Elder Scrolls Online: Tips & Tricks for the New Adventurer

Today, Elder Scrolls Online enjoys its retail launch, meaning players everywhere can jump in and see the new Tamriel. It's been nearly three years since Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim came out and players are screaming for their Elder Scrolls fix, but ESO is a very different game. Before you take your first steps into this brand-new world, here's a few tips to make the journey a bit smoother.

Every Journey Starts With a Single Step

• First of all, take a look at our handy guide for a deeper look into starting out in Elder Scrolls Online.
• If you’ve played through the Coldharbour tutorial level, you can skip it, but you’ll miss out on all the items you can find and you won’t get to choose your starting weapon. In the tutorial, you can choose between the Sword and Shield, Ice Staff, and Two-Handed Mace. If you skip it, you’re just given a Sword, a Two-Handed Sword, and some gold.
• Join the Mages and Fighters Guilds. When you complete their quests, you’ll get the persuasion and intimidate skills respectively, giving you more NPC conversation options.
• You can join up to five guilds at any one time, so don’t be afraid of being stuck with a single one.
• Check every chest, desk, cupboard, and bookshelf you come across. You can find a ton in guild halls, inns, and castles. They’ll give you experience, skill points, and even motifs for crafting.
• Return to the starter islands. They provide good experience, loot, more skyshards, and other achievements. Oh, and don’t forget to join those guilds above before returning each island.
• Once you choose an armor type (light, medium, heavy) don’t wear all 7 pieces of armor in that type. Instead, leave your last two, least-important armor slots for the other two types. This means you’ll be leveling up those armor types, so if you need to switch, you’re not running without any bonuses.
• Remap the interrupt command to a single keyboard key or mouse button. The default is clicking both mouse buttons, which you can mess up in the heat of battle.
• Repair your gear at vendors. It’s amazing how many people forget this.
• Don’t skip Cyrodiil training, or you’ll lose out on valuable Alliance points.

Skills To Pay the Bills

• Skill points power everything, so they’re at a premium. I’d recommend focusing on your class skills, one or two weapon skills, your racial skills, and one or two crafting disciplines.
• You’ll gain more skill points by absorbing skyshards found around the world. Oh hey, someone already created an interactive skyshard map. Keen.
• The skills that you have in your skill hot bars will level up as you level. It’s good to put one skill from each of the three class trees in your hotbar. This will help you later once you finally decide which class skill line you want to focus on.
• Also put Soul Trap in your hotbar. Level up Soul Magic early, because Soul Gems are needed to revive upon death and the Soul Summon skill allows you revive without a soul gem.
• You can start PVP at level 10. Once you’re at that level, you can head to Cyrodiil and join the Alliance War. You will gain PvP and PvE levels in Cyrodiil, alongside the possibility of finding skyshards and books. You’ll be level-boosted in PVP, but you’ll still lack some of the skills high-level players have.
• You can respec your skill points for an amount of gold based on the total skill points you’ve invested, not the number you have period.

I Get Around

• Use wayshrines to fast travel. You only have to pay for them when you’re not right next to one. If you do have to pay, the amount goes down each wayshrine you use in succession.
• Feed your horse! Horses level up when you feed them, which leads to a stronger horse.
• If you picked up the Imperial Edition, you already have a horse. You just have to buy it at a stable for 100g.
• There are thirteen constellation-based Mundus Stones available for each Alliance. The full list of Stones and what benefits they impart is available here. You can overwrite one Stone’s bonus with another.

Sportin' That Bling-Bling

• This helpful Reddit poster has put together quick reference guides for each of the crafting professions. You can keep this open in your browser to help when you’re in the game.
• Heavy armor improves hit points, medium armor improves stamina, and light armor improves Magicka.
• Always enchant your weapon for the extra boost to damage or a special effect.
• Where do you find crafting materials? Maple logs, ore veins, jute flowers, and roots, used for woodworking, blacksmithing, clothier, and alchemy respectively, can be found in the wilderness. Rawhide can be looted from the bodies of wild animals. Cooking and brewing ingredients can be found in barrels and crates.
• Every now and then, you'll find improvement materials. Each one gives you a 20 percent chance to improve your equipment, so you'll need 5 in order to ensure 100 percent success. you'll want that because if you fail the improvement, you could lose the item altogether.
• Upgrade your gear every two levels or so. It matters.
• There are special crafting stations out in the world. They're needed to craft each of the special armor sets.

One Last Thing...

• Banks auto-stack your items, so feel free to just throw them in.
• Kill local fauna like deer and rabbits to fill Soul Gems quickly.
• I got stuck on this one. There are no mailboxes in Elder Scrolls Online. You have to hit the ‘ key. (The one next to enter.)
• Hit “T” to cycle through your active quests without going into your journal.
• If you come across red conversation options, that means you have a choice to make. Yes, these choices are irreversible.