Some 1st-timer questions

sanzz18 · January 2018

Whats good y'all? So I am really just starting to get into ESO now. I have done a ton of research on this game so I can learn how to play. I do have a few questions though.

1) So I was looking up builds and watching youtube videos and decided on a Stamina Nightblade since that seems to fit my playing style at this moment. One of the biggest things I am confused on is the skill lines. There are a ton and I get what each of the skill lines purposes are for the most part but I am not sure how to implement those to go along with a final build. I get how everything but class/race is reset-able. I know its good to wear the three different pieces of armor to level up all in the beginning. My question is when your following a final build, how do you level you skill lines efficiently? And how do you use the world, guild, and race skills properly as well?

2) When it comes to looting, I have been looting everything I can. Even looting the bookcases to gain levels and stuff. How do I know what mats are good to keep? or good to get rid of?

3)In regards to looting there comes space. As a noobie, my inventory is filling up so quick, even when I try to sell stuff its still always so full. What do you guys suggest I do to manage this problem easily?

I am sorry if some of these questions are repetitive. It's hard with such a detailed game to collect my thoughts and remember everything I read lol. Thanks in advance.

Loc2262 · January 2018

In your final build you usually have a number of buffs, then DOT (damage over time) skills you keep up and then use a "spammable" direct damage skill until you need to reapply your buffs and DOTs.

For each class/resource combination, you use the skills that do the most damage for the least amount of resources in that regard. The most "bang for your buck".

On stamina setups, that's usually and invariably (which makes it a bit boring and every stam setup feel the same) a bow on the back bar with Poison Injection, Endless Hail, then Beast Trap from Fighters Guild and Caltrops from Alliance War. Sounds arbitrary, but that just turned out to be the best combination of DOTs in terms of damage vs. cost and similar runtime.

Everything else in that regard you'll find in build info you probably already researched, so I don't need to repeat it here.

FYI: Race is resettable too if you pay crowns for a Race Change Token.

When leveling up, you generally want to level all of your three class skill lines to the max (50), and the weapon skill lines you're going to use (Destruction Staff, possibly Restoration Staff for magicka DD, Bow and Dual Wield for Stam DD, Two-Hander for PvP/Solo, Sword+Shield for tank etc.) Just have at least one skill from each line on your active skill bar when you receive XP. The more you have there, the faster the line levels.

To level up Fighers Guild, kill undead, daedra and werewolves and destroy dolmens. You'll only need that on Stam chars (and on some magicka setups) for the Beast Trap and Dawnbreaker. For Mages Guild, collect lorebooks. You need that for Shooting Star and some passives. Undaunted, do pledges and dungeon achievements. You want both passives.

Looting bookcases is a good idea. You don't get items from those. Inventory space is at a premium in this game, indeed. If you're planning to seriously get into it, especially crafting, you won't get around an ESO+ subscription. With that, you get, among other things, a "crafting bag" which automatically holds all crafting materials and has infinite space.

You can increase your inventory space with crown tokens, or in-game gold at the bag vendor (increments of 10 spaces for increasing amount of gold), or by leveling up the carry capacity horse skill. There's also the bank which can hold up to 240 (480 if you have ESO+) items. It also costs gold or crowns to increase its space.

If in doubt, create a few "mule" (item carrier) characters and use the bank to swap items back and forth. Most players do that.

With the next patch, there will also be the option of getting storage containers for your houses which hold 30 or 60 items each.

ZOS_Chris · January 2018

Firstly, I'd like to give a very warm welcome to sanzz18 to the game and the forums! We hope you have a great time!

And secondly, thank you ever so much to Loc2262 for that treasure trove of information, it's incredibly useful and we really appreciate the time you took to share your knowledge. Thank you again!

Nestor · January 2018

1. Just so you know a Stamina NB has the steepest learning curve in the game. Its not impossible, but the better you understand the game, the better you will play that one. May want to park them and play a Magic Sorcerer or Magic Templar for the first character. Easier learning curve. Then go back to the NB
2. If you have ESO Plus,, the Crafting bag takes care of the mats. If you don't have ESO plus, then only keep the mats you can use. For Alchemy, usually its the Flowers, for gear, half the nodes will have the level of mats you need for your character, the other half is tied to your crafting skill. As for gear, if its better than what you have on, wear it, otherwise decon it to level crafting in preparation for end game. There are sets in each zone, try to get at least two set pieces to wear, 5 for full bonus.
3. Storage space is always a premium in this game. Get the first two character bag space upgrades, well first 3. They are 400, 2000 and 5900 gold. That should get you to 90 Bag Spaces. Bank Upgrades are expensive, but the first two are too bad.
4. Legerdemain is the method to print money in this game, steal from containers, and fence in the Outlaw Refuge, there is one in each zone. The first Trafficking passive helps with this. Find places with little to no NPC around so its easier to do this.

Open the following Spoilers for some general purpose advice:

General Advice:

If you need Gold, engage the Legerdemain System and Steal and Fence. There are many areas that are rich in things to steal with few to no NPCs around so the risk is next to 0.

Gear, with Enchants that help your character is important. Not meaning you need the best set, you just need something. And, don't forget Jewelry, either normal stuff, or something that is part of a set. Just have something in all your slots. Note, while leveling, try to wear a mix of armor weights so they all level up. Food can help, Blue for early levels, Purple for higher ones.

Have a Class Skill and a Weapon skill on your bar at all times so you can get those leveled. Mix in a 5th skill to level up and use along the way. Once you get a skill to Morph stage, you may want to slot another one and get that to Morph rather than build the previous one all the way up. Save maxing your skills for later.

World Bosses are not designed to be solo'd. Wait for other players to show up, or send out a Zone chat that such and such World Boss is up, people will show up, as they are farming dropped set items.

Join a good guild, sometimes you can find one by running with a random player, sometimes from zone chat, sometimes from a thread on the boards here. You can always drop a guild, so don't worry about doing that. There is no black list unless you are a complete tool, and while there is still no list, word will get around if you just dump on everyone all the time. But, try a guild, then leave for whatever reason? No worries there.

Delve Bosses you can solo, if your gear is decent (not the best, just decent) and you have some skills in your rotation. Its all about skills in the game, sometimes weaved in with Light or Heavy Attacks, sometimes just skill rotations. The rotation you use needs to make sense to you and your build, so it will be different for everyone. However, some skills will buff the next skill you use, or next set of skills you use, so maybe use that first. Some skills are Damage over Time, so apply those early, but don't spam them until you need to apply it again. Some skills are cheap cost damage dealers, so spam those, but not so quickly you use up your resources. Weaving in Light or Heavy Attacks, with or without animation canceling, can help.

Finally, combat in this game requires you to be Mobile, Agile and Hostile. Move around, attack from advantage. Learn to Block, Dodge Roll, Interrupt (Bash), Stay out of Red etc, and you can soon take very little damage while in combat, at least most of the time.

Good Luck.

First Character Leveling:

First leveling character? Forget about Builds right now. No need, your handicapped anyway by the game so you are way more powerful than you need to be. Instead take advantage of this buff to properly level your character so you can be deadly when it matters later on when you are not buffed by the level scaling. In other words, you can create a rotation that makes you think your all that and a biscuit because of the scaling buffs, then get a rude awakening come Champ Ranks when you are on your own.

In other words, right now if your wearing any gear, the mobs will die.

1. Have one class skill on your bar at all times, swapping them out once the skill reaches Morph stage. Worry about your Morphs later.
2. Have one weapon skill on your bar at all times, again until Morph stage
3. Wear a mix of all 3 armor types so they all level about equally
4. From L1 to L20, invest in attack skills and actives
5. From L20 to L35 start investing in Passives and Support Skills
6. From L35 to L50 start investing in Morphs (but only if all your class skills are at the Morph Stage), Passives and Crafting Skills
7 From CP10 to CP160 try out dropped sets to see which ones fit your playstyle, don't worry about traits right now, fill in passives and actives you may have missed
8. Grind on Dolmens to level your Fighters Guild, or find the Lore Books to level Mages Guild
9. Do some stealing to level Legerdemain, best source for money in the game
10. Decon every piece of gear you get that you are not going to use immediately to level equipment crafting, no need to invest skills points until Champ Ranks.

I recommend just questing to level your first character, its better in the long run. But, if your in a hurry, this is the best overall way to get to 120 to 150 skill points. Its not the fastest way to L50, its just the best way to L50. Actually, it is the fastest way to the skill points you really need to excel in this game.

Let me give you an example of what I did with my last two leveling characters.

1. I collected all the Skyshards in the zone. I avoided any and all quests other than those that show up in the delves that have skyshards. These quests do not give set items for rewards so no loss there.
2. I would farm the dolmens a few times to get set jewelry that helped my character
3. I would do the Public Dungeons including all the bosses
4. Then I would move to the next zone.

In doing this, I could fully gear up my character with level appropriate stuff, and it was helpful gear. May not have been the best, but you don't need the best while leveling. Any gear I farmed from Dolmens or PD's is repeatable, so I can get it at CP160 by just repeating. Then, I had all the content quests left for me once I reached CP160 as those can give you sweet Set Drops in good traits you want. And, Quest Experience is huge for gaining CPs once your past CP160. Kind of a waste before that.

In about 8 zones, I would be fully leveled in Mages, Fighters, Class, 3 Armors and Weapon Skills. Leaving only Undaunted to level, although I would get to almost 3 in that from Dungeon Achievements.

Combat:

Combat in this game comes down to Skill Rotations, with Light or Heavy Attacks interspersed. So, it's more like 1,2,3,4,1,2,3 dead. Pick your skill rotations so that one skill will set up or buff another skill. For example, use a skill that Snares, then a skill that gives Damage over Time to an area so the snared mobs spend longer in pain, then use a spam damage skill. This is just one example.

Once you learn a good rotation, then you can weave in light or heavy attacks between the skills to extend the resource pool you play from. So it's more like 1, LMB, 2, LMB,3, LMB, 4, LMB, 1 Dead. Then once you learn how to weave attacks, then you can start animation canceling to up your DPS.

So, attacks are not just a spam of the Left Mouse Button, but an application of your skills and weapon attacks.

You add in Blocking (reduce damage), Bashing (interrupting a caster or heavy attack wind up), Dodge Rolling (double click on a WASD key to avoid damage and get out of red quickly). Throw in some terrain advantage, and your basically a Mobile, Agile and Hostile wrecking machine.

Finally, Horses, you didn't ask, but your going to want one

Once on the horse, lets talk about a few things.

1. You can sprint past your Stamina as long as you keep sprinting or don't hit a rock or a pebble or something that slows you down. As such, you have to re-apply the Sprint as you go along. On the PC, this is the Left Shift, not sure on the consoles.
2. Speed of the Horse until you get that part upgraded to around 25 to 30 is kind of slow to the point it almost not worth it to ride if your in a hurry. Sure you get there faster than running, it just feels like your going slower than you can run.
3. Once past the first two character bag space upgrades, horse bag space is the cheapest in game, but it takes the longest to max out as it's one bag a day.
4. Stamina is useful to upgrade, but most people wait until Speed and Bags are upgraded before investing in Stamina.
5. You can upgrade one element of your riding each day at the stables. Some people roll alts early and park them at the stables upgrading things before they play them
6. You can buy packs of Riding Lessons in the Crown Store.
7. The upgrades you apply to one character do not carry over to another character.
8. Different Mounts are different skins the Riding Upgrades apply to all Mounts on that character.

driosketch · January 2018

Loc2262 hit a lot of the points, so I'll just add to it.

Attributes, in PvE, one shot mechanics hit for about 16k health, so you want to have above that with some cushion. 17~20k depending on how often you die. PvP gives you a 5k health bonus on top. Once you hit your heath goal, including food bonus, you'll want to put the rest of your attributes into stamina, as well as stamina enchants on your armour.

Class skills, you'll want to have at least one skill from each line on you bars while leveling. You want to get all to 50 to open the last passive. And you'll likely eventually want to put a point in almost every passive you can.

Raise each class skill in the three lines till rank 4 when you can morph it. If it has a stamina morph, take it. If not, see if either has a useful utility for you limited magic pool to be worth the cost. If not, unlock the next skill and so on through each five in each line.

Weapons, you'll want to focus on the stamina weapons, dual wield, bow, and 2 hander. Level them like you do with class skills. (By the way, when you turn in quests, kill an enemy, or complete an anchor, the weapon bar showing gets the rank up. You can also rank up a weapon by slotting a skill even if you don't have the corresponding weapon equiped.)

Armor passives, some are per piece and some require you wear 5 pieces in that weight. Most likely that will be medium, but whatever you pick, unless you plan to swap roles, don't spend points in any 5 piece passive you can't use.

Guilds, focus on the skills in fighter's guild. Thieves and Dark Brotherhood are largely justice system related. Undaunted has a useful passive at the end, but may also be one of you longest grinds.

World, Ledgerman's first passive can help you be more stealthy.

Race, you put points in all these passives.

Crafting, depends on if you want to craft or not on this character. But alchemy and provisioning have passives that will boost the duration of those consumables when used.

As for holding crafting materials, most of that doesn't matter till you hit endgame tier (CP 160). Sell it if you won't be using it, create a mule alt character or get ESO+. The one thinng you may want to hang on to though are alchemy flowers and plants.

Edit to add: Alliance skill line: unlocks in Cyrodiil. You'll want the likes of rapid maneuvers, vigor (best stamina heal) and claptrops.

sanzz18 · January 2018

Wow guys thanks a ton. This is exactly the information I was looking for. You guys are extremely generous taking your time to help me out. I skimmed through these as I am at work but once I get home I will read these posts in depth and ask ant questions I still may have (probably none since this was all so informative).

SydneyGrey · January 2018

If you get a subscription to ESO-plus, you get a crafting bag that hold an unlimited number of crafting and alchemy materials. If you play for a while and decide you like the game, it's worth getting a subscription. You also get double bank space with it. I think I played for three months before I decided to get a subscription, and was never sorry I did.

Loc2262 · January 2018

@ZOS_Chris (and @sanzz18): You're very welcome!

In 2016 when I was getting acquainted with this rather complex game, I was very glad about nice people willing to help. So I like giving back some of what I received back then!

Also, I must say I enjoy the "Players Helping Players" sub-forum here. Much less saltiness and lots of friendliness and helpfulness compared to other sections of this forum.

sanzz18 · January 2018

Thats why I chose this section compared to general discussion, I figured there would be less bitterness haha. I played pretty heavy the last couple days. I feel much better with the skill lines. The only thing I find that gets me overwhelmed is managing my inventory. It is hard for me to decide what to keep and what not to. Any suggestions regarding that for a beginner? I also, will probably do ESO + subscription once I get more comfortable with the game.

kringled_1 · January 2018

At this point, I actually find it much easier to manage inventory on my low level characters than my high.
Craft materials? If you don't have ESO plus, I wouldn't even bother. Someone who knows what they are doing can be selective but if you're starting out you're not really going to have a plan for craft materials.
Glyphs: extract them for the most part.
Gear: Most gear, if it doesn't seem useful to you right now, deconstruct or use it for research (or vendor it if it's jewelry). I.e. if it's not on your body/equipped right now, by the time you have a use for a piece of gear, you've outleveled it by so much that it's not very useful.
Same with a lot of the consumables - keep the ones you use frequently, everything else will probably be vendor bait before long.

SydneyGrey · January 2018

Loc2262 wrote: »

Also, I must say I enjoy the "Players Helping Players" sub-forum here. Much less saltiness and lots of friendliness and helpfulness compared to other sections of this forum.

That's for sure. General Discussion in particular is the refuge of choice for the regular forum trolls. *Shudder*

Loc2262 · January 2018

@sanzz18: I agree with @kringled_1. Especially as a brand new player, you don't need to tear your hair out over inventory management. Most stuff you find in terms of gear will be useful only for a short while anyway, until you outlevel it. Trying to collect sets at early levels is thus not useful either, since gear pieces become obsolete really quickly.

It's a different story if you have friends/guildies that can craft training gear or similar for you at certain levels. If you go the solo route for now though, just replace gear with new stuff you find, deconstruct or sell stuff you don't need. That applies to all crafting materials. Like kringled said, without the crafting bag you have no chance of making a good selection without immediately overloading your inventory.

There's six crafting professions (blacksmithing, woodworking, clothing, provisioning, enchanting, alchemy), each with dozens to hundreds of materials. As soon as you get the bag, you can start collecting what you find. Until then, deconstruct/sell the gear you get, which levels up your crafting skills.

jlb1705 · January 2018

sanzz18 wrote: »

Whats good y'all? So I am really just starting to get into ESO now. I have done a ton of research on this game so I can learn how to play. I do have a few questions though.

1) So I was looking up builds and watching youtube videos and decided on a Stamina Nightblade since that seems to fit my playing style at this moment. One of the biggest things I am confused on is the skill lines. There are a ton and I get what each of the skill lines purposes are for the most part but I am not sure how to implement those to go along with a final build. I get how everything but class/race is reset-able. I know its good to wear the three different pieces of armor to level up all in the beginning. My question is when your following a final build, how do you level you skill lines efficiently? And how do you use the world, guild, and race skills properly as well?

2) When it comes to looting, I have been looting everything I can. Even looting the bookcases to gain levels and stuff. How do I know what mats are good to keep? or good to get rid of?

3)In regards to looting there comes space. As a noobie, my inventory is filling up so quick, even when I try to sell stuff its still always so full. What do you guys suggest I do to manage this problem easily?

I am sorry if some of these questions are repetitive. It's hard with such a detailed game to collect my thoughts and remember everything I read lol. Thanks in advance.

I just started playing a few months ago, and went through a lot of what you're experiencing with inventory management.

First of all, I'll say that if your only hangup on ESO+ is that you want to get more comfortable with the game first, I'd recommend pulling the trigger on a sub right now instead of waiting. I thought the same thing you were thinking, and then after I subbed I found that it worked the other way around. I started having a lot more fun with the game when I found that I could still hoard but didn't have to be meticulous with managing inventory because of the double bank space and craft bag, Keep in mind that with the craft bag not only do you have the extra space, but any items that can go in there will do so automatically (unless you toggle this off in the settings) so not only do you have more space, but you spend less time moving stuff around.

If you're not subbed though, the best tip I can offer is to pay close attention to what stacks and what doesn't. If it doesn't stack and you can't use it right now, you probably don't need to keep it. If it does stack and you plan to loot it or farm it as you go, it's better to keep it in your character's inventory than in your bank.

Think of it this way: If I keep a stack of rough maple in my bank, then I go out and harvest maple while I'm traveling, until I get back to the bank to make a deposit I then have two stacks going for one item. If I kept the stack in my character's inventory instead of the bank, then I just add to the stack instead of creating a new one.

You can't do that for everything of course, but if you have decent discipline over what you're going to loot and what you're going to leave, then this can help save some precious spaces.

nihirisutou · January 2018

I started off with a Stamina Nightblade, it definitely isn't the easiest class to play, but hey if you learn via that, you can play any of the classes.

DoctorESO · January 2018

.

Marginis · January 2018

sanzz18 wrote: »

Whats good y'all? So I am really just starting to get into ESO now. I have done a ton of research on this game so I can learn how to play. I do have a few questions though.

1) So I was looking up builds and watching youtube videos and decided on a Stamina Nightblade since that seems to fit my playing style at this moment. One of the biggest things I am confused on is the skill lines. There are a ton and I get what each of the skill lines purposes are for the most part but I am not sure how to implement those to go along with a final build. I get how everything but class/race is reset-able. I know its good to wear the three different pieces of armor to level up all in the beginning. My question is when your following a final build, how do you level you skill lines efficiently? And how do you use the world, guild, and race skills properly as well?

Once you start running a final build, you're not really leveling anymore. My recommendation? Load up on skillpoints and use a few extra to level stuff up, then switch to a full build when you're foing something besides just exploring.

As far as using skill lines effectively? Read their descriptions. Do they fit your build? Are they useful? I've found in all of my blundering build researching that it's far more effective to look at what stats you want, then pick the armor and abilities that will best help you achieve that, rather than try to do a build exactly and then have it not do everything you want it to, or be what you want it to be. For my part, I don't need reduced fine cost (cuz I never get caught) but health regen in khajiit skills helps my tanking a lot, as some examples.

sanzz18 wrote: »

2) When it comes to looting, I have been looting everything I can. Even looting the bookcases to gain levels and stuff. How do I know what mats are good to keep? or good to get rid of?

Get ESO plus and lose having to worry about this. Otherwise, look at side characters to store stuff, getting rid of items you can easily or cheapily reacquire, or using the stuff to level crafting skills. Or just sell the expensive ones, get them septims.

sanzz18 wrote: »

3)In regards to looting there comes space. As a noobie, my inventory is filling up so quick, even when I try to sell stuff its still always so full. What do you guys suggest I do to manage this problem easily?

Craft bag with ESO plus. Or buy bag space and mount capacity, giving it priority over other money-needing things. It will help you in the long term. If nothing else, make use of a guild bank (where your items are safe) or side character inventories.

sanzz18 wrote: »

I am sorry if some of these questions are repetitive. It's hard with such a detailed game to collect my thoughts and remember everything I read lol. Thanks in advance.

Not a problem. These are good questions. Happy travels adventurer.

sanzz18 · February 2018

Thanks for more replies. I did not see them to now. I am highly contemplating buying the ESO+ membership, just need a little more time. I want to make sure me and my buddies stick to this game before I do so but its looking more positive. I have been doing a little better managing my inventory. I gave up on provisioning for now, I don't collect any of it. I just use the recipes to learn them and that's it.

The only thing I am having a hard time with right now is my bank to be honest. I am upgrading my bag and bank as much as I can along with leveling my mount bag space. As for the stuff I am having a hard time with, what do you suggest?

1. I have so many damn runes lol they are RUNEing my bank space (stupid joke). Should I care about keeping them at this point? I am extracting every glyph I get right now.
2. How about all the style material? Would you keep all these on a first character?
3. I am keeping the trait gems cause they seem rather important to hoard (correct me if I am wrong).
4. Alchemy doesn't seem to hard to manage but is it worth keeping any of it at this point?

I understand any of these questions will be irrelevant if I did ESO+ but just for the meantime lol.