Elder Scrolls: Online

[Epona]

Oh, forgot to say earlier, some good news from the PTS - you can now buy recipes needed for writs from chef and brewer NPC vendors, so you won't ever get stuck on a provisioning writ for want of knowing the recipe. It checks against your provisioning rank and offers the correct recipes for your rank

 

[Vintage Paw]

Oh thank god!!!

 

[moon]

I've done a bit of questing and a bit of standing around watching the world go by, some of the squares get quite lively with dance troupes, random werewolves and formation horse jumping antics.
I ended up dancing in a fountain at one point
Will probably get into it a bit more over the coming days when I have more time etc..

 

[moon]

I want an armoured bear! I keep looking at other players in awe thinking about where they have been, what must they have done and seen. Lol
I'm currently running around in ragged green trousers hoping and praying I don't get mobbed.
I'm a Breton on a desert island doing stuff, I had to wear a disguise and some nice people helped fight a mob so that I could free some other people, that's about all I know right now.
I deposited things in a bank, I really wanted to sell them so I could buy a bear but they are 0 value at merchants.
I crafted some leather straps, I think..

 

[Epona]

Unfortunately you can't buy a bear in-game, they are from the crown store. The only mounts you can buy for in-game gold are horses, which come in 4 colours (there's a chestnut one which is 10k, and a dun, a black, and a paint which are all 42k. Unless you bought Imperial edition, in which case you get a free white horse).

Everyone starts out being able to make low level armour though, collect iron ore for heavy armour, rawhide scraps for medium armour, and jute for light armour, then go to the appropriate workbench and make yourself something a bit better than the rags you start out with

 

[moon]

Unfortunately you can't buy a bear in-game, they are from the crown store.

WHAT??!!
Wtf is a crown store??
I need a bear...

 

[Epona]

WHAT??!!
Wtf is a crown store??
I need a bear...

It's cosmetic and convenience items that cost IRL money. (or rather you can buy crowns for IRL money, then use the crowns to buy stuff on the crown store. If you have ESO plus then you get 1500 crowns a month added to your account, but not sure how it all works on consoles).

 

[Vintage Paw]

Crafting is mandatory imo, unless you're in a guild with people who will give you stuff. Sure, you can find decent-ish gear, and some quests and dungeons will reward you with a nice blue+ piece now and again, but you can craft stuff with excellent set bonuses, and make sure you have decent armour in every slot, and it costs you nothing but the time to gather materials, research traits, and craft it.

To be any good at crafting, you'll need to invest skill points in the passives related to the craft you want to level. With that in mind, it can be difficult to level all crafts on a character you actually want to play the game with, since there are a finite number of skill points available. Epona's good advice was to have all the armour/weapon crafts on one character (clothier, blacksmithing, woodworking) and everything else on another (provisioning, alchemy, enchanting). That's what I'm doing, although it's very easy to level up provisioning without investing many points so I reckon you should just do that on all your characters anyway.

 

[Vintage Paw]

It's also worthwhile levelling up every skill on every character even if you don't intend them to be a crafter in that profession, so you can pop a couple of points in the 'hireling' passive, which means an NPC will send you materials for that craft once per day. With 1 point in hireling you'll mostly just get standard materials you could gather yourself, with a small chance to get a rare material and improvement material. With more points there's a greater chance to get better materials. They'll always scale to your level.

So, you'll no doubt take the hireling passive for woodworking on your character who is the main woodworking crafter, but if you take it on your others too you'll get extra materials your main crafter can use, which is useful because some can be quite hard to come by, and it's especially important when you want to craft yourself a full set of purple or gold gear.

 

[Epona]

And the only way to get purple provisioning mats is by hireling, so definitely take provisioning hireling at some point

Another reason to level provisioning on every character is for the passives that extend the time that food and drinks buffs stay active, that can be quite valuable at higher levels.

 

[Vintage Paw]

I quite like the passive for alchemy and provisioning that creates more portions with the same ingredients. If you're a packrat like me, you'll have no end of provisioning ingredients for recipes you don't need, so crafting a bunch of them can be a decent way to make a bit of cash here and there. I expect it's even better if you're in a trade guild, but even just selling to merchants is decent.

Of course, I benefited from having a shat load of ingredients from before they changed provisioning - brought me in quite a lot of gold, selling those.

 

[Epona]

I quite like the passive for alchemy and provisioning that creates more portions with the same ingredients. If you're a packrat like me, you'll have no end of provisioning ingredients for recipes you don't need, so crafting a bunch of them can be a decent way to make a bit of cash here and there. I expect it's even better if you're in a trade guild, but even just selling to merchants is decent.

Of course, I benefited from having a shat load of ingredients from before they changed provisioning - brought me in quite a lot of gold, selling those.

Food/drink as an end product doesn't sell well at all, I suspect because it is so easy to level the skill. Provisioning ingredients are always in demand however, and I find they sell well via my trading guilds at between 4-10g per unit for most of them on the NA server (I guess not everyone stops to loot every container the way I do!), and some blue and purple recipes sell for a lot of cash. Actually the level 20 purple recipe is one of the most expensive ones in guild stores, because people don't spend as much time in a level 20 zone as in VR zones, so are less likely to find the purple recipe as they are going through at lower levels.

 

[Epona]

Oh another juicy piece of info which apparently has been known for a couple of weeks but I've only just picked up on it - in a recent live stream episode, Zeni confirmed that mat bags are due to be provided as a bonus for ESO Plus subscribers, this is due to be rolled out with the Dark Brotherhood DLC (which will be the one after Thieves Guild).

 

[Vintage Paw]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, extra space for crafting materials on top of your normal bank/inventory space? Because YES PLEASE.

 

[Epona]

I know, I know

I'm going to save actually wetting myself until there's more info and confirmation which definitely won't be until after Thieves' Guild (I'd guess we'll hear more details around May or June ish), but it's looking promising. I did hear mention of it back last year when they said it was something they were intending, but to hear recent mention of it is encouraging.

With that and the bank assistant, we'll be able to feel more like adventurers and less like warehouse stock managers

Editing, because it's like all the spelling has fallen out of my brain today!

 

[moon]

I'm now level 7 and managed to get some new clothes, weapons and abilities. I refined some metals and leather and crafted a few things. I'm mainly using a 2 handed sword and magic.
I think I'll specialise in either blacksmithing, clothing or enchanting, but not sure yet.
I've got to a point where my bank slots are full but I'm still collecting new things so I'll have to be more selective in future.
I'm a Breton but for some reason my character selection screen shows me as a Redguard, I hope that wont cause any problems further into the game..
At the moment I'm finding the game a bit slow, maybe because of the dialogue (slow speech) or running from place to place, am hoping that the pace picks up a bit..

 

[Epona]

I'm a Breton but for some reason my character selection screen shows me as a Redguard, I hope that wont cause any problems further into the game..

Best to check now at an early stage - log in on your character and go to your skills screen and look at the racial skills page. If the first racial skill is "Light Armor Affinity" and the others relate to magicka and spell resistance, then you are a Breton. If the first one is "Shield Affinity" and the others relate to stamina, then you are a Redguard.

(BTW unless you were particularly set on playing a Breton for role-playing reasons, a Redguard is by no means a disaster - it's the best race for any stamina build. And you could still do a magicka build with it, it's only min-maxers that worry too much about the racial passives and the 0.1% difference to performance they make)

 

[moon]

Ok, I'll look at the skills screen again soon, in the meantime here are 2 pictures of my character,
this is what I look like in game, as a Breton?

And this is me in the character selection screen, this one is darker and more muscular, looks more like a Redguard?

 

[Vintage Paw]

Facial structure definitely looks redguard to me, in both pictures.

(I've played around in the cc more times than I can count now, and know them all pretty well.)

If you really don't want to play redguard, it takes no time at all to get to level 7, so sell all her gear and put the cash in the bank, then go and make your breton and start over.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Also, if you're a redguard you'll know how to craft redguard armour and weapons, and won't know how to craft breton stuff unless you've found a breton crafting book. So that's another way to absolutely double check.

 

[moon]

Really, ok well I'm quite attached to my character so will be a Redguard then..
Although I never play with a shield, I prefer a big ass sword and some magic..

 

[moon]

Also, if you're a redguard you'll know how to craft redguard armour and weapons, and won't know how to craft breton stuff unless you've found a breton crafting book. So that's another way to absolutely double check.

Yes I have a redguard style thingy in my inventory.. So there it is.

 

[Vintage Paw]

Well you don't have to play with a shield. Ignore what your racial passives suggest, just do what you like best

 

[Epona]

^ Yes, what Vintage Paw said - that first racial passive only helps you level up that skill a bit quicker than other races, it's a completely meaningless skill tbh as you will likely have maxed out whatever weapon you mostly use by the time you hit about lvl 40-50 anyway. It means nothing when it comes down to it, doesn't give you any bonus in using a particular weapon.

 

[Epona]

Also should add really that doing the quests in this game, at no point will you come across anything that requires you to have maximised your build at all - nothing in the questing part of the game is going to require that you have certain builds with certain racial passives and certain weapons - some builds may provide a slightly easier time than others, but there's nothing that requires you to have a highly optimised build, at all.

Just play a class/race/weapons/spells that you enjoy.

 

[moon]

Is anyone soul trapping in this game? Or are you buying/looting filled soul gems? I have 1 filled soul gem (which I am saving for when I really really need to revive on the spot) and a couple of empties.
I should hit level 10 quite soon and thus PVP? So it would be quite good to have a supply as I think the walking distances are quite far (I've been watching Angry Joe's videos) I cant justify buying a horse/bear just yet and also feel I'll miss spotting materials if I'm not on foot.
I'm hoping to join the fighter's guild but will try the mage's guild too, would I be right in thinking there is an undaunted guild? Or has this morphed into the Dark Brotherhood/Thieves guilds?
Then there are all the player guilds which are another minefield..

 

[Epona]

Join all the NPC guilds as early on as possible - they all have their own skill lines which are very useful, but they level up by (Fighters Guild) - killing undead and daedra and doing dolmens; (Mages Guild) - finding lorebooks; (Undaunted) - doing dungeons - so best to join early and start leveling those skill lines. Fighters Guild particularly has some very useful skills against daedra and undead (which make up the majority of the NPC enemies in the game tbh, and you'll probably come across vampire players in PvP too), and Mages Guild has what is probably the best ultimate in the game, so they are worth getting.

In terms of soul gems, later on in the main quest you get access to a passive that auto-fills soul gems so you won't need soul trap forever - but do use it to fill your own soul gems in the earlier portion of the game, buying filled ones is a huge waste of money. You can often steal empty soul gems from stalls next to mystic NPCs, and they often drop from locked chests, so you don't really even need to buy empty ones. Save your gold for something that you can't get for free

Oh I think in Cyro you can only use grand soul gems, so no point stocking up on lower level ones for PvP. And you cannot rez yourself using a soul gem anyway if you die to another player, you have to either wait for someone else to rez you, or rez at your home wayshrine which does not require a soul gem.

 

[moon]

How do I even begin to trap a soul? Do I need a particular skill? I don't think I've been putting any points into soul magic etc..
I'll try to do some guild quests tonight..

 

[Epona]

You start out with soul trap - it's in the soul magic line (which btw unlocks bit by bit as you do the main quest) - just put it on your bar, you don't need to unlock it. Then find NPC enemies of the appropriate level for the soul gem you want to fill, so for a lesser soul gem you need to find enemies level 11-20, for petty level 1-10 etc. Cast soul trap on them and kill them and a soul gem of the right level is filled. I usually find an area with lots of mudcrabs of the appropriate level when I want to fill a stack of gems

 

[moon]

OK thanks, I'll investigate my skills bar a bit more as I've basically been ignoring it
I've managed to start 2 radial menus for potions and emotes which has saved a lot of flustered time digging through menus etc. I guess I should add some other consumables to the radial too.
I've tried to create a glyph but have no idea what I created or where it went, let alone how to use it, plus there is a black arrow over enchanting tables which I'm guessing means I still have to create the correct glyph. But I've run out of runes..
I'll go hunting for more, do they make a sound like ninroot when nearby? Or are those the skyshards?
I'm going to try not to ask too many more questions so I can enjoy discovering the answers in game, unless I get really stuck...