Dark Anchors are very easy and you should join some as a beginner. It is a good way to gain experience. The first time you do a particular one, e.g. in that particular location, you gain extra XP. You'll get a piece of jewelry on completion, which you can either use or decon to level your jewelry crafting.

Be sure to join both Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild NPC guilds. They will give you the Intimidate and Persuade passives respectively. Dark Anchors will level the Fighter's Guild, because it is levelled from killing Undead and Daedra.

Until you reach level 50 AND get to CP160 all your gear will be worthless. It won't fetch any gold to speak of in guild stores. Use what you find, but don't keep anything. Just deconstruct it as soon as you've outgrown it.

Certain plants are high value and may be worth selling, particularly Corn Flower.

Treasure chests only contain worthless crap for the most part. Still, as a beginner, every bit gold gold helps.

Start levelling your crafting professions sooner, rather than later. Start researching crafting traits, because it is a very long term endeavour. Even if you don't like crafting, you need this to take advantage of transmutation. Don't worry about what that means, just thank me later. Go to the Mage's and Fighter's guilds and find the NPCs that certify you for crafting writs. Do those every day. If / when you get gold quality materials, those are high value and worth selling.

World bosses will probably be beyond your reach to solo, but you can always participate when other people do them. Thing is, until you are level 50 and CP160+, the gear they drop will have no long term or monetary value.

Get a mount and start levelling your riding skills every day.

Lermond wrote: »

Hello!

Welcome to ESO

I can't really answer about race/class choices as I'm still trying to figure out that part, but I can try and answer some of the other questions

Apart from the character creation, what should I do first?

The tutorial you play through depends on whether you have base game only or any of the chapters (Morrowind, Summerset or Elsweyr): in that case you do the tutorial of the latest chapter you have.
If you did the base game tutorial (the Wailing Prison) you should have found yourself in the starting zone of your alliance (either Stros M'Kai, Bleakrock Isle or Khenarthi's Roost), doing the story quests there leads you to the following zones until you get summoned to the Harborage, starting the main quest proper. I think you should do that first, as it makes most sense story wise to finish the main quest before doing the DLCs stories.
If you did the tutorial of one of the chapters you should get a quest about a hooded figure as soon as you get to the first big zone in your alliance(mind that you have to go there actively, just following the quests lead you through the chapter story line), following this just starts the base game tutorial and the rest is the same as above.

I already noticed that I seem to lack skill like “persuasion/intimidation” during conversation options. After some research I was left to believe that at least 1 of these skills I could learn by joining a NPC Guild (Mage Guild).

Intimidation and persuasion are skills that you get by joining the Fighters Guild (Intimidation) and the Mages Guild (Persuasion). I advice you to join both early on, so you can progress in them.
Also, if you want to make a crafter (more on that later) you'll eventually have to finish both story lines, as they give access to specific crafting stations.

I have as well little clue about material, it seem that basic ones are to be picked left and right from urns, boxes and alike. I am fairly sure my inventory was full after 30min of gameplay lol … in the end I destroyed all that had no value; I only kept ores that I mined.
Is there any rule on what to keep and what to sell/trash? As well as a “global“ market where I could sell it for more than the normal NPC vendors offer? I did notice that some items have a “bonus” value if sold to NPC vendors as well as some weapons and armor seem to have some bonus of 280% if “picked apart”. I am not sure on how it is called but I believe it has to do with smithing and gaining materials from those items.

You can craft gear in crafting stations, there are four type of them: blacksmith stations allow you to craft weapons (except staves and bows) and heavy armours, clothing stations allow you to craft light and medium armours, woodworking stations allow you to craft staves, bows and shields and finally jewellery stations allow you to craft rings and necklaces.
To craft any piece of equipment you need refined materials (the base one are iron, jute, maple and pewter for the stations I mentioned earlier, you refine the raw ore you get around the overworld at crafting stations, ten pieces of raw mats give seven-ten pieces of refined ones) and (with the exception of jewels) a style item, that determine the appearance of the piece (there's the basic races styles that you can buy from the crafting merchants, and a lot of others that you get from chests, quests and other activities), and an optional trait item that gives special properties to the piece (like giving more damage, more experience, lowering the cost of roll dodging and the like); there are two special traits that are "ornate", which means that the item is worth more when sold to merchants, and "intricate", which means that the item gives more inspiration (basically, crafting experience) when deconstructed, which is destroying the item to get experience and some of the material back.

I came as well across “runes” but there use eluded me. Just like with gathering “herbs” where I was unable to see any bonuses that were given just question marks.

Runes are used to craft enchanting glyphs (look for an enchanting station in the major towns), that you can add to gear (there's three type of glyphs, for weapons, armor and jewellery), basically every rune is either a verb (like "raise", or "harm"), a target (like "health" or "stamina") or a quality (like "fine"), combining one of each creates a glyph of a certain level with an enchantement like raising max Magicka or Stamina regeneration or adding flame damage to your weapon. Using a particular rune for the first time translates it and its meaning replaces the question mark (there's a group of achievements tied to translating each rune).
Same goes for the alchemy reagents, that are used to create potions or poisons, to craft them you need to find an alchemy station and combine a solvent (either water of various level for potions or various oils for poisons) and two (or later three) reagents. Each reagent has four effects, to craft a potion or poisons you have to mix reagents that have at least one effect in common (you can see it even non knowing the effects because when you pick the solven and both reagents in the station it say "unknown potion" as a result, whereas reagents with no effect in common will give "inert potion", and fail the crafting attempt). As per enchanting, using an effect for the first time discover it and replaces the question mark (there are achievements for discovering all of the effects, also).

There's also provisioning, that allow you to craft food (that temporarily raises your stats) and drinks (that raise your stats regeneration, also temporarily). To craft either food or drinks you need recipes that are sold by chefs and brewers and found in containers (mainly urns) and NPCs (either pickpocketing or looting the corpses) .

Crafting absorbs a lot of skill points, so be aware of that if you choose to make your main a crafter (I did, it's not that hard as there's a ton of skill points available, still it's something to consider).
Also, don't split crafting among characters: I started splitting equipment and consumable crafting between two characters, it's not a good idea as many furniture recipes call for a wide range of skills

albesca wrote: »

Crafting absorbs a lot of skill points, so be aware of that if you choose to make your main a crafter (I did, it's not that hard as there's a ton of skill points available, still it's something to consider).
Also, don't split crafting among characters: I started splitting equipment and consumable crafting between two characters, it's not a good idea as many furniture recipes call for a wide range of skills

So I should make a character dedicated to crafting? If so, wouldn't an Orc be the best option for you gain an increased crafting inspiration gain of 10%.
Combined with ESO + it would be a 20% gain on crafting, no? Considering that all materials gathered can be shared via your account.
About gathering/mining, does the lvl (Expert) affect what you can harvest, quality or amount wise? I did ore veins and got Iron Ore at the start but now I am getting as well up to 2-3 dif items with it.

I wouldn't choose my race based on inspiration gain. There are two skill lines which level rather slowly, Enchanting and Jewelry Crafting. It could help with levelling those a bit quicker, but mjeh. It will do diddly squat for you after that.

+1 on joining the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild as soon as you can. I'd add Undaunted, too, as even though you can't do the pledges to start with, you can grind up levels doing Bolgrul's delves. The passives are worth having.

I just trashed a magsorc for the same reason- to squishy. Right now I'm playing around with a MagTemp, altho my focus is mainly DPS.
1- don't trash the gems you're getting from deconstructing. You'll need those for when you start crafting gear to be able to put bonuses on them. I learn this list in the hard way lol. Anything you get from deconstructing or collecting (ore runes and such) can always be sold to other players. You'll have to be a part of a guild with a guild store to do so though.
2- as far as mounts go, what you level first should be your preference. Personally I go for the bag space, cuz I'm a hoarder lol If you plan on PVP then speed is probably the best bet.
Add-ons are totally up to you and there's a ton out there. There's mini map add-ons, UI editors, menu expansion add-ons, basically anything you could think of wanting. I use a client called minion to manage and download all the ones I use.