What's important to know about item sets in ESO?

There are a few things you should know about ESO item sets. Below we are going to take a look at set bonuses, traits, set parts and perfect and imperfect gear for ESO (Elder Scrolls Online).

ESO Set Bonus

Sets in ESO can have bonuses, and they are usually to be found on weapons, armor and jewelry. There’s a few ESO sets with simple bonuses, but the majority of sets have a so-called set bonus which makes it unique and has an effect that cannot be done with other pieces of equipment.

You can either craft sets, find them in all kinds of content or even excavate them. The bonuses can reach from 1 piece (for Mythical pieces from excavation) to 5 pieces per set. Oftentimes other players refer to 5-5-2 or 5-5-1-1 in order to show how many different set pieces of equipment you should be wearing and with how many bonuses active.

Example of an 5-5-2 Setup:

Example 5-5-1-1 Setup:

Traits in ESO

Traits in ESO are special bonuses that are either already on an item set or are applied during item creation in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online). They can either be random, which is often the case when it drops from an enemy, or they can be defined by crafting ingredients during the crafting process.

Traits are incredibly important for ESO sets, as they define your playstyle. A damage dealer would for example prefer divines in PvE to increase the Mundus Stone effect, whereas a tank would oftentimes prefer sturdy to decrease the block cost. In the beginning this all doesn’t really matter, especially not before 160 Champion Points (the maximum level for gear), but when a player reaches the 160 Champion Points level in ESO it is advisable they decide on which kind of playstyle they want to play and decide which trait to get on which pieces of gear. Optimizing sets in ESO is a big part and can make or break a build.

Traits on gear pieces for ESO sets can also later be changed by Transmutation. For that a transmutation station is needed, as well as transmutation gems and you need to have researched the trait you want to change the gear into. Having one character dedicated to this can come in very handy, as any character can perform this action. The gear will be soul-bound though after the transmutation process.

ESO Weapons, Armor & Jewelry Set pieces

Weapons in ESO are quite unique in the sense that they always represent 2 set bonuses. A 1-handed weapon will need another 1-handed weapon or a shield (which counts as armor, not as weapon) in order to make the 2 item set bonus active, or a large weapon will count as 2 items, as the character will wield it with two hands.

Armor in ESO has 3 different types of weight: light, medium and heavy. Each weight has its own skill line and profits from various passive abilities. Light armor utilizes magicka, whereas stamina setups benefit the most from Medium armor. Tanks would usually want to utilize the Heavy armor skill line, as they benefit the most from it.

Jewelry in ESO has been in the game for quite some time now, but it’s still a very expensive hobby for crafters. You can find any kind of jewelry quality in all content, but players can also craft jewelry for any crafting set in ESO and determine the quality themselves. That also means that you can upgrade the quality of any ESO Set - be it weapons, armor or jewelry. The only exception are mythic items. They can not be modified.

Enchantments & Durability for ESO Sets

Enchantments in ESO on weapon, armor and jewelry are so-called glyphs that add special enhancements to your items and boost your capabilities for your ESO sets, such as Damage, Maximum Health or Magicka Regeneration for example. They help flesh out a role and can help with deficits, for example if you don’t have enough magicka, you can enchant your gear with magicka glyphs. These also come in all kinds of quality and can be found in all kinds of content. Only players can craft legendary glyphs, though.

Durability is something that we find on armor, but not on jewelry. For every amount of experience we receive, the item will lose durability. The same applies to dying. Traits, enchantments and set bonuses on ESO sets will no longer work and you will have to repair it to restore the power.

On weapons it’s called a Charge. They can not lose durability, but the enchantment’s charge will run out. You need a Soul Gem in order to fill it back up (right click on the weapon and choose charge).

Perfect and Imperfect Gear Sets in ESO

Very few ESO sets have perfect and imperfect set parts. Perfect and imperfect gear often drops in endgame content such as trials or arenas. The perfect and imperfect pieces are part of the same set but the perfect version has an extra stat. Often players in ESO overestimate the difference in power of the perfect vs imperfect versions, in reality the difference is negligilble because the power increase is often only around 1-2%.

Important to know is that the unique five piece bonus is the same on both ESO set versions. The perfect version of a set often only adds an extra stat (such as extra spell damage, weapon damage, max magicka, max stamina, penetration, recovery, critical). In the image below you can see the difference between the Perfected False God's Devotion and the normal False God's Devotion set is only the extra spell damage, everything else is the same.

Perfected and imperfected ESO sets gear can be mixed together. You will only get the stats of the imperfected (normal) version of the set. However, this is nice because you might already have some perfected gear, but not all of the needed parts. That way you can mix the sets together until you can replace the imperfect gear parts with the perfected version.

Now you know everything you need to know about sets in ESO (Elder Scrolls Online).