I mean, what is the "appropriate" level? Or any other minimum requirements (gear, preparation, being in appropriate guilds)? How/where do I start?

PVP

To get to Cyrodiil, open your Alliance War tab and choose the campaign you want to enter. The Below 50 campaign might be a good start, though the No CP campaign may be busier.

Choosing one of the Imperial City campaigns will take you to the Imperial City. As a new player, the No CP option will put you on better par with the PVPers there. However, be aware that Imperial City has a lot of miniboss and boss monsters roaming around so it is more difficult than most overland questing.

Battlegrounds has a Below 50 option with a variety of 4v4v4 (when the queue is working, anyway) game mode options. You'll fight other below 50 characters, though the actual players may quite experienced.


If you want to start PVP, go ahead!
A couple recommendations:
1. Go to Cyrodiil and complete the introductory quest, which will unlock the first of the Alliance War skills: Rapid Manuevers. This is an incredibly useful skill because Cyrodiil is a huge zone and having a faster horse is a good thing. Stay on top of your mount speed and stamina upgrades.
2. If you want to jump right into fighting, Below 50 Battlegrounds can be great fun and you'll make good AP. Just be aware that when you hit Level 50, you'll jump into the main BG bracket with the CP 160 players with max level gear. That can be a jarring experience if you aren't prepared for the sudden difficulty spike.
3. If you can, get Impenetrable trait gear for PVP. It'll help keep you from bursting like an overripe tomato when someone hits you with a critical attack.

Hope this helps!

Dungeons

Roles - generally Groupfinder will assign 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 Damage Dealers to a dungeon.
Tank - the basics are: equip a taunt, hold boss aggro, and don't die. Crowd control, debuffing enemies, and group buffs are good.
Healer - the basics are: keep the group alive with healing. Extra DPS and group buffs are good.
Damage Dealer - do damage and kill the mobs and bosses. Having self-heals is good. It's helpful to know your own DPS, which you can find out with an addon like Combat Metrics if on PC or by using a training dummy on PC and Console. Many guilds will have access to training dummies in their guild house since its a little expensive to buy as a new player.

I'm not going to recommend a level to start off with, since most of this comes down to what you feel comfortable with, so I'll just talk about the difficulty spikes.
Dungeons will unlock for Groupfinder at specific intervals allowing you to queue for specific or random dungeons. You can queue for those dungeons manually before they unlock in groupfinder if you really want to.

Normal Dungeons below Level 45
Below level 45, dungeons will unlock progressively according to difficulty. New and leveling players should be able to keep pace pretty well.

Level 45
At this point, all the Dungeon II and (if you own them or ESO+) the DLC dungeons. The DLC Dungeons are a difficulty spike with harder mechanics and/or DPS checks. If you don't know the mechanics, it's totally fine to ask your groupmates.
You can also begin running Undaunted Pledges.

Level 50
Most Veteran dungeons will unlock. These are the same dungeons as you did in normal, except the enemies are beefier and mechanics hit a lot harder. Undaunted Pledges will have an optional hard mode that adds extra health or an extra challenge mechanic to the final boss.

CP 160
All non-DLC Vet Dungeons are unlocked. IIRC, only vet City of Ash 2 and Crypt of Hearts 2 are the two that unlock here, due to the DPS check and the group mechanics required, respectively.

CP 300
DLC Vet Dungeons you own will unlock.

Trials
Trials are 12-player content that don't have a groupfinder. Most trial groups will form up through guilds or in zone chat, particularly in Craglorn. They come in Normal and Vet variety just like dungeons, with the newer Vet trials like Sunspire being the hardest group content in the game.

Hope this helps!

Miragent wrote: »

Taemiru wrote: »

The gear that you have doesn't really matter below 160cp, but if you want to be a bit sweaty try to find someone who can craft you a decent set with training trait.

I've been reading some guides, doing craft writs and crafted myself a training gear and both staves, missing only chest piece (where do people get so many training gems anyway?).

What are the "random dailies" you're referring to? Not Undaunted pledges - from which I'm still weeks away?

VaranisArano wrote: »

PVP
...

Hope this helps!

Yes, heaps, thank you so much!

You can run Random Dungeons using Groupfinder. It will select from the pool of dungeons you currently have unlocked for your level. You can set the Normal or Veteran difficulty as well once Vet unlocks.

The first time you run a Random Normal/Vet dungeon each day you get a large exp reward and better rewards in the mail. After that, you can continue to run random dungeons for smaller, but still decent exp and rewards.

Miragent wrote: »

I've been reading some guides, doing craft writs and crafted myself a training gear and both staves, missing only chest piece (where do people get so many training gems anyway?).

What are the "random dailies" you're referring to? Not Undaunted pledges - from which I'm still weeks away?

You can deconstruct items you find, they can drop craft materials, upgrade materials and trait items, also you can get all those things by farming and refining materials.

There is feature named "dungeon finder", basically it puts you in a team with 3 randoms to do a dungeon. There is an option to go for specific dungeon or for random, the random will give you extra xp in the end and some small but nice loot in mail. Tho be prepared for long waiting time if you play as a DD.

Also, does it matter, what level the other group members are? Anyone can group with anyone, as long as the group has the right role set up?

Miragent wrote: »

Also, does it matter, what level the other group members are? Anyone can group with anyone, as long as the group has the right role set up?

If using groupfinder, it will match members of the appropriate level for the dungeon.

So normal Fungal Grotto 1, the first dungeon to unlock, will see a huge mix of Level 10 players all the way up to CP 810.
Normal White Gold Tower, a DLC dungeon, will see a mix of players from level 45 to CP 810.