That's exactly the kind of this I was looking for. Thanks, FriedEggSandwich!

Thanks, Kyle.Wilson! I actually didn't realise that you could upgrade your horse at all so I'll look into that. I got my free house (really it's a glorified broom closet) and bought one piece of furniture to finish the quest. While player housing does interest me in the long run, it's still early days.

Thanks again. This is exactly the kind of stuff that no one tells you.

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

I recommend stealing things if you're finding yourself short on cash. The Daggerfall docks are my usual recommendation for location - it has a fair number of containers to loot, few witnesses and no guards.

I also like to rob the bank in Vulkhel Guard, when sneaking it's quite easy to do. And the castle/palace in orsinium (if you have that DLC)

My favourite character is a sorcerer with pets (clannfear is fave) Things I learnt a lot later after I started playing was to start crafting straight away so you can be self reliant as crafting takes ages. Most important, is to research your character, passives in particular. Just Google Sorcerer builds or Sorcerer pet builds. Passives are often a game saver :-)

I see really great advice from other players so I will just add what I've done to the pile: Get some addons. For crafting research get Harven's Research Timers and any other Harven's addons you may want to try. Horse training is a big MUST every day. Horse's train on a 20 Hour period so a good Horse Timer addon is needed to show you time left and give you an onscreen message when research/horse training has been completed. I suggest you train your horse in Speed first or Inventory followed lastly by Stamina. There are 60 slots for each area so...about 6 months to complete training. The Inventory slots you will need real soon which is why I always do Inventory training first but many do Speed first.

Join a guild. If it sucks, leave it and find another. Good guilds are a big plus in leveling your characters in all aspects including Crafting. You should never have to buy an item for research. In the beginning you will find all kinds of drops to cover your research needs for quite a while. When you finally get to the point you need something crafted for research ask a friend or a guild member. I never charge for research items but if it's a Nirncrux trait the Nirncrux has to be provided for me to craft it.

Other addons I suggest are Destinations, Craftstore, Lorebooks, Potion Maker, Skyshards, Lost Treasure....more but that's enough to get you started. ESOUI site is a great place to get addons or get Minion to manage all your addons.

Put skill points into Medicinal Use in Alchemy right away. You will have to level Alchemy to fully utilise 3 skill points in it. It is worth it..big time. When Medicinal Use is maxed out your potions will outlast the cooldown of the potions so your potion buff can be active as long as you keep popping potions.

1 skill point into Keen Eye for Clothing and one into Keen Eye for Alchemy. This helps immensely in harvesting those hard to see plants.

I highly suggest you level up your character with mixed weight armor: Heavy, Medium and Light so your Armour lines level as you do. This will help immensely when you reach CP level and eventually get your Undaunted Passives unlocked fully at level 9 Undaunted. You will get a 6% boost in Health, Stamina and Magicka with all three weights of armour on your toon at level 9 Undaunted with the Undaunted passives unlocked (2 Skill pts in Mettle).

Another thing you can do is put at least one Ability from each line you intend to use (Destruction Staff, Restoration Staff, all of the 3 Class Abilities) on your bar as you go to level those lines. For example: If you put one skill point into a Resto staff Ability and then place that Ability on your bar it will level the Restoration Staff line as you level your toon. You don't even have to have a Restoration Staff to do this.

If you know someone who can craft for you then leveling your character becomes fairly easy to do. Ask a friend or guild member to craft two heavy, two medium and 3 light armour pieces all in Training trait and weapons as well in Training trait. I usually do this in 10 or 15 level increments with the last set crafted around level 42 or so and make everything Blue (Improvement level). Training trait items stack which means each piece adds to the other so if you have 7 pieces of Training armour all at 5% (can't remember the exact number for Blue) then you get 35% boost in XP for killing enemies. Add the Training from your weapons and it goes even higher. You will level very quickly. For enchanting I suggest all armour be enchanted with Magicka enchants (For a Magicka character). This will raise your overall damage done by Abilities (Spells).

Unlock all Class Abilities as you go whether you know you will use them or not. Same for Destruction staff for DPS Magicka characters and maybe Resto staff as well. You may also want to wield Dual Daggers/Swords/Maces on one bar (after you hit level 15 which unlocks the 2nd Bar) to give your toon one more weapon which will increase your Spell damage/DPS, etc...You will want the Dual Wield line to reach level 50 but DO NOT unlock anything in that line until it hits level 50 and then put 2 Skill points into the very last/bottom Passive. Check it out. If you don't want to Dual Wield then disregard what I wrote about Dual Wielding. You will want to level them as you go and max out what you want to keep. When you get to a certain point in developing your character you can easily respec it and redo all the Skill points for what you want to keep and not put Skill points in Abilities you decided not to use.

When you reach level 45 you will receive a letter in game to join the Undaunted. Go to the nearest Undaunted site and "Sign the book" which starts the Undaunted line on your character. Start immediately running Pledges in NORMAL with friends or guild members to level your Undaunted Ability. Undaunted Pledges are Daily Pledges so make sure you run them every day if possible. You will earn one Undaunted key from each Pledge done in Normal. Once you hit CP level (10) I do believe, you can run the Pledges in Veteran mode but you may want to wait until your character is much stronger and your skill level is much higher. Save your Undaunted keys!! Do NOT use them until you reach CP160. Your keys will be wasted if you use them before CP160 on lower level shoulder pieces. Keep the keys!

Install one or more VOIP programs for voice communications. Many guilds use voice comms for Pledges, Trials, etc and it makes life much easier being able to communicate during runs. Ventrilo is old but good, Teamspeak is good and there is Discord as well.

If you have Treasure Maps hang on to them until you reach CP160 so what you find in the chests will be CP160. OK...long and lots of stuff and there is a lot more I could write but this should give you enough to think about for a while.

Good luck!