Choose Your Race and Class in ESO Wisely: The Optimal Pairing Mistake
When creating your character in ESO, your initial choice of Race and Class is the single most important decision for long-term optimal performance, especially in endgame content like Veteran Trials and PVP.
Optimal Pairing: Thoroughly research the best Race and Class combinations and meta builds for your chosen role.
Min-Maxing: While any combo is viable for casual play, choosing a synergistic pairing is essential for min-maxing in challenging content.
Character Investment: Smart initial choices prevent the need to purchase costly Crown Store Race Change Tokens or abandon a high-level character later.
Unlock Essential ESO Skill Lines Early: Eliminate Backtracking
The most time-efficient action you can take as a new player is to immediately join the three main in-game guilds: the Fighters Guild, the Mages Guild, and the Undaunted (at level 10).
Why? Joining these organizations unlocks their respective Skill Lines. Once unlocked, these skill lines level up passively as you complete activities related to them.
Fighters Guild: Killing Daedra and Undead (common enemies). Unlocks powerful passives and abilities for Stamina builds.
Mages Guild: Finding and reading Lorebooks scattered throughout the world. Unlocks powerful passives and abilities for Magicka builds.
Undaunted: Completing Dungeons and daily Pledges (unlocked at level 45). Unlocks the crucial Undaunted Mettle passive, which boosts resources.
The crucial benefit is eliminating backtracking. By unlocking these skill lines right away, every monster you kill and every Lorebook you find contributes to your progression. This passive leveling ensures you won’t have to stop questing later to spend hours grinding these skill lines from scratch.
Below are the three main Alliances and their locations.
Find Your ESO Community: Join a Player Guild
After setting up your character, your next crucial step is to use the Guild Finder in the Options menu to join a player-run guild immediately.
These are groups of real players who band together to offer help, advice, and access to unique resources. Finding an active, helpful guild is essential because you will need their assistance for the very next important step in your character’s progression.
Don’t delay! A supportive guild community is the single best resource for new players, providing:
Real-Time Help: Get answers to your questions instantly.
Mentorship: Find experienced players to guide your early build decisions.
Trading Access: Gain entry to a guild store (if it’s a trading guild) to buy or sell gear.
Group Content: Easily find groups for dungeons, world bosses, or other activities.
Maximize XP Gain: Secure Your Training Gear
While finding a helpful community is important, the absolute first request you should make to your newly joined player guild is to ask a Master Crafter for a set of Training Gear.
While finding a helpful community is important, the absolute first request you should make to your newly joined player guild is to ask a Master Crafter for a set of Training Gear.
Training Gear is crucial for new characters. This special crafted equipment has the Training trait, which dramatically increases the Experience Point (XP) gain from all your kills.
The best set to use while leveling is Heartland Conqueror. When you equip five pieces of this set, its unique bonus doubles the effectiveness of your weapon’s trait. By ensuring your crafted weapons also have the Training trait, you gain a massive, boosted XP bonus that lasts until you reach the max gear level (CP 160).
Why this is essential: Speed-Leveling with Heartland Conqueror: Combining the Training trait on weapons with the Heartland Conqueror five-piece bonus creates the fastest passive XP boost available, significantly accelerating your leveling speed.
Skill Line Efficiency: To ensure you level all armor skill lines (Light, Medium, and Heavy) simultaneously, request a mixed set of armor: one piece of each weight and the remaining six in the weight appropriate for your build (e.g., five Medium, one Light, one Heavy for a Stamina DPS). This highly efficient method prevents the need to backtrack later just to level unused armor types.
Guild Advantage: This is a classic example of why joining a guild is vital—you need a skilled, established player to craft this essential gear for you.
As soon as you join a guild, politely ask in chat if a Master Crafter would be willing to craft a basic set of Heartland Conqueror Training Gear appropriate for your level and chosen role! Make sure to specify you need one piece of Light, one piece of Heavy, and the rest in your primary armor weight—all with the Training trait.
ESO XP Boost Consumables
One of the most effective and common ways to speed up your leveling in The Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) is by using Experience (XP) boost consumables.
These consumables generally come in two forms: Experience Scrolls (mostly from the Crown Store or Daily Login Rewards) and Ambrosia Potions (craftable via the Provisioning skill line or purchased from other players).
You can only have one XP boost potion or XP scroll active at a time; they do not stack with each other. For example, using a Psijic Ambrosia (50%) and a 150% scroll will result in only the stronger 150% buff being active. However, the boost from a scroll or potion does stack with most other sources of XP gain.
Don’t Buy, Train! Securing Your Free Mount
As a new player, you should not spend gold on a horse right away. You will receive your first mount for free once your character reaches Level 10 as a reward for leveling up.
While the free horse starts slow, the important thing is to immediately begin training your riding skills at a stable.
Where to Train: Find a Stable Master in any major city.
How Often: You can upgrade one of your mount’s stats every 20 hours in real time.
Priority: Your primary focus should be upgrading Mount Speed. A faster mount dramatically improves your efficiency for questing, exploring, and traveling between locations.
By consistently training your mount daily, you’ll ensure that your free horse quickly becomes as fast and useful as any purchased mount in the game.
Secure Permanent Mount Speed: The Cyrodiil Quest
While Mount Training is vital, there is an immediate, permanent upgrade available that significantly boosts your travel speed: the “Continuous Attack” passive.
To acquire this crucial passive, you must travel to Cyrodiil (the Alliance War zone) as soon as you hit Level 10 and complete
the introductory quest.
Enter Cyrodiil: Travel to the Cyrodiil zone via the Alliance War tab in your menu.
Complete the Quest: Immediately pick up and complete the short introductory quest, “Welcome to Cyrodiil”
Unlock the Passive: Completing this quest grants you access to the Assault skill line, even if you never PVP again.
Buy the Passive: Spend a Skill Point to unlock the “Continuous Attack” passive within the Assault line.
Benefit: This passive gives you a permanent, passive 15% increase to your mount speed. This buff stacks with your daily Mount Training, making your free horse much faster immediately and ensuring you save countless hours of travel time throughout the game.
ESO Power-Leveling Strategy: The Grind
With your optimized build, essential guilds joined, and speed buffs secured, it’s time to put your plan into action and power-level to the maximum character level (Level 50).
Your goal is to maximize kill XP by wearing your Training Gear (especially the Heartland Conqueror set), consuming your XP Scrolls/Ambrosia, and rapidly defeating large groups of enemies.
The Grinding Location: (Crimson Cove) A highly effective and classic leveling spot is the Public Dungeon Crimson Cove in the Malabal Tor zone.
The Strategy: Prep Your Buffs: Ensure your Training Gear is equipped and your XP Scroll/Ambrosia is active.
Pull Large Groups: The layout of Crimson Cove allows you to run through large sections of the dungeon, “pulling” and consolidating dozens of NPCs (enemies) into one massive group.
Burn Them Down: Use your strongest Area-of-Effect (AoE) abilities to quickly defeat the entire mob. Rinse and Repeat
By executing this combination of preparation and repetition, you can reach Level 50 in a matter of hours, bypassing the days or weeks it would take through normal questing, and immediately unlocking access to the Champion Point (CP) system.
These are in my opinion the Biggest Beginner Mistakes in The Elder Scrolls Online.