Beginner's Guide

General tips

Create a character of each class which is 7 at the time of writing. Even if you currently don’t think you ll be using them or like the class there are a lot of advantages in doing this. First off, log them in each day and visit the riding trainer in any main town to upgrade your riding skill (speed/stam/storage) so if you do ever switch or want to try another class you will have a bit of a headsstart.

• riding trainer / mount speed Visit the riding trainer (located in any main city, designate dwith a horse icon on the map) every day! You can only upgrade one of the three stats (speed/stam/storage) once a day and there’s 60 upgrades for each stat so (without things like daily login reward riding scrolls) it will take 180 days to fully upgrade your riding skill for each character. Yes, you will need to do this for each character. This is why the advice is to create all 7 class characters right at the start so you will basically only need to do this “once”.

You may have noticed that your mount is slower than your running speed when you are first starting out. Well, there is a way to get a quick 30% speed increase at all times for a single skillpoint. However, this passive skill is located in a PVP skill tree. Luckily, you can get to the appropiate level without doing any form of PVP combat. Just go to a Cyrodiil campaign (press L by default) and follow the introduction tutorial there. Be sure to not select the “I don’t need to, I’ll talk to General whatshisname right away” option when it comes up in conversation or you will be short a few points. This tutotial only takes a few minutes and will get you enough to unlock Continuous Attack in the Assault skill tree.

Crafting

• Research Make your first/main character also your crafter. As you’ll likely be playing it the most - at the very least right now - you’ll also get them more skill points and pick up more crafting materials. This is important for later. Even if you make another character your main still only focus your crafting and research on this one character. As research timers increase by a lot (days/weeks) it is best to stick to one single character only when it comes to crafting and research.

Advanced

All that said, later on, especially once you have reached grand master crafter status on your main/crafter, it can actually be beneficial to start researching on your alts and increase some of your crafting skills as well even if you will/should never actually craft gear with them. This is because the more traits you have researched as well as your crafting skill (specfically the first skill in each tree) will increase the odds of obtaining purple and gold materials as well as master crafter writs from daily crafting writ rewards.

Travel

Travelling to an unlocked wayshrine from anywhere in the world will cost you a small amount of gold unless you travel via another wayshrine instead. However, you can also travel to anyone in your guild, your current group party, and your friends list as long as they are online and this will cost you nothing! This can be incredibly useful in the early game to unlock wayshrines so you won’t have to run everywhere first. It is also a good way to get closer to skyshards to gain more skillpoints fast.

secondly, there are a bunch of towns that offer a free tiny room at their respective inn which you can travel to from anywhere for free. Be sure to unlock those as that will certainly help in the early game with travelling across the map. The locations are: beep boop beep boop

Advanced

Even in later game it is a preferred way of travel as it will save you a lot of gold over time. There’s a very popular addon that will add a section to the map window showing all zones you can travel to for free just by clicking on it.

snugpod: popular due to location next to pledges, riding trainer, traders

Game Settings

There’s a few things you can change in the Game Settings to make your life in Tamriel a bit easier.

• Settings > x > Prevent attacking innocents.
• • This you will want to disable to prevent accidental clicks on a random NPC passerby while just strolling through town and getting accosted by the gaurds for it. The only time you will want to enable this setting is when you are on a specific quest that requires it or on a character that has a purpose on killing civilians. For example, a thief/killer/stealth character.
• Settings > Gameplay > Circlclclleles
• • The default Red for “bad things” is not very noticable in a lot of areas. Especially in overgrown areas and dungeons. In later content there can be so many effects and mechanics going on that the default red is nigh invisible. The usual recommendation is to set it to a pink/magenta and move the opacity slider to the middle. It may look odd at first but soon you won’t know any better and you’ll never miss a “bad circle” or incoming ranged attack again!
• • Similarly for the “good things” you can set this to a slightly brighter and more yellowish green so it stands out more.
• Settings > autoloooot
• • beep boop

Race and Class Choices

Unless you aim to be in the top 1% of players there is very little difference in your choice of race and class. While certain race and class combos definitely have a bit of an advantage, in the late game it makes only a slight difference. Create any combination you would like to play as!

That said, the general preffered yada yada race/class combos:

• Khajiit Nightblade
• etc

Stats, Skill Points, and Experience

Generally speaking you will want to put all obtainable 64 Stat Points into a single resource. For a Melee character that would be Stamina, for a Caster or Healer that would be Magicka, and for a Tank that would be Health. There are some outliers but this works for virtually all scenarios.

In the beginning as you level up you will get a lot of skill points. Your priority here is your preferred Class Skill Tree skills and passives as well as your Race Passives. Next to that you will want to put points into your Armor Skill Tree of your type. Generally this is Medium for Stamina users, Light for Magicka users, and Heavy for Tanks.

Advanced

You can wear any combination of armor but you will generally want to stick to your role’s type. However, in the early levels it is recommended to use one piece of the other armor type as well so you will level those skill trees simultaneously as you gain experience. In the later game this is usually done with the Head and Shoulder piece. For example, your Stamina Nightblade would be using all Medium Armor except for a Light Shoulder and a Heavy Helm. This has the additional benefit of making it easier later on if you do decide to respec your character into a Caster or Tank as you won’t have to start from zero.

Additionaly, the way the game works is that whenever you gain XP (from a kill or quest reward for example) all currently equiped Armor types, Weapons, Skills on your active bar, and the Skill Tree those Skills belong to also gain XP (Except Assault/Support). This is a good way to level multiple Skill Trees all at the same time.

Champion Points

Once you reach level 50 for the first time you will unlock the Champion Trees. There are 3 Champion Trees displayed as constellations with a lot of both Active and Passive “stars” you can unlock as you level up even more. Some stars will require you to unlock (put points in) another star if it’s in the same line. There are so many it will take you a very long time to unlock everything you want so prioritizing is key here, especially in the beginning as you will undoubtedly be short of Champion Points for quite some time.

There are both Active and Passive stars. Passive stars always active if you have points in them. Active stars need to be “slotted” to become active. You can only slot 4 Active stars per Champion Tree. So 4 Green, 4 Blue, and 4 Red. You can change which Active stars are slotted at no cost. You can also move your points around in all your stars but that does have a cost.

The 3 Champion Point Constellations are categorized as:

• Green: Crafting
• • This includes stars to help you gain more from Deconstructing, gain more Gold, be better at Fishing, Stealing, and more.
• Blue: Warfare
• • This is mainly all Combat-related stars to add raw Damage, Critical Chance, Damage to specific Damage types (e.g. Damage over Time, Channeled, etc.), and more.
• Red: Fitness
• • Stars for more base Resources, gaining Resources on kills, better Block and Shield, and things like being able to resurrect other players faster.

Below we will show the basics you will want to unlock first and generally on most - if not all - characters. Slottable stars will be marked and bolded. Stars are roughly listed in order of priority unlock.

Green

• Steed’s Blessing
• • This will make your out of combat movement speed much faster. Up to x% when all 50 points are used.
• Treasure Hunter
• • Higher chance of better loot from Treasure Chests. This is especially useful in dungeons as they can contain dungeon-specific set items!
• Inspiration
• • A passive that makes you gain more “Inspiration” from deconstructing gear which essentially translates to leveling up your crafting skill lines faster. You can take the points out of this one via a respec once you have maxed your crafting skill lines.

Note: As Champion Points are slow to come by it is recommended to only use Inspiration and Meticulous Disassambly on your main/crafter though you should then also only deconstruct gear with that character. So any proper loot you pick up with another character that you want to deconstruct should be put into the Bank first so it can be deconstructed later with your main/crafter. As you level up you can add Meticulous Disassambly on more characters to save time and character swapping.

Blue

• beep
• • lorum ipsum cattus?
• aha
• • yup
• Wrathful Strikes
• • For a DPS one of the most commonly slotted stars.

Note: The blue tree is the one that will vary the most between characters depending on their class and role. For instance, a Nightblade will benefit more from x while an Arcanist will benefit more from x. See our Builds section for more specific recommendations if you are working on a specific class or build.

Red

• HP
• • simple
• Resource
• • obvi
• armor
• • Armorrrrrr

As you can see even just unlocking these base stars - and getting them fully leveled - takes quite a lot of points. This is by design. It will take you some time before you can comfortably put points in other more “niche” and situational stars hence it is a good idea to start with these as they will work well for virtually any situation you will encounter.

Scrying and Excavating

This is the Antiquing mechanic in the game that has two separate Skill Trees accosiated with it. Antiques can be anything from a Style Motiff to Furnishing for your house to a part of a Mythic item of which some are very good. If you have access to Scrying (via Summerset DLC) it is definitely advisable to start this. You only really have to do it on a single character so as above it is recommended to do this on your main/crafter so it is all consolidated and no need to endlessly switch between characters.

Scrying determines what type of difficulty of antiques you can scry for as well as how many attempts (clicks) you can make before it times out and you have to try again. Nothing is lost if you fail, so you can always just try again.

Excavating determines which tools you have to your disposal to dig up the antiquity as well as how many digs (clicks) you can make before the time runs out.

How to Scry

If you have found a Lead for an Antiquity it will be available from your Journal section. Selecting this will enable you to Scry for it. This will open up a blue tablet with a bunch of shiney boops and will look a bit like a phone tablet game. The point here is to connect all the already lit up sections. You start from the bottom center and click on any icon. Any icon connected to it that is of the same type will then also light up and make it possible to select any other icon adjacent to all your lit up icons. Failing this within the turn limit simply means you will have to try again; there is no penalty. Completing it will pop up the Map and place an outlined blue area on it where your antique is located.

How to find your Dig Site

Travel to your newly discovered location with the blue outline. Once you are inside you can search for it. It will be a small mound of dirt with gold stars coming out of it if you are near enough. To make it easier on yourself though and not go through the entire area at random, use the Eye that was given to you in the starting quest! If you have not yet slotted it, go to your Collections > Tools and select the Scryer’s Eye there and assign it to a quickslot. Using this Eye will show a small blue shiny line in the world with blue specks travelling towards the correct location of the dig site. All you need to do is follow that line. If you move a bit too much or had to go around a mountain just use it again to get a new line to appear. It has a short cooldown of about 5 seconds and will cost you nothing to use.

How to Excavate

Now that you have found the dig site you can click it and another minigame will pop up. This time a box with many squares filled with layers of sand of differing height. In the beginning you will only have two basic tools to your disposal. The Augur - which you can only use a limited amount of times per dig attempt - will show you how close you are to the actual antique location in this sand box. Green means you are right on top of it, Yellow means it is 1-2 squares away, Orange means it is 3-4 squares away, and Red means it is at least 5 squares away. So if you see a Red square just go to the opposite section of the box.

Antiques will come in varying sizes though over time you will know the common ones for each difficulty type. In the beginning you will mostly encounter antiques that are 2x3 in size so once you have a Green square or two you will know pretty quickly where the entire piece is located.

Now you can start digging. At first you only have the basic Hand Brush which will remove one layer of dirt from a single square. It is a slow process but you can upgrade it later and unlock other skills that will be able to remove more layers and from bigger areas. If you fail the Excavation minigame you will simply be thrown out of it and you can begin finding your dig site again which will have moved by now but still be in the same blue highlighted area. With later tools you can dig faster though there is a small risk of “damaging” your antique. The same result applies though. You can just try again after finding the new dig site.

While digging you may encounter smaller treasures. These will give you bonus Gold or Treasure if you manage to complete the dig succesfully.

If you are succesful some text explaining what you found will appear and depending on the item you have unearthed it will also appear in your inventory. This can be a simple treasure to sell or a furnishing item. If you dug up a multi-lead item, such as a rare Mythic item, you will see a row of boxes with some lit up while some others are gray until you have dug up all of them. Once you have done all of those you will receive the Mythic item in your inventory.

Note: As you level Scrying and Excavating (they will both level up simultaneously upon completing a succesful dig) you will be able to unlock more skills in their respective trees. There are a few that are extremely useful in speeding things up and lowering your chance of failure.

From Scrying:

• Coalescence: The first point in this skill will enable you to light up a small circle of icons making it easier to reacher further places. This requires “Foci” which is built up upon connecting any destination light. You will need two. Once you have two skill points in this skill it will be able to light up a “snowflake” type pattern which is one of the most useful skills in the entire Scrying tree.

From Excavating:

• Heavy Shovel: Removes one layer of dirt from a 3x3 area. This costs 2 Foci. A second point into this skill will make it have a chance to not use up the Foci cost making it possible to use it again immediately.
• Keen Eye: Treasure Chests: This is not actually relevant to Scrying and Excavating but it is a very handy passive skill to unlock. What it does is make all Treasure Chests in the world and in Dungeons and Trials have a blue glow once you are near enough! With one point it is within 20 meters, with two points it is within 30 meters. This is a very wanted skill for veteran players so they do not miss out on Chests in Dungeons and Trials as they can contain the items of the Set Gear that they are looking for. It does, however, require to have leveled this Skill Tree up to 7 for one point or 9 for two points and these are not very fast leveling Skill Trees.

Guild Traders

Guild Traders is where you can buy and sell items from other players. Each guild can have one guild trader. The trader for each guild is determined by a blind bid placed on a trader that is reset each week. Premium locations will cost more (up to tens of million of gold each week) while the more outskirt locations will be cheaper. A guild can place 10 bids on 10 different traders but can only win one. The gold of all failed bids are refunded into the Guild Bank. The cost of Guild Traders are one of the most kept secrets in the game due to the possibility of another Guild “stealing” their Trader by knowing how much to bid to win them. If you are in a Guild with a Trader you can help them out by donating Gold each week to ensure they can keep and maintain their Guild Trader.

Buying from Traders

You can buy from any Guild Trader you encounter, you do not have to belong to their Guild. Prices for specific items can vary lots between Guilds and locations where premium locations often mark up prices due to the convenience as they are prone to selling more from passerby’s and people not wanting to travel all over the map to look for a cheaper alternative. Traders on the outskirts will generally have items for cheaper but this is not a rule.

Items you buy from a Guild Trader will be sent to you directly into your Mailbox which you can open by default with '. Note that items from your mailbox will expire after a certain amount of days so be sure to check them and take their attachments!

Selling on Traders

You can sell any non-bound item on your Guild’s Trader, if they have one. If they do not have one you can still list items for sale but then those items can only be purchased by your fellow Guild members.

There is a small listing fee associated with listing an item. The higher the set price, the more you have to pay for the fee. This is non-refundable! Any items sold will also give a small percentage to the Guild in the form of Sales Tax (3.5%). The remaining Gold will be sent to your Mailbox. The Sales Tax is negligable compared to the costs of a Guild Trader so even top Trader Guilds rely heavily on donations from Guild members to keep their Trader up each week.

Mundus Stones

Mundus Stones are special stones you can find in the overland that will give your character a specific always-on boost. This can range from increased Critical Strike Rating to increased Healing Power. Using the Divines Trait on your gear will increase this boost by certain percentage for each item with that Trait. You can change your Mundus at any time for no cost though you will have to travel to its specific stone to do so.

The most commonly used Mundus Stones are:

• Thief: Increased Critical Strike Rating.
• • Almost all DPS will prefer this but there are outliers.
• Lover: Increased Penetration.
• • For the DPS that doesn’t need Thief or has low base Penetration this is a good alternative.
• Atronach: Increased Magicka Recovery.
• • Often the top pick for Healers but also commonly seen on Tanks!