ESO: How To Level Up Alt Characters Fast and Efficient

This guide is to help you level up your ESO Alt Characters in an efficient way. This is not a power levelling guide, but more of a checklist that once your character is max level, you will have the needed skill lines, skills, skill points, and everything else you might need for your next character. Even if you have power-leveled your character and are missing the essential skills and such, you can still use this guide to get everything necessary for your character.

If this is your first character, you can use this guide to figure out an efficient way to start your journey through Tamriel, but I would recommend to take your time and enjoy the leveling process for the first time. Here is a ESO Beginner Guide that might be more suitable for your first character. This alt-character guide will skip storylines and assumes you have already explored Tamriel at least once before.

Table of Contents:

• Preparation
  • Armor and Jewelry
  • Weapons
  • Sets to consider
  • Optional
• Things to keep in mind
  • Downtime activities
  • Power levelling
  • General hints
• Immediately after character creation
• Level 6
  • Summerset and Artaeum
• Level 10
  • Daily Dungeons and Battlegrounds
• Levels 11-14
• Level 15
• Levels 16-44
• Level 45
• Levels 46-49
• Level 50 CP10
• Level 50 CP160 and above
  • For further development

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Preparation for Efficient Alt Character Leveling in ESO

Armor and Jewelry

Create this setup in level 10 and level 30:

The point is to have different weight classes of armour so all skill lines level up. Of course, you can change the setup depending on what you are aiming for. If you are leveling up a tank, use more heavy pieces. If you are leveling up a healer, use more light pieces. But try to use at least one piece of each weight class.

For leveling up it doesn’t matter which pieces are heavy, medium or light. But to have the most out of them in combat, chest has the most armour so use the heaviest piece here. Arms and waist are the weakest pieces so they are suitable for light pieces. Other pieces are equal in armour.

If this is your first ESO character, you can ask someone to craft them for you, but it’s not important. You should explore and learn the game when playing the first character. This can come later. It is perfectly fine to use whatever pieces you find on fallen enemies, in chests or as quest rewards.

When you equip at least 3 pieces of armor of the same weight you open that armor skill line. You can do this for all, Light Armor, Medium Armor and Heavy armor. However, even if you have not done that but gain EXP while wearing at least one piece of armor the skill line will gain EXP on the background.

Weapons

Create the weapons you want to level, or create them all if you want to have all of them level 50 by the time your character is done. The set should be the same as your jewelry to get the 5 piece bonus.

You can create only those weapons you want to use, or all of them to level up each weapon skill line.

If you have multiple characters to level up, consider upgrading them. But blue armor, white/green jewelry, and purple weapons are more than sufficient.

Sets to consider

The sets are pretty flexible while leveling up your character, but here are some suggestions you can use:

• Heartland Conqueror – this boosts weapon trait and if the weapon trait is Training, you will get more EXP from kills.
• Adept Rider – Gain Major Gallop and Major Expedition at all times. Helpful when the character and the horse is not fast.
• Order’s Wrath – a great set to boost your damage.
• Druid’s Braid – can be used as one or two pieces to fill in the last empty slots. 1pc gives Max Health, 2pc gives also Max Magicka.

Optional

• Experience scrolls
• 185,000 gold
• Colovian War Tortes
• A lot of alchemy ingredients
• A lot of provisioning ingredients
• Provisioning recipes of different levels

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Things to keep in mind for leveling a Character in ESO

Downtime activities

• Questing
• Main quest gives skill points
• Zone quests also give skill points
• Questing is a good way to level up and gather skill points. Whenever you don’t know what else to do before the next stage, do questing.

Power leveling in ESO

Power leveling is not advisable for your first character. Even for your alt characters, following this guide will get you the essentials, and you will level up a lot, minimizing any need for power leveling. Only power level when you have enough skill points and the required skill lines, and you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing. A level 50 character with no skill points is pretty useless. You should aim for at least 100-120 skill points. 130-140 if you do PVP. More if you also do crafting with the same build. So collect Skyshards and do main quest and zone quests which both give you skill points. You can read a power leveling guide, but here are some methods:

Method 1 – Alik’r Dolmen Grind

Can be done alone, low EXP. Go to Alik’r Desert, open the three Wayshrines next to the three dolmens and follow the group. There’s always a group going around and you can join them alone or ask to be invited to a group in zone chat. Dolmens give some EXP, not much, but it’s easy. Just hit anything so it registers you are in combat and you get a small amount of EXP with minimal effort. You will also level up the Fighters guild skill line and get a lot of jewelry for deconstruction. For a full guide on how to do this read the ESO Dolmen Leveling Guide.

Method 2 – Deshaan Graveyard Zombies

Can be done alone, medium EXP. Go to Deshaan, north-west corner to Quarantine Serk and start the quest Bad Medicine. Advance the quest until you go to the graveyard. Start going around the graveyard killing zombies. This gives better EXP than Alik’r dolmen grind, but less than methods with a friend. Also gives you Fighters guild EXP, and glyphs and gear to deconstruct.

Method 3 – Bangkorai Bears

Can be done alone or with a friend, medium EXP. Bangkorai bear farm. Go to Sunken Road Wayshrine in Bangorai and around the area are a lot of bears. They give EXP and leather. Around the same EXP as Deshaan graveyard grind in ESO.

Method 4 – Craglorn Skyreach

Should be done with a friend, high EXP. Craglorn Skyreach grind. This is easier with a friend, preferably with someone with enough CP to complete this alone. Go through the Skyreach catacombs, once everything is killed, exit, disband the group to reset the instance, group again, enter, rinse and repeat. This is the second most effective way to level up. Gives you Fighters guild EXP. You can find a map of the rotation in the ESO Skyreach Grind Guide.

Method 5 – Black Rose Prison

With a friend. Black Rose Prison. This also needs a friend who is at a higher level. Go to BRP, first arena, either do the round 2 or round 4 grind. Easiest is you advance to round two, when round two boss spawns, one of you dies, the other one uses a resurrection sigil and then dies, round resets, resurrect with the sigil, resurrect the other player, rinse and repeat. This gives you the best EXP but is slightly more demanding than Skyreach.

General hints

• What to do when you come across different things when you explore Tamriel.
• Read bookshelves. Can give you a whole level in some skill line.
• Read blue books. They give 5 points to the Mages Guild skill line. If you complete a book series, you get 20 points.
• Open wayshrines.
• Collect Skyshards
• If you are close, go to any undiscovered place. It gives a small amount of EXP.
• Bind any uncollected items, even if it is too low level for your current level.

Crafting

If this is your first character or if you do not have a crafter character yet, you should level up your crafting first in ESO.

• Deconstruct (preferably with appropriate CPs in place) all extra items to get crafting materials.
• Finish survey maps to get more crafting materials.
• Do daily crafting writs each day to get crafting materials and inspiration – there are instructions below how to open the crafting writs.

If this is your first character

• Do the ESO tutorial
• During the tutorial, pick up each weapon type and kill something with each of them. Any critter or enemy will do. That opens a skill line for that particular weapon type.
• During the tutorial, pick up at least three pieces of each armour type and equip them. Equipping three items of any armour weight will open that skill line.

To Do Immediately After ESO’s Character Creation

• Get 185,000 gold from the bank (or 5,000 if you don’t need bag space)
• Upgrade your bag to the maximum. (Cost is about 180,000 gold. If you don’t need more bag space, 5,000 gold is enough.)
• Equip a mount
• Visit stables and upgrade your mount. Do this each day.
• Visit Fighters Guild and Mages Guild, and join them. They can be found in your alliance’s capital city (Stonefalls for EP, Vulkhel Guard for AD, Daggerfall for DC) or the starting major city of any expansion DLC.
• Open your weapons pack (it’s in your inventory when you start)
• Kill one creature in overland with each weapon in the weapons starter pack – this opens each weapon skill line
• Equip at least one time 3 pieces of each armor weight (can be done later as the skill lines do advance even when they are not open)
• If you plan to do PVP, get someone to give you a vampire bite and save the build into your armory before assigning any skills

• If your main toon is on CP levels, add CP and equip Celerity from the red tree and Steed’s Blessing from the green tree.
• You should have 3 skill points. Open the first skill of each of your class skill lines. Try to keep at least one skill from each class skill line on your skill bar at all times.
• Visit Solitude in Western Skyrim – there is the Antiquarian Circle where you can do an intro quest. It gives good EXP in the beginning.
• If you have the Beam Me Up addon, use it to discover as many wayshrines as possible. This also gives good EXP in the beginning. Otherwise wait until level 10.
• Get a Mundus Stone. Any is better than none. In the beginning the character and the mount are slow so The Steed is useful. You can find it in Reaper’s March, The Rift, Bangkorai and Cyrodiil. The Steed increases run speed by 10% + increases Health Recovery by 238.

Level 6

• Do intro quests for crafting. Quest givers can be found in Mages Guild (Daniel Teleno) and Fighters Guild (Millenith).
• If you have enough CP, add green CP to inspiration
• Do daily crafting writs. You can do this once per day.

Summerset and Artaeum in ESO

• Travel to Alinor, Summerset. In front of the crafting place is Felarian. Talk to him and you can do an intro quest to jewelry crafting.
• Travel to the other side of Summerset, to Shimmerene. Start the main quest. Go through The Queen’s Degree until you get to Artaeum and speak to Ritemaster Iachesis. You don’t need to accept the following quest.
• In Artaeum, speak with Loremaster Celarus and start the Psijic Skill line quest. This is a long and arduous quest but worth it. It also takes all over Tamriel so it’s good for opening wayshrines. If your horse is too slow, you can wait until Level 10 before closing all the rifts. Here is a guide to leveling up your Psijic skill line.
• Artaeum is a good place to level up your Antiquities. Here is a guide to level up Antiquities. Grab some drinks and snacks, put on some music or podcast, start doing the green and the blue antiquities until you unlock purple ones. This will take some time. After that, you can go zone by zone and do green -> blue -> purple. Purple can be done only once, so once you have done that, go to a new zone. Repeat until you can do golden ones. Artaeum is small and has no enemies, so that is an easy place to do until you can scry purple ones. You can do the rest once you have a faster horse. Once you can complete golden leads, you can start hunting mythics. They can be dug up at any level, but they will always drop at Level 50 CP160 so you can’t actually equip them before that level.
• All this will most likely get you to level 10, but if not you can do Downtime activities until you reach it.

Level 10

• Go to Cyrodiil. Immediately. Even if you never plan to do PVP in ESO, do this. You don’t have to do any PVP for the intro quest. Start the intro quest Welcome to Cyrodiil. Don’t skip, just do the quest. Takes about 10 minutes. You will shoot a few siege weapons, repair them, go see an Elder Scroll, find out about Cyrodiil quests. At the end you will gain enough AP to get you to Rank 3. This gives you 2 skill points and opens Vigor skill. Vigor is a good healing skill, especially for stamina based characters. But most importantly you can put one skill point in the Continuous Assault passive. This gives you 30% more speed for your horse. You only need that one skill point in that passive.
• Join the Undaunted Guild. You can find the quest in your alliance zone. Head to a tavern and talk to a recruiter for the Undaunted. You will get a quest to enter a dungeon. You don’t need to finish the dungeon, only enter it once. So ride there, enter the dungeon manually and you can immediately exit. Return to the recruiter to hand over the quest. Now all dungeon and trial quests will give you undaunted experience the first time you complete them. More information in Undaunted beginner guide.
• If you have Gold Road chapter, visit Skingrad and open the Scribing.
  • If you haven’t done that with any character yet, consider doing the entire questline.
  • If you have already done that with one character, you only need to do the intro quest
• With a faster horse, you can now open all the wayshrines and also complete the ESO Psijic skill line quest. When going through the Psijic skill line quest, collect all the Mages Guild books and skyshards you come across. If you see a dolmen opening, go help. This way you level up many skill lines at once. And if you opened Scribing, you can get the free Mages Guild scripts if you haven’t already deposited extra ones in your bank with another character.
• There are several addons that show you the locations of Mages guild books and Skyshards.

Daily Dungeons and Battlegrounds in ESO

• Daily Random Normal Dungeon. Do this once a day as the first time you do it per day per character gives you bonus EXP. Each dungeon will also have a quest and completing the quest will give you EXP and a skill point. If you have joined the Undaunted Guild, the quest gives you also Undaunted points.
  1. Open Group (P)
  2. Set your role – tank, healer or damage dealer
  3. Open Dungeon Finder from the menu on the left
  4. Make sure Random Normal Dungeon is selected from the top right hand corner.
  5. Click Join Queue
• Daily ESO Battlegrounds. Do this once a day or until you are at least in the second place as that gives you the daily bonus EXP. This also increases your Alliance War rank. If you plan to play a support role, increasing rank to 6 is useful, as it opens many skills useful in support roles. At rank 4 you open Purge and War Horn skills. At rank 6 you open Barrier. Also, Caltrops open at rank 6. Advisable even if you don’t plan on doing any PVP.

Levels 11-14

• Downtime activities
• Questing
• Delves – collect the Skyshard.
• Public Dungeons – collect the Skyshard, the group event gives a skill point.
• Collect Skyshards
• Daily writs/dungeon/battlegrounds – once a day per character gives bonus xp.

Level 15

• Can equip a second weapon
• Here you can do a trick to level up skills and skill lines while still being more effective in combat. Add a weapon you want to level up and skills you want to level up on your back bar. Load the front bar with the combat and survival skills you need to be able to be effective. Whenever you are finishing a quest, about to kill the last boss of a dungeon, or do anything that gives you a lot of EXP, switch to back bar. Whenever you gain EXP, it goes to the active bar.
• Once you can morph a skill, open a new skill and equip it instead. This way all your skills will be morphable should you need them in the future.
• Remember you can always reset your skills by going to the Armory and loading an empty slot. Then just load up your back bar with skills you need to level up until you can morph them. I try to level up all weapon skill lines and each skill until I can morph them. That way when you hit level 50 CP160, you have everything open and ready to go.

Levels 16-44

• Downtime activities
• Questing
• Delves – collect the Skyshard.
• Public Dungeons – collect the Skyshard and complete the group event with friends or anyone who is in there to get a skill point.
• Dolmens whenever you come across an active one.
• World bosses – grouping with one friend gives 10% extra EXP.
• Collect Skyshards.
• Daily writs/dungeon/battlegrounds – once a day per character for the bonus EXP.

Level 45

Once you reach level 45 you will get a letter to join the Undaunted Guild. Go do the intro to Undaunted and then you can do daily pledges. Daily pledges give EXP and Undaunted points to level up the Undaunted skill line. Before you can go to veteran dungeons, you can only do 4-key pledges. Base game dungeons give one key per pledge and DLC dungeons give 2 keys per pledge when completed in normal difficulty.

Levels 46-50

Or levels 46 to 50 CP159 if you this is your first character.

• Downtime activities
• Same as levels 16-44.
• Undaunted pledges.
• If you didn’t join Undaunted Guild earlier and haven’t done dungeon quests yet, do them now as they also give you Undaunted experience.

Level 50 CP10

• You can start doing veteran dungeons. Good way to start collecting Monster sets.
• Your equipment is not at the cap yet, so anything you collect before CP160 will be outdated quickly.
• It’s still good to collect set pieces for your sticker book.

Level 50 CP 160 and above

• If this is your alt character, this is where you should be after level 49.
• Now you have reached max equipment level and can start using a more permanent gear sets. Use your crafting character to make the gear.
• Most of your skills should now be leveled up so you can morph them and you can start to make a more permanent build.

For further development

• Collect Monster sets from veteran dungeons.
• Use the Undaunted keys to buy the shoulders for the Monster sets
• Do veteran Undaunted pledges – the base game pledges are not too difficult to complete on veteran hard mode to get more keys per pledge
• Now you can also equip Mythic items
• Craft a starter set in CP160 level, for example Order’s Wrath and Hunding’s Rage (stamina) or Law of Julianos (magicka), until you have collected and crafted/reconstructed a more comprehensive build. If you have a crafter character and enough items in your sticker book, you can make a more permanent build immediately. Click here for some build guides to help you.
• Continue collecting sticker book so you can get the best gear.
• Go to trials to start collecting your trial gear sets into your sticker book. Technically you can go to trials on lower level, but others might not like it and the gear you get from there is not going to be max level. Wait until you are at least CP300 and have DPS well above 50k (depending on group’s requirements) before going to veteran trials.

Thanks for reading, you can find more guides in the ESO Guides section.

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