Let’s back up and get you some advice aimed at a very new player.

1. Fear not. You cannot “wreck” anything on this character. Skill points, attributes, etc - these can all be undone and reset, so never be afraid to try new skills or weapons.

2. Don’t worry too much over this first character and if you’ve picked the right class, race, etc. In these forums people usually approach everything from a position of wanting to “max” out a character. You can play any class and any race and be fine in 99% of the content. If you love the game and stick with it, you’ll probably create new characters to try other classes. So take your character and have fun. (I mention this because argonians are a little more inclined to be magic healers, but the racial passives are not that big of a deal except in the hardest of hard content).

(On a side note, I have 12 vet characters and play all classes in both magic and stam. I really like stamina templars, and I think this is a great starter character if you’re having fun with it. I personally love mine waaaaaay more than DK, which I find dull. The weapon skills are fun, they have a good balance of class skills, and they have a good balance of dps and heals.)

4. New players often get stressed by the attribute points (where at each new level you invest in health, magic or stamina). Just put every single point in your fighting resource and never stress over these. Long story short, they don’t play a significant role and you can hone your character with gear ten times as easy as worrying about these.

4. For your first 20-25 levels, just explore the world. Do quests. Get into fights and die a lot, lol. See if you like the game. For a new player, these first levels are about learning the basics. What do your skills and abilities do? How do they work together? How do all the passives and buffs and all that work? How does gear work, and how do you use it to be stronger?

Tip: in your gameplay menu, you might want to turn on combat text. Combat text displays numbers for damage or heals you’re doing. Like if you hit a monster with an ax and see a little 700 over their head, you did that much damage. Combat text can be helpful for new players to learn how much damage these different abilities are doing, and what makes that stronger.

5. Leveling. To get you started, let’s cover some basics on leveling and how the various lines level. If you want to follow along, this will all be in your skills menu.

Before the lines, though, tip: in this game, you never, ever lose levels on things you’ve earned. For example, if I work my bow to 35, there is no way to erase this and have to start over. You’ve leveled your Biting Jabs a bit. You can’t lose that progress. Even if you go recast to get the skill point back, you could unlock the skill again in the future and your progress is saved. If you level one morph and want to go recast to try the other, the progress on the first morph is saved and you can move back to it later. Don’t worry that something you do will erase work you’ve put into the character...nothing will erase your progress (except, I guess, deleting the character. Don’t do that, lol).

Skill menu lines

A. Class skills. Each class has three class skill lines. As these level, you get to unlock more powerful skills and passives. New players are often confused about how to level these. Class skill lines level when you earn XP WHILE SKILLS FROM THE LINE ARE ON YOUR BAR. (Sorry for caps, too lazy to bold tonight, lol). If an Aedric spear skill in on your bar when you kill a monster or turn in a quest, the line is leveling. If two are on the bar, it’s leveling twice as fast. Tip: try to keep at least one skill from each line on your bar as your playing so they’re working up. You want all three lines to be leveling.

Tip: when selecting skills or morphs, it might be helpful to understand that most skills in the game are either geared toward stamina or magic characters. As a stamina character, a clue the skill is for you is if it costs stamina. Secondly, look for skills that do physical, disease or poison damage. These scale off your stamina. Abilities that do magic, fire, shock or lightning scale off magic. They are not for you, generally. You will probably still use some magic abilities, but ones that are more geared toward buffs or heals or shields. Like Sun Shield in the aedric line...this costs magic, but puts a shield on you so it isn’t weakened by you being a stamina character.

Feel free to play with any ability in your class lines, and unlock all the passives. There are plenty of skill points in the game. There are a few you don’t need as a stamina character, but don’t stress. Just learn by playing, and as you decide which skills you like and which you hate you can recast your skill points.

B. Weapon skills. Like class skills, you need weapon abilities on the bar for that weapon line to level. As a stamina character, play around with sword and board, dual wield, bow and two handed. There are plenty of skill points to unlock abilities all over and to experiment with different weapon types. Down the road if you ditch a weapon you’ve leveled, you can pay a little gold and get all the skill points back.

C. armor. Levels by wearing armor of that type. Pretty simple. As a rule, stam characters should level medium and heavy, while magic characters can level light and heavy. Tip: medium armor makes you hit harder, while heavy makes you tankier. Don’t be afraid to wear mostly medium as you learn to play. Usually hitting harder is more useful. A lot of new players think they’ll be a tank some day and wear all heavy, and this can make you a bit weak and it’ll take longer to fight through monsters.

D. Soul magic. Levels as you advance the main story, which advances based on character level. Don’t worry about this line.

E. Guilds
a. Fighters - levels by closing dark anchors and killing undead/daedra. You’ll be doing a lot of this, and it’s why the line is going up. Get the line by joining at the guild hall in your starter city.
b. mage guild - not that important for stam toons. But it levels by collecting the blue books lying around. You can still pick these up, and you get the line at the mage guild hall when you join up.
C. Thieves guild - if you have access to hews bane you can get this line in any thieves den with quen. Levels by doing dailies and side quests from the thieves den in hews.
D. Dark brotherhood - levels like the thieves line, just in the Gold Coast with the dark sanctuary.
E. Undaunted. You might see people talking about this in the forums. You can join when you’re level 43, so don’t worry about it now.

F. Legerdemain. Levels by stealing, pickpocketing and fencing.

G. Craft skills. I won’t go into these, but the craft lines level by deconstructing and making stuff. For now, just tear apart junk you pick up. If you want to become a crafter down the road, worry about it after you’ve learned the game a bit.

Things to do early on (Other than just exploring and going where you want):

- start your alliance quest line in your starter city. These are looooooong lines, stretching through all five zones in each alliance. It’s pretty easy to follow them from quest to quest, but if you get lost look ul where to get back on track in an online quest guide.

- in the old days, the game held you in your first zone for awhile. These are designed to teach you the basics. The first zones are auridon, glenumbra and stone falls. You might want to play one of these thoroughly to start.

- once you hit level ten you can go PvP in Cyrodiil. If interested in PvP, don’t feel you have to wait months and months to level before you go...just come pick a fight and scrap it up with us, a level ten can cause a fair bit of mayhem, lol. And PvP is a great way to learn. Join a group...playing with a large group when they’re using mics, you’ll learn a lot as they jabber, ha.

- join a guild. There’s a guild recruitment section in these forums. Guilds are useful whether you want to find people to play with, or if you just want to watch the scrolling guild text chat. MEGA TIP: (many people don’t figure this out for years) when you belong to a guild, you can go into the roster and fast travel to ANY online member by clicking their icon...travel to player. The game doesn’t alert them or anything, it just transports you to the closest wayshrine to that member. This can be a great way to unlock new areas.

- explore the dlcs. Each dlc zone has a main storyline that is mostly independent with few spoilers. Feel free to play any dlc zone that interests you.


Hope that’s helpful. If you have questions, let me know. Use @davey1107 in your post so I get an alert. And you might want to add a signature to your profile in these forums to let us know what server you’re on. Vets will often help you out with free stuff if you’re on their server. If you’re on PS4 NA let me know and I’ll get you some starter junk, lol.

Welcome to the game!