New player: factions and quest lines

Neofit

Hi,

New player here, just got out of the tutorial. Long time MMO player, long time TES/FO fan, PvP hater.

I am trying to plan my time in ESO, not to "win the game" at maximum speed but to experience the most lands/quests/classes with the least overlap between alts. For example, if each alliance has its own piece of land, and there is one main quest line per alliance, I can see most of the PvE content by choosing three different alliance/classe combos, and all three will *mostly* play different questlines in different lands?

One of the things that put me off playing TESO before is that I had read about Veteran Ranks, and that in order to get the max of your toon (which is usually where the next expansion starts), one had to play all of the alliances lands and quests on each character, thus ruining the discovery for later alts, for whom these quests would be more appropriate story-wise. But apparently Veteran Ranks have been removed with DBH, although I have no idea what they have been replaced with, but I'd like to believe that the issue of having to do all of the questlines with the every toon is a thing of the past.

So please correct me where I am wrong. If I go
Altmeri Sorcerer
Daggerfall Nightblade
Ebonheart Dragonknight
will I have much overlap in terms of lands to see and quests to do?

According to forum names there is a "Main quest", but I suppose it means one MQ per faction, right?

Thanks.

Intelocalypse

You can do all three faction zones with one character, if you wish. Once you complete your "Main Quest" with a character, you will unlock what is called Cadwell's "Gold and Silver." What faction you chose to play will determine which opposing faction you move onto to experience their story line. I do not remember the order. Before the Veteran rank removals you more or less needed to do them with each character in order to level up to max veteran rank. However, with the release of all these DLC's and the removal of the Vet ranks, you don't really have to do them all with one character. There are plenty of things to do in order to gain Champion Points.

With that said, what I consider the "Main Quest" has nothing to do with faction. It is independent of the faction zones and it will be the same no matter what faction you choose. You do it once per character. Each faction's zones however do have their own story lines. Which again, if you wanted to, could do them all with one character.

Hope that helps.

rhapsodious

Intelocalypse wrote: »

What faction you chose to play will determine which opposing faction you move onto to experience their story line. I do not remember the order.

They rotate as such: DC -> AD -> EP

So a DC character will go DC -> AD -> EP, an AD character will go AD -> EP -> DC, and an EP character will go EP -> DC -> AD.

You can now access Gold and Silver at the same time, but the Silver zone will follow CP scaling of... I want to say CP10/40/70/110/140 whereas the entirety of the Gold zone will be CP160.

I'd recommend doing Gold and Silver on one character at least once, because in the DLCs you'll get the maximum amount of "hey, I recognize you!"'s. For example, the DB DLC is best enjoyed if you've completed both the AD and EP zones.

But yes, Veteran Ranks have been replaced with Champion Points. CP were already there but now they're the basis for leveling your character instead of an added bonus. For someone new, the easiest way to explain it is 10 CP = 1 old VR. So when you're looking at older guides, multiply the VR by 10 and you have a rough idea of what tier of content they're talking about.

Each zone has a story and each faction has a story that spans the five zone stories (i.e. the Ebonheart Pact storyline is a progression of the Stonefalls -> Deshaan -> Shadowfen -> Eastmarch -> Rift storylines) and then there is the "Main" Main Quest which is agnostic to faction and progression is tied to character level.

Neofit

Thanks for the replies.

I suppose I haven't explained this well enough, but I actually do want to play alts in order to experience different gameplay. 3 alliances/factions/lands seems good to play a different class in each of these. If this can be done without repeating the same quests with each of the 3 alts then it would be awesome. But if I understood the replies correctly, even with the Veteran Ranks gone I will still have to replay all the pre-expansion content thrice if I want 3 max level alts?

Also, I suppose that as in SP TES games, a mage/warrior type will be able to correctly play the Brotherhood DLC content?

rhapsodious

Oh, I'm not discouraging playing alts! You do you, just know that you'll want to complete everything on one character at least once if you want the maximum amount of dialogue/achievement/title/whatever goodies.

You don't have to play through all the content 3 times, but it will certainly help the grind. Champion Points are account wide but levels are not. Consider:

I am unoriginal and your toons are named A, D and E.

You play A first and complete the AD questline at level 46.

You start D. D is level 3. You finish the DC questline at level 50. You earn 13 CP going through content.

You go back to A and grind some more. As soon as A hits level 50, s/he is considered CP13. You earn another 50 on him/her, bringing you to CP63. D is, at this point, also CP63.

At this point you create E. E hits level 50, is immediately CP63.

You go back to A and go through all the content to grind out all the way to CP160. At this point, all 3 of your toons are considered "max level" as CP160 is the gear cap.

CP501, the cap on the amount of CP you can currently allocate, will take you a long while. But I've only done Gold and Silver once. You can level your alts through dungeons, DLC and now just going straight to your Gold zone and grinding. Or do all your post-50 leveling on one character (as I did for the most part) and let your alts reap the rewards once they hit 50.

And yes, you can play the DB DLC any way you like. There's bonuses for being stealthy, of course, but nothing is stopping you from just incinerating/cleaving your victims. It might just be a bit easier if you employ some finesse.

Neofit

rhapsodious wrote: »

I am unoriginal and your toons are named A, D and E.

You play A first and complete the AD questline at level 46.

You start D. D is level 3. You finish the DC questline at level 50. You earn 13 CP going through content.

You go back to A and grind some more. As soon as A hits level 50, s/he is considered CP13. You earn another 50 on him/her, bringing you to CP63. D is, at this point, also CP63.

At this point you create E. E hits level 50, is immediately CP63.

You go back to A and go through all the content to grind out all the way to CP160. At this point, all 3 of your toons are considered "max level" as CP160 is the gear cap.

Tell me if I at least correctly understood part of it :

I can play each alt on his faction lands/questline to near level 50, without too much questing overlap. Then with a bit of grinding, they can each reach 50. As long as it's around 90% original + 10% grinding/repeating I don't mind, let's not be too picky, it could have been the other way around. Then I choose one toon with whom I redo all of the content once, and all three will benefit, right?

Ilsabet

I had the same basic question as my first character approached the end of her alliance questing (and the Main Quest, which is the culmination of what you learn about in the tutorial and is done by each character independent of the alliance quests). I wondered if it would be better to switch to an AD alt to experience that storyline "fresh" through the eyes of a new AD character rather than continuing on with my DC character.

What I found was that in this case it was more fulfilling for me to continue the throughline of my main character's "journey," with Cadwell's Silver being an extension of her adventuring after completing her main alliance and the conflict with Molag Bal. It was also comfortable to continue with the playstyle I was used to and continue to develop and hone it in the more challenging areas. I was also able to rack up lots of CP as I continued leveling through vet ranks, which my alts will be able to take advantage of when I start playing on them.

I certainly wouldn't discourage alts, and I do have several alts that I plan to play on (treating each one from a new perspective even if it's material I've encountered before). I'd mostly advise you to keep your options open and not necessarily commit in advance to doing things a certain way if you discover that a different approach might suit you better down the line. If it makes more sense to you to experience each alliance through the eyes of a new character from that alliance, you can do it with three different characters. But you might start with one character and see if you get attached to it enough to continue into the other alliances with that character, and that's a completely valid way to do it too (and not because you're forced to do it that way to get to "max" level).

In my experience there's not much in this game that requires you to get to max level as quickly as possible if you'd rather just take your time and experience the story and exploration and crafting and farming and just hanging out and whatever else. You can set your own priorities and learn how to do what you want to do, and then just take it from there. In particular, since you mentioned expansions, you can do the DLC at any time since characters are scaled up to max level in those areas, putting everyone on the same footing level-wise.

Now if you do eventually want to get your alts to max level, you'll have an easier time with it now that vet ranks have been replaced by the champion point system. With the old system, you'd need to level each character up to V16 individually. At vet levels they would also be earning CP, which would be shared across the account. With the new system, you level characters individually to level 50, and after that their level is considered in terms of the CP on the account, as rhapsodious explained. So essentially you'd just need to level your alts to level 50, and then rack up enough CP using any combo of your level 50 characters to get to 160 CP to be able to equip max level gear.

Hopefully that's not too confusing.

rhapsodious

Neofit wrote: »

Tell me if I at least correctly understood part of it :

I can play each alt on his faction lands/questline to near level 50, without too much questing overlap. Then with a bit of grinding, they can each reach 50. As long as it's around 90% original + 10% grinding/repeating I don't mind, let's not be too picky, it could have been the other way around. Then I choose one toon with whom I redo all of the content once, and all three will benefit, right?

You understood all of it! That's precisely how it works.

Ilsabet

Neofit wrote: »

rhapsodious wrote: »

I am unoriginal and your toons are named A, D and E.

You play A first and complete the AD questline at level 46.

You start D. D is level 3. You finish the DC questline at level 50. You earn 13 CP going through content.

You go back to A and grind some more. As soon as A hits level 50, s/he is considered CP13. You earn another 50 on him/her, bringing you to CP63. D is, at this point, also CP63.

At this point you create E. E hits level 50, is immediately CP63.

You go back to A and go through all the content to grind out all the way to CP160. At this point, all 3 of your toons are considered "max level" as CP160 is the gear cap.

Tell me if I at least correctly understood part of it :

I can play each alt on his faction lands/questline to near level 50, without too much questing overlap. Then with a bit of grinding, they can each reach 50. As long as it's around 90% original + 10% grinding/repeating I don't mind, let's not be too picky, it could have been the other way around. Then I choose one toon with whom I redo all of the content once, and all three will benefit, right?

You've essentially got it right. I'll also point out that if you do all of the area quests and exploration and delves and world bosses in each area, you probably won't have to do much (or any) grinding to get to level 50. I got to level 50 before I even hit Coldharbour, which is the zone you do after the five zones in your main alliance.

You also get CP very fast now, so you won't even need to complete all the Silver and Gold zones to get to CP 160. (But you can do as much as you want, and any exp you get on a level 50 character will contribute to the account's CP.)

Neofit

Thank you all.

Neofit

Now it dawned on me... The sky shards and skillpoints received from quests are not account-wise, are they? So I will still need to do all the quests and visit all the lands on all my toons, aren't I?

PhxOldGamer68

Yes, to max skyshards you have to go through all faction areas because it's per character and not account-wide. And of course, Cyrodiil, which is your hated PVP. A year now after PS4 launch, and I still haven't finished Cadwell's Gold on my EP first character. 2 more to go in AD.

I'm Level 50 in all craft skills so I needed to go everywhere to get the skill points. I've also respec'd several times to try out different weapon and armor skills to the max.

starkerealm

Neofit wrote: »

Now it dawned on me... The sky shards and skillpoints received from quests are not account-wise, are they? So I will still need to do all the quests and visit all the lands on all my toons, aren't I?

Yeah, that's correct. This also means if you want to fully mine out the skyshards in Cyrodiil, you'll need to spend some time deep in enemy territory digging around through their delves.

starkerealm

Neofit wrote: »

Tell me if I at least correctly understood part of it :

I can play each alt on his faction lands/questline to near level 50, without too much questing overlap. Then with a bit of grinding, they can each reach 50. As long as it's around 90% original + 10% grinding/repeating I don't mind, let's not be too picky, it could have been the other way around. Then I choose one toon with whom I redo all of the content once, and all three will benefit, right?

Yeah. Though there's a slight abbreviation here.

Any CR you earn is available to all your characters. Level 50 or not. Only your level 50 characters can earn more. But, if you take a character to, say CR160 alone, all of your characters, regardless of level, will have 160 CP to spend. They won't be able to earn more until they hit level 50, and their XP bar switches over to CR, but they still benefit from it.

Also, quests for a given faction are mostly the same when replaying them. So, if you took a character to gold, you'll have effectively played all of the story content from all three alliances. There are some minor differences, where characters have slightly altered dialog if you're going into a New Game + cycle. For instance, in New Game, you can tell Raz about Molag Bal's invasion. In New Game + (silver or gold), you can instead tell him you were sent back to Tamriel to set things right. These are usually minor, but they are scattered through the questlines. On the whole though, if you've maxed a character out, and done everything in the zones, coming back through on another character will still be doing the same quests again.

There are differences in Cold Harbour based on your alliance. Because you'll encounter characters from the other zones whom you haven't met yet. So their dialog changes if you've been doing quests with them.

So it will be more than 10% repeating on new characters.

dodgehopper_ESO

You're not interested in leveling a Templar?

GCypher87

So CP is account wide, like said before. And skill points, learned traits for crafting, and achievements are per toon.

As far as quests repeating themselves in each faction, it doesn't happen. Except for the ten total guild quests.

My advice is alternate all three characters until they've all reached about level 15 and are completely done with the first major zone, collect all the skyshards and do all the dungeons in this first zone. This gives you enough time to get a good feel of both zone and toon. Then pick your favorite zone and your favorite toon. If your favorite toon is already in your favorite zone, awesome! If not, reroll them there. They are now your main. I can't tell you how much it hurts my heart that my main is in AD when I want them in DC so much.

For getting skill points on your alts you wont need to do quests in silver or gold, just run through and collect skyshards and get the group events in the public dungeons in each area. I don't think the silver and gold main quests give skill points. I could be wrong though.

For traits, I made my main my crafter, don't need to worry about crafting on alts, though I do some, anything big can be done on my main though.

And don't worry too much about achievements on your alts. They are mostly for fun.

That's just how I play. It may not be your style, however heed my warning about making your main in your favorite zone. You'll play maybe a day on each character, it's such a small price compared to all the time that goes into your main after that. Whatever you do though, make sure it's fun for you.