Lol; very true. Unfortunately none of my friends are playing. They are FPS fans.

Disabling the starter islands was a terrible design decision, you're supposed to complete it and THEN start with the mainlands, try returning to a lower level zone and complete its quests so you can get a high enough level, also, try crafting your own gear so it fits both your level and race style

My tip: stop dying.

What is your class and weapon at this point?

Also, ftr I've played a number of MMORPG; and dying always annoys me. But most of what I've played is balanced such that it is easy if you are patient and don't rush head long into things.

Another thing to try is stuffing as many skill points into health rather than into Stamina and Magic in the early stages, that will also help.

Some thoughts.

• Make some new equipment for yourself. If you're dying a lot, your current gear might be worn out. And if you have any slots on your equipment that are empty, or just have low-level / beat-up gear, filling those slots with shiny new stuff will help your survivability. When in doubt, slap some plate mail on it and call it a day... But then, I'm a Blacksmith, so I might be biased. ^_^'
• If you haven't already, go check out the starter island for your alliance. As Cheesus kinda-sorta said, going there can help you level up, get more skill points, and even just get more practice at combat. There should be someone near where you first woke up after Coldharbour you can talk to to get on your way there.
• Try out different skill lines, if you can. Maybe the problem is just that you 'work' differently from whatever skills you have. For instance, I tried the Bow for a while, but it turns out, I'm just bad with it. 1H+Shield, however, works wonders for me.
• Even if your RL friends aren't online, group up with whoever's running by. Or, join up with one of the eleventy-bajillion guilds that's starting up right now. You have five guild slots, so there's no harm in joining up with one of 'em at random.
• Worse to worse, if you can grind your way up to Level 10, you can pop into Cyrodiil and go play there. If you just aren't very good at fighting monsters, maybe you're better at fighting players, who knows? (I'm the reverse, of course - I'm way better at killin' monsters than killin' folks.)

Hope that helps. Good luck!

Craft. Go out and collect stuff. Make the best armor/weapon(s) you can for your level, or the next level if you're close.

Use that food too, it gives huge buffs to hitpoints and such. NPCs seem not to mind people stealing everything they own, so you may as well take their food.

keep an eye on the quest levels, I noticed I was going from level 4 quests right to level 8 ones where I was getting hit like a truck!

In the beginning as a sorcerer, i recommend using light armor (start getting mana perks asap), your pet, and a bow. Get silver bolts asap. Use your snares and stuns from mana skills, then drop silver bolts for the stam skill.

i would do something like this for the majority of pulls.
Power attack to pull
Poison arrow
Crystal shard
Silver bolt

if they get close or there is more then one mob pop encase then shoot while moving back.

If you dont want to use a bow then a destro staff can do the same thing with other skills. Remember you dont need a bow to use silver bolts. That skill is by far the most powerful skill a new character can have for questing, especially if you are fighting undead or deadra.

As for not having friends to play with, if you are in Daggerfall feel free to join up with us http://theseptimbloodline.guildportal.com/ PvP/PvE/Social guild. you can find me in game (Kronos Dawnbreaker) or apply on the website if you would like.

Tips:
1. Eat some of that junk food they keep dropping. One that either gives you more health or improves your health regen.
2. Make sure your gear is within 2 levels of your character level.
3. Early in the process, make sure you have 2 heavy, 2 medium and 3 light pieces of armor. Get rid of the soulshriven stuff as early as you can, before you leave Coldharbour if possible.
4. Make sure you target mobs, hover your mouse over them, to see their level and compare it to yours. Look out for areas where hitting one mob will bring out two more.
5. Block.. its the right-click, and stuns when they use heavy attacks. Interrupt, use the block + left-click, to prevent casters or channeled stuff like archers. There was a good bit of instruction in the tutorial in Coldharbour on how to use this part of combat.
6. Are you sure you went back to the starter island? Only time I died there was when I went swimming out into the Slaughterfish.
7. Play the forum game. Whoever gave you an answer for your question, mark that one, or those as answering your question.

Gedalya wrote: »

BTW, I am on the starter island; Breton, sorcerer. Also, there is a bonus pet; how do I enable/acquire it?

@Gedalya, as a sorcerer, in the beta I used to feel very weak in the starter island. Until you level up a little beat you'll feel that way. Try to update your armor and weapons while you level up and pay attention to the game mechanics (dodge to avoid hard damage and try to knockdown/knockback foes so they cannot reach you).

After a while, you'll get better equipment and amazing skills, so you'll stop dying

mutharex wrote: »

Gedalya wrote: »

Ok, found my Vanity Pets; nice! Also I've upgraded all of my armor. I just want to confirm that I'm on the starter island though; don't I start out there? I know it can be skipped but I never left the island I started on. How can I confirm that I'm on the starter island?

What's the name of the island/city? By default now you skip the starter islands. You can speak to a NPC next to where you spawned to go to the islands though. Do it

I keep seeing this, but how do I find the spot where I spawned? I don't remember. It was a house in Daggerfall. Is there a good way to find it again, even for someone who is navigation ally challenged and consults the map every 30 seconds?

Thank you @Yasha! Now I know I am not on the starter island like I thought. This explains my problems more. While I agree with allowing players to skip the starter island; I think you should at least still start there. I will try my hand at the starter island before coming back to the mainland.

Thanks everyone for all of the great tips/advise!