You want to explore and find items in North Harbor as much as you can, as the crates are full of easy pickings. In particular, there are many crates that contain lockpicks there, and getting these later in the game costs money.
You always want to loot chests, trunks, wardrobes, desks, bookshelves, and furnishings.
Remember: Coldharbour has a lot of motifs and provisioning recipes to loot.
You can stop looting everything when you hit Level 5. At that point, picking up food ingredients and less valuable loot is less efficient.
Don’t hesitate to eat your food and potions. At least the most basic types come up frequently throughout the game.
You can level up as much as five different skill lines by putting an ability into each of your five HUD bar slots. If you’re not sure that a skill line earns experience, you can hover your pointer on the progression bar to find out.
You can also level up weapon skill lines, even without the weapon. You just need to slot a skill from that skill line into the respective HUD bar slot.
Your weapon will level up faster if the only skill lines in the HUD are those related to said weapon.
Level up Soul Magic early, up to at least Morph Rank 4. Soul Gems are worth the trouble and comparatively easy to pick up.
Remap your interrupt / CC break into a keyboard key. The default action is to click both mouse buttons and it is easy to mess up. You can react faster if you switch it to a key. You may want to remap dodge wall as well, for the same reasons.
Always use wayshrines over fast travel. The only time you have to pay to use one is if you're not close to one.
Take advantage of wayshrines to ensure you are always replenished as well. Of course, you’ll want to memorize where they are in the map.
If you do have to pay to recall wayshrines one after another, know that the amount of gold required goes down every time you do, by 1g a second.
Don’t forget to repair your gear with each vendor you pass by as often as you can.
Since your characters share one bank account, you can save items that way. You can also mail items to yourself, and best of all, mail items between characters to each other, to keep items indefinitely.
Banks autostack your items, so feel free to add items in without arranging them. When you take them out, you can always unpack those stacks.
Get crowd control early on. They get useful as early as Level 7 or 8, where mob packs with 22 speed start coming for you.
Make sure to go return to the starter islands. Loot is great, including crafting items, two skyshards, lore books, and achievements. Make sure you join the Fighter, Mage, and Undaunted Guilds before returning so you can level those up in the islands.
When you go to any area which isn’t too hard, for leveling up, make sure to switch armor types so you retain flexibility and can switch between them when you really have to.
Pick one or two trait skills when you start. You won’t be able to develop combat skills if you do not do this. Make sure to use your research time when you do.
In fact, you may want to research traits for all the crafting skills, since it’s free. If you ever decide to pick up one of the traits later on, you’ll be well prepared.
Construct a lot of items with the trait skill you want to level up, so that you can quickly get the hireling. You get items for leveling up your hireling, which you do by working on your trade skill after getting it.
When picking mounts, speed matters most, especially for player versus player.
Don’t skip the training in Cyrodil. You get a bigger reward, and a lot of Alliance points early on, among others.
Visit your Alliance’s scroll temples. They both have a sky shop nearby
Empty your bags before you leave town. Sell what you don’t need or can’t put in the bag.
Better to have armor enchanted with health and charms than stamina or Magicka.
In your journal, under the Sky Shots tab, you can get hints on how to get Sky Shots. It also tells you if you found all the shots in a certain area.
Don’t forget you can sprint to travel faster.
An argument can be made for picking up every quest you come across. If you have the time, you will find overlap is plentiful. As a result, you can resolve multiple quests relatively quickly, and get bonuses more quickly as a result.
There’s a persistant bug caused by multiple inputs, leading to issues with phasing and quest triggers. Official GM advice is to leave the area to come back later, or log out and wait five minutes before you log back in.
Check your map of Cyrodil to see what areas are under your faction. You can easily pick up Sky Shards without fighting that way.
Healing people around you while they are in combat will gain you experience, including skill experience, and even loot.
When starting out, go to the Fighter’s guild, the Mage’s guild, and seek out the Undaunted in the taverns to pick up their quests. These guilds give you skill trees relevant for spell DPS, PvP, and healing.
To level Mage’s guild skill trees, you collect Lorebooks
To level Fighter’s guild skill trees easily, go to all the Dark Anchors, Dark Fissures, and Public Dungeons.
To level both the Undaunted and Fighter’s Guild skill trees, finish all three instances of dungeons in each quest zone.
Looking for a horse? Don't waste time asking in chat. Go to town and check your map.
Feed your horse everyday. If you feed it for 50 days, it can reach its max level of 50 when that time period is done.
The 50 level cap could mean you won’t be able to max out all three attributes, so choose those attributes carefully.
Every single time you feed your mount, you have 1 inventory added in, assuming you maximize carry weight.
Cyrodiil has many Mundus Stones you would be hard set to find in other zones, even those owned by your faction.
One shot small targets, like rats and deer, to fill out your Soul Gems quickly.
When an item is bound to you, it is literally bound to your ESO account. You will not be able to share bound items to other characters, even just for professions or Improvement.
Respec costs are not based on your Total Skill Points, but on your invested Skill Points. If you don’t know what to build or test, you can leave those Skill Points alone and therefore keep your Respec costs low.
You can Respec your Skill Points with a large amount of gold. You won’t need to re-level your skills, since you won’t lose your skill progress when you Respec.
Similarly, you can use a large amount of gold to reassign points between your Magicka, health, and stamina points.
Buy upgrades to your bag and bank account so you can extend your stay in the field.
If you ever end up stuck in the NPC screen, type /reloadui, press the apostrophe key, or click the mailbox symbol on chat to clear the screen and get you unstuck.
Pressing the apostrophe key after you reach Level 15 will allow you to toggle between your weapons at any time.
Hold the Q key to open your quickslots. You can fill out as much as eight quickslots.
ESO does not have auction houses. Instead, you can sell your items to vendors, sell in the Guild shops in your Guild, or sell them in open chat.
Mundus Stones give you power ups that cannot be removed, except by using another Mundus Stone.
Each Alliance has their own complete set of Mundus Stones.
If you wear equipment with a trait related to the Mundus Stone, it will boost the Stone's effect.
You can upgrade inventory slots from 60 to 110 slots.
You can join the Fighters Guild and be a werewolf or a vampire at the same time.
You can only go to dungeons with other races if they are in the same Alliance as you.
When you join the Mage’s Guild, go straight to Shalidor’s library. Those books will quickly raise your Mage Guild experience.
When you acquire Eiditic memory (in the game), you will be able to see every note and book you collected in the game, just as if you remember by heart everything you have ever read.
Light armor boosts Magicka, medium armor boosts stamina, and heavy armor boosts HP. You can switch between them to boost your starter stats. However, you can level them faster if you wear armor of only one weight class. How you do it is up to you.
ESO has a progression system called VR, or veteran ranks. When you get to level 50, you go up to VR1. Each VR tier gives you new unique gear, and the system caps at VR10.
Healing spells that target allies also function in such a way that they target you.
When playing quests from other Alliances, you can only reach up to Level 50.
The public dungeon bosses payout high in loot. Even better than that, they respawn quickly.
Most locked chests are on the coastline.
Go all Zelda and open drawers in houses. You’re likely to find raw materials for crafting.
Dungeon loot from chests can be better than loot from dungeon bosses, but be warned; it’s not personal loot. Take care there’s no one behind you ready to swipe it from you.
The cheapest horse is 17500g.
Quests give the most XP, followed by exploring areas. This is how it works out: questing leads to exploration, which leads to grinding. When you explore, you will also find hidden quest, so they work together.
A guild must have at least 10 members to have a guild bank.
A guild must have 50 members and own a resource in Cyrodiil to open a guild store.
Don’t forget; Soul Gems can revive others, so make sure to keep them filled out.
If you want to play PVP, the kill 20 enemy players quest is easy to fill out with other players.
When a siege engine is done with a siege, you can pick it back up. Remember that firing projectiles takes health from these engines, so you may want to check and repair before you pick them up again.
