Level 1 Gear Challenge

Tornaad

I recently created a Dragonknight and have not taken him very far because I was hoping for a bit more of a challenge on the overland content for this character. Today as I was looking through the overland content feedback thread, I had a question come to my mind, how far could I take this character, if I had basic level 1 gear? No enchantments of any kind. No set items. Just basic level 1 gear.

I specifically want to see if I can take him through the whole main quest until I face Molag Bal. As I thought about the idea, I kind of like it. So, I wanted to see if anyone else wanted to try with another class.

For my Dragonknight, I am going to be roleplaying him and writing an epic poem based on his adventures. I am going to pretend that he is cursed and cannot use different equipment until after he has defeated Molag Bal.

Does anyone else want to join me with a different class?

Tornaad

What I am specifically going to try is to just use the gear I am equipped with upon character creation and the weapons I can get in the first room you enter into after getting freed from the prison before you run through the combat tutorial in the tutorial zone.

Lysette

That won't make much of a difference, because most of the damage doesn't come from weaponry, but from your skills. Just take a character you have and replace your armor with heavy armor level 1 and a 2h level 1 weapon and see what is changing - of course you won't have the same power, but it will be enough for normal overland with a stamina heavy armor 2h build. Especially if you are still using food or beverages and potions - and a mundus stone like steed.

In this case the armor is just there to get access to the armor passives and the weapon to get weapon passives. in the end is is all about skills, regardless of how crappy your gear and weapon is.

Tornaad

Lysette wrote: »

That won't make much of a difference, because most of the damage doesn't come from weaponry, but from your skills. Just take a character you have and replace your armor with heavy armor level 1 and a 2h level 1 weapon and see what is changing - of course you won't have the same power, but it will be enough for normal overland with a stamina heavy armor 2h build. Especially if you are still using food or beverages and potions - and a mundus stone like steed.

Even with no armor?

Lysette

Zuboko wrote: »

Lysette wrote: »

That won't make much of a difference, because most of the damage doesn't come from weaponry, but from your skills. Just take a character you have and replace your armor with heavy armor level 1 and a 2h level 1 weapon and see what is changing - of course you won't have the same power, but it will be enough for normal overland with a stamina heavy armor 2h build. Especially if you are still using food or beverages and potions - and a mundus stone like steed.

Even with no armor?

With no armor you have no access to armor passives - and those are important. With a dragonknight you don't really need armor active skills, but with a class, which doesn't have a good damage shield, unstoppable with heavy armor or anullment with light armor is a vital skill to have plus quick health injection by vigor or resolving vigor, when things get ugly.

Ilsabet

It would be an interesting experiment. Your stats would be very low, and get lower as you level, because your gear wouldn't be keeping up with your battle scaling. So you'd feel more nerfed as you went along, which could be an interesting thing to grapple with from a RP perspective, getting weaker rather than stronger as you progress.

As for whether you can function without appropriately-leveled gear and set bonuses, I wouldn't be surprised if you can still handle overland fights, but it'll be more reliant on your playstyle and skill without the benefit of armor and damage stats and set buffs. If you're not using CP either, then it would probably be quite challenging.

If you want to do a test run, you might take a fully-leveled character and just make a full set of white untraited non-set level 1 gear with no enchants, strip CP (armory set would be useful here so you can restore what you had), and go out and see if you can kill things before they kill you. Or literally just go naked, since that would accomplish much the same thing.

Lysette

The only problem I see there is sustain - because fights are longer and consume more resources - and if you don't have enchanted jewelry this could be a bottleneck - that is why I would go for heavy armor, it restores some resources when you get damage and it's passives support 2h weapons, which you need as well that you can fight more enemies at at time. Otherwise your skills do the most damage, what weapon and gear you have is not that important, as long as you have it at all.

mocap

ESO leveling is horizontal. If you can beat 32k hp mob right from the start, then you can beat 32k hp mob at the end of the game. Anyway, with lvl 1 gear and lvl 1-49 toon with no CP bonuses, and with some knowledge of game mechanics/combos/rotations:

- alliance zones story - yes
- Coldharbour story - yes
- chapter/DLC story - yes
- soloing alliance zones world boses - yes, many of them. Strong healer/tank companion can help to solo most of them

- chapter/DLC world bosses - probably non of them, maybe some of them with strong companion
- soloing base game normal dungeons - some of them with strong companion
- soloing DLC dungeons - no

ShawnLaRock

You can do most content on characters with low-level, or little to no gear.

We did Hel Ra Citidel on all new baby EU toons the other week when NA was down. I levelled up to 5 when turning in the final quest… and have a full 5pc set of Infallible Aether, and a level 4 AY necklace. The highest person in our trial was level 10. We had to trade found food and tinctures of health. Lol.

Also have an alt account that has level 16 crafted gear made by my main, and they are ~350CP with no problems.

S.

blktauna

I would love to see video of this. Many claim its easy to do so many things yet..