Welcome to the game!

Your initial 25ish levels can be about learning the various mechanics and systems. Just explore, have fun, and pick any fight you feel like picking. Don’t stress too much about any choices in the game...you can’t screw anything up on your character. But I’ll offer my standard basic starter tips.

1. Don’t stress over attribute points. Put ALL into your fighting resource, meaning invest in stam for a stam character and magic for a magic toon. I’d explain why, but it’s boring and it’ll be over your head right now. Just invest them all this way, and six months from now you’ll be like “oh, I get why that makes sense.”

2. Skill points be plentiful! Unlock any ability you want to try, and invest in any passive that sounds good. Recasting is cheap, and you don’t need to horde points for later. There are so many in the game now that you can unlock all class abilities and passives, several weapon lines, be a master crafter, and still spend more all over.

3. Join the mages and fighters guilds in your zone one city. Fighters is important because it can’t level until you join. You don’t have to do those quest lines, but just join to get the skill lines.

4. Since you’re an experienced rpg-er, just some brief notes on how lines level to get you started:

Class and weapon skill lines level by having an ability from the line on your bar when you earn Xp. Slotting a dual wield ability, for example, levels that skill and the dual wield line. Stacking multiple abilities from a line levels the skill line faster. As a rule, try to slot abilities from each of your class skill lines...the later skills are typically powerful, and you want all lines working up.

Armor skills level by wearing armor of that type. You need to wear 2 or 3 pieces to get a line to show up. I disagree with another poster...light armor is for magic dps, and medium is for stam dps. For end game, most players wear mostly the armor for their fighting resource plus a piece or two of heavy. If you’re a stamina character, wear a mix of medium and heavy.

Guild skills vary by guild. Fighters is by killing undead and dadra. Mages is by collecting purple lore books. Dark brotherhood and thieves guild level by working missions for those guilds.

Racial and soul magic work up as your main character level goes up.

Alliance war skills level as you earn AP in PvP.

5. Crafting can be rewarding, but it’s not essential. Experiment with it...don’t feel obligated to spend too much time there unless you enjoy crafting. I like crafting...I’ve made tens of millions crafting...but it’s not for everyone. For now, deconstruct crap and level the lines, then as you learn the game decide how much crafting you want to do. As others have said, it sucks up a lot of skill points, but there are enough shards and quests out there to do it.

6. For beginners, I usually recommend choosing one of the major story arcs and following those for a bit. This is a good way to learn since the game was designed around introducing mechanics as you progressed. The story arcs I’m mostly,referring to are the faction quest lines that weave through the zones in the three factions. I’d suggest picking AD, DC or EP and picking up their first quests in the zone 1 city for the faction you choose (vukel guard, daggerfall or davons Watch). The factions quest lines are very long...there are like five multi-stage quests in each of the five zones. They reward a ton of skill points and xp.

Now that you can go anywhere, it can be a bit confusing to follow these lines. It helps to understand that with the faction lines every single quest begins where the previous left off. Quest givers will always point you to the next location. My personal favorite faction line is AD, because you start off in tranquil auridon and then it gets wilder as you progress. And I think the story makes the most sense (ep always confuses me).

Again, welcome!