If you haven't already grabbed the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, and Undaunted skill lines, be sure to get those. Also unlock the Assault and Support skill lines, because they'll be useful later.

I would start with unlocking some Companion to level alongside you. There's a Dragonknight and a Nightblade in Blackwood, a Templar and a Sorcerer in High Isle, a Warden and an Arcanist in the Telvanni Peninsula/Apocrypha (Necrom Chapter), and our latest two, a Necromancer and a Dragonknight with Soul Magic, in the Crown Store. You can level each of them up and complete their quests to unlock their Keepsake collectible, which provides some passive bonus such as better fishing, better lockpicking, or extra loot from various sources.

Next, I'd recommend unlocking the ability to Scribe from the Gold Road Chapter. There will be a portal near the Mages Guild that'll get you started on that questline. Scribing grants you access to customizable abilities, which will be located in various existing skill lines, such as Mages Guild, Assault, and Weapon skill lines. You should complete the entire questline, because that will unlock the ability to find Scripts from various in-game activities, and Luminous Ink from various sources, both of which are useful for Scribing and should be accumulated over time.

Next, I'd unlock Antiquities from Western Skyrim in the Greymoor DLC. Scrying and Excavation allow you to unlock things like furniture and motifs, but more importantly, access to new item sets called Mythics. You'll find a bunch of leads even without the ability to unearth them, but you'll want to fully unlock this system relatively soon to be able to unearth those leads before they expire.

After those, the rest of the Chapter features can be unlocked at your leisure. The Psijic Order skill line is nice to have if you want more abilities — maybe soon we'll get a Scribing ability for it. Tales of Tribute is a surprisingly fun card game that sometimes ties into the Companions or Antiquities systems. Of course, the Warden, Necromancer, and Arcanist classes were the Chapter highlights for previous years, so you could always make a new character to try out their abilities if you'd prefer.

Oh I finished Cadwell's gold right back when the game was still new, I played really regularly up until Summerset. I have 9 new zones to explore though, so just checking if any were too rewarding to leave til later. Western Skyrim sounds like my next stop as I've seen leads for Scrying popping up all over and didn't realise they expire. I already progressed Scribing up to the point where Ink drops randomly, so can just finish that later. Thanks for the replies so far!

Ahrvanas wrote: »

So the title says it all really. I remember when I first started I wish someone had told me to start horse training from day 1 given the 6 month long process for every horse (This was long before horse training was for all mounts on your toon). Now as a returning player, I've been absent since I think Summerset or Clockwork City were brand new. Is there anything I really need to get started asap to get the ball rolling? Or something so awesomely game changing I just need to do like yesterday? I was planning on just plodding through the DLC in order of release, though I already did Blackwood to get hooked up with Bastien.

Thanks in advance folks!

I returned last year after leaving around the same time as you. It was difficult knowing so much about the game as it existed in 2019 because much of that is now invalid. It would have been easier for me to re-learn the game from scratch, which is essentially what I did anyway, but with headaches.

You'll want to google hybridization and antiquities.

There's more to hybridization than this, but the "power" of most abilities now scales based on the dominant resource type, regardless if they cost magicka or stamina to cast. So Magicka and Stamina build archetypes still exist, there is no restrictions in the kind of armor or abilities they can use.

For example, my Magicka DK trial build currently uses 6 medium, 1 light, dw front bar, inferno or greatsword back bar, with a mix of magicka and stamina abilities.

We have spell crafting in the form of scribing.

Achievements are now account-wide.

There is an armory station and assistants that allow players to save/change builds. So a character that is built for the dps role can use the armory assistant to become a tank with different attributes, morphs, curses, etc..

I'd noticed them in collections, I had actually assumed it was just for the appearance! This is a game changer!

There is a lot of really good advice in here already but I want to add this:

I would (personally) recommend making your very FIRST priority the Scribing Unlock/Tutorial Questline and all the following WING quests.
The reason for this is when you complete the Wing quests on your first character, NOT ONLY do you unlock the various ways to get/farm available Scripts and the rare Luminous Ink material needed to make them... you ALSO UNLOCK THESE FOR YOUR ACCOUNT! (Meaning once you do them on the one character, your others will only have to complete the Scribing Tutorial/unlock Quest!)

Some of the ways to earn Scripts will be the Dailies you complete from Guild Quests, etc - which is why I recommend you do this ASAP and before anything else. One of the Wings will even unlock the ability to RARELY get Ink from harvesting resources, etc so it will be things you'll be doing anyway!

(Edit: Recommended order for wings is USUALLY Netch, Dragon, Gryphon, then the last required Crow. )

Edit 2 - LOL! I love that a new post was JUST PUT UP which addresses a little bit of the New/Returning Player issue! XD What timing.
Of course it won't give you a step-by-step guide or tier list of items to get done like players will be able to tell us, but still.... a great improvement is hopefully coming!