Each new year tends to bring some new players to ESO, especially later on in the year when Zenimax begins releasing the latest updates and content for the game.
With that in mind, we thought it'd be a good idea to share a few important tips to help out beginners who are just joining the game, or returning after a long break.
We've also included links to various guides and resources that we've created about the topics mentioned in this article, so if you aren't sure how something works or just want more detail, feel free to check them out!
So without further delay, here are our top five tips for new players in 2023:
Tip 1: Pick up the Guild Questlines
In the base game, there are three non-player Guilds that you can join - the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and Undaunted. Each of these guilds offer you new quests and a new skill line, although the Undaunted guild works a little bit differently to the other two and won't offer all of its features until you reach level 45.
It's a good idea to pick up the intro quest for each guild as soon as possible after creating a new character. The intro quest consists only of a few lines of dialogue and will immediately unlock the skill-line for that guild.
Members of the guild will later seek you out as you level up and further quests become unlocked.
To join each Guild, head to Daggerfall in Glenumbra, Vulkel Guard in Auridon or Davon's Watch in Stonefalls and head to the Fighters and Mages Guild Halls. Members of the Undaunted can be found in the tavern located in the above cities.
Examples of some powerful skills that are hidden within these guild skill lines are Shooting Star, Flawless Dawnbreaker and Energy Orb.
Tip 2: Getting the Most out of Crafting
ESO includes a multitude of different crafting skills for you to level up, each of which is important for enhancing your character in different ways:
- Blacksmithing - Craft and upgrade melee weapons and heavy armour.
- Clothier - Craft and upgrade light and medium armour.
- Woodworking - Craft and upgrade Bows, Staves and Shields
- Jewelry Crafting - Craft and upgrade necklaces and rings. You need the Summerset DLC to access this skill line.
- Alchemy - Craft potions and poisons to heal and buff yourself or damage and debuff enemies in combat.
- Enchanting - Create powerful enchantments to enhance your weapons, armour and jewelry, potentially making your character much stronger.
- Provisioning - Cook up meals and beverages which give long-lasting buffs to your health, magicka and stamina pools and/or regeneration.
It's advisable to level up all of these sooner or later, but it's entirely up to you how you want to go about doing it. Some players prefer to do them bit by bit, deconstructing surplus weapons and armour when their inventory is nearly full to get crafting XP, or for the other skill lines just using up the ingredients that you found in the world each time you pass a crafting station.
For the first four skills mentioned on the list above, it's also very important to use the Research feature when possible. Weapons, armour and jewelry in ESO typically have a trait which enhances your character in some way when the item is equipped. You can research a trait that's on a looted item in the Research tab. Doing so will destroy the item, and the subsequent research will take some time to complete.
When the research is complete, you'll be able to craft items with that trait! This is useful for another reason - crafted item sets require a certain amount of researched traits on the piece that you want to craft, and some of these sets are pretty strong. So taking a bit of time to get this stuff done early on will definitely pay dividends when you are higher level and want to make your character stronger.
Tip 3: Master the Core Combat Abilities
In addition to class and weapon abilities which are slotted on your action bar, ESO also includes several core combat abilities. These are abilities that everyone can perform, regardless of which class they are or which weapon they have, and getting comfortable with using all of them at the right time is important for mastering combat in ESO. These abilities are:
Light Attack
A simple hit from your weapon, does mediocre damage on its own but is free and quick. A feature of more advanced combat in ESO is "light attack weaving", which means casting a light attack in between each skill you cast. You don't need to worry much about this when you're new, but its worth practicing for later if you feel like trying something new out.
Heavy Attack
Hold down the light attack button to charge up a heavy attack. When it's fully charged it will automatically be cast. Heavy attacks do more damage but are much slower. They also regenerate magicka or stamina, depending which weapon you have equipped. So if you're running low on resources, try throwing out a few heavy attacks to recover.
Dodge Roll
Costs some stamina and causes you to roll away in a given direction, avoiding any direct attacks targeted at you during the dodge roll. Dodging multiple times in quick succession increases the cost.
Note that on PC, the default binding for dodge roll is to double tap a WASD button. You might want to change this in your game settings - having it bound to a single button is quicker and it can save you from taking a heavy hit.
Block
Anyone can block in ESO, a shield isn't required. However shields do make blocking more effective. Simply hold down the block button (RMB by default on PC). Each attack you block will cost stamina, and your stamina regeneration is disabled until you drop block. Blocking does not stop all incoming damage, but will reduce it by quite a lot.
Bash
Bash is the easiest way of interrupting channeled enemy attacks. By default, you need to press the light attack button while dodging to perform a bash, however you can rebind this if you want, allowing you to perform a bash independently of blocking.
Bashing costs a small amount of stamina and does a small amount of damage - its primary use is normally to interrupt enemies that are casting a dangerous ability.
Tip 4: How to Increase Your Damage and Healing Output
This is an important thing to understand for players who are starting to get to grips with the basics of the game and want to make their character more powerful. However it's not a simple topic with one answer - there are several ways of improving your damage and healing values. Below are the most important things to understand about this:
- Your maximum Magicka or Stamina (whichever is highest) adds to your damage output. Therefore its a good idea to focus on one of them when allocating your attribute points, and also remember to craft or buy a buff food that improves that stat.
- You can use enchantments that directly improve your physical or magical damage. These go on your jewelry, and putting them on will result in an immediately noticeable improvement to how powerful your character's abilities are. There's another similar enchantment that you can put on your weapon. Remember to enchant your armour too - usually you'll want either magicka or stamina, depending on which resource your build is focused on, but tanks tend to use a mix of health, magicka and stamina.
- You can find (or craft) and equip item sets that buff the stats of your character, and sometimes give you special abilities when wearing all pieces of a given set. Most item sets need five equipped pieces to get the full effect, but some only require two or three pieces. Some good item sets for beginners are Ashen Grip, Hunding's Rage and Innate Axiom. The most powerful sets typically come from Veteran trials, dungeons and arenas, but it's generally a good idea to have solid beginner build and be at least CP160 before doing too many of those.
- Finally, you can grab a Mundus Stone to give an extra buff to your character that lasts until you manually remove or replace it. These don't make a huge difference but they're free and definitely worth getting.
Those are the main ways of improving the damage or healing that each skill does on its own. The rest of it just comes down to practice - in time you'll get better at using your abilities and managing resources.
It's also not worth spending too much time or gold on these steps until you hit CP160 (the level cap for gear), as you'll just have to replace everything you made otherwise.
Tip 5: Check out the Guild Finder
To really get the most out of ESO, it's highly recommended to join some player guilds. The easiest way to find them is via the Guild Finder, although you'll sometimes see them advertised in in-game Zone chat too.
Player guilds are great for finding people to complete group content (such as dungeons and trials) with, for selling items in Guild Stores, or just for meeting some friends.
You can be a member of up to five player guilds at once.
We hope you enjoyed this article about beginner tips in ESO. The Elder Scrolls Online is a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) developed by Zenimax Online Studios.
