Welcome to 31 tips and tricks for ESO Beginner Guide 2024.
I’m the Lost Yogi, and I have been playing the Elder Scrolls Online since Beta.
These are the 31+ tips and tricks I wish I knew when I started playing Elder Scrolls Online.
Wear All three kinds of armor.
To achieve an armor skill line you need to put on three pieces of the armor type you need a skill line in. If you want the Medium armor skill line you need to wear three pieces of medium armor. Once you get the skill line you can take off the pieces you don’t need, you will keep the skill line.
In the Elder Scrolls Online Game, you have three types of armor.
Light, medium, and heavy. Light is for spellcasters, medium is for stamina-based damage dealers, and heavy is for Tanking.
But you need at least one piece of each type to get the full benefit of the Undaunted skill line passives.
By the way, do you know the 19+ best ways to make gold in the Elder Scrolls Online? If not read the article here on Players Dojo!
If you are brand new to the game, make sure to take a look at the ESO Class Quiz!
Get a Free Mount.
When you reach level 10 in ESO, you get the free sorrel horse.
All mounts are equal, the only difference is how they look.
The most important part, remember to train your riding skills.
Read the in-depth How to Mount in ESO guide.
How much your mount can carry, how fast it can run, and how long it can sprint, all depends on your character’s training.
Your riding skills are speed, stamina, and capacity.
All three start at 0 and you can get them to 60.
Research Crafting traits.
Becoming a master crafter takes time, a lot of time!
Any piece of armor, jewelry, or weapon can have one of 9 traits.
You benefit in different ways according to the traits you choose to wear.
The traits stack, so you can add as many items of the same trait as you like, but you could also use different traits on different pieces of equipment.
When mixing traits you can choose the benefits you feel you lack the most.
The reason you need to start researching traits right away is that it takes additional time for each trait you already know. The first trait for one item takes only a few hours, while trait 9 takes a month or more unless you put skill points into research speed.
Start out researching 1 trait for all items, then trait 2 for all items, and so on.
That way you will be able to craft more items faster, as armor sets demand you know X amount of traits to be able to craft them.
“The ESO beginner guide would not be complete without these ESO Tips and Tricks.“
What is the fastest way to farm gold in ESO?
How do I farm gold in ESO, you might ask? Getting all the gold you will ever need in ESO is pretty easy.
I have made this ESO gold farming guide, but for now, my very best ESO Beginner Guide tip for getting gold in ESO the fastest way.
Find a Delve or Dungeon with undead where you can run in circles killing them.
Preferably you want a Dungeon or a Delve near a town or a merchant, so you have easy access to selling once your bags are full.
As a beginner, and this is the ESO beginner guide, this is the absolute fastest way.
If you want to level fast while making decent amounts of gold, you should join the Dolmen train in the Alikir Desert.
Just get to Alikir and type Dolmen in zone chat. You will get an invite and can join the slaughter.
This is not the fastest way to get gold, but it just might be the fastest way to power level and get lots of gold.
Best weapon for your class in ESO.
I had to put this in The ESO Beginner Guide since it seems to be one of the most asked questions in ESO.
What is the best weapon for my class in ESO depends on your playstyle.
That’s why I will be making class guides for all classes, and all three roles for each class (Tank, Healer, Damage Dealer).
I can’t answer this short enough for an ESO Beginner Guide, but I can make videos about every class.
You can find the Lost Yogi YouTube Channel here.
Use all weapon types.
While I can’t tell you which weapon is the best for you in this post, I can recommend you use all weapons at least once while leveling up.
When you kill a mob while holding a weapon, you get the corresponding skill line for that weapon. Even though you do not intend to use that weapon, it is a great ESO beginner guide tip to use and level all skills at least to the morph point.
This is because, for some reason, it goes faster-leveling skills while your character levels, and slows down once you reach the max level.
So if you need to change the weapon type, later on, this will have saved you tons of time.
Don’t buy Armor or Weapons.
While leveling up, do not buy armor, weapons, or jewelry.
Save your gold, and spend it on riding skill upgrades, bag space, and bank space.
There is no need to buy any gear, as you level so fast these days in ESO from level 1 to 50, and again to Champion Point 160, that you will be sorry you wasted your gold on any gear.
You could buy food you should buy food, as that buff will help you tremendously.
I know that gold is about to burn a hole in your pocket, remember I didn’t just write this ESO Beginner Guide, I was a beginner once!
But man is it a waste of gold buying gear until you are at Champion Point 160.
Deconstruct or sell everything you find.
You want gold, but what you should do as you start is to deconstruct everything you find, that can be deconstructed.
When you Deconstruct you get materials for crafting when you craft you increase your crafting skill and will be able to make better gear.
Everything you craft you can sell, either to vendors or in guild stores.
You will need the upgrade materials you get later, and they will cost you way more than you could earn if you just sold everything.
You can sell everything you don’t need if it’s white, green or blue quality. Unless it’s jewelry, then you should always deconstruct blue as well.
Purple and gold items should always be deconstructed, as the materials, you could get from these are crazy expensive.
Collect All Skyshards.
You find Skyshards out in the open, in delves and dungeons.
Once you find one, you can activate it and harvest the energy.
For every three Skyshards, you collect you get one skill point.
Every Delve and dungeon has a Skyshard hidden somewhere, and you can use the Skyshard Addon to help you find them.
I’m not sure how many I had to run back for in areas I was done with before I learned this. That is why this tip got into this Elder Scrolls Online Beginners Guide.
Dots (damage over time) vs. Direct Damage.
Your DPS is dependent on how much damage you can stack.
The more Damage Over Time (DoTs) you have running while you just Direct Damage, the more overall damage per second (DPS) you will do.
If you are just fighting 1 – 3 trash mobs, one DoT fired while your approach is enough, and the Direct Damage.
In bigger groups, you should throw in 2 or 3 Dots before going to Direct Damage. In boss fights DoTs is King! Stack all the DOTs you can while weaving in light or heavy attacks between each DOT.
If you have time for a couple of Direct Damage attacks before you need to refresh your DOTs by all means do Direct Damage.
This is where most beginners go wrong because from the start you can handle everything with one skill if you choose the heaviest-hitting one.
When we get to more difficult mobs, we are not trained to diversify our skill use. That’s why this tip made it into the Elder Scrolls Online Beginners Guide 2021.
Follow the main questline.
“I know you are the Lost Yogi, but why would you put this tip into your Elder Scrolls online beginners guide?”.
Thank you for asking, and the answer is as simple as the headline, you can get lost in all the quests in ESO.
My first MMORPG was Everquest online, then I boarded the WoW train and none of them felt like ESO in regards to side stories.
If you want to enjoy everything as I did, be my guest it’s plenty of fun and will take you around 3 years to get through it all, and see everything.
To keep track of your progress, you can find your Achievement Points by pressing U. You can’t use them for leveling or buying anything, but you can get a picture of how much of the game you have seen.
The same goes for finding all the Lore Books. There are around 4.000 Lore Books spread out throughout all of Tamriel.
Now that’s why this made it into the ESO Beginner Guide.
The main quest is marked in the picture below. Good luck.
ESO Tips and Tricks: Use Boats, wayshrines, and Teleport to fast travel.
Did you know, that you can right-click on any group or guild member and choose Fast Travel? It will teleport you straight to them.
Now that is a tip for the ESO Beginner Guide.
Log in daily for rewards (Could be a mount!)
Daily Rewards wasn’t even a thing when ESO first came out, back in 2014.
But every game developer learns from what works in other games.
Daily rewards work, and even though you are being manipulated, or rewarded for logging in daily, you should still do it.
Elder Scrolls Online Beginners Guide 2023’s most obvious tip, but if you missed this in-game it could be the most important since this could get you free mounts and pets besides all the other nice gifts.
Join The Mages, Fighters, and Undaunted Guilds right away!
There are more guilds than these you should join, but these three you can find in the first big city you get to.
All three give you a new Skill line, where the Mages guild benefits Magicka users the most, Fighters guild benefits Stamina builds the most.
Undaunted benefits everyone, and you need to max it out to get the great benefits.
The Mages guild level increases when you read Lorebooks, so read everything you can find! Fighters Guild increases when killing undead, which is great if you read the part of this ESO Beginner Guide about farming gold.
Undaunted increases when doing Group Dungeons/ Veteran Dungeons.
Search Bookshelves, Urns, boxes, sacks, and coffers.
Best ESO Tips and Tricks! Hidden in every corner of Tamriel are things you can pick up, use, or sell.
Some are worth more than others, but if you have ESO plus you have unlimited storage space for crafting materials and should collect everything that isn’t nailed or bolted to the floor.
Bookshelves can reveal Lore Books that you missed in your travels or haven’t stumbled upon yet. Also, some of us try to find every book, scroll, letter, note, and tablet in the realm, here searching bookshelves comes in very handy.
This is probably ESO Beginner Guide tips and tricks I would have ignored when I started, but it has cost me dearly since now there are books that I can’t get to, as they are locked by quests I have done and didn’t pick up the Lore Books along the way.
How to get outfits or dye your armor.
As this is the updated ESO Beginner Guide, I felt it was necessary to include this little tip.
You can make your outfit look like any style you have collected the motifs of.
Also, you can dye everything in any color you have earned (you earn colors by doing achievements).
You find the dye and style changing desk in every town that has crafting options.
I promise the tips in this ESO Beginner Guide will get better as we go down the list.
Recharge your weapons.
The Elder Scrolls Online Beginners Guide would not be complete if I didn’t remind you to recharge your weapons!
Soul Shards are used for reviving yourself and others, but also to recharge your weapons if they have a glyph on them.
Food boosts stats and drinks boost regeneration.
It wouldn’t be an ESO Beginner Guide if we didn’t talk about food buffs.
You can get food that scales to your level by either buying it, having a friend craft it for you, or getting some in the daily reward bonus.
“Green” food and drinks only affect one stat, food affects the maximum stat while drinks give that stat higher recovery.
“Blue” food and drinks affect two stats, and “Purple” affects all three.
You can even get Purple and Gold food, which affects 2 max stats and one recovery.
They are often the best buffs in ESO, but also the most costly.
Best food and potion.
Gold food and tri-stat potions should be part of your end-game collection.
Blue potions for Magicka users, Green/Yellow potions for Stamina users, and Red potions for Tanks and PvP.
As read elsewhere in this ESO Beginner Guide, you should not save potions below your level.
It’s a waste of space and single-benefit potions drop all the time or you can buy 100 with very few gold coins.
Check out this list of the 10 best food and drink buffs in ESO.
Healing Potions and other self-healing options.
A very important tip, learn to keep yourself alive!
Nobody wants to group with the Noob who stands in red all the time hoping the healer will keep him/her alive.
As you can solo 85% of ESO if you are good at it, most groups expect you can keep yourself alive for trash mobs and don’t need much healing when fighting the easier dungeon bosses.
All classes have skills to heal themselves, you also have potions and if you are struggling you can use a Restoration staff.
Don’t save potions lower level than you need.
Bag space is scarce when you start, and you don’t want to mule around anything you don’t need anymore. The headline here could just as well have read, “Don’t save gear at a lower level than you need.” But for some reason, we think we are going to need those low-level potions in an emergency.
Maybe this ESO Beginner Guide tip should read “Use the Merchant every chance you get”.
It is not easy to cover everything in an ESO Beginner Guide, I even wrote a FAQ with 25 or more tips and tricks.
How to Maximize your DPS in ESO.
- Increase your level.
- Upgrade your gear.
- Choose beneficial Set bonuses.
- Distribute your Champion Point to support the DPS build.
- Level your skills & upgrade your skills.
- Debuff boss mobs with Major Fraction & Major Breach.
- Learn to weave light attacks in between each skill use.
- Learn the best skill rotation.
- Use buff food ( 2-stat or legendary).
- Use buff potions.
- Choose the best Race.
- Utilize Class Buff.
- Remember to bar-swap
Make sure you read my post on how to get higher DPS in ESO, right here.
How to change Glyphs augmentation.
If you find some nice gear, but the bonus on it isn’t what you were hoping for, just slap a new glyph on it.
The new glyph will overwrite the old bonus, and this can be done as many times as you like.
How to change traits on your gear.
This might be too advanced a topic for an ESO Beginner Guide, but I want you to know at least, that it is possible and if you get really rare items of champion point 160, and they have the wrong trait (training for example) you can change it.
You need 50 transmute stones and go to Brass City, where you will find this device (see picture below).
Bag space upgrades are worth it!
This is the only thing you should spend gold on, extra space, both bag space and bank space. You will need materials for crafting food, armor, weapons, and many other things. You will get the gear you want to save for a later time, and you might even want to have more than one set of gear with you for long adventures.
You need extra bag space and bank space.
Most people even make extra characters that they don’t level up, but just buy bag space on and use those to store gear they might want to use at some point.
It is no problem to farm gold as you learned earlier in this ESO Beginner Guide, but the cost of bag space upgrades is quite substantial, that’s why this is the only thing you should be spending your hard-earned gold coins on.
Training your riding skills also gives you up to 60 spaces extra in your bags. This takes time as you can only train riding skills in ESO every 20 hours.
That’s why I wrote earlier about training your riding skills in ESO.
Only use XP bonus potions and scrolls when…
If you are one of those where all that matters is getting to level 50 and Championpoint 160 (or more) really fast. Don’t waste XP Bonus items while running around doing the slow stuff (like the Harbourage).
Wait until you are level 20-25’ish, then go to Alik’r Desert and join Dolmen Farming. Once you are there and got the 3 needed Wayshrines to keep up with the “train”, pop an XP Potion, or use an XP Scroll and farm all you can for that hour or two.
Even though you are a pro for making it so far into this ESO Beginner Guide.
You should still keep going, I promise you if you liked it so far, you are going to love the next tip.
Visit Cyrodiil.
Even if it is just for a brief moment, you should visit Cyrodiil.
As soon as you get inside, you get a Skill Point just for showing up.
If you play a Stamina Damage Dealer it is even more important, as you need skills called Caltrops and Vigor, and you can only get those skills by playing some PvP.
If you need those skills and don’t know how to get them fast, just use a Restoration staff and join a big group from your alliance, and start healing them. Alliance Points (Those you need to earn to get PvP rank and skills) will rain on you like… well rain in Seattle, Bergen, or any other place where it rains all the time (the UK).
The reason is if you heal someone and they earn AP (Alliance Points) you get the same amount for keeping them alive.
I know you won’t need the Restoration staff skills, as a stamina Damage Dealer when you get to a higher level, I cover this elsewhere in this ESO Beginner Guide.
Level up all skills.
Perhaps the best ESO Tips and Tricks I wish I knew when I started.
So it goes into this Elder Scrolls online beginners guide.
ESO changes all the time, what works today, might not work next month.
That is one of the beautiful things about this game, you need to adapt or die.
For some reason, it is faster to level skills while you are leveling.
I recommend you put a skill or two on your skill bar even if you can’t use them, just to level them up to at least morph point.
When you have done that with all the weapons you won’t use right now, reset your skill points, and set them right.
Even a stamina Damage Dealer could at some point benefit from running a Restoration staff for the shield, and Destructions staff was changed so Ice Staff became a staff for tanking.
By making sure all skill lines and skills are leveled up, while you level your character, you can switch to your heart’s content at a whim.
Some ground even this ESO Beginner Guide can’t predict.
If you want to keep up to date with all the changes, you should look at Patch Notes on the ESO forum.
Important milestones are level 50 and 160 Champion Points.
Level 50, and 160 Champion points are really important milestones.
Level 50 is important because this is when you start to earn Champion Points instead of levels.
Champion Point 160 is also very important because this is the maximum gear level. This means when you hit 160 Champion Points you can start investing in the best gear you can find, and upgrade it to Legendary (Gold), for even better battle performance.
Best Armor and Weapon trait when leveling up.
Like the rest of the game, you should wear 5 pieces of your main attribute gear (light for Magicka, medium for stamina, and heavy for tanking). Also, you should wear one of each of the two other weights since you then get more bonuses.
While leveling up, you should have a Training trait on all your gear, stacking experience bonus as high as possible.
Wait until level 25+ to worry about this, as you will change gear every 5 minutes when you level below 25.
My advice in this ESO Beginner Guide is to just wear whatever you find on your way, and don’t waste time or gold, crafting, or buying new gear at all.
Choose the right faction (only important in PvP).
Yes, I have talked about this before, it does matter what faction you choose in ESO… If you play PvP!
I entered the game not knowing anyone, found some like-minded friendly people, and joined their guild. We were all from Aldmeri Dominion and that was perfect, we ended up doing a few trials. But after a year or so we had to merge with another guild, from the same country because both guilds did not have enough serious members for doing Trials.
Join the Psijic Order.
On the island of Artaeum, the ancient Psijic Order resides, and you should go visit. As soon as you get the Psijic Order skill line, you also get the passive “See the Unseen”. This passive gives you the vision to see rifts in time and space, ok that might sound cooler than it is, but you can see these rifts filled with loot. Leveling this skill line is a pain, but you might need the skills, so dig in.
Remember to read my Elder Scrolls Online FAQ, which picks up where this ESO Beginner Guide ends.
I also made an ESO for Dummies Guide to pick up the slack, maybe I should have called it ESO for N00bs?
And make sure your PC meets these System Requirements for the best experience.
These were 31 ESO Tips and Tricks for the ESO Beginner Guide, I answered all the questions I wish I had known when I started, back in 2014.
I do hope you found them useful and that they speed up your way to being a top-tier player.