"Get In And Play!" Mini-Guide For New(ish) Players And (Rusty) Returning Players

tinythinker · March 2015

Hello and welcome (back) to the game!

There is a lot of good advice on and off of the forums that is scattered about, having been added from last spring until now. Many players have posted helpful information (and are still posting) but it can get hard to find after a while, so I've described and linked some things below that may be helpful to have in one place for reference. I could have added much more but intentionally tried to keep it relatively brief. There is something particularly relevant to returning players at the end.

Don't worry about all of it at once, just take what you need at any given time and leave the rest. The best advice is to do what seems fun in the game and be patient as you learn it. If you think a guide should be included in this thread please add it in the comments.

Some of my general advice for really new players

For what it's worth, here is my most concise and basic advice to new players. I hope it helps.

Other People's General Advice and Hints

Many people have written helpful things on the forums, like this guide on blocking/avoiding powerful attacks and tips you wish you'd known from the start (for more tips like this check out the Adventurer's Handbook series).

Terms

I'm not sure how familiar you are with MMORPGs, as many of us had little experience with them but loved The Elder Scrolls. If that describes you, these links will help with some common terms:

Can anyone explain these common terms?
Unofficial ESO Slang and Abbreviation Dictionary

Guides and Walk-Throughs

There is help if you get stuck in a quest thanks to sites like Dulfy.net. Some people also have very useful videos for basic parts of the game and character builds, such as Deltia's Gaming (look under Guides on the top bar). Many players find websites like Tamriel Foundry helpful as well. The latter, for example, has this extremely handy guide to the things you might overlook in the Public Dungeons. ESOHead's Skill Calculator was handy for tinkering with and sharing builds but wasn't maintained, yet it seems like it is being revised.

Group Dungeons and PvP

When you are ready, don't hesitate to try parts of the game that many new players (especially those new to MMORPGs) sometimes find confusing or intimidating such as Player vs. Player combat in Cyrodiil and Group Dungeons. My post on PvP still holds up well (except for mentioning forward camps, which were effectively taken out of the game and are still unavailable for purchase after many months). Also see the video guide to PvP produced by Deltia.

What Race/Class Should I Be For This Role?

It depends. (That is best the best advice, full stop. But read more for the conventional wisdom.) Currently, the easiest choices for newer players/players new to the roles: for tanking = #1 Dragonknight/Templar, #2 Nightblade, #3 Sorcerer; for healing = #1 Templar, #2 Nightblade, #3 Sorcerer, #4 Dragonknight; for DPS - it depends on the build and opinion very widely. As for race choices, the most obvious/easy choices are Breton or Altmer for magicka-focused builds and Imperial or Redguard for stamina-focused builds.

All of that said, the easiest/most obvious choices aren't always the most fun, interesting, or even powerful/effective. Experiment and look at what the top theorycrafters are trying, and don't forget that with the addition of the Championship System customization and experimentation has more twists now.

Healing/Being a Healer

I've posted in the past about being a healer in ESO. So has this person. Oh yeah and this person. And so did he. And... well, you should have enough to get started. Of course there is advice for tanking and damage dealing out there as well I just wanted to focus on healing. And speaking of other roles, if you tank in ESO you don't really do AoE taunts or just stand in one spot pushing the same button unless you want the healer to beat you over the head with her restoration staff.

Collectibles/Achievements

There is a lot that could go here, but I've selected things which have been and continue to be very helpful and sought after. For example, finding Mai'q the Liar. And how about the Crime Pays/Give to the Poor/Lightbringer achievements? Or completing Monster Hunter in the Aldmeri Dominion, or the Daggerfall Covenant, or the Ebonheart Pact? Are you looking for monster parts? Or perhaps you just want to go fishing? And keep an eye out for more non-quest/less obvious achievements as you wander about in the game. Two of my favorites are "Slaughtered!" and "Nose Diver", and they both have something in common

Twitch Streams

This is popular with ESO players and you can watch them discussing/ playing the game live or catch the recording. This can be fun and also inspire ideas. Here are a few to try to see what I mean:

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http://www.twitch.tv/elloawendy/profile

http://www.twitch.tv/defatank/profile

Add-Ons

I would add that you might want to consider an add-on or two to see if they help.

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For example, class skill lines (Storm Calling, Daedric Summoning, Dark Magic since you are a sorcerer) and individual class abilities (i.e. Mage's Fury, Crystal Shard, etc) level up when you gain experience with them. This also works for weapon skill lines/abilities and for Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, etc abilities. So if you defeat something or unlock a chest, etc, with an ability on your active bar, that ability and its skill line gain experience. The same is true if you complete a quest.

By using something like Wykkyd's Outfitter you can have the game "remember" different arrangements of your skill bar and change them with a simple click. I keep one called "Leveling" that I switch to just for turning in quests. To install any add-on just download the file, and if you have Windows, most likely you will have a folder called The Elder Scrolls under Documents. This is where all customization happens and the storing of screenshots takes place. Open it, then the folder called Live, and drop the add-on file into the folder called AddOns.

Personally I like to stay close to the cleaner display of vanilla ESO, but Wykkyd's Outfitter and Foundry Tactical Combat can be very useful. After having done the Alliance questing zones a couple of times I kept Garkin's LoreBooks and Skyshards add-ons handy to make sure I didn't miss any, but your first time through finding them through exploration is do much more fun! If you really get into PvP add-ons like Kill Counter are good to use.

Update 6/Version 2.0

Here are ten quick things about Update 6/Version 2.0 ...

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1. Mount skills are now character, not mount, specific, and can be leveled every 20 hours -- just like you used to do -- by feeding your horse at the stable. The horses and Guar and Senche are basically mount costumes now. If you have a character that didn't have a horse before, as long as one other did they all do now.

2. Blocking and dodging cost a LOT more now without advancing in the right areas of the Championship System. No more block casting forever, as stam build will quickly wear you down with weapon attacks.

3. Staffs all use spell crit/power now, and many class morphs now have stamina options rather than just magicka options.

4. Impenetrable now reduces damage from critical hits, not the chance to receive a critical hit. If you are a high crit build you will hit opponents in PvP for critical more often but those with full impen who invest in taking less crit damage in the Championship System won't be hurt as badly.

5. There are fewer mats now for Provisioning, and the effects of drinks were buffed.

6. Reward (but not quest) costumes as well as pets and mounts are in their own inventory system now.

7. Stackable items like food mats now can be stacked to 200.

8. Critical hits don't build ult anymore, mostly that now comes from a buff you gain for several seconds from doing weapon attacks. Toward the end of the PTS testing I saw some patch notes that said they also added things like blocking to give ultimate. Many abilities and passives still give ultimate as well if they state so directly in the tool-tip, like Cleave. Many players report building ult as fast or faster than they did in the previous system.

9. The new buff system is essential to theorycrafting builds after Update 6. You can have one major and one minor of each type active at one time, but two major buffs or minor buffs of the same type do not stack. So you can stack Major Fracture with Major Breach but not with another Major Fracture. Set bonuses, potions, and abilities offer the various buffs.

10. This update includes Phase One of the Justice System which lets you steal and murder, but it doesn't include player on player bounties, the Theives Guild, or the Dark Brotherhood. A lead writer a month or so ago said he was working on material for the Dark Brotherhood.

Two things that will help you adapt are learning about how the new buff system works and figuring out how to spend you Championship Points. Those who do those two things well are way ahead of those who do not.

More details below about those two things if you want them...

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Many abilities, 5 piece set bonuses, and potions now give buffs from a short list of possibilities. Each character can have any number of buffs but specific ones don't stack. So if you wanted to use Fracture to reduce your enemy's armor rating, that buff comes in two types like all of them do, major and minor. You could (de)buff the opponent with both Major Fracture and Minor Fracture, and those would both stack to take down the target's armor strength. But, if you or another player tried to use Major Fracture again on the same target to stack it with the previous Major Fracture, it won't help. You could instead hit that target with Major Breach, which reduces spell resistance. So knowing what buffs you want to apply to yourself/allies and which debuffs you want to apply to enemies helps you make your build.

As for the Championship system just log in and hit the = key. You earn Championship Points any time you earn XP with a vet character, and the Championship Points you accrue are account wide yet are spent on each character individually.

In the Champion screen you can see the passives that require points to unlock in each of the constellations and also higher in each of those trees you can see the boons that unlock when you spend enough points in a particular constellation. Each point spent in a constellation raises your "rank" for the constellation. Many players look at the boons that only require rank 10 or 30, that is, those that require 10 or 30 points to be spent in a particular constellation, see which of those easier to get boons would help their build, and then make sure their points go to those constellations first to unlock those boons before spreading them around elsewhere.

For example, for my Sorcerer I spent 30 points in The Apprentice to unlock the boon Spell Precision, which gives an extra 12% spell crit. Along the way I picked up the rank 10 boon for that constellation that guarantees a critical hit on my next spell after blocking three spells. If ever make it rank 75 in that constellation I will get a boon that reduces spell cost by 80% after drinking a potion, and if I make it to rank 120 in that constellation some day there will be a 20% chance when I kill an enemy that they will explode and give me and any nearby allies a boost of Magicka, like some arcane piñata.

iLLGT3_ESO · March 2015

Thank you for this guide!

tinythinker · March 2015

You're welcome, @iLLGT3_ESO . I hope it helps.

And to everyone reading this thread, I forgot to mention that due to personal issues facing the creator of Wykkyd's Outiftter that mod is currently buggy for some players and likely needs updated. If you want to try the add-on go ahead and install it (they are easy to disable in the game menu), and if you have any issues turn it off and check the link to the download every so often to see if a new version is out.