noOb-servations

Grimm13

Welcome to ESO and sorry I don't know who to direct you to on XBox for guilds. Watch the zone chats, guilds will advertise for members there a lot of times. Ask in zone is there are guilds recruiting. Be sure to ask them if they have any requirements to be a members and if they have a guild trader. Guild trader makes the guild store available to members outside of the guild. Guild store you can sell to other guild members.

Fine to drop provisioning. I would recommend buying the Holiday Food and Drink recipes as they are level one but can be good to know. Sell your ingredients or trade them to a crafter for Food/Drink. A skilled crafter can make 4 to your 1 unskilled food/drink, a guild mate might not even charge you. Probably have to ask is someone will make you food/ drink to buy as it's not listed on traders often.

Legerdemain has been suggested above. This makes opening chests easier and improves the found items. You don't have to be a pickpocket but it is easier. At the least sneak and steal from every crate you see, sort and sell to a fence. Launder the useful items for you.

That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Yup, I remember watching live. We've gone so far yet we are so far away.

ZOS_Holden

Hi @AdamSC,

Just wanted to take a moment to welcome you! We're happy to hear that, as a solo experience, you seem to be enjoying the game. In addition to the guides mentioned earlier in this thread, (Thanks @The_Protagonist!) You can find a good number of guides at the link below:

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/guides

In regards to not having engaged in any of the social aspects of the game, we hope you decide to soon, as the social aspect of the game, at least in our experience, can be a good way of learning the basic mechanics or the game.

Thanks so much for taking the time to share your impressions and feedback with us!

AdamSC

So many great responses! I am thrilled that this is such an active and welcoming group.

Also, am glad that there are some other geezers around as well

A lot of good advice. Too many to go through one by one.

Thanks for the gamertag invites - I will friend you sometime this weekend. I appreciate the offer to connect. So, thanks @Feric51 , @RABIDxWOLVERINE , @RumpRoast71
You will be my first Xbox friends! New Generation of consoles.

As for provisioning. It seems that most of you feel that it is necessary to the game to have the food bonuses. To maintain it without ESO + I should find a few recipes with common ingredients - but otherwise I will ignore food when I find it.

@GimpyPorcupine - Good plan on the gold, I was already thinking that anything I didn't spend on repairing my gear would go to increasing bank space. Thanks for the riding tip. This will make a difference over time.

I am avoiding ESO+ if I can because there is such a high price tag. I figure if I love the game and it becomes part of my routine / lifestyle it will be worth it. Until then I will deal with the constraints - because the limits are what make a game fun.

One big reason I am avoiding it is because of the psychology around it. If I am paying a monthly fee, I will feel pressure to "get the most out of it I can" and then the game becomes work, not fun. So, I will deal with the bag limits.

It is interesting to me that there is so much incentive to steal in the game. It is almost as if there is no way to avoid it as a low level first time play. I played through Skyrim twice before I did the thieves guild quests. My intent was for this character not to be a thief - but I may have to rethink that. (I do like the roleplaying aspects of the game.

AdamSC

Hopefully the text-based MUDs included my personal favorites: Darkness Falls, and Darkness Falls: The Crusade!
[/quote]

I don't remember the name of it, but I do remember it had this evil feature where you would lose a small percentage of your gold by NOT playing. It encouraged you to log in at least every day.

Bear in mind that this was not pre internet, but it was pre world wide web! Only colleges and big companies could connect to the early net. My University ended up banning MUDs for a while, because it was so popular that it was sucking up all of the connecting bandwidth.

You could only connect personally if you had a modem and a public access number. (but that was long distance unless you lived in a city with a big university.

Very primitive.

Ocean_Charlie9

Welcome and I hope you have a very awesome time!

Tip from a Khajiit: do not buy Skooma. Bad for health, very bad. Buy this one wares instead, yes?


Joke aside: as all people here say, don't rush yourself, enjoy the main quest, make friends, kill mudcrabs, do not follow a dude called Molag Bal and eat, a lot.

See you!

Lysette

Welcome to ESO from me as well - as far as provisioning goes, do not drop it totally - spend 1 in recipe quality and you will have access to a bunch of blue recipes already. I myself use Bergama Warning Fire (a speciality beverage) which increases health recovery and adds max stamina for 2 hours - which is quite helpful for a stamina build - and it scales with your level. You can get it from a guild store. This is basically 1 point well spent and you can craft it on every level, once you can spend this point in recipe quality (does not take much to be able to).

You will get recipes as well when you do the crafting writ for certified provisioners as well as additional ingredients (I guess, that is level 6, when it is offered to do the certification). Otherwise look into any chests and sacks you come across. Food and beverage is a cheap and easy boost to your character stats, do not miss out on this opportunity.

Edit: as a side note - Bergama Warning Fire is one of few recipes, which scale with your level (guess, those were festival recipes) and given that point spent in recipe quality, allows you to use it for the entire leveling phase - these kind of recipes have special icons in the guild store, watch out for those, because they are quite good and have pretty low skill requirements (4 different ingredients though).

Lysette

Hm, and if it wasn't said already - go for ESO+, your inventory will be so much better to use, when all the crafting materials, baits for fishing and such are automatically transferred into your crafting bag and it can directly be used by any character you make on this account - it will free so much space in your inventory and bank, it's well worth it.

knaveofengland

hi adam join 5 guilds in total , iam in 5 guilds 3 for selling stuff and 2 social , join and ask fellow guildiesfor help when you need it .
as for storage simply make as many alts/toons and use them for storage , for recipes open crates boxes in delves should find many there , aslo many recipes are cheap to buy .

wish you well

Ozium

yes even knowing what a mud is dates us lol. been four years since here in beta but just bought game and itching to see all the new stuff !

proud member of the grey beards society ;p

AdamSC

@Ozium - grey beards society! Is that a guild? I would totally join it!

Lysette

Well, I am just 30 and have played MUDs - it is not that one has to be older, to know about these games. I found them in some respect more versatile than video games, because you can do stuff in those, you can't really do when you have to visualize them. This said, it is hard to go back to it, once one gets used to graphics - but I enjoyed my time playing MUDs.

The really amazing thing with MUDs is, those I played are still active and some have even a decent amount of players at prime time (after 20+ years in existence).

Gorrvald

You'll have things to do for years. I've been playing since launch on PC and just the other day I found a wayshrine and an area I hadn't discovered yet... It blew my mind.

Now, I'm a fairly casual player and I don't play every single day. But that's a testament to how much there is to do in this fantastic game.

AdamSC

Lysette wrote: »

Well, I am just 30 and have played MUDs - it is not that one has to be older, to know about these games. I found them in some respect more versatile than video games, because you can do stuff in those, you can't really do when you have to visualize them. This said, it is hard to go back to it, once one gets used to graphics - but I enjoyed my time playing MUDs.

The really amazing thing with MUDs is, those I played are still active and some have even a decent amount of players at prime time (after 20+ years in existence).

This does not surprise me one bit... People still play pen and paper D&D. It was fun then and is still fun. People should play what they find fun. That said, when I discovered skyrim, I felt that someone had finally created the game I always wanted to play.

GimpyPorcupine

AdamSC wrote: »

I am avoiding ESO+ if I can because there is such a high price tag. I figure if I love the game and it becomes part of my routine / lifestyle it will be worth it. Until then I will deal with the constraints - because the limits are what make a game fun.

One big reason I am avoiding it is because of the psychology around it. If I am paying a monthly fee, I will feel pressure to "get the most out of it I can" and then the game becomes work, not fun. So, I will deal with the bag limits.

I played for a long time without ESO+, and just added it when the craft bags came out, and boy was it worth it. The "Inventory Management Mini-game" used to consume far too much time. All crafting materials would be deposited into the bank, then when the bank was full, I'd have to log out, log into the appropriate mule for each profession, withdraw the materials, rinse and repeat until I had enough bank space to go back to questing. ESO+ craft bags mean that all materials go there automatically, which in addition to removing the mini-game mean that you can pick up everything in sight and make fewer trips to town to sell or deposit.

$0.50/day to not go through that is totally worth it to me.

Feric51

@AdamSC

The best advice that's been given on here , and one I wholeheartedly concur with, is to take your time and enjoy things.

With regards to ESO+, I played the first several months without it and managed to get by just fine. I have it now and don't think I'd know how to live without it, but it's one of those things you don't miss what you don't have, so don't feel like you need to have it for your experience to be enjoyable.

People have mentioned food and the provisioning skill, and this can be confusing for someone new to ESO. Food (and drinks) are consumables that you can loot in their most basic form, or craft by learning the recipe and collecting the necessary ingredients. As you level the provisioning skill, it allows you to make more potent and/or longer lasting food. Food/recipes are similar to weapons/armor in that there are level restrictions to be able to use them, although (to complicate matters) there are some consumables that scale to any level that were part of holiday or other special events.

To further explain. The provisioning skill requires you to level it up to make the more potent food/drinks, but you can consume level-appropriate food at any time that was made by someone else. But, there is still benefits to leveling the skill line and putting skill points into the passives that increase the duration of the food's effect. There are lots of sites that probably explain this better than I'm getting ready to, but since you're here reading this now, I'll save you the hassle of looking elsewhere.

Foods increase one or more base attributes (health/stamina/magicka) by a set amount.
Drinks increase your recovery rate of one or more of these attributes.

White level consumables can be looted from the world (i.e. you see a "drink" on a table and you pick it up) and the effect will give a minimal boost for 30 minutes of play time.
Green consumables are the basic craftable ones and give a substantial boost for 30 minutes.
Blue food/drink boosts two attributes for 1 hour.
Purple ones boost three attributes for 2 hours, but not as big a bonus as the blue variety gives (just longer duration).

The event-specific consumables can mix and match the effects and, as mentioned before, scale to your level so you can use from level 1 to max champion point level.

Don't fret if you feel overwhelmed at first. It will seem like there's not enough skill points to go around as skills become available faster than the points to unlock them. There are lots of ways to gain skill points, and I'm sure lots of people would be glad to help you find skyshards and do public dungeon group events to get the easy ones.

Anyway, don't hesitate to contact me in game or on here if you need anything. Fair warning though, I fall into the geriatric gamer club too, and I only play in the evening after the wife and kids go to bed, so my availability may be limited.

Lysette

AdamSC wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

Well, I am just 30 and have played MUDs - it is not that one has to be older, to know about these games. I found them in some respect more versatile than video games, because you can do stuff in those, you can't really do when you have to visualize them. This said, it is hard to go back to it, once one gets used to graphics - but I enjoyed my time playing MUDs.

The really amazing thing with MUDs is, those I played are still active and some have even a decent amount of players at prime time (after 20+ years in existence).

This does not surprise me one bit... People still play pen and paper D&D. It was fun then and is still fun. People should play what they find fun. That said, when I discovered skyrim, I felt that someone had finally created the game I always wanted to play.

I actually have a hardcover of the original D&D book - with military and other mass combat mechanics even. The original D&D had even a whole game concept, which was no longer part of the AD&D series later on. I liked pen&paper, we used to have a group doing this when waiting on the next lecture in university. We use a more free form system though - fudge - you might know it?

Lysette

Feric51 wrote: »

@AdamSC

The best advice that's been given on here , and one I wholeheartedly concur with, is to take your time and enjoy things.

With regards to ESO+, I played the first several months without it and managed to get by just fine. I have it now and don't think I'd know how to live without it, but it's one of those things you don't miss what you don't have, so don't feel like you need to have it for your experience to be enjoyable.

People have mentioned food and the provisioning skill, and this can be confusing for someone new to ESO. Food (and drinks) are consumables that you can loot in their most basic form, or craft by learning the recipe and collecting the necessary ingredients. As you level the provisioning skill, it allows you to make more potent and/or longer lasting food. Food/recipes are similar to weapons/armor in that there are level restrictions to be able to use them, although (to complicate matters) there are some consumables that scale to any level that were part of holiday or other special events.

To further explain. The provisioning skill requires you to level it up to make the more potent food/drinks, but you can consume level-appropriate food at any time that was made by someone else. But, there is still benefits to leveling the skill line and putting skill points into the passives that increase the duration of the food's effect. There are lots of sites that probably explain this better than I'm getting ready to, but since you're here reading this now, I'll save you the hassle of looking elsewhere.

Foods increase one or more base attributes (health/stamina/magicka) by a set amount.
Drinks increase your recovery rate of one or more of these attributes.

White level consumables can be looted from the world (i.e. you see a "drink" on a table and you pick it up) and the effect will give a minimal boost for 30 minutes of play time.
Green consumables are the basic craftable ones and give a substantial boost for 30 minutes.
Blue food/drink boosts two attributes for 1 hour.
Purple ones boost three attributes for 2 hours, but not as big a bonus as the blue variety gives (just longer duration).

The event-specific consumables can mix and match the effects and, as mentioned before, scale to your level so you can use from level 1 to max champion point level.

Don't fret if you feel overwhelmed at first. It will seem like there's not enough skill points to go around as skills become available faster than the points to unlock them. There are lots of ways to gain skill points, and I'm sure lots of people would be glad to help you find skyshards and do public dungeon group events to get the easy ones.

Anyway, don't hesitate to contact me in game or on here if you need anything. Fair warning though, I fall into the geriatric gamer club too, and I only play in the evening after the wife and kids go to bed, so my availability may be limited.

I will add to this, that some of the event beverages/foodstuffs might be blue with low requirements but still last for 2 hours like the Bergama Warning Fire (blue) - it is a speciality beverage and mixes health recovery with stamina max boost - so it is seen from the concepts a hybrid or food and beverage - there are as well some, which do both on a single stat - I do not know the name by heart yet, but it does health recovery and health max boost (but I guess, that is a purple one).

NewBlacksmurf

FYI
You would also want to use the Xbox clubs and the ESO game Hub looking for group features provided by the Xbox.

Tomg999

notyuu wrote: »

8: highly recommend avoiding cyrodiil until you are 150% confident in your ability to fight and kill another player within 5 seconds of seeing them

Except go there briefly as soon as you get access to do the training only. You get a couple of skill points, can pickup a skyshard, and get a bunch of xp.

Then leave and don't come back for quite a while.

Hurtfan

I disagree about PvP, and this is just my opinion, but I dove right into it without knowing anything. I've had fun the entire time (minus the technical issues of course), and probably learned the most just from experience vs. forums or youtube.

For some reason PvP is made out to be the boogie man, some call it the true end game, but don't be afraid to try it out if you like PvP.

I've never been big on PvP but ESO's version has me hooked.

Tomg999

Hi & Welcome. I came from Elder Scrolls standalones too, but have been playing ESO since Beta.

I have found that you can ease into the social aspect, and find some really fun interactions even before you get much into it. It can help to get used to chatting, working together, etc & it's fun.
Some ideas:

• I have found it's fun in a busy dungeon to just run around with other folks, fighting mobs, killing the boss, using complimentary skills and tactics. You don't even have to chat.
• World Boss & (sometimes) Dolmen pick up groups from chat are a cool way to work with others. In Wrothgar if you have it there are groups running the daily quests that do a little working together, a fun way to group up.
• If you are grinding in any or the common spots (Greenshade, Coldharbour, etc) you can group with a few folks running around. Helps with xp & can get used to working with others.

As for Guilds, find a good one that appeals to you, but also join a few trading guilds. This helps to buy & sell at the bank, as well as travel for free! That feature allows you to check out other areas without having to walk there the first time.

Marginis

Welcome to ESO!

As many others here have mentioned, joining a guild is one of the greatest parts about ESO. Try your best to find a smaller guild, or one with a casual, tight knit community at first. Those kinds are the best for newer ESO players, good for learning little tidbits and just to hang out with. You'll also find some of your best ESO friends that way, I've found.

I'll offer my guild, if you want to check it out Here, but that's definitely a priority I'd recommend for you, looking through the guilds here on the forums and finding a cool group to hang out with. And don't get discouraged by some of the bad apples - ESO has one of the finest communities for a game, overall, that I've seen, and the good far outnumber the bad.

Anyway, hope you have fun with ESO (and give me a call if my guild piques your interest)!

jlb1705

AdamSC wrote: »

Having a lot of fun with Elder Scrolls and my new Xbox one.

I am a casual player who deliberately stays behind a generation in consoles. (so that the price will be lower and that only the best games are still being sold)

I won't say how old I am - but am old enough to have friends who failed out of college because they spent too much time playing text based MUDs. Feel free to guess.

I have precious little time for gaming and I was spending too much time replaying Skyrim and doing ridiculous things (Like playing a classic mage AD&D rules - no armor - no blades and still not feeling challenged) After leveling pickpocket to 100 and watching almost every NPC walk around Whiterun in underwear- I decided it was time for a new game.

So here I am playing ESO, my first MMO and enjoying it. Some observations.

1. As a solo "Elder Scrolls 6" substitute experience the game holds up pretty well. Lots of the things that made Skyrim such a great game.
2. It is a much more pleasant world to spend time in than Skyrim. While the dark places still exist, there isn't the constant black cloud over every area of the game. I like the feeling here much better.
3. There is a lot more expository story telling - which is a little annoying. 20 minutes of backstory from the prophet was yawn inducing. I am hoping this isn't the mode for the rest of the game and I am hoping that I can skip the content when I replay a different faction.
4. Crafting is fun - but time consuming. I am still trying to figure out how to optimize it without ESO plus. I was really looking forward to provisioning, but am frustrated by the way it is implemented. I have tons of ingredients and very few recipes, so it takes up a lot of inventory space and has so far produced very little benefit. Thinking I will completely drop that line and focus on the others.
5. The game is glitchy - but no more so than Skyrim. So I am good with the level of quality.
6. This game is enormous! It is going to take me months to work through the basic story let alone the DLC.
7. I am having trouble getting adjusted to the stats system. It is way more complex than Skyrim and the numbers don't make sense. It is tough to weigh the relative benefits of 112 physical resistance vs 146 in Max Health. I am sure I will figure it out, but for now it is still a little opaque.

Overall, it is a great game - a fantastic value - and a ton of fun.

Currently I am playing a Bosmer - sneaky, archer, non-thief type. I am level 11 so still very early on.

Haven't engaged with any of the social aspects of the game - but plan on doing that after I get the basic mechanics figured out. Not even sure how to go about choosing a guild.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to say hi and let me know your thoughts.

Adam

Your story sounds similar to mine. I've been playing for about seven months now, and feel like I'm still learning how things work differently in ESO from the single-player TES games

A couple tips based on my experience of crafting in the early stages:

Get ESO+ if you can. That's the #1 thing I would have changed about my first few months playing the game. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you're so much better off as a casual player if you're paying the sub. If you don't have much time, why spend it managing inventory. The extra bank space is key, and so is the craft bag. I spent a lot of time in my first few months moving items around - time that I could've been questing, but wasn't because I was trying to farm gold to be able to buy the next inventory space upgrade, which quickly become unaffordable at low levels. ESO+ removed that grind for me, and I'm having more fun when I play.

Train your riding skill as soon as possible after obtaining a mount. It takes a long time to do, so don't wait to get started on it. The 60 slots you can get this way are some of the least expensive in the game.

Start researching traits now if you haven't already. It's perhaps the longest grind in the game. I've been good about keeping up with it and have invested the skill points in to speed it up, but I'm still nowhere near completing it.

Consider creating a crafting alt. I was loathe to do this at first, but I'm glad I did. First of all, it's a way to get more cheap inventory slots. Second of all, it frees up skill points for your main character for combat/stealth/etc. Third, it saves time. Park the crafting alt in a city where the writ boards, crafting stations, and turn-in location are all close together. I prefer Vivec City, but there are other good ones if you don't have access to Morrowind. If you have ESO+, your alt has instant access to all of the materials your main picks up while adventuring. If you don't you can transfer them at a bank. It didn't take long before I had a good enough stockpile to sustain doing a daily writ for all six professions. It provides me with a small but steady stream of gold, and has been the main way I've been gathering recipes as they drop occasionally in the reward for completing the provisioning writs. Now I'm at the point where I can log in with my alt and complete all the writs in just a couple minutes before moving on to playing as my main. It saves a whole lot of time compared to traveling out of my way to take care of that stuff.

As for guilds:

I recommend checking out The Lunar Collective - they have a recruitment thread in the Xbox NA guild recruitment forum here. They're solo-friendly. They have fairly regular access to a guild trader, and dues are not required in order to sell through them. I'm not very active in the economy yet, but they've allowed me to dip my toe in it without having to constantly shell out the gold that was hard for me to come by at early levels. I can't speak to the social aspects of the guild though, since I do everything I can to avoid in-game social interaction or group play.

AdamSC

jlb1705 wrote: »

If you don't have much time, why spend it managing inventory.

This is a really good argument in favor of the sub... though I still think I will wait a bit to see if I stick with the game.

AdamSC

Tomg999 wrote: »

Except go there briefly as soon as you get access to do the training only. You get a couple of skill points, can pickup a skyshard, and get a bunch of xp.

Then leave and don't come back for quite a while.

This is some good advice too! Adding this to my list.

AdamSC

Lysette wrote: »

I actually have a hardcover of the original D&D book - with military and other mass combat mechanics even. The original D&D had even a whole game concept, which was no longer part of the AD&D series later on. I liked pen&paper, we used to have a group doing this when waiting on the next lecture in university. We use a more free form system though - fudge - you might know it?

Nice! I have my old Monster Manual somewhere. Have heard of fudge from my son's cosplay friends - but have never played it.

Bobby_V_Rockit

Welcome! Honestly, your at level 11... I’ve been playing for pver two years on PS4 and am WELL past level cap... however I agree with everything you said. Its a awesome game, even more so if played as a pseudo sequel

AdamSC

GimpyPorcupine wrote: »

I played for a long time without ESO+, and just added it when the craft bags came out, and boy was it worth it. The "Inventory Management Mini-game" used to consume far too much time. All crafting materials would be deposited into the bank, then when the bank was full, I'd have to log out, log into the appropriate mule for each profession, withdraw the materials, rinse and repeat until I had enough bank space to go back to questing. ESO+ craft bags mean that all materials go there automatically, which in addition to removing the mini-game mean that you can pick up everything in sight and make fewer trips to town to sell or deposit.

$0.50/day to not go through that is totally worth it to me.

There is no way that I will do this. (Create a mule that is - still thinking about the sub) Would rather just deal with the constraint. Played a lot this weekend and managed to pick up some recipes in a delve - plus the certification. Now provisioning is my most advanced craft skill. Glad I didn't can it too soon.

As I do more crafting, I can see how people would use it to get some in game gold. Very nice.