Some thoughts:

1. Before there was such a thing as companions, one could solo the easiest dungeons before Level 50, even if one lacked a young person's reflexes.

2. My limited experience with tank companions is horrible. I'd much rather use them for some combination of healing/shielding/buffing/damage, and deal with boss enemies myself.

3. If you're going into hard content you're unsure about, always take a nice high-powered self-heal. Every class has one or more, and Resolving Vigor is good as well. That said, you also will like to be able to heal your companion, and that lowers the options slightly. Vigor is no longer good, and wardens have to be a bit creative.

My favorite heal if playing with anybody else, even a companion, is the sorcerer's Twilight Matriarch. It heals 2 targets, plus itself, and doesn't have to be aimed or positioned for in any way.

4. "Ticking" heals can differ greatly in magnitude. Critical Surge is a wonderful self-heal for sorcerers. Lotus is smaller, but heals self or others for wardens. Swallow Soul is a great spammable damage skill for magblades because of the heal.

5. It makes sense to use one dropped set, for easy access to jewelry, and one crafted set, for easy access to weapons. Or you can just buy weapons in guild stores. Also, some good weapons can be had as quest rewards or named drops from boss, most especially an infused lightning staff of Mother's Sorrow with a name like "Argonian Muckminder".

6. The right mythic item can of course help a lot. Ring of the Pale Order is great if you're not going Oakensoul.

knowing if it is soloable or there are mechanics (as infamous Direfrost Keep's plates)
patience at first, prepare to spend hour and even more, even in normal non-dlc dungeons,
don't stay in red circle, there are a lot of guides on youtube explaining mechanics

go solo couple world bosses if it works it is one step closer, other problem is to survive the mobs in the dungeon...

even some beginner's build should do (when you know how to use it) - normal non-dlcs can be done with around 10k dps,
may be having heavy armor on body or even 10 health allocated in attribute points, ice staff as back bar (whatever works best)
food and potions !!!

skills - spammable, aoe (mobs-spammable), fast healing and healing over time(hot), having some buffs and debufs is bonus but should work even without them (one hour+ mentioned before)

companions - in normal non-dlc may help as tanks

as beginner friendly - fungal grotto 1, volenfell, banished cells 1... kind of(see guides) - arx corinium, city of ash 1, wyrest sewers 1, tempest island, darkshade caverns 1 (?)

Edit: forgot - also shield skill

The Banished Cells I, Fungal Grotto I, Spindleclutch I, Darkshade Caverns I, Elden Hollow I, Wayrest Sewers I, Arx Corinium, City of Ash I, Crypt of Hearts I are all easy enough you will not need anything special beyond a heal.

Direfrost Keep requires a workaround/exploit or someone else to stand on a location.

Tempest Island and Volenfell are also easy enough they don't need anything special beyond a heal.

Blackheart Haven's last boss will defeat you unless you have the means to survive without your abilities for a while. (Also be sure not to go into the water as that can kill you fast)

Blessed Crucible and Selene's Web are also easy enough they don't need anything special beyond a heal.

Vaults of Madness has a first boss that has a stage that reflects your damage back at you so you'll need to heal and stop doing damage to avoid your companion killing you by damaging the boss. The next boss will leave you CC'd for much of the fight. Your companions gear will matter somewhat for the fight as you will be spending a fair bit of time incapacitated but, your companion will likely be able to solo it without an issue the rest of it is easy.

Once you get the the II dungeons and dlc it starts to get harder and you will probably want to be decently geared to make the mechanics easier to deal with. If you already know the mechs, you'll have to put less effort into gearing. If you don't know the mechs on the DLC dungeons/ II dungeons you'll likely want to google them first as some have enrage timers/unavoidable cc/ one shots.

Personally, when I got more into doing the DLC dungeons I swapped to tanking rather than being a dps/heals hybrid because it lets me make far more mistakes. (However, you will hit issues in the fights that have enrage timers.)

One thing to note with your companion is that sometimes the mechanics will beat the snot out of them and they will just sit in red and other times they will actually respond well to the threats or be immune to them.

My opinion is based only on my experience, and I solo hard content, so some advices can be a "too much" for you.

Companions aren't that great as tanks, so you'd better level them as a healer for soloing purposes. Although from my experience, comanions aren't reliable either (but I'm talking about vet content), so better count on yourself only.

I suggest getting the psijic ulti which allows you to skip most of 2+ man mechanics. Next, you're going to need a good mix of survivability, sustain and damage. Basically, when solo, you're a dd with some tweaks. Some encounters force you to be more defensive (certain vDLC bosses), while others allow you to go more aggressive.

Since you want to solo normal dungeons, you don't really need to have meta gear. Have basic dd sets and throw something for survivability. My stamnb char is running rele+zaan, while my survivability comes solely from master 2h, pale order ring and redguard race (sustain). With this setup I can solo vDLC dungeons, and damage is pretty good. I presume pale order should be enough for you, so then you should focus on damage.

You're aiming at 50% crit, around 4k damage (more=better), decent penetration (I have 10k which is overkill, you should aim for something around 4-5k for normal content, AND have a source of major breach), and maybe some proc sets. Have at least purple gear, jewelry included, with right traits: divines for armor, bloodthirsty for jewelry. Full damage enchantments on armor. In case with jewelry you can use some sustain enchantments if you need it, but otherwise use damage boosts. Potions, albeit expensive, do help a lot. They free up extra slots and help sustain. You can run dungeons without them, but this way you're going to lose damage. I won't recommend anything specific so feel free to choose. You can even switch pale order to something, if it works for you. There are good build editors for ESO which help a lot.

I started to solo when I was below 50lvl. It was hard, but doable. If you have some cp and understand basic mechanics of the game - you're going to be fine. Actually, if built right, you'll even find normal content pretty easy and boring.

As for companions, I never faced an encounter where I would fail without one. They have some potential, I really like their huge shield from resto staff, but they tend to die easily, so I don't count on them.

EDIT: forgot to mention basic stuff like food and mundus, etc, but, if I were to write a full guide to soloing, it'd be too much for a comment. So I suppose that you know already about such things

FrancisCrawford wrote: »

Of course, some dungeons are harder to solo than others. The first boss of Vaults of Madness is really tough to survive unless you can burn him down fast enough that his mechanics never really start. The same is true of the final boss of Blackheart Haven. One of the early boss fights in Fungal Grotto 2 is certain death unless you do enough damage before being pinned down.

Direfrost Keep can't be soloed without an exploit or near-exploit. The Malubeth fight early in Wayrest Sewers 2 is hard even if you're duoing with another player; soloing would be very hard unless you're quite expert.

Etc.

And some bosses have ccs that are hard or impossible to avoid, but that you eventually get released from, so you need enough tankiness to survive. Fortunately, one of those is the final boss of Spindleclutch 1. If you can handle that fight you can handle most of the other examples in the non-DLC dungeons as well.

A small tip for vaults of madness first boss, if you approach the DPS carefully, and stop doing damage the moment the channel starts, it won't kill you. I either approach that fight as a quick burn or a single target only fight depending on normal or vet.

Had to skim because I need to log off, but I am surprised at all the advice against setting up companions as tanks.

Bastian and I have done several non-dlc dungeons with him as tank, and even Falkreath Hold though I died a lot from the mob packs. Isobel and I did Arx Corinium with her as tank even though she is not max level yet. I haven’t tried harder ones yet as I am still working on my dps on a new character.

Ring of Oakensoul, the end.

Being a werewolf for Blackheart can help.

Precognition morph of Undo is a must for "hold" mechanics as companions not always reliably bash things and they do that only in melee range and if they target the specific thing to be bashed.

Example:
Dark elf boss in Cradle of Shadows apply a hold and summons 2 shades that need to be bashed to be free. Companions will target only the boss and wont bash them unless you target them with Y, but that might be already too late.

katanagirl1 wrote: »

Had to skim because I need to log off, but I am surprised at all the advice against setting up companions as tanks.

Bastian and I have done several non-dlc dungeons with him as tank, and even Falkreath Hold though I died a lot from the mob packs. Isobel and I did Arx Corinium with her as tank even though she is not max level yet. I haven’t tried harder ones yet as I am still working on my dps on a new character.

agree with this, i would recommend having one companion set up as tank, one as healer, and one as dps at a minimum so they can help the toon your using

if your on a dps with self heals, get a tank companion or healer companion
if your on a tank get a dps companion

if you have the companion set up properly, they will be fine in 95% of the content, theres only a few mechanics in dungeons that are difficult for them (such as the bear lightning breath in earthen root enclave, since a tank companion doesnt block through it)

It really depends on the dungeon. Base game can be doable just fine without companion and minor tweaks.

Dlc like mazzietun or whichever, need more thoughts to builds.

Some, just simply cannot be completed without other players due to mechanics like tripping multiple switches at the same time.

However what you need to start pushing as solo content is self healing ability and or tanking for your own character. If your companion has the tank role, then you also need to be able to heal them in turn. For sorc, pets can help distract and tank with some heal. Crit surge allows healing when you deal critical damage. (Try pairing with thunder bug set)

A great set to lean on for a beginners magicka set is the phoenix one. It’s from the pvp zones and when you nearly die it pops a massive damage shield and some small damage to help correct your mistakes and quickly heal yourself back up.