characters even further, this system will become available to you first when you reach veteran rank 1 on any of your characters, once you do, you'll be able to gain Champion System points on any of your characters that are veteran rank 1 or higher. The points themselves are account bound, meaning you will be able to spend the points on all of your characters, regardless of their level.

- Justice system first phase
A initial phase of the justice system has been published allowing us to pickpocket certain civilian npcs, murder them and break into their homes. Committing a crime might give you a bounty depending on whether or not there was any witness. Guards will try to collect any bounty that you might have on your head, beware, depending on your status they might attack you and you don't stand a chance against a guard considering that they are immortal at this time.


These are just some of the changes that comes to my mind when thinking back on how the state of the game was 10 months ago, there's a lot more, and my advice is to no be afraid of learning it the slow way, don't get overwhelmed by the fact that it might feel or seem like a whole new game, a lot of things has improved whilst there still is some features that are missing and the dream of zero bugs is still alive.

As already ad advised by others; reading official forums, tamriel foundry or player written blogs such as deltiasgaming will help you get up to speed.

Pappa

Apart from the Justice system, I didn't realise it had changed so much, guess you don't notice the changes if you play all the time