The Elder Scrolls Online: The Art of Accepting 50 Quests and Forgetting All of Them

Steam Community guide by SPIDER RYUKAI.

Step 1: Choosing Your Alliance (Or, Who’s Your War Buddy?)

When you start, you’ll pick one of three alliances:

1. Daggerfall Covenant (DC): The medieval nerds with knights and Breton nobles. You’re here for honor, glory, and the occasional brawl with a tavern full of orcs.
2. Aldmeri Dominion (AD): The snooty elves and their woodsy friends. If you like cats and trees, this is your home.
3. Ebonheart Pact (EP): Dragons, snow, and lava. Basically, Skyrim: Multiplayer Edition.
   Don’t stress too much about this decision; you’ll spend 90% of the game ignoring your alliance in favor of chasing shiny loot.

Step 2: Creating Your Character (Or, How to Look Good While Dying)

Race: Pick your race based on one of two factors: min-maxing or who you think looks cool. If you choose Argonian for their lore and aesthetics but end up tanking in PvP, congratulations—you’ve made a terrible decision.
Class: You’ll choose between classics like:
Dragonknight: Set things on fire. Accidentally set yourself on fire.
Nightblade: Be sneaky, stabby, and constantly broke from all the potions you’ll need.
Sorcerer: Summon pets that will block doorways and annoy your party.
Templar: Heal your teammates or blind your enemies with the power of the sun. Bonus points for yelling, “Feel the light!” in group chat.
Necromancer: Raise the dead, terrify villagers, and look edgy while doing it.
Warden: Summon bears, plants, and frost storms. Nature is your weapon, and it’s a weird one.

Step 3: Your First Steps in Tamriel

1. The Tutorial: This is where you’ll learn to swing a sword, cast a spell, and pick up every random item you see. Pro Tip: You don’t need to loot every broom and plate you find, but we know you will anyway.
2. First Quest: You’ll meet some random NPC who urgently needs your help to stop the apocalypse. Don’t worry—they’ll be totally fine waiting while you harvest butterflies and chase skyshards for 12 hours.
3. Stealing Is (Basically) Mandatory:
   ESO’s unwritten rule: if it’s not nailed down, it’s yours.
   Grab everything from bookshelves, urns, and treasure chests.
   Get caught stealing? Bribe the guards or flee dramatically while yelling, “You’ll never take me alive!”

Step 4: Becoming a Combat Legend (or... Not)

1. Skill Spamming: Combat in ESO is less about strategy and more about spamming abilities until something dies (hopefully not you). Pick abilities that look cool and figure out their usefulness later.
2. Dodging is Life: Learn to roll-dodge like your life depends on it. Because it does. Boss throws a fireball? Roll. A wolf looks at you funny? Roll. Stub your toe? You guessed it—roll.
3. Ultimate Abilities: Your ultimate is a big, flashy, game-changing ability. Or, if you’re like most players, it’s the thing you forget to use in every fight until it’s too late.

Step 5: Joining a Guild (Or, Finding Your People)

There are three official guilds you can join:
Fighter’s Guild: For slaying daedra and flexing your muscles.
Mage’s Guild: For reading books and pretending you understand them.
Thieves Guild: For stealing everything in sight and escaping guards like a pro.
But let’s be real—what you really need is a player guild. Look for guilds with fun names like “Sheogorath’s Cheese Enthusiasts” or “Kittens of Doom.” Bonus points if they host fishing contests or random naked dungeon runs.

Step 6: Dungeons & Trials (Or, Chaos with Friends)

1. Dungeons: Team up with three strangers (or unfortunate friends) to tackle ESO’s many dungeons. Prepare for:
   DPS players queueing as tanks because “How hard can it be?”
   Healers who think their staff is for smacking, not healing.
   Someone falling off a cliff because they were looking at the scenery.
2. Trials: The big leagues. Twelve players working together in perfect harmony—or more likely yelling, “WHO PULLED THE BOSS?!” in all caps.

Step 7: Crafting (Or, Tamriel’s True Endgame)

1. Gather Everything: Wood, ore, flowers, fish—you’ll hoard it all like a dragon in therapy.
2. Master a Craft: Blacksmithing, enchanting, alchemy… or all of them, because why not?
3. Research Traits: This takes actual real-world hours, so get ready to wait longer than it takes to bake a lasagna.

Step 8: PvP (Or, Prepare for Pain)

Cyrodiil: Enter the massive PvP zone, where alliances fight for control of keeps, scrolls, and bragging rights. Mostly, you’ll spend your time running between objectives, dying, and blaming lag.
Battlegrounds: Small-scale chaos where your team either works together beautifully or disintegrates like wet parchment.

Step 9: Fashion Is the True Endgame

Forget stats—what matters most is how you look. Spend hours dyeing your armor, trying on costumes, and arguing with friends about whether your helmet ruins the vibe.
Remember: the more outrageous your outfit, the better your chances of intimidating enemies.

Step 10: Embrace the Madness

Join random events. Jester’s Festival? Dance like a lunatic. New Life Festival? Pretend to fish enthusiastically. Embrace every bizarre holiday ESO throws at you.
Don’t be afraid to stop mid-battle to pick a flower or pet a random dog.
Always, always blame your death on the healer, the tank, or a nearby rock. Never yourself.

Final Words of Wisdom

Tamriel is a big, beautiful, and absurd world. Whether you’re exploring ancient ruins, yelling at dragons, or just standing around in Vivec City admiring someone else’s mount, remember: the real loot was the friends we made along the way.