The Elder Scrolls® Online
Buy GameBeyond Battle in The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited – a Non-Combatant’s Guide
The Elder Scrolls® Online
Buy GameMost people who play The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited will spend a lot of time in combat.
Between dungeon dives, excursions to Coldharbour and other nasty places, and especially Player vs. Player combat, most players’ kill counts are going to climb into the thousands. Or tens of thousands. Or more.
But sometimes you just want to take a break from saving the world. Fortunately, if you’re feeling in a peaceable mood, ESOTU is positively loaded with stuff to do that doesn’t involve combat.
CRAFTING
Holy wow, is there a lot of stuff to craft in this game. Weapons and armor, sure. And clothes and shields. And food and potions. You can even craft glyphs to imbue your gear with magical powers.
Indeed, you could probably spend a whole game’s worth of time just making stuff. And getting started is a cinch: although crafting can be challenging to master, it’s exceptionally simple to pick up. Fundamentally, you need only raw materials and an applicable crafting station, which are found in towns and when out adventuring. There are differences between the various crafting types, but generally speaking, if you have the raw materials you can just jump right in.
The three disciplines for crafting physical gear all work pretty much the same. Blacksmithing allows you to make melee weapons and heavy armor. Woodworking lets you make shields, bows, and staves. And delving into the Clothing craft lets you make light and medium armor. In each of these disciplines, the only thing governing what you can make (apart from availability of the raw materials) is your character’s proficiency. Interact with a crafting station and you can select from a range of general item types – swords, boots, bows, and the like. If your level in that craft is sufficient, and you have enough raw materials, you can make whatever you desire.
And how do you level up a craft? You learn by doing...and also by undoing. Crafting items will earn you experience in the skill tree for that craft, but you can also deconstruct gear to earn Enlightenment (along with raw materials). Items with unique traits – like Sturdy, Sharpened, or Well-Fitted – can also be researched, which lets you apply that trait to future crafted items. It takes time and destroys the item, but it’s worth it if you want to really bring your crafting to the next level.
Provisioning works in a slightly different way; instead of being presented with a list of everything that’s possible to make, you need to collect recipes before you can craft food and drinks. It doesn’t take long to build up quite a recipe book, full of recipes for stat-boosting grub that you can prepare at any cooking fire. That is, as long as you have the materials...but you’ll find cooking ingredients pretty much everywhere in ESOTU. Folks tend to leave an awful lot of stuff lying around in barrels. And you can also harvest your own – or catch it. Yes, if you have some bait handy (generally thanks to slaughtering tiny animals, you monster), you can find a fishing hole in just about every body of water, where you can snag some seafood to add to your recipes (not to mention the hopes of nabbing a trophy fish for bragging rights!).
Alchemy is somewhat similar to cooking in that you need prior knowledge to craft a potion. But in this case, you don’t need a recipe; you’re free to experiment to your heart’s content, provided you have some plant matter to work with and a solvent (e.g., water) to serve as a base for the potion. So how do you acquire that knowledge? If you’ve played previous Elder Scrolls games, you probably already know: Find some interesting plants, and eat them. In real life you’d be taking your life into your hands, but in ESOTU you should be fine. Mostly. Usually. Hey, at least you’ll know what that herb does!
Finally we have enchanting. This is the process of combining runestones to create glyphs, which can then be applied to weapons, armor, or jewelry. You’ll find runestones scattered all over Tamriel, generally either ensconced in cute little shrine-looking structures or stashed in heavy sacks. Like in alchemy, you can only learn the use of those stones once you used them, but unlike in alchemy, you’re not going to eat them. Because, ew. Instead, you’ll combine three different types of stones at an enchanting station to make a glyph; once you do you’ll learn the translation of those runes for future use.
EXPLORING
Does crafting sound a little too sedentary for you? Then you might find exploring more satisfying. Tamriel is absolutely packed with interesting things to discover, see, and do that aren’t combat-focused. For one thing, exploring itself is its own reward. OK, yes, there’s a joy to setting foot in someplace you’ve never been before, but that’s not what we’re talking about. See, you get experience points anytime you discover a new location – so wanderlust actually pays off. (Just take note of the level of any enemies in the area so you don’t inadvertently stumble into a swarm of high-level foes beyond your abilities.)
Of course, that’s not the only draw to exploration. There are all kinds of rare items to find. For one thing, Skyshards are tucked away all over the map. For every three you find, you get a skill point. Sweet deal, right? You’ll also discover locked chests sprinkled throughout Tamriel, generally packed with some pretty spiffy gear. Of course, you need to get them open first; fortunately, lockpicking in ESOTU is more intuitive than ever.
Or maybe you’re interested in a more scholarly form of exploration? It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that Tamriel is also loaded with books to read – more than a thousand books to read. Some of these are skill books that will bump one of your skills upon reading. Some are racial motif books, allowing you to craft different styles of armor and weapons. And some are lorebooks that will be saved to your Lore Library for later perusal.
Now, in the course of your travels, you may find yourself inside establishments owned by in-game characters. If you dug through their chests, that would of course be stealing...which you can totally do! Yes, ESOTU has something for everyone, including those who choose to pursue a life of crime. You even get your own skill tree: Legerdemain, which lets you improve your sneaking, lockpicking, pickpocketing, and the like. Of course, such a life is not without its dangers; if someone spies you nicking their goods, you’re likely to get a visit from the local law, who will need to be paid off if you really do want to stay out of combat. And stuff you steal can’t be sold to regular merchants. Fortunately for you, every major town has been infiltrated by outlaws, who have set up their own Outlaw Refuge outside the city. Find one and you’ll be able to sell your ill-gotten gains to a fence, or “launder” them if you’d rather use them yourself.
SOCIALIZING
Still, these are generally solitary pursuits, and ESOTU is a massively multiplayer game. Which, of course, means you can put your crafting skills and exploration experience to use with other players, too. If you can find or craft some useful items, you can sell them – either in guild stores or one-on-one via the game’s messaging system.
Speaking of guilds, socially minded players looking for a break from battle can keep themselves occupied by joining, starting, and/or managing a guild. You can join up to five different guilds, one of which can be a guild you founded yourself. If you create your own (or are invited to manage one you’ve joined), you can spend loads of time customizing it, from rank titles to heraldry. The bigger a guild, the more it can do (for example, guilds with 50 members can open their own store for members to sell items), so building a guild others want to join can really pay off.
But maybe you’d rather just kick back and hang with your friends. ESOTU allows a variety of different interactions between players, including native voice chat on consoles. You can choose from a variety of channels for voice chat, but one thing that’s particularly neat is that you can hear other players based simply on proximity – so you don’t need to be friends or guildmates with other players to communicate.
Of course, this is a feature you can turn off if you’d rather adventure in silence. And if so, the game also supports a range of gestures (point, wave, dance, etc.) to help you communicate with other players, numbering well over a hundred. And console players aren’t left out here; you can map up to eight favorites to a radial menu that you bring up simply by holding Right on the D-pad. So you can shake your booty at the touch of a button. (Console players can also use any of the hundreds of gestures directly from the social menu.)
The best part about all this non-combative activity? Your character will still grow, and change, and level up. Your experience will continue to evolve, even if you never pick up a sword or staff. Of course, you’d be missing out on a heck of a lot of the game... but then, that’s your choice. And Elder Scrolls games have always been about choice.
