A.) racial passives aren't imperative unless you need to absolutely maximize a toon for the hardest end game content. In any class you can build a magic character or stamina character - you really need to choose one or the other, hybrid doesn't work well at all. Dunmer make fantastic magic NBs - their racial skills are more magic based. But you could run one as a stamblade if you like.

Regardless, don't sweat it. Play how you like. Learn the game. If you choose stam or magic on a character then change your mind later, it costs a little in game gold to respec and shift them. If you run a dunmer and then decide some day you need another race or class, you can role a second character and work them up in a couple hours. The longest grind is for champion points as a vet, but every character on your account has access to the same pool.

B.) as a stam toon you'd want to work up dual, bow and 2h. Dual is your attack and health sustain. Bow is a little tough in PVE but has good skills. 2h is a good defensive bar (you'll eventually have two weapon bars). As a magic character, work up the two staff lines.

C.) stam bs magic skills: NBs are fun to me in that they play very different between a stam or mag character. It's almost like having two different classes. When you're looking at your skills and seeing they run off magic, skills morph after moving through four levels. Morphs allow you to choose one of two options. A lot of your skills will have one option that is stamina and one that is magic...this is where many of your skills get better for a stam toon.

If running a stam toon, focus on these skills: assassins blade, teleport strike, veiled strike, drain power. Those all start as magic then morph to powerful stam attacks. You'll also use magic abilities as a "magic dump," things that don't hotmfor damage but perform a basic function that doesn't matter if a stam toon uses them. Like cloak, which makes you disappear for a few seconds, or mark target, which provides the same debuff and health restore regardless if your a stam or mag blade.

And you'll round out your bars with weapon skills...the weapons I list in B are all stamina based abilities. End game bars run about 50/50 between class and weapons skills for NBs.

D.) gear. You had to go ask about gear, lol. As a newbie, don't focus too much on gear. You can wear gear for about five levels before it needs to be replaced, so spending tons of time and gold doesn't make sense until you're a vet collecting gear you'll use for a while. But you can collect gear, I'll go over some tips.

To start, learn the gear system. What is the armor rating? How does color affect quality of gear? And most importantly, learn about sets and how they add buffs for wearing more pieces of those sets. (There are endless online guides as you run into questions).

Gear has color quality. Learn the system, but don't sweat it. A player under level 50 might wear upgraded green or blue armor, but they never need purple and gold, and they can get by w white. You won't need upgrades until you're past level 35ish, so you have plenty of time to learn the system.

You can buy unbound gear at guild traders. Those are smaller auction houses scattered all over. The best are in the capital cities in the second zone of each faction. But before spending, there are drop sets in the zones. Each zone drops a stamina set, a magic set and a tank set. Pieces drop in delves and world bosses, jewelry drops at dolmens. Any drop you pick up will be your character level when you earn it. Feel free to look up drop sets at Tamriel Foundry or ESO Academy. Find one that sounds fun, then go play the area and earn it. But again, you can go allllllll the way to fifty without ever using an armor set, so only do it if you feel like it's a fun mission. What's the grind like? Depends on the set, but most overland drop sets (this refers to all the sets where jewelry drops at dolmens) only take 3-5 hrs of play to collect the 3 or 5 pieces needed to wear the whole set.

There are also craft sets in the game that are very powerful. Learn how these work and are made. At first you won't be able to make them, but most players in the game can. Much faster than looking for drops is picking a craft set you want, collect the mats needed to make it, then asking someone to craft for you. You can almost always find someone to help by putting out a zone text chat and asking politely. Remember to ask their fee, or make sure to tip. As a 2+ year vet, I see those messages and help new low level players for free all the time. I even do it for free. The mats needed for lvl 5-vet140 armor are literally garbage to me, lol.


Other tips for new players:

- you can buy a mount for $10k gold at a stable. You can then spend 250 gold once a day to feed it and improve its speed, stamina or to add bag space to your character. Invest in a mount asap, and start feeding it. You only have to buy a mount once...then all toons on your account may use it. But each character needs to feed separately.

If you bought the new skyrim on console, you might have a code for a free mount.

- you can increase bag space at a pack merchant and bank space at a banker. The first few upgrades are cheap, but get progressively more expensive. The first bag upgrade costs 400 for 10 slots. The last costs 65,000. And don't forget the 60 bag space slots on a mount at 250 each...these are good investments.

- most new players freak over attribute points...where you spend in health, magic or stamina when you level. Don't. Spend ALL attributes in your fighting resource: stam for stamina toons and magic for magic toons. Just adopt this strategy and never worry about it again. When you're a vet, the enchantments you put on each piece of armor is equivalent to 8 attribute points. You'll have flexibility to play around with resources here, so you never need to adjust attributes.

- class and weapon skill lines work up by having an ability from that line on your bar as you earn xp. If you have a siphoning skill equipped when you kill a monster or turn in a quest, siphoning goes up. Early on, always keep one skill from each of the three class skills equipped. You want these working up...the abilities and passives are powerful. Work your weapons up, but a little slower. If a skill line falls behind, put more abilities on the bar.

- armor works up by wearing armor of that weight. Magic characters should work up light, stam toons work up medium. But all character should work up heavy. End game builds usually incorporate 1-2 pieces of heavy. You can also work up all three...that's optional. Regardless, early on try to wear 5 in your preferred armor and then 2 heavy or 1 heavy and 1 med/light so the lines work up.

- you can free fast travel to any online member of any guild you belong to by going to social...guilds...roster then looking for online members (green icon) and selecting them then "travel to player." They don't even know you did that. If you like slowly opening areas ala Skyrim, go for it. If you want to expand your map faster, join a guild (see section on this forum for recruitment) then open wayshrines using guild fact travel.

- fighters guild levels by closing dolmens and killing undead. Mages guild levels by picking up purple lore books. At each new level you will get s new quest in their storylines. They're both optional, but this is how those skill lines level. There are a lot of good skills for a stamblade in fighters and for a magblade in mages. But the most notable is entropy for magblade s...it increases your attacks by 20% for 20 seconds. You want this.

- don't sweat spending skill points. You ultimately want all passives in your class and applicable weapon/armor lines, most abilities in your class lines, most in your preferred weapon lines. You'll also want passives in fighters and mages. And if you want to craft, there are a TON of passives in these lines (25ish each times six lines).

There are enough points in the game to open everything you want. If you run short, run public dungeons (each has a point and a sky shard) or delves (one shard each) or hunt for overland shards. With One Tamriel you can go anywhere, so you don't run out of accessible skill points for a loooooooong time.

- because some players don't like grinding skill points, its popular to use a second or even third toon for crafting. This makes skill points waaaaaaay easy to come by. Under such a system, a player would fight with a main character and invest points in fighting skills. They'd bank their crafting crap. A second character would develop a basic fight bar to gather the easiest shards for skill points. They'd deconstruct the junk you pick up to level craft skills, spending their points in those lines. A second toon can handle all six trade skills...or you can split to a third and have one focus on smith, cloth and wood while the third handles enchant, alchemy and provision.

That's just an optional tip. I personally prefer using my main for everything. I had to go get all the shards in the game, but it was fun doing that for me and I like having him able to do everything.

- Even if you don't use them for crafting, alts can be handy for bag space. If in doubt, save an item/mat. You have eight free toons on your account. They come with 60 slots. You can feed their horses for another 60 (over time). You can invest even more gold to upgrade their packs. Early on, my strategy was to equip each alt with 150 slots via mount upgrades and three bag space increases. That's 23k gold over a couple of months to get them to this capacity...it's a pretty good investment.

- Never be concerned you're going to "mess up" a character. You can spend a little gold in any capital city to undo morphs, all your skill points or your attributes. The cost is based on how many you've spent. My vets cost like 1,000 for morphs and 10k for all points. Early on it'll cost you like 500 gold for either.

Hopefully these tips help and aren't overwealming. They're the basic stuff most vets say they wish they'd known early on.