Beginner FAQ

What's a Trait?

Traits appear on weapons, armor, and jewelry by random chance. Some you may recognize include Divines, Infused, Robust, or Sharpened. Unlike Enchantments, Traits never run out of charge and are just a quality of your item. Items can have both a Trait and an Enchantment.

What about Research?

Research allows you to destroy an item with a Trait in exchange for learning the Trait to craft with later. For example, if your level 25 Sharpened Greatsword is no longer useful, you might take it to the Blacksmith and Research the Sharpened Trait for Greatswords. Now, you can craft a better Sharpened Greatsword applicable to your level.

Research takes time. The Research skills in your crafting skill lines help reduce this, and some even allow you to research more than one Trait at a time, which really helps since there are 324 Traits in the game. Research times can range from 6 hours to 64 days without investing in the Research skills.

So get Researching, starting with Traits on items you actually plan to use. And try to focus on only Researching one one character. Many players prefer to use one character as a Crafter, with as many skill points as possible invested into Crafting skills.

What is a Daily Crafting Writ?

Daily Crafting Writs are tiny, repeatable daily quests. You only have to craft an item or two per writ. You should do them. Why?

• Gold - While the rewards may be small at first, a level 50 character can make around 5000 gold a day doing crafting writs. The amount is based on the level of the skill line.
• Inspiration - Basically XP for your crafting skills. Do writs, get better at crafting, get more gold and materials. The amount is based on the level of the skill line.
• Materials - Turning in daily writs nets you materials, recipes, and sometimes weapons, armor, and jewelry.

You can get started doing writs by getting Certified.

• Meet with Millenith for Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking certification.
  • She is located in or near the Fighters Guild in Daggerfall, Davon's Watch, Vulkhel Guard, Vivec City, Alinor, and Rimmen.
• Meet with Danel Telleno for Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning certification.
  • He is located in or near the Mages Guild in Daggerfall, Davon's Watch, Vulkhel Guard, Vivec City, Alinor, and Rimmen.
• Meet with Felarian for Jewelry certification, if you have Summerset.
  • He is located in Alinor.

Once you've gotten Certified, do your first writs. I prefer Vivec City in Vvardenfell for this, but there are crafting areas in many other cities. In these crafting areas there will be two bulletin boards indicated by a blue quest arrow. Get the quests, craft what they tell you to craft, and turn in to the quartermaster.

Addons can make this process MUCH less time consuming. Check out the Crafting section of the Addons page for more info.

Sealed Master Writs

What is a Master Writ and what do I do with it? A Master Writ is a consumable item which, when used, starts a quest to craft an item of much higher quality than your Daily Writs ask for. When completed and turned in to Rolis Hlaalu in your alliance's capitol city, you receive Writ Vouchers, which are a type of currency only usable at writ merchants, of which Rolis is one. They sell crafting stations, storage chests, and many other things a homeowner and crafter may want.

• Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry, and Woodworking Master Writs usually require a Set Item made. Most set crafting requires a number of Traits researched for each item from the set you want to craft.
• Provisioning Master Writs require the recipe specified in the writ.
• Alchemy and Enchanting Master Writs only require prior knowledge of how to craft the items requested.

Addons can make this process MUCH less time consuming. Check out the Crafting section of the Addons page for more info.

Protip: Don't start upgrading items until you have all the skill points in the Expertise skills. Though the Expertise tooltip says that it improves your chances, that's really not what those skills do. They reduce the number of upgrade materials required for Improvement. This can save a LOT of gold. For example, one Chromium Plating can be worth 190,000 gold, and all 3 points in Platings Expertise cuts down the amount of Plating needed by HALF, so upgrade your Temper, Tannin, Platings, and Resin Expertise skills!

Set items: Pieces of gear that, when more than one is worn, give you special benefits. There are many sets in the game, but 62 of those sets can be crafted. In order to craft Set gear, you must either travel to a special location in the world, or visit a guild hall that has that set already. Sets also generally require several Traits researched for each type of item you want to craft.

In Alchemy, you combine a Solvent and two (or three) Reagents to create Potions or Poisons. As you use your Reagents, you learn new Traits. All Reagents have four Traits. Most Alchemists either look online for the potion they're trying to craft, or use an addon like Potion Maker to assist. This link demonstrates one way of both powerleveling Alchemy and learning as many Traits as possible.

Enchanting is actually quite simple once you start doing it. Use three Runes in the Enchanting Station, get a Glyph which can be used to Enchant your weapons, armor, or jewelry. Runes are divided into three types: Potency, Essence, and Aspect. Potency determines if the Glyph will add or subtract, and the level of the effect. Essence Runes determine the type of effect (weapon damage, frost resist, etc). Aspect Runes control the resulting Glyph's quality (legendary, epic, etc). Most crafters look up a recipe for the Glyph they want to create online, or use an addon (like CraftStore) to craft Glyphs. Like Alchemy, you must actually use every Rune to create a Glyph in order to Translate the Rune and find out what it does. This link is another powerleveling guide which can help you translate all your Runes and level your Enchanting.

Potency Rune Table

Essence Rune Table

Aspect Rune Table

Table data sourced from UESP

Transmutation

Transmuting allows you to change the Trait on a weapon, armor piece, or jewelry piece to a different Trait by visiting a Transmute table. There is a Transmute table in Clockwork City, and there is also one in our Guild Hall. In order to successfully transmute an item to a new trait, you must have already researched that trait. This costs 50 Transmute Crystals.

For example, if you found an Inferno Staff of Mother's Sorrow with the Training trait, and wanted it to have the Precise trait, you would first research the Precise trait, and then use the Transmute station to change the trait on the staff to Precise for the cost of 50 Transmute Crystals.

Reconstruction

ESO Update 28 added Set Collections which allows you to also use a Transmute table to Reconstruct a set item. You must have previously bound, deconstructed, or merchant sold the item to unlock it in your Set Collection. Many items become bound when they are equipped, or when their trade timer runs out.

Reconstruction costs between 25 and 75 Transmute Crystals, depending on how many items from a given set that you have unlocked in your Set Collection.

You can never have too many Transmute Crystals! Here's where you can get them!

Transmute Crystals also have a chance of dropping from dungeon final bosses, Half-Digested Adventurer's Packs, and certain Events.

Protip: You can gain 50 Transmute Crystals, and some other good stuff, by reaching Tier 1 rewards in any of the Cyrodiil Campaigns, at the end of the 30 day campaign. To do this, enter the Alliance War menu, choose any campaign, right click it, and select Home. Then, enter the campaign. To reach tier one rewards you must gain at least 25,000 Alliance Points in the campaign you chose as Home. This can be done by capturing keeps, resources, killing players, and turning in quests. You can press L, go to the overview tab, and select the scoring menu to check your progress on reaching Tier one. Once you have reached it, you only need to wait for the campaign to end and then the rewards will come in the mail when you log in on that character. This can be done on multiple characters each month.

Written by: Algroko

These terms get a little confusing.

• Chapter: The main content for the year. For example, Elsweyr was a Chapter. The zone "Northern Elsweyr" is unlocked by purchasing the Elsweyr Chapter.
• DLC: Secondary zones, such as "Southern Elsweyr," are considered DLC. DLC dungeon packs are also considered DLC.

If you buy the current Collection, you will get the current chapter and all previous chapters. If you bought the Standard Edition and then the current chapter Upgrade, you will only receive the current chapter and not the older ones.

Probably the straightforward way to get access to all available content is to unlock the current Chapter either through the Collection or Upgrade, and subscribe to ESO+. You can buy Chapters and DLCs separately but it will almost certainly cost more, at least in the short term.

I can't decide that for you. I can tell you that Plus has a lot of benefits. Like these!

• Craft Bag - an infinite, automatic bank for all your crafting materials, baits, and more. No more full banks.
• DLC - gives you access to all DLC and all but the very most recent chapter in the game.
• Double bank space - No matter what your pre-Plus bank space was, getting Plus will double it. And every time you buy a bank upgrade Plus doubles that too!
• 10% increases to XP, gold, and research speed - Pretty self explanatory.
• Renewal Crowns - You receive an allowance of crowns on your renewal date, depending on your renewal option.
  • 1500 every month
  • 4950 every 90 days
  • 9900 every 180 days
  • 19800 every 365 days

Subscribing to ESO Plus does NOT unlock the base game. You have to purchase the base game separately!

• Zone chat - Covers the entire map you're in.
  • Type /z or /zone in the chat box.
• Local chat - Covers an area near you.
  • /say /s only covers a small area nearby you.
  • /yell /y covers a larger area.
• Guild chat - The number is is assigned in the order in which you joined guilds.
  • From /guild1 or /g1 up to /guild5 or /g5 inclusively.
• Group / Party - The members of the group you're in.
  • /group /g /party /p
• Whisper - Send a message to one specific player.
  • /whisper /w /tell or /t followed by @username or CharacterName
• Emote
  • /emote /me /e sends messages like "Gynger Ayyle is relaxing after a hard day of crafting."

It differs for some things, but most of them are listed here.

At 10AM UTC / 2AM EST / 3AM EDT

• Remains-Silent
• Mount training
• Random normal dungeons
• Random veteran dungeons
• Random battlegrounds
• Fence / Launder
• Crafting writ quests
• Pledges
• Craglorn dailies
• Worldboss dailies
• Event dailies
• Pretty much anything that has a blue quest arrow

Note: On 2023-03-13, ZOS moved nearly everything into the 10AM UTC time window.

Event tickets are awarded during Events in ESO, usually at a limit of 3 tickets per account per day. You can only have 12 tickets at a time.

Such events may include:

• Anniversary Jubilee
• New Life Festival
• Jester's Festival
• Midyear Mayhem
• Witches Festival
• Undaunted Celebration
• Any of the zone celebrations

But what do I do with the tickets?

You can exchange them for collectables at the Impresario, usually located in:

• Davon's Watch, Stonefalls
• Vulkhel Guard, Auridon
• Daggerfall, Glenumbra
• Vivec City, Vvardenfell
• Alinor, Summerset
• Rimmen, Northern Elsweyr
• Solitude, Western Skyrim

The Impresario will be marked with a symbol on the map.

You will automatically unlock your first mount when you hit level 10. You can also:

• purchase a horse with gold from any Stablemaster NPC (don't, it's expensive as frig)
• purchase a variety of mounts from the Crown Store with Crowns and Crown Gems
• unlock them in Crown Crates or as a Daily Reward.

If you already unlocked one on another character, and you don't have one on a new character, you do not need to wait around till level 10 again. Just go to Collections > Mounts and equip it.

But how do I make my mount faster? Several ways.

• Purchase upgrades from the Stablemaster every 20 hours for 250 gold per upgrade. You can choose between Speed, Stamina, and Bag Space.
• Purchase packs of upgrades from the Crown Store. These sometimes can also be bought with Crown Gems and appear in Crown Crates, and as level up and daily rewards.
• Unlock the Continuous Attack passive skill from the Alliance War > Assault skill line. This applies a permanent 30% mount speed increase.

To help reduce the tedium of mount training, be sure to check out Auto Riding Training, also listed on the Addons page.

1. Open your inventory. See where it says ITEMS? To the right of that is a little lightning bolt symbol. Click that. You'll see some of the items in your inventory, but not all of them. You'll also see a large wheel. Those are your Quickslots.
2. Drag and drop Potions, Food, Siege, and more to the Quickslots on the wheel. Anything you want to access quickly.
   • If you have any Mementos (Cake, for example, or Ezabi the Banker) that you want to access quickly, there's a button for mementos too.
3. Exit your inventory. Hold Q until the Quickslot wheel shows up, and then move your mouse to whichever slotted item you want to equip. Once it's selected, let go of Q.
4. Whenever you need your potion or anything else you've quickslotted, just press Q.

In short, once you've got your Quickslots set up, hold Q to choose an item, and press Q to use it.

Unlocking Skill Lines

Psijic Order

1. Go to Summerset and start the main Summerset quest line.
2. Complete The Queen's Decree.
3. Once you're in Artaeum, visit Loremaster Celatus inside Ceporah Tower.
4. Complete The Psijic's Calling.

Leveling Skill Lines

Most ESO skill lines level up just by using them, or more accurately, gaining XP while the skills are on your bar. These skill lines, however, have different requirements.

• Assault and Support - Participating in PvP - Cyrodiil, Imperial City, and Battlegrounds. Alliance Points are both a currency and the points that level your Alliance War skill lines.
• Crafting - By using them for crafting, but Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry Crafting, and Woodworking can be leveled faster by deconstructing Intricate items.
• Dark Brotherhood - Dark Brotherhood quests and dailies.
• Fighter's Guild - Destroying Dolmens, killing Daedra and Undead, and doing Fighters Guild quests and dailies.
• Legerdemain - Picking locks and fencing and laundering items.
• Mages Guild - Collecting Lorebooks, and doing Mages Guild quests and dailies.
• Psijic Order - Psijic Order questline.
• Racial - Leveling your character up.
• Soul Magic - Completing quest in the Main Questline.
• Thieves Guild - Thieves Guild quests and dailies.
• Undaunted - Undaunted Pledges and daily delve quest.

Soul Gems are useful. Full ones can revive you or another dead player, and can recharge your weapon enchantments.

• They can be looted, both full and empty.
• Empty gems can be purchased from any Mystic NPC (Mages Guild traders, etc). Full gems are NOT economical. Empty gems can be filled using skills, including, but not limited to, Soul Trap from the Soul Magic skill line.
• You can always ask. They are of little value to most endgame players.