If you find them fun, do them every day. There's a reason the dungeon finder unlocks at level 10, find your playstyle and ignore any negativity you run into.

The people who say you would be dead weight are being selfish. They are afraid you will get some gear they want but it won't be at their level.

When I want better gear while leveling a character I usually do dolmen for a while then put on whatever dropped. Last couple of characters I left in level ten gear until they hit fifty just for fun.

I agree with @max_only. You could easily do a number of vet dungeons before CP160. But the gear will drop at your current level, so you'll have to go back and farm again once you hit CP160. So if you want better gear, temporarily, go ahead. Just know you'll be back

Join a guild and ask for someone to make you some gear crafted with training trait.

When I first started playing I did queue up at level 10 when the dungeons opened up to me.
Got into the dungeon and saw "kick the level 10" and bam..was kicked. Never queued up again.
That was May 2017.
I just wear crafted, overland gear and have some monster sets from keys/golden vendor.
Since I don't do trials and am not a min/max player I do just fine.
This game provides a number of ways to get decent gear for playing and surviving.

The pug groups are just as toxic as the wow pug groups so I don't bother.

So if you want to do group dungeons while leveling up, here's what I recommend.

As a tank: you need One Hand and Shield and gear close to your level. You MUST have a taunt and One Hand and Shield's Puncture is the best one available since it comes with a potent debuff. Ice Staff passives can be decent for tanks, but requires a bit more work to manage well. I used bith on my leveling tanks for taunts and Crowd Control.

When you are ready to move to Vet Dungeons, you need to know the mechanics, be solid on your crowd control, and be prepared to block, dodge, and interrupt the one-shots. Vet Dungeons are simply more unforgiving in terms of mechanics for tanks.


As a Healer: you need a restoration staff. Your primary job is to keep the team healed, but you'll find that heals over time usually suffice (unless someone stands in stupid). So keep the HOTs rolling while you DPS and buff the group. Healing Springs is great.

In normals, be prepared that you will sonetimes get boss aggro if you have a fake tank in the group. If you can, just stand in place and keep yourself healed - you basically become the tank. If you have to run around to stop the boss from killing you, blame the fake tank (and later, take a look at why you feel squishy).

To go to Vet Dungeons, you need to get good at balancing healing, DPSing, and most importantly, buffing the group. Healers provide important resource return and buffs through things like Combat Prayer, Major Courage, and Necrotic Orbs.


As a Damage Dealer: you need AOEs to deal with mobs and good single target damage for bosses. You need to know your DPS, you need to be able to sustain a rotation of damaging skills, and you need to be able to survive a couple adds beating on you.

The level of Dungeons you can do is determined by your DPS. Most dungeons can be completed with relatively low DPS, but higher DPS lets the runs go faster, smoother, and makes the mechanics more forgiving. DLC dungeons require higher DPS and respecting the mechanics to go easily.

So get on a training dummy (most guilds with guild houses have one) and figure out your DPS. On PC, you can use addons like Combat Metrics too.

Normal: I find that 7k to 15k is sufficient for most normal dungeons. Higher DPS, as always makes it go easier.

Vet: 15k DPS is sufficient for easier dungeons and on the low end for harder Vets. (I've completed Vet COA2 with a group DPS of 40k ish, and it was a long hard slog that I do not recommend PUGing with that group DPS - if you want to run harder Vets, I definitely recommend higher DPS) The higher your DPS, the less you have to deal with punishing one-shot mechanics from the boss.

For context, my pure tank usually pulls 4-6k DPS on the boss while I'm tanking everything. I expect pure healers to pull about the same or less, and I expect my DDs to manage better than my tank, you know?

Survivability: don't be ridiculously squishy, don't stand in stupid, don't blame the healer when a mechanic one-shots you, and know that there is no AOE taunt, so you will probably have to deal with adds that slip past the tank.


I've leveled both tanks and healers through the Dungeon Groupfinder and never had issues, but I also knew the dungeons which definitely makes it easier. There's nothing wrong with being new to Group Dungeons. However, there are certainly steps you can take for each role to help your first experiences go more smoothly. Hope this helps!

I guess in reply to you Juju, what is overlanding gear? And I thought monster sets dropped from a particular boss. What are these keys/golden vendor you speak of?

I have internalized the crafting system pretty well. I decon everything. I make sure I always have research going, prioritizing impenetrable, divines, and infused gear first. I'd like to make my own entry-level gear that requires 2-4 traits, and be able to put a good trait on there without waiting weeks to research an important trait. I feel like I've got this down and will craft when I have the traits learned.

What you have said with the overland gear and monster sets being another option intrigues me!

Solidus2 wrote: »

I guess in reply to you Juju, what is overlanding gear? And I thought monster sets dropped from a particular boss. What are these keys/golden vendor you speak of?

I have internalized the crafting system pretty well. I decon everything. I make sure I always have research going, prioritizing impenetrable, divines, and infused gear first. I'd like to make my own entry-level gear that requires 2-4 traits, and be able to put a good trait on there without waiting weeks to research an important trait. I feel like I've got this down and will craft when I have the traits learned.

What you have said with the overland gear and monster sets being another option intrigues me!

Gear can be crafted, drop in overland zones, from dungeons, trials, PVP vendors, rewards of the worthy (PVP), undaunted and battleground rewards.

Each overland zone will drop 3 sets in light, medium, and heavy armored varieties, plus weapons and jewelry. These can be obtained in rare random NPC drops, treasure chests, quest rewards, dolmen/geyser events, and world bosses. Starter zones only drop one set, Armor of the Trainee, in all varieties.s
Monster sets are obtained 3 ways: the helm from kilking the final boss of the vet dungeon, the shoulder from opening chests in the undaunted enclave with keys obtained through doing Daily Undaunted Pledges (extra key with hardcore), and the Golden Vendor.

The Golden Vendor appears every weekend in Cyrodiil (same times as luxury furnished) and has a random selection of monster helms or shoulders and Golden quality rings or necklaces from overland and dungeon sets available for gold or AP depending on trait.


Monster Sets are a staples for CP 160 build because they provide great bonuses for only wearing 2 pieces. Overland sets vary in quality. Some are useless, some like Necropotence (Rivenspire) or Spriggans (Bangkorai) are excellent for certain builds. The same is true for dungeon sets, btw. Some are great (Ebon Armory from Crypt of Hearts for trials tanks) and others are pretty useless.

You guys rock, that explains several things. I was wondering what to do with my Undaunted Keys I've been getting from New Life Mystery Boxes (the single daily one because ZOS goofed the last holiday, I've heard). I'll hoard those until CP160, for sure.

Overlanding sets seem like a great place to start. I really enjoy the public dungeons and Dolmens I've come across. Frankly, I love Dolmens and could do them all day - They remind of of Rifts when playing...well, Rift. Ugh...I miss that game so much.
It actually breaks my heart seeing its dying state. And I'm a 15 year WoW veteran, but my only feelings are for Rift. I digress...

I'm also getting filthy rich off thieving and selling things like the New Life Writs that I'm just not interested in at this point. So the Golden Vendor seems like it could be nice later on.

Thanks for everything, guys.

Striken7 wrote: »

I think it was a mistake to allow players to use the dungeon finder at level 10, I think it would be better (and I personally wait) until level 15 when you unlock weapon swapping. Before that you're only half a character.

As far as Normal dungeons go, you can do them whenever.

You don't really need weapon swapping to tank or heal the first three normal dungeons. Just slot One Hand and Shield or a resto staff and use it.

For that matter, you probably don't even need a back bar to do Fungal Grotto as a damage dealer either - its not exactly a hard dungeon with DPS checks. It'll make it easier - especially for stam DPS - but not necessary.

I don't see any reason to wait until level 15 unless it makes you feel better about your DPS to have a back bar. But then again, I played before ZOS revamped the dungeons so I remember when level 10s were queued into Fungal Grotto 2 and White Gold Tower and we mostly managed regardless.

Solidus2 wrote: »

I guess in reply to you Juju, what is overlanding gear? And I thought monster sets dropped from a particular boss. What are these keys/golden vendor you speak of?

I have internalized the crafting system pretty well. I decon everything. I make sure I always have research going, prioritizing impenetrable, divines, and infused gear first. I'd like to make my own entry-level gear that requires 2-4 traits, and be able to put a good trait on there without waiting weeks to research an important trait. I feel like I've got this down and will craft when I have the traits learned.

What you have said with the overland gear and monster sets being another option intrigues me!

Overland..all the zones you are questing in. Each zone has sets that you can acquire.

Here's a website with all the sets and where you can find them.

https://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/Sets

El_Borracho wrote: »

VaranisArano I assumed he was talking about veteran dungeons because he brought up the CP160 thing along with getting better gear. Anyone can do normals. With vet, I thought it would be a waste of time to farm gear before reaching CP160.

If the goal is gear, then yeah, I wouldn't bother running dungeons and especially vet dungeons with monster helms until CP 160.

But if the goal is just to run the dungeons, then with good preparation, I don't see an issue with running dungeons through groupfinder as they unlock while you level. Also, the harder DLC vets are gated at CP 300 anyways, and if you know you have enough DPS or experience as a tank or healer, I don't have a problem with low CP players running vet dungeons.

I wouldn't run vets until you hit 160cp you will out level your gear far too quickly and all the pain to get monster sets below 160 is useless. Run all the normals save the few set pieces you get from them and you get a set up with 5 pieces of a set in your kinda level range. If you find helpful players who will craft gear for you for just the materials it's a really good option to be honest blue crafted gear on your level is really good and will help you later for veteran dungeons.
Tl;dr normals anytime but no veterans until 160cp