Getting back into playing; advice?

Arunei · March 2015

So I stopped playing quite a long time ago thanks to not being able to afford the sub fee. Ever since I heard that ESO was going F2P (or B2P as it technically is), though, I've been excited to get back into playing. I decided to go ahead and renew my sub a few days ago, then hopped on today and realized that I had no clue wth I was doing on my previous character. Thus, I decided to start a new character as a different Class.

Since it's been a while, I figured I'd see if there's anything I should know about "starting over", as it were. I've been seeing things like a new Champion system, the removal of the VR system, and all sorts of other things. What do I need to know about 1.6? My Class is NB this time and I intend to play a stealthy assassin/thief character (reminds me of the good times I had in Skyrim w/ level 100 Sneaking, when I could jump up and down right in front of NPCs and remain Stealthed XD); what sorts of things do I need to keep in mind?

Also, and this is kind of a random thing, but my comp is not a gaming rig by any means, and I know if I want to play on higher settings I need to upgrade the physical components altogether. However, even playing on the lowest settings still results in me getting 8-15 FPS, and I'm fairly certain my RAM/CPU/graphics card aren't THAT bad. Any tips for how to squeeze precious frames out of this game? It's so darn irritating to be attacked by enemies you can't return fire on b/c they haven't actually rendered yet >.>.

snowmanflvb14_ESO · March 2015

well would need to know exactly what your rig consists off.

Arunei · March 2015

@snowmanflvb14_ESO Well, I was mostly looking for info or advice that would help me get back into the game, but here's the specs and what I've done so far.

*64-bit Win8.1
*4 GB Ram
*AMD E1-1200 APU processor, 1.4GHz
*AMD Radeon HD 7310 graphics card

I've gone into the AMD control panel and moved everything to performance > quality, I've changed performance and battery settings, I've changed advanced system settings in the computer for quality, and I intend to get a 4GB (at least) flash drive in a week or two to use as additional RAM. I've also updated my graphics card and I've run both CCleaner and Advanced System Care 8 several times to clean up my temp files, disk errors, registry errors, etc. I've cleared my prefetch folder of everything that could be deleted too, and I've been deleting a lot of Steam games I don't play atm to free up more space on the computer overall.

Now mind you I haven't tried playing ESO since doing all this last night, as I still need to restart my comp for a few things to take effect and I wanted to defrag my system before I do that. I'm hoping what I've done will win me a few more frames; I'd be content with something around 20-30 even though that's considered bad (as it's a lot better than 8-15 lol).

Alphashado · March 2015

Your CPU is REALLY slow and is certainly your biggest issue. You are going to have to run on very low settings in order to play ESO at a decent framerate and that is unfortunate because the game is beautiful. That being said, a couple of the biggest culprits are display grass and shadow effects.

In regards to returning to the game, my advice is to simply take things slow. Don't overwhelm yourself with many different skills at first. Pick a class and playstyle you like, find a couple combos that are effective for you and roll with them while you learn the basic mechanics of the game. You will have plenty of time later when you have extra skill points to spare to experiment with new skills.

You will get weapon swap at lvl 15. Keep in mind that this extra bar can also be used as nothing more than a "leveling bar". What I mean by that is you can fill the other bar with skills that you don't use in combat and still level them up simply by switching to this bar right before you turn in a quest. The quest xp applies to your 'active" bar only, so you can level one set of skills with combat xp and another set of skills with quest xp.

Choose between a magicka build or a stamina build. Hybrid builds can be fun, but they won't be nearly as effective as building your character around one or the other.

Find a good trading guild. I can send you an invite to one if you are interested, you can send me a msg here. There is no auction house in ESO, so the closest thing to it is the guild trader/kiosk. A good active trading guild with 500 members and a kiosk is a very good way for you to sell your stuff.

Try to complete all the map objectives such as Dolmen, zone bosses and solo dungeons. Completing theses (turning the map icon white) awards an achievement and a very large chunk of XP.

Unless you are a Templar, carry a resto staff around with you. The heals are very powerful and even if you don't want to be a healer, this will help you complete difficult tasks.

Also, be sure to grab every skyshard in every zone you are in. You can either use an addon to find them or there is a list of clues for their locations in your achievement UI.

Consider using addons as an option. If you are a purist and would rather not use them, then that's ok, but many of them are incredibly useful and easy to maintain using an addon manager like Minion.

Arunei · March 2015

@Alphashado I decided to try going back to my level 15 Templar just b/c I didn't feel like losing the progress on her and such, and I was disabling certain addons thanks to a UI error I couldn't get to close. I decided to disable grass and make shadow stuff low, and after I hit Apply I'm stuck with an infinite loading screen between logon and the character selection screen x___x. So far my return to Tamriel has been met with rather poor luck, as I was having this issue a few days ago when I first decided to start playing again.

EDIT: Heh, of course after posting this the character selection screen finally loads XP.

Alphashado · March 2015

Arunei wrote: »

@Alphashado I decided to try going back to my level 15 Templar just b/c I didn't feel like losing the progress on her and such, and I was disabling certain addons thanks to a UI error I couldn't get to close. I decided to disable grass and make shadow stuff low, and after I hit Apply I'm stuck with an infinite loading screen between logon and the character selection screen x___x. So far my return to Tamriel has been met with rather poor luck, as I was having this issue a few days ago when I first decided to start playing again.

EDIT: Heh, of course after posting this the character selection screen finally loads XP.

Unfortunately, you will likely have issues for the duration of your ESO game play because of your PC. particularly your CPU. 1.4 GHz is REALLY slow and it will cause you lots of problems. But I certainly understand having to work with a budget, so I wish you the best of luck and I hope you can still enjoy the game at very low graphic settings.

Deathweeps · March 2015

My advice would be, above all...wear proper knee armor. I knew an adventurer that was once like you and I, until, well you know...those arrows though.

Honestly just have fun, find a good group of people and rock it out. If you can't find anyone, hit me up. I will play with you.

ashlee17 · March 2015

Templar is a great choice

breath of life is a great skill especially combined with biting jabs/puncturing sweeps will get you though most situations.

Magica pots and crafted set gear help a lot and are easy to get.
Let me know if you need a good guild. More Than Fair is a great multi purpose guild and I'd love to shoot you an invite

mail me @ashlee17 if you want in

Good luck and welcome back