Leveling quickly and/or efficiently

Replies: 49

There are always a bunch of questions about how to level quickly. Some of the answers have changed or are changing. For starters:

• The mechanics of leveling are covered early in my general tips thread: http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/general-tips-for-new-or-returning-players/
• I completely agree with the idea that, for your first character, you should play through the game in the ordinary way, doing quests and so on. Or, if you’re sure you wouldn’t enjoy that, then this is probably not the game for you. (Obviously, there are edge cases in which your friends are already playing it and want you to join them, or something like that.)
• The game has been inconsistent about match difficulty of kills to XP from kills. But all that will be automatically changed with One Tamriel. Previous information as to what gives particularly good or bad XP is unlikely to still apply.
• It is advisable to level almost everything you might use in combat. The game changes enough that options that seem inapplicable to you now might be great later.
• When turning in quests, make it a practice to swap in skills and weapons for leveling. This is especially important for the big epic quests that give lots of XP. Even though it interferes with the drama of the final quest dialogue, it’s very advisable to do.
• You have a bar on your screen you can mouse over to see how many XP you need to get to the next level (if you’re under Level 50) or next champion point (if you’ve already hit Level 50).

What I mean by “almost everything” includes:

• You have 18 active skills from your class. Level them all at least to the morph point.
• The same goes for the skills from both magicka weapons or all four stamina weapons, whichever of those applies to your character.
• The same goes for any skills from other lines that might ever make sense for you.
• You should level the skill lines for all three armor types.
• Soul Magic levels automatically if you play the game.
• Unlock Alliance skills to at least Level 4 (for Warhorn), and at least Level 5 (for Vigor) if you’re stamina-based.
• For stamina characters, Level Fighter’s Guild all the way to 10, for (Flawless) Dawnbreaker.
• Grab lorebooks when you see them, to level Mage’s Guild. If you play on the PC, strongly consider using the Lorebooks add-on.
• Level Dual Wield to 50.
• For Magicka characters, level Destruction Staff to 50.

As noted in my link above, a large fraction of all leveling is tied to XP gain. There are various ways to boost that.

• ESO Plus members get a 10% boost.
• Wearers of Training gear can easily get a 72% boost.
• Drinkers of Psiijic Ambrosia (available in guild stores everywhere) get a 100% boost.
• Level 50 characters are commonly Enlightened. (More on that below.)

At the time I’m posting this, I don’t know whether those stack additively or multiplicatively; could somebody please tell us below?

Let’s talk about the Training trait.

• Training is one of the few traits (indeed the only craftable trait) that exists on both weapons and armor AND which works the same way in both cases.
• Each piece of training gear gives +7/8/9/10% to XP from kills (but not from quests or exploration), depending on whether it’s white/green/blue/purple.
• I think every leveling character should have a full set of training gear, if you know somebody who will craft it for you. If it’s blue, then you’re getting the 72% boost to XP gain I mentioned above.
• I think even CP 160+ characters who are below the CP maximum should probably wear 7 pieces of training armor when soloing easier content, although at that point you might as well use any CP 160 gold weapons you’ve already invested in.
• To keep costs down, you’ll presumably want that to be CP 140 or CP 150 gear, of purple or blue quality.

Since Champion Points are confusing, let’s talk a bit about those.

• Champion points are actually by account, not character.
• Any Level 50 character can gain them for you, and has its level defined by how many CP your whole account has earned.
• Any character of whatever level has a SEPARATE copy of all the champion points on your account, which you assign for that character only. E.g., if you have 90 CP, then every character can use 90 CP, and can allocate them differently, with the blue points being used to get +12% crit to weapon or magicka skills as the case may be. If you pay the 3000 gold for a respec, only that character’s choices are respecced. Etc.

Finally, let’s talk about Enlightenment. If you have at least one character at Level 50:

• You have an Enlightenment pool of somewhere between 0 and 4.8 million points.
• While the pool isn’t empty, your Level 50 characters gain XP at a greatly accelerated rate, specifically 4X.
• The XP you gain reduces the size of the pool 1-for-1.
• The pool is increased once a day by 400,000 points, up to the 4.8 million cap.