General tips for new or returning players

Replies: 96

Oh, heck — let’s have a thread with advice or comments that we seem to be repeating. In no particular order:

• It is possible to level up with a build that is well below optimal. Don’t sweat (all) the details. The good advice in this forum and others about endgame builds does not need to be followed while you’re leveling.
• Food is a powerful stat boost, and is sold cheap in guild stores. Use it.
• Light and medium armor only have advantages over heavy when you have the opportunity to put skill points into the associated passive skills.
• Your weapon is approximately as important as all your armor put together. Also, it doesn’t take damage. If you invest in any gear, invest in your weapon first, jewelry second, and armor last.
• It is not really necessary to pay for armor repairs until you’re in endgame. Just throw the stuff out when it breaks and replace it with something else that you looted. Alternatively, have a set of “nice” armor that you wear for difficult fights, or when you’re going out on a date. Switch to mob-dropped stuff for most of your fights, which will be easy.
• If the enemy group has a healer, kill or otherwise shut down the healer first.
• Don’t stand in the red circles.
• Don’t stand in the red rectangles.
• Don’t stand in anything red.
• Skill books are not the same as lore books. They have no relationship to each other.
• You level up active skills, class skill LINES and weapon skill LINES according to what’s on your skill bar at the moment you gain experience points. So it is often advisable to have a special skill bar just for quest turn-in.
• You level up weapon and armor skill LINES according to what you have equipped at the moment you gain experience points.
• Other skill LINE leveling does NOT happen the same way. Crafting, Fighter’s Guild, Mage’s Guild, Undaunted, Legerdemain et al. each have their own leveling mechanic. But individual active SKILLS from any line (among those that have active skills) level as described above.
• Passive skills do not level per se. Your skill line level, however, affects which passive skills you can buy.
• In addition to skill books and lore books, there are various pieces of paper lying around. These contribute to your understanding of events and backstory. They may also get you new places on your map and so on.
• I particularly liked the papers that got added to the Prophet’s “office” as the main quest progressed.
• You can “travel to” another player (actually the wayshrine nearest them) provided they’re grouped with you OR in the same guild as you (and online). This is a great way to get access to new areas of the map. However, there are limitations. Basically, if the description by their name says they’re in one of the explorable regions for your alliance or Coldharbour, you can probably go. Ditto for a second or third alliance region you’ve gained access to after finishing the main quest. (Edit: The limitations referred to in the previous sentence were lifted with One Tamriel. You can travel to any alliance zone immediately upon character creation, if you can find the means to do so.) In other cases you may not be able to “travel to” them. You even get a few experience points for discovery for doing this. (More if you step off the wayshrine you arrive at to also discover the area it’s in.)
• There are a lot of skyshards in the game you can get to safely even before you’re able to survive combat in their area. If you want extra skill points early, that’s a way to get them.
• Until the introduction of the Champion Point system, this game didn’t have “traits” the way some other MMOs do. Champion Points (when invested) are sort of like those traits. Armor and weapon “traits” are something completely different. But really, Champion Points are spent on something a lot like passive skills.
• There are some very useful add-ons to this game. http://www.ESOUI.com is the generic place to learn about them. There are two main tools for managing add-ons. One is Minion.

Note: Any reference to “add-ons” is PC-specific. Other tips should apply more or less equally to all versions of the game.

• This topic was modified 3 months, 1 week ago by  FrancisCrawford.