The Elder Scrolls Online in 2022

The Elder Scrolls online (ESO) is by far one of the best MMO’s I’ve played.

Starting Out

When you first start out, you enter character creation. There, you will choose your race, class, and build your character from head to toe. You can spend up to an hour if you’re picky. You have the following races – High Elf, Khajiit, Nord, Bosmer, Dark Elf, Argonian, Breton, Orc, Imperial and Redguard. Each of the races comes with there own passive. You can choose any class for any race, however, some races do better with certain classes, for example, an Orc with a Tank class. Once your done, time to go to jail.

Time Served

Like every TES game, you start off in a prison somewhere, depending on the faction you belong to. You start off with nothing and you have one ability bar. You get broken out of prison cell by Lyris, and you have to fight your way outs. However, you chose to stay and farm a route with NPCs to level up your skills to level 15. Once you hit level 15, your second ability bar unlocked. Every time you level up, you get one skill point.Once I hit level 15, you can just proceeded on to meet the prophet, he’ll tell you how to get out, You have to fight your way out. The prison is like a huge dungeon, and before you leave, you should explore and pic up loot you can sell for gold. It’s nice to have a little bit of money after serving hard time. Also, there’s a Shard you can collect. Once you’re out, you’ll end up in a small island.

Exploring your Options

The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is a massive game. If you’re a fan of The Elder Scrolls Series, I strongly recommend you get ESO. The map is divided into 3 factions, The Ebon Heart Pact. Aldmeri Dominion and Daggerfall Covenant. Cyrodill which is a pvp area. Each of the areas, excluding Cyrodill, have there own stories to tell. ESO gets even bigger with all the DLC map packs. Those include: Summerset, Morrowind, Murkmire, Orsinium, Clockwork City, Dark Brotherhood, Elsweyr, Greymoor, Blackwood Chapter. I’m sure I’m missing an expansion, never the less, I’ve spent over 3,000+ hours and I haven’t done it all. There is so much to do, see and explore

From here on out, you have two choices, you can explore the island and complete all the quest. Or, you can ask someone to give you all the shrines through out the map. The idea is to unlock one shrine in each area so you can go and hunt for Sky Shards. Before I do anything, I unlock certain skill sets from the Mages and Fighters guild. Then I proceed to to port over to the Brother Hood and run pick up the first quest.

Why? After you complete it, you unlock the Blade of Woe. It’s a stealth kill mechanic. It comes in handy. Just make sure you take a lot of lock picks. There locked doors. One you brake into the compound, you need to duck and walk around without alerting the guards. Lock pick the door, and get inside. Once inside, you can start looking anything of value to sell later on. Also, Once you completed all those things, sold all your goodies, Port over to the east side of the map, and start hunting for Sky Shards.

Sky Shards Equals Skill Points

For every three Sky Shards you collect, it gives you one point. As your hunting Sky Shards, you’re also leveling up your toon (character), and getting one skill point every time you level up. You can place your skill points anywhere you want, provided that’s the skill line you want to level up at first. Each area can have 16 to 20 Sky Shards. There’s two ways to find Shards, run with a someone that knows where the Shards are located or, you can download a mod, for PC, that shows you all the locations of the shards. Or, you can go online and fine different websites that show you where the Sky Shards are located. One piece of advice, if you’re starting out, do run all over the place because it’s very difficult to loose where you left off. Stick to one route when collection shards. Easy, now work you way from the east side of the map to the west, collect them all.

By the time you finish hunting Sky Shards, you should be or close to max level and you’ll enter your CP Levels. Base level use to be160. I’m not sure if it’s changed since I haven’t created a new toon. Now that you’ve collected all the shards, put in your skill points, now your ready to rock. If you’re wondering, since this is an MMO, can you solo it? Yes you can solo everything concerning the story. As I’ve said, you have 3 factions and each faction has it’s own story. Also, you have the main story. In the main story, you’ll meet the prophet again and you’ll run the main quest line.

Running Dungeons, Collecting Gear Sets & Crafted Sets

When I started the quest line, I was level CP 256. It’s a good idea to have decent level when you run any quest in ESO. You’ll make your life easier and you won’t be dying all the time. To level up, I just ran dungeons. Running dungeons. Why? Each dungeon offers a particular gear set, Heavy. Medium or Light. Depending on your class, say, you’re a tank, you want heavy, sword and shield and a 2 Handed sword, or any combination you see fit to build. Also, anything you pick up, you can dismantle or sell to the merchant if it has a value of 100 or more. If the value is less than 100, just dismantle it. The more you dismantle, the more mats you get.

There’s over 50+ types of sets to collect. You can look online and see the sets available and go farm that set. Also, you have crafted sets. Crafting your own gear requires points and a tons of patients. Or, you can pay a crafter to craft you a set, white, being the lowest quality to purple quality or better. You can also find sets through out the entire map. However, you have to upgrade them yourself. Again, you need skill points to level up your crafting skill. just to touch up on crafting, if you want to craft your own sets, start as early as possible, like as soon as you leave the prison. Why? It take a long to level up your crafting skill.

Now I’m Ready

Now that you have obtain CP level, you have your gear, weapons, your ready to wreck. At this point, I just ported back to the Island and started running the main quest for that island along with the side quest. When I would get done with one quest, I would explore every nuke and cranny of the island looking for any kind of loot, loot chest, what have you. Loot chest are spread throughout the entire map including the island you started off at. Anything you find, you dismantle or sell. After you’ve completed all quest in the island, you’ll travel to the next location to start off your new adventure. There’s over 3,000+ quest and side quest to take on.

Guilds

Elder Scrolls Online has guilds you can join or, create. You have different types of guilds, some just chill others run dungeons, other just run Trials and you have your pvp guilds. You can joint multiple guilds. A well built guild will have a crafter, a banker, traders, and your foot soldiers. Some guilds are on point, others are utterly useless. So, if you’re the type that like guilds, find one that fits you or, create one.

Trials

Trials, you need 13 people to run a any trial setting in ESO. You have your combination of tanks, healers and damage dealers. You can run Trials on normal or vet mode. Each trial rewards you with a particular gear set. You get one piece a week. If you run a trial in vet mode, your pieces will be of purple quality that you can upgrade to gold if you have the skill set to do so. Each Trail offers a different types of gear and weapon. If you’re looking for gear pieces from a particular Trial, make sure that’s what you grind until you have what you need. Trails take a lot of team work. Some guilds require you to have a mic via discord. Others just text in the text box. If you can read, follow directions, you’re good to go. No mic required. Take it from me. I’ve ran Trails without mics and completed them on Normal and Vet.

Arenas

Dragon Star Arena: DSA is a 4 man dungeon with 10 levels like Trails. DSA offers it’s own type of gear set. If you run it in normal, you’ll get blue quality gear. If you, however, run DSA in Vet, you’ll get purple. for every level you complete, you get a reward. You can trade with members of your group if you wish, same for Trails. If you need or want a particular piece, let the people your running with know what your looking for. More often than not, you’ll end up with what you need. I love running DSA.

Maelstrom Arena is a solo dungeon with 10 levels. For every level you complete, you get a reward. If you run it and complete it in normal, you’ll get blue gear. However, if you run it in Vet, you get gold gear or weapon. Unfortunately, the reward can be anything. If you looking for gold staff, for example, you may end up with a gold bow. Maelstrom is a lot of fun to run and farm. You also have others group and solo arenas to explore and try out.

So Much to Do & See

Aside from dungeons and trials, you have world bosses, throughout the entire map. You also have writs which is crafting assignments, your crafting benches, jewelry stations to craft jewelry, you can dye your gear weapons. You also have the ESO Crown Store that sells pure cosmetic items, from mounts, clothing, xp scrolls. You can also buy an ESO monthly sub, or outright by what you want. The ESO Sub is not required. You also have your daily log-in rewards. You have your mounts that you can increase there stats in the stable, once a day. You can buy houses. The Elder Scrolls Online, in short, is a huge open world in where you can play the way you want, how you want. Play in groups or solo, it’s up to you. Every character is voice acted, you can read lore books. and much more.

Unlike an MMO, I’m Going to End It Here

There is so much more to say. However, The Elder Scrolls is filled with beauty, mystery, dragons, beast of all sizes, bosses and a continent to explore at your leisure. You can spend thousand of hours doing anything and everything you want to do. The Elder Scrolls Online is a heavy grind. If you enjoy The Elder Scrolls, again, I strongly recommended. The developers continue to update and add DLC content to ESO. ESO is getting bigger by the years.

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