Some advice for those using ESO+ free trial for the first time

Michae

Visit every dlc dungeon and zone for some free collectibles. You don't have to do any quests, just pop in at the wayshrine and you'll get free stuff, likefor example pets, hats or styles. That is all.

Raisin

Dye all your costumes.

FierceSam

Do the opening 5 minutes of Dark Brotherhood to collect your Blade of Woe

Go to Hew’s Bane Thieves Den and start the Thieves Guild skill line to activate Thieves troves around Tamriel

Do (admittedly quite a bit of) Clockwork City to activate the Precursor quest and build a free test dummy

Go kill dragons in Southern Elsweyr just because it’s fast, stupid fun - what dragon culling is supposed to be.

Visit Orsinium and farm some Briarheart

Danikat

Also add some extra furnishings to your houses - it's not just the base furniture limit, you get twice as many pets/mounts and collectables too.

zvavi

Get dark brotherhood, thieves guild and jewelry skill lines unlocked, not sure about the jewelry, but dark brotherhood and thieves guild stay after the free trial 100%

Hallothiel

Is there a list if which dungeons etc have freebies?

Michae

Great insights everyone!

Hallothiel wrote: »

Is there a list if which dungeons etc have freebies?

May be a little outdated but here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUjlzqPa8Vc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrFUc8jBdrk

Really, just google it if you have any doubts. Also, just going to every dlc location is a fair bet you'll get something.

Houshiki

Fill your craftbag until its bursting.

darthgummibear_ESO

FierceSam wrote: »

Do the opening 5 minutes of Dark Brotherhood to collect your Blade of Woe

Go to Hew’s Bane Thieves Den and start the Thieves Guild skill line to activate Thieves troves around Tamriel

Do (admittedly quite a bit of) Clockwork City to activate the Precursor quest and build a free test dummy

Go kill dragons in Southern Elsweyr just because it’s fast, stupid fun - what dragon culling is supposed to be.

Visit Orsinium and farm some Briarheart

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

5cript

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

You are wrong, you keep skilled skill lines.
---
so many good replies! I would've only thought about filling the craft bag to the brim.

FierceSam

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Do the opening 5 minutes of Dark Brotherhood to collect your Blade of Woe

Go to Hew’s Bane Thieves Den and start the Thieves Guild skill line to activate Thieves troves around Tamriel

Do (admittedly quite a bit of) Clockwork City to activate the Precursor quest and build a free test dummy

Go kill dragons in Southern Elsweyr just because it’s fast, stupid fun - what dragon culling is supposed to be.

Visit Orsinium and farm some Briarheart

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

Give it a try, you might be surprised at what happens

Coatmagic

stuff your bank and homes and craft sack huzzah

Danikat

5cript wrote: »

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

You are wrong, you keep skilled skill lines.
---
so many good replies! I would've only thought about filling the craft bag to the brim.

I suspect that's what most people think of, because it's the only ESO+ benefit which really gets talked about.

I've often made the mistake of thinking free trials are irrelevant to me because I buy the DLC I want to play, so once I've logged into each character to update the craft bag I'm done. And that's in spite of the fact that I've occasionally bought a month of ESO+ to get other benefits, like the ability to dye costumes.

It's also worth trying out DLC you're not sure about. I really didn't expect to like Clockwork City because the brief visit during TES 3 was one of my least favourite parts of the game, I'm not a fan of the whole creepy dystopian 'steam punk uptoia goes horribly wrong' theme. But I had a quick look during a free trial and got to see that firstly things aren't nearly as bad as they will be in 700(?) years, and you get to see a lot more than just the city itself, which makes it more interesting to me.

Also one boring but useful thing I do is take advantage of materials moving out of the bank and double bank space to clean up my consumables. I have all my characters dump all consumables, soul gems, lockpicks and similar items into the bank, then I go through each character in order and have them withdraw only what they actually need. I often find I'm left with a bunch of food, poisons etc. I don't even remember picking up and far too many soul gems and then I can sell or delete the excess.

gatekeeper13

Thanks to the free ESO+ trial, I managed to complete almost all Dragonhold Achievements and get all titles, free stuff, complete Lunar Champions Hall tablets etc etc. But truth is I really liked the DLC and although there is nothing more to do, I will consider buying it in the future. Totally worth it.

Geekgirl

My two tips:

1. Harvest, harvest, harvest. Now is the time to cram that crafting bag FULL.
2. Choose a DLC (after visiting them all once) that you do not have and begin completion. Google may be able to tell you which are the shorter ones to bust through. If you finish them, you don't *need* to purchase them later unless you want to.

wolfbone

darthgummibear_ESO wrote: »

FierceSam wrote: »

Do the opening 5 minutes of Dark Brotherhood to collect your Blade of Woe

Go to Hew’s Bane Thieves Den and start the Thieves Guild skill line to activate Thieves troves around Tamriel

Do (admittedly quite a bit of) Clockwork City to activate the Precursor quest and build a free test dummy

Go kill dragons in Southern Elsweyr just because it’s fast, stupid fun - what dragon culling is supposed to be.

Visit Orsinium and farm some Briarheart

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

RefLiberty

"wolfbone wrote:

You realize you lose the associated skill lines when the dlc goes away, right?

What happens then, you get your skill points back to pool or it is like locked?
I'm using E+ from the start so didn't had a chance to test it

rpa

Whatever you do, do not fill your temporarily doubled bank with junk before the trial ends.

bakthi

I did things in this order:

1. Get all skyshards from DLC overland and delves. This also gave me several pets, costumes, etc. Complete the delves too, when convenient.
2. Start TG and DB quest lines for trove access and Blade of Woe.
3. Start Southern Elsweyr quest line so I can get the daily for dragon kills; I won't have nearly enough time to unlock The Good Bits, but may as well chip away at it.
4. Along the way, loot/harvest everything in sight, including during a daily random normal dungeon (this is on my second account, so still sub-50). That extra time after disbanding is put to good use running back through the dungeon and picking up any containers I missed. Also shove researchables into the bank.

Going to see how much of the S.E. zone story I can finish up at this point, then probably shelve that account for a while aside from horse training and trait research.

amapola76

Don't be distracted by the shiny; now is a very good time to do some non-glamorous things you may have been putting off, or hadn't thought about doing before.

Transferring items between characters, deconstructing items (so you can catch any resulting materials in your craft bag), dying your costume, researching jewelry if you don't have Summerset, etc.

As far as farming materials is concerned, think ahead to what you will need over the next 6-12 months, as you never know when the next free trial will be. For example, the anniversary event is still a few months away, but you can blow through a LOT of materials doing crafting events at that time. So what are the common provisioning recipes? You are likely to need lots of grapes, carrots, poultry, etc., so be particularly on the lookout for those. When you are harvesting runes, don't just grab the purple and gold runes and leave the low level ones behind, because again, you may need them down the road.

Grab as many butterflies and torchbugs as you can, because, hey, who cares about worms and crawlers? You do, nine months from now, when you need to fish for some reason and can't find bait to save your life, because who is making room in their limited inventory for worms?

majulook

Get the skill lines for DB and TG and Mats like others are saying.

Farm DLC's for Skyshards - Start with the smaller DLC' and Get All skyshards for before moving on to the next DLC.

Ilsabet

zvavi wrote: »

Get dark brotherhood, thieves guild and jewelry skill lines unlocked, not sure about the jewelry, but dark brotherhood and thieves guild stay after the free trial 100%

You can't use jewelry stations if you don't have access to Summerset, so while you keep the skill line progress, you can't actually make/decon/research jewelry after the free trial ends.

(Source: Alt account with no Summerset or sub.)

Also confirming that other skill lines like TG and DB do stay intact and usable after the free trial ends. It's totally worth taking alts to Abah's Landing so they can pick up thieves troves in the future.

Also I made a list of the swag available for stopping in:

Orsinium - Orsinium - echalette pet
TG - Abah's Landing - jackal pet, thieves troves passive
CWC - Brass Fortress - brass dovah-fly pet
Murkmire - Lilmoth - haj mota pet

Dragon Bones - Fang Lair or Scalecaller Peak - dragon priest mask
Wolfhunter - March of Sacrifices or Moon Hunter Keep - hunter hat
Wrathstone - Frostvault or Malatar - Ayleid crown

DB - Anvil - assassin personality
Shadows of the Hist - Mazzatun or Cradle of Shadows - heroic personality
Horns of the Reach - Falkreath Hold or Bloodroot Forge - bull horns emote

Dragonhold - Senchal - hat outfit style
Scalebreaker - Moongrave Fane or Lair of Maarselok - mask outfit style

MellowMagic

Join the thieves guild so u can loot troves forever.

kargen27

Quoted post has been removed.

and now because of this thread they don't have to. How cool is that?

Unseelie

Quoted post has been removed.

Seems like a fantastic thread with great information.

amapola76

SocialAssassin wrote: »

So another one of these threads? Truth is you would know most of this by simply doing some reading and researching

Researching like... for example... reading forum threads?

amapola76

Oh, one more bit of advice: it looks like Midyear Mayhem starts right at the same moment that the free trial ends. However, Cyro is a great place to run around farming mats (at least in the areas that your alliance holds!). So my advice to you would be to go ahead and take your characters now, anytime in the next 24 (23?) hours to Cyro, and run around with them a bit picking things up, and then just leave them stationed there, ready to start Midyear Mayhem tomorrow.

HOWEVER, for newer players who have not experienced this yet: if you are not an experienced PVPer, be sure to go to the bank first and deposit all or most of your AP and TV before venturing into Cyro or Imperial City. That way, when you get ganked-- and you will-- you won't lose all of the free AP and TV you have acquired from daily rewards.

Ilsabet

amapola76 wrote: »

HOWEVER, for newer players who have not experienced this yet: if you are not an experienced PVPer, be sure to go to the bank first and deposit all or most of your AP and TV before venturing into Cyro or Imperial City. That way, when you get ganked-- and you will-- you won't lose all of the free AP and TV you have acquired from daily rewards.

AP can't be lost, but you're right about the tel var.

amapola76

Ilsabet wrote: »

amapola76 wrote: »

HOWEVER, for newer players who have not experienced this yet: if you are not an experienced PVPer, be sure to go to the bank first and deposit all or most of your AP and TV before venturing into Cyro or Imperial City. That way, when you get ganked-- and you will-- you won't lose all of the free AP and TV you have acquired from daily rewards.

AP can't be lost, but you're right about the tel var.

If you have AP across several alts... for example, from daily rewards... you want to put it in the bank to pool it so that you can have one character use it to buy things while you are there.

ArchMikem

zvavi wrote: »

Get dark brotherhood, thieves guild and jewelry skill lines unlocked, not sure about the jewelry, but dark brotherhood and thieves guild stay after the free trial 100%

Unlocking the skill lines wont do you any good once you lose access to the zones and cant do the content that levels them up.

amapola76

ArchMikem wrote: »

zvavi wrote: »

Get dark brotherhood, thieves guild and jewelry skill lines unlocked, not sure about the jewelry, but dark brotherhood and thieves guild stay after the free trial 100%

Unlocking the skill lines wont do you any good once you lose access to the zones and cant do the content that levels them up.

True for jewelry. Not exactly true for DB and TG... you won't be able to go to the locations on the map and work on those quest chains, but you can still use the abilities from the skill line.

Also, most importantly, for all three lines, the next time ESO+ rolls around in a few months, your progress will be right where you left it, it's not like you have to start over completely from scratch, so yes, obviously it is worth it to get a head start on advancing those skills.