What gear should I use while leveling?

jonzhao68

Me again, new player. So far I am loving the crafting system here but I am finding I am constantly short on materials, especially those needed for improvements. I prefer to craft my own gear though because I like having gear that matches appearance-wise and I can craft exactly the type of gear I want for certain slots. The problem though is like I said I am constantly short on materials and often I find better gear anyways while questing. The problem with that gear though is often I don't like the appearance or it's not the weapon I prefer to use or it is a heavy helm or something when I prefer a light helm.

So just curious, is it worthwhile to constantly craft yourself new sets of gear to use or will the gear you find always be better and easier to come around.

Asardes

Deconstruct all trash (non-set) gear that drops from enemies. That's a constant stream of appropriate level materials. Collect those materials and ask a guild mate, or simply ask in zone chat for a crafter. Best levels to craft are those which end in a 4 because that's the maximum level for the respective tier, and you'll probably have more than enough materials from deconstruction to have even multiple sets crafted. What actual set is best for your really depend on your build, since magicka and stamina builds benefit from different stat bonuses on the respective gear sets. For magicka builds, spell damage, spell critical, maximum magicka and magicka regeneration bonuses are valuable. For stamina builds, weapon damage, weapon critical, maximum stamina and stamina regeneration are valuable. Wearing gear with training trait will give you more XP from killing enemies so you will level faster. I've leveled multiple characters so I can tell you what I've been using.

On stamina builds: 5 x Hunding's Rage + 4/3 x Night Mother's Gaze is a good combo. I mix armor types right from the beginning to level all 3 armor types. I make the chest heavy, the waist light and the rest medium. I also make two one handed weapons and a bow to train 2W and bow while leveling. All gear with training trait, tempered to blue and with maximum stamina enchantments on armor, elemental damage on weapons - less important.

On magicka builds: 5 x Armor of the Seducer + 3 x Torug's Pact is a good combo. I mix armor types right from the beginning to level all 3 armor types. I make the chest heavy, the legs or feet medium and the rest light. I also make a resto and destro staff to level the respective skill lines. All gear with training trait, tempered to blue and with maximum magicka enchantments on armor, elemental damage on weapons - less important.

I craft those sets at levels 14/24/34/44. From level 44 to 50 it's a short trip and for overland content you can keep that level 44 gear until you hit CP160. Or maybe craft one intermediate tier. Then craft CP150 gear since it takes far less materials, with the desirable traits. Best is to have divines on armor and sharpened on weapons. Then you can go on farming CP160 gear.

Here's a list of crafted sets: http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafted+Sets

SolarCat02

Crafted sets are definitely worthwhile. (Make sure they are armor sets, with bonuses depending on how many pieces you wear!) It is tough to stay fully geared while leveling your first character, though.

How often are you replacing your gear? You don't need to craft a new set ridiculously often, especially depending on how high you are upgrading it.

I would also suggest adding skill points to the passives that increase your chances of getting good materials from refining and deconstructing, and also the one that reduces the quantity of improvement materials needed to improve them. This should help a lot.

DMuehlhausen

Honestly the gear you get from quest turn ins are normally good enough to get you through. Throw in some dungeon runs and you should be fine.

nine9six

If PC / NA - hit me up and I will get you situated with gear to level in.

newtinmpls

Asardes wrote: »

Deconstruct all trash (non-set) gear that drops from enemies. That's a constant stream of appropriate level materials.

This ^^^

It also levels your crafting. Be sure to use the green/blue ones as they will level you faster, and for that matter if you are willing to spend (or risk) tempers to increase/improve something with "intricate" it will give an even bigger boost.

Trublz

I've leveled all my Alts to 50 and I always made myself(all training) gear at lvl 6(so I could enchant with lvl 5) and again at lvl 16( because you unlock 2nd weapon slot at 15) and use that gear until lvl 50.
Usually use julianos or hundings with a few other mixes in there depending on characters role/resources/etc

Loralai_907

If you can, have the training trait on all of your gear. Like others have said, new gear about every 10 levels should be fine. I use green until level 20, blue until level 40 and then go purple. Use the same color enchantments. Green food is fine, but going to blue food is going to be better. I don't personally use purple food.

And speaking of crafting your own gear, make sure you always have as many traits researching as you can at once. It takes forever to get all of the traits researched.

Zerok

Stamina gear:
-5x Hunding's Rage
-4x Morkuldin OR 3x Ashen Grip (if using 2H).

Magicka gear:
-5x Julianos
-3x Seducer OR 4x Magnus (if using DW)

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

crafted with training traits. until you hit cp 160 and all gear that drops is end level

SmellyButtocks

newtinmpls wrote: »

Asardes wrote: »

Deconstruct all trash (non-set) gear that drops from enemies. That's a constant stream of appropriate level materials.

This ^^^

It also levels your crafting. Be sure to use the green/blue ones as they will level you faster, and for that matter if you are willing to spend (or risk) tempers to increase/improve something with "intricate" it will give an even bigger boost.

Never knew that, thank you!

Would you say the inspiration gain is worth the upgrade mats?

Nestor

SmellyButtocks wrote: »

Would you say the inspiration gain is worth the upgrade mats?

@SmellyButtocks

Depends. You will reach a point where you have 100's of Green and or Blue Tempers, and you will never use them up. So, upgrading an item before deconning to give you more Inspiration can get you to 50 a bit faster. Is it worth it? I think you get like 10% more Inspiration, so it's not like a huge gain. I am of the school of "Decon it all, let the Crafting Bag sort it out" so I don't seek to maximize my return on decon, just get it done and move on. I also forget most times I am at a crafting station.

Nestor

@jonzhao68

No matter what armors you use, try to use a mix of weights so they all level to 50 at roughly the same time. This way you can switch out armors without having to grind the skills up, which can take a while. No need to invest in the Armor passives of the one or ones you won't use all the time, and certainly only spend skill points on the 5 Piece Bonuses of the amors you would normally wear 5 pieces of, like 5 Light for Casters or 5 Medium for Stamina as an example.

Duukar

Level 10 - Regular(no set bonus) all training set. 5 of the armor you intend to use and 1 of each of the 2 others. Just make sure its all Training an preferably upgraded to blue.

wear this until level 24.

Level 24 - Consider a set bonus that makes sense for your class that has easy low traits to craft. All training. 1 set bonus is fine. You aren't min maxing yet. Again 5 of what you will wear and 1 of each of the other.

Level 40 - Do a set bonus that makes sense. Low traits and easy to craft. Just one set. Try to upgrade to purple. All training. At this point have a look at your armor levels. If you are really short of 50 in one make more of that than the others. Balance this out. You want all armors to get 50 around the same time if able.

All this time make sure you have gotten your fighters guild skill line. Kill as much undead as you can find. If you see an undead spawn that has lots stay there and kill a while. You will want this skill line maxed at some point and its a HUGE hassle if you neglect it.

Make sure you have your mages guild skill line from the start. Get an addon to show lore book locations. You will NEED this skill line maxed at some point and it makes sense to get it along the way.

Get an addon to show sky shard location. Collect em as you go.

Finally Training only affects Kill XP... To maximize this i recommend a sub to the game and buying a few XP scrolls. Those 2 bonuses affect ALL XP.

One of the best things you can do is clear all delves with a sky shard in them. There is great XP and loot from mobs in there and a big bonus XP hit when you kill the final boss.

Then at 50 dont forget to start the Undaunted grind and choose your min max armor sets and GET TO FARMING... JEEEZ!!!

Danksta

Nestor wrote: »

SmellyButtocks wrote: »

Would you say the inspiration gain is worth the upgrade mats?

@SmellyButtocks

Depends. You will reach a point where you have 100's of Green and or Blue Tempers, and you will never use them up. So, upgrading an item before deconning to give you more Inspiration can get you to 50 a bit faster. Is it worth it? I think you get like 10% more Inspiration, so it's not like a huge gain. I am of the school of "Decon it all, let the Crafting Bag sort it out" so I don't seek to maximize my return on decon, just get it done and move on. I also forget most times I am at a crafting station.

It's 5% more inspiration per upgrade, but you also get more inspiration for deconning a higher quality item, so it's more than the tooltip implies.

SaibotLiu

It's a very casual mmo with very forgiving mechanics. I just kill stuff and do quests and pick up armor as I go. You dont really need optimal gear for anything except high end pve or pvp.

jonzhao68

Thanks everyone, that actually answers all my questions concerning crafting gear (even the ones I forgot to ask). ^.^

Nestor

@Danksta @SmellyButtocks

Just did some testing with CP160 Intricates, one White, one Green and One Blue. I have ESO Plus and the Champ Passive for Inspiration, but numbers can be compared and these came from Combat Log Statistics

Intricate White 23264
Intricate Green 24096
Intricate Blue 24096

Weird that Blue did not give more than Green.

As for being worth upgrading before deconning, not so much in my mind. While better, it really is not enough to worry about. I mean sure, if you think about it, and have Greens to use up, go ahead. But to fret over lost Inspiration, nah.

waterfairy

You don't need to keep upgrading your gear every time you level up, just throw on some training traits for armor and upgrade once every tier (iron, steel, etc.). Put sharpened on your weapons, upgrade those every 2 levels and keep them green and you'll be fine.

Schemering

make a good set every 20-25 levels but upgrade your weapons every 8-10 levels. The set bonuses are most important for armor not the level but the tooltip damage of weapons has huge impact on your damage output as it is directly added to weapon and spell damage . I use divines trait on low level gear and make it purple as i want to level fastest which i do with best gear so i kill faster but training isnt a bad idea either

Enslaved

jonzhao68 wrote: »

Me again, new player. So far I am loving the crafting system here but I am finding I am constantly short on materials, especially those needed for improvements. I prefer to craft my own gear though because I like having gear that matches appearance-wise and I can craft exactly the type of gear I want for certain slots. The problem though is like I said I am constantly short on materials and often I find better gear anyways while questing. The problem with that gear though is often I don't like the appearance or it's not the weapon I prefer to use or it is a heavy helm or something when I prefer a light helm.

So just curious, is it worthwhile to constantly craft yourself new sets of gear to use or will the gear you find always be better and easier to come around.

If you are below lvl 50, no need to craft anything, save materials, use dropped stuff. Pretty much anything below CP160 is trash item, worthless piece of crap. That does not mean you can't hunt for set items that might help you a lot while leveling. Pick what you would like to have as a main set, go to that area and join dolmen zergs for jewelry and group boss zergs for weapons and several armor pieces. You can't fail. Also, if you like vampirism or lycantropy, try to get infected by these asap, so you can level faster. Use AOE skills to damage all enemies on dolmens, since it will help you progress Fighter's Guild skill line much faster. Also, be patient, this is a mmorpg after all.

If you are in a good guild, ask someone to craft you some training gear. And gl.

Easily_Lost

I take a different approach. I decon everything, research what I am wearing for armour ( on my mage, 5 light, 1 medium, 1 heavy ). I make new armour every 2 levels ( to get the XP for crafting ). Then I Enchant all my new made armour ( again for the XP ). I will not improve any armour until I get to max rank.
I do the same for what weapons I use.

I find this works best for me. Every forum post that I read says you don't need to create armour so often, But I do.

One last thought, play the game how you feel like. And most of all HAVE FUN.

Enslaved

hagermanj wrote: »

HAVE FUN.

or else.