ESO Guides
During the Murkmire main quest in Elder Scrolls Online,you may have ran into some confusing quest markers – specifically during The Swamp and the Serpent quest! After you stumble through it, and later go to complete some Root-Whisper village dailies, you may have found youself with the Offerings That Hide daily quest – with those same confusing quest markers! This guide shows you the correct way to go in both those quests!
Some of the links included in this post are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
I have updated my Quick & Basic Alchemy Guide for Elder Scrolls Online! In this quick video about alchemy in ESO I show you how to gather resources for the craft, as well how to actually create potions and poisons!
This guide is very short and basic, if you’d like to take a look at the skills in the Alchemy Skill Tree in ESO, or maybe find out about poisons, please check out my Extended Alchemy Guide!
It’s that time of year again for the ESO Jester’s Festival! This holiday event always takes place over April Fool’s day, and this year event tickets are involved!
You know your rotation, you’re weaving, have the basics down and you even have some pretty decent gear – but what else should you be leveling and why are you using these abilities? Let’s find out!
I’ll go through each section of abilities and split everything into a few categories. Must have, good and icing on the cake. Obviously focus on using skill points on the must have abilities and passives first, and as you get spare skill points – add some icing on the cake. The order things are listed within their category isn’t important – I mostly just went through them in the order they are in the game.
Class abilities are definitely important to unlock and use! Which ones should you focus on early, and what passives are actually important?
Dark Magic is a bit of an odd skill line. You don’t want many of the active skills, but the passives are great so you definitely want to level it up all the way!
Crystal Shard > Crystal Fragments – This is a bread and butter skill of magicka sorcs. For beginners it may be best to avoid this skill as it messes up an otherwise static rotation, but it holds a big punch and allows the passives of this skill line to get unlocked and levelled.
Unholy Knowledge – This passive directly helps with sustain, and does not require a skill from the skill line to be slotted.
Blood Magic – This passive only comes into use when using one of the abilities in this skill line. If you are using Crystal Fragments you definitely want this skill, but if you’re not – you can pass it over for now.
Exploitation – This passive does require you use a skill from this skill line, but it’s great as it’s the only source of Minor Prophecy other than poisons – which are generally not used in PvE. This not only gives you the Minor Prophecy buff – it also gives it to your allies!
Persistance – This allows an ability to cost less after blocking. In group content you don’t do a ton of blocking so it’s an okay passive for DPS.
This skill line is obviously focused on pet sorcs. My recommendations here are from a non-pet sorc point of view.
Daedric Curse > Haunting Curse – This is a must have skill for magicka DPS sorcerers in ESO! It’s a bit of an odd skill, containing both single target and AoE damage. It’s also not a DoT – but it takes time for the damage to be fully done.
Bound Armor > Bound Aegis – This skill is an active skill – but you use it only for it’s passives. This will give you both your minor resistance buffs, ensure the Daedric Protection passive is active and give you 8% extra magicka! Since a lot of your damage scales from how much magicka you have, this is a big buff that shouldn’t be ignored!
Daedric Protection – This passive increases your recovery (by 20%!!) while an active ability from this skill line is slotted. It’s definitely a huge help in sustain!
Conjured Ward – This is a class shield that is a fantastic option to have. You have choose a morph that allows for a larger shield that the light armor skill version, or one that helps with sustain!
Power Stone – This passive decreases the cost of your ultimate by 15%! That applies to any ultimate, not just sorcerer ones.
This is where most of the lightning comes from in the Elder Scrolls Online Sorcerer class! We’ll make use of quite a lot of these abilities!
Mage’s Fury – This is your execute! Although some builds do offer rotations without your class execute, this skill is important to unlock and level so you have it available if you do need it! One morph does more damage which is normally preferred, but if you tend to do overland content where there are lots of groups of mobs – the recovery morph is decent as well.
Lightning Splash > Liquid Lightning – This is one of your bread and butter skills – this being a DoT (damage over time!). You want the Liquid Lightning morph so it matches up nicely with your wall of elements DoT, and gives more room for other skills while it runs.
Capacitor – This passive increase recovery. I know it seems odd we have so many things to help with sustain, but I promise you – you will appreciate all of them!
Implosion – This is like a built in passive execute! As you will always be using Liquid Lightning – this passive always has a good chance to proc on low health mobs!
Expert Mage – This increases your spell damage by 2% for each sorcerer class ability slotted – not just the ones from the storm calling skill line. After all those recovery passives – we want to do great damage too!
Surge > Power Surge – This is a great skill to use during normal dungeon or out in the overland where you do not want to use expensive crafted potions – but still want the benefits of the Major Sorcery buff. This also has a heal that is good enough to be my only heal in VMA! Having a constant small heal up can be a huge help – especially when venturing solo!
Energized – This passive becomes more important if you use a lightning staff. This increases the damage you do with any shock abilities!
Lightning Form > Boundless Storm – This ability is great for shock themed builds, gives you both major resistance buffs and gives a short speed buff! This is a very fun and useful skill to use when you are venturing solo, as it does damage to enemies all around you and makes you a bit tougher to kill!
The only weapon you will be using is destruction staves.
All this applies whether you use 2 inferno staves, or 1 inferno and 1 lightning staff.
Force Shock > Crushing Shock – I can’t stress enough how much more utility Crushing Shock has than Force Pulse. So many times (especially in trials) it’s extremely useful for DPS to have a ranged interrupt – and what better than it to be your spammable! This ability hits enemies 3 times with one click of the button!
Wall of Elements > Elemental Blockade – This is a bread and butter skill for all magicka DPS in ESO – whether you are a sorcerer or not. You do want the longer lasting morph to simplify your rotation and allow other skills to be used while this runs.
Penetrating Magic – This passive is like a secret boost to your spell penetration – but only works with your destruction staff abilities.
Elemental Force – This increases the chance of you applying very useful secondary effects such as burning – which add more free damage!
Ancient Knowledge – This is the reason it’s important your spammable/front bar is an inferno staff! This passive makes whatever staff is currently equipped the one that makes a change. While on your lightning staff back bar – your AoE’s (like elemental blockade) are doing more damage, but once you swap to the front (fire) bar – elemental blockade is no longer doing extra damage – but crushing shock is!
Weakness to the Elements > Elemental Drain – You honestly won’t really use this in battle, but it’s an important skill to have unlocked if you like to practice your rotation or test your dps on a target dummy while solo.
Tri Focus – This makes your fire heavy attacks do more damage, and adds that cool splash damage to lightning staff heavy attacks!
Destruction Expert – Remember how I keep saying sustain? Yes, this is another passive to help it.
You’re wearing 5 pieces of light armor, so pretty much everything is important – but I’ll still let you know what is most important!
Annulment > Harness Magicka – This shield is available to anyone wearing at least 5 pieces of light armor, but is incredibly useful. I prefer to take harness magicka here with helps with sustain, and when I need a shield where there is no incoming magicka damage – I used hardened ward for a larger shield! This allows a large shield and a sustain shield being available to you without respeccing any skills.
Evocation – Sustain sustain sustain.
Prodigy – This increases your spell critical rating, which means your spell will crit more often!
Concentration – Increases your spell penetration! Especially important when playing solo!
Spell Warding- This allows you to be slightly more resilient again magicka attacks.
Grace – This is probably more useful in PvP, but snare reduction and cheaper sprint is nice to have!
You’re wearing one piece of it, so might as well take advantage! There are no must have’s in this section though!
Athletics – The main reason I list this as good to have is the reduction in roll dodge cost. As a magicka DPS character, you have not invested anything into stamina – so the amount you can roll dodge is pretty limited.
Wind Walker – This is definitely an ‘icing on the cake’ type of passive. Normally percentage bonuses are amazing – but due to our limited stamina recovery this doesn’t do anything huge – but could make a difference in you being able to do that live saving roll dodge or block!
Improved Sneak – There is exactly 1 dungeon in the entire game that this will prove useful in a combat type situation, but it’s nice to have for completing some of the sneakier DLC and quests.
Oddly, the heavy armor skill line has a few passives that will definitely help you out – even though you are only wearing one piece of it!
Juggernaut – If you get any odd passive – make it this one. This passive increases your max health by 2% per piece of heavy armor warn, that means for you – 2%. This sound small, but when we want enough health to survive but don’t want to give up glyphs that would otherwise be magicka – this passive can make that difference!
Constitution – I struggled with whether this should be must have or good to have. It’s not as important as Juggernaut, but is definitely more inmportant than resolve! Health recovery isn’t something we put into anywheres else, and it can take us off the edge of death while we resurrect our healer, plus has a small sustain bonus built in!
Resolve – This passive makes us a bit less squishy!
Don’t worry about focusing on levelling this skill line up, just unlock the skill line by joining the fighters guild – and this skill line will level up naturally as you play!
Banish the Wicked – Every time you kill an undead – you gain some ultimate! There is a lot of undead in this game, especially in dungeons so it really helps build ultimate up faster!
Meteor – I’ll let you pick the morph you choose, but this is often put on a bar to benefit from the mages guild passives rather than to be used. The ultimate definitely it useful though!
Inner Light – This not only makes sure you benefit from Mage’s Guild passives, but also increase your magicka by 5%!
Magicka Controller – This passive is active on any bar you have a mages guild ability slotted. This increases your max magicka by 2% and increase your magicka regeneration by 2% Definitely a big help!
Mage Adept – As per my 30 second testing on the PTS – this passive does not actually change the cost of meteor and it’s morphs. You may actually wonder why I bring it up at all. At some point – you will accidentally press that inner light button and swear to yourself for how much magicka it just consumed. At least acccidentally pressing it now won’t consume at much.
You level up undaunted by completing group dungeons and group dungeon achievements! You also can level it up by going pledges and daily undaunted quests!
Undaunted Mettle – This passive is practically the entire reason we are wearing 5-1-1 armor weights. It helps all of your stats, just grind it out and get it.
Undaunted Command – Once you play at a higher level, you’re going to be hoping to be seeing orb or shard synergies to synergize on cooldown to help you sustain. This will help those synergies help your sustain even more!
If they say something about magicka, or spell something – get it. It’s important.
It’s surprising that you’ll appreciate leveling crafts on your main DPS character as well. I didn’t split the crafts up since there are so few skills though.
Alchemy – Medicinal Use – This makes your potion effects last longer. On a standard Spell Power potion that is crafted – the effects of the potion will actually outlast the cooldown – therefore allowing 100% uptime!
Provisioning – Gourmand/Connoisseur – Which one of these passives is more important to you depends on if you use a food or drink. It’s nice to be able to have your buff food/drink last longer!
Here’s some skills that you are super confused as to why I suggest you level them – but they might actually come in handy some day and you will be glad you leveled them up! These are definitely not as important as what’s listed above.
Alliance War – Purge > Efficient Purge – A few different dungeons and trials have effects that you want to purge (or in some cases – absolutely must) and it’s great for some DPS to have it on their bar too!
Fighters Guild – Silver Bolts > Silver Leash – In a very very limited set of cases, it’s handy for DPS to be able to pull adds in because the tank just can’t. Your group will thank you.
Are there any skills or passives you feel deserved to be on this list but wasn’t? Let me know in the comments below!
Here’s a SUPER fast guide on how to get the FREE Indrik mount in ESO!
1) Earn event tickets during in game events
2) Trade in 10 tickets for a feather
3) Repeat until you have all different feathers
4) ‘Use’ a feather in your inventory!
You’ve got a sorc and have been practicing a rotation.. but what are you wearing? In this guide I’ll cover not only specific sets for Magicka Sorcerer DPS in Elder Scrolls Online, but basic gear guides for any DPS in ESO.
I will be covering some basic gear tips and explanations before we talk about any sets at all. If videos are your preferrred content delivery method, check out this guide in .
If you haven’t read/watched part 1 or part 2 yet, I really suggest going through those first!
For a magicka sorcerer you will be using two destruction staves. Your front bar will be an inferno staff, but your back back you can use inferno or lightning staff. Although a back bar inferno staff will be technically higher DPS – lightning staves help with off-balance in a non-optomized groups or solo situations – also the splash damage of the channeled heavy attack is nice.
Your “front bar” is whatever bar your spammable is on.
Armor weight does matter in ESO. You want to wear 5-1-1, this means 5 pieces of light armor, 1 piece of medium armor and 1 piece of heavy armor. You may be confused as to why, so don’t worry – I will explain!
You require 5 pieces of light armor so that you get to receive benefit from all the light armor passives which are magicka based.
You want to wear at least one of each armor type to take advantage of the Undaunted Mettle passive in the Undaunted skill line. This also allows you to take some other armor passives such as Heavy armor’s Juggernaut passive that increases your max health by 2%.
Though it would make a huge different for which armor pieces are different weights, there is a difference and you can use this to your advantage to gain a bit or armor rating. I’ll list out how much armor each piece at epic quality has. Light/Medium/Heavy
As you can see, it is most beneficial for your single heavy armor item to be chest, and you single medium armor item be head/shoulder/legs/feet. Unfortunately that is only possible if you are using a crafted set. Otherwise you generally use shoulder/helm because that is your monster set – and it doesn’t matter which of those two slots is medium or heavy.
This is pretty simple for magicka DPS. Here are your options
But what are big and small? This is like the armor ratings – but the same pieces aren’t big and small.
Big (possibly infused) – Head, Chest, Legs
Small (always divines) – Shoulder, Hands, Waist, Feet.
Jewelry traits are still up in the air mostly. A lot of guides recommend all or at least some bloodthirsty. That isn’t bad and you can go ahead – but it isn’t exactly necessary. Arcane is still a great trait for magicka DPS.
It is best to have infused on both of your staves. If you play solo rather than in groups – using the sharpened trait is a great option.
This one is really simple – all magicka enchant on armor!
I really recommend a minimum of 170000 health with food active on DPS characters, but I prefer to use attributes to get to this number rather than enchants. This allows you to swap out gear for different scenarios without worrying if you still have the right amount of health enchants on.
Often many guides will tell you to use all spell damage enchants. Is that best? Sure. Will you be able to sustain it? Probably not. You will want to use a mix of magicka regeneration and spell damage on your jewelry depending on your CP level and comfort level with sustain. I personally like to run 2 spell damage enchants and 1 magicka regen enchant as a max CP player.
This has been up in the air over the last few patches, but likely any of these options will still be good.
Absorb Magicka on your back bar. This will be a big big help with your sustain.
Flame or Shock enchant on your front bar. Shock if you are a solo player, fire if you tend to play in groups.
Those who are really brave can use shock on one staff, and lightning on the other. If you still have a weapon damage enchant on your staves from past patches, that isn’t terrible and is fine too.
There is a few different setups for magicka sorcerer
You don’t need all your gear to be legendary. It will not make much of a difference other than making you go broke. Don’t do it! If you’re playing at a higher level you will want to make your weapons gold, but the gear is not necessary. The quality of your weapons is far more important than the quality of your armor or jewelry. Not high level yet? Go ahead and use blue armor and purple weapons! Weapon quality makes a decent different – armor quality doesn’t.
Finally! I’m actually going to talk about specific sets you can wear as a magicka sorcerer!
I consider leveling to be anything below CP160. So I consider level 1-50 along with champion point 10-150 as the leveling experience. Don’t rush this, this is when you’ll be leveling up different skill lines, abilities and getting to know your class! So what gear do I recommend?
Levelling doesn’t take a ton of time, so spend it enjoying the game instead of focusing on gear. Seducer is a crafted set that requires only 3 traits researched to make. I recommend making both weapons, heavy chest, one medium piece (head,should,legs,feet), and one light armor piece in seducer. Although you won’t take advantage of things like the undaunted mettle passive as you level, this will help you level those other armor skill lines. Making a new set ever 10-15 levels would be a good idea – and no need to make it any better than green or blue quality.
There is a light armor set that drops in each zone. Just use whatever you have from the zone. Using what you find will allow you to keep your armor a bit closer to your level and just offer convenience. Dolmens are how you get jewelry so don’t pass those by!
While you are leveling you will likely want to focus more on sustain than on damage. If you’re having trouble sustaining just go ahead and make some absorb magicka glyphs for both weapons – and leave the jewelry you pick up as is. It will generally be magicka cost reduction enchants by default on jewelry.
So you made it to CP160 and are looking to get into the BIS (best in slot) gear instantly! Settle down! You may be max gear level, but you still have a ways to go. You’ve got some CP to get, probably some passives to unlock and even level up some more skills. So what do I suggest? Make some Julianos!
To get you started – head out to Orsinium to make yourself a full julianos set. Julianos is a solid set that is always a great option for any magicka DPS characters – and it’s crafted! This set is definitely about damage and not sustain.
Once you have crafted that Julianos set, go ahead and run the group dungeon Veteran Crypt of Hearts 1 over and over. Why? Well a couple reasons. As a lower CP player you are still missing some raw stats (these come with CP until CP300) and are missing some sustain without many champion points. Lich is a solid set that is great for sustain, that is in one of the simpler group dungeons – that has the bonus of a solid monster helm drop at the end. Lich also drops in Crypt of Hearts 2 dungeon – but then you don’t have a chance at the Ilambris monster helm, and it’s a bit more challenging.
To acquire the shoulder piece of Ilambris you will need to do some undaunted pledges and open up Gilirions chest!
Best case scenario: at CP160 make yourself a Julianos set. Make both weapons (CP160), make head/shoulder medium or heavy CP150, and make another light piece. This means when you get a Ilambris helm and shoulder you didn’t waste many materials, and then after can craft other julianos piece at CP160 to match you mosnter set keeping you at 5-1-1. This also stops you from having to get a medium helm – since you can just craft a julianos piece and use whatever helm you got.
For the start of this farming, wearing the pieces is more important than the traits. Wear whatever lich you first pick up to give you the bonuses from the set while you continue to farm the dungeon to get it in better traits. The 5pc bonus is more important than it being divines.
Use this gear setup until you feel more comfortable with sustain.
Burning Spellweave (BSW) and Netch’s Touch are both dungeon sets that can come from group dungeons. Burning Spellweave was BIS not long ago, though I never cared for it much on a Sorc since we do a lot of shock damage, but it’s definitely still a solid set. Netch’s Touch is a decent set that is awesome to use if you want a themed lightning sorcerer! Both of these are base game dungeons – no DLC or chapters required!
BSW – City of Ash
Netch’s Touch – Darkshade Caverns
Only one of these overland sets is really an option for you. If you are a magicka sorc DPS who does not use pets (who this guide is intended for) you will love Mother’s Sorrow. If you are a pet sorc – use necropotence.
Mother’s Sorrow (MS) is an amazing set that has the bonus of being an overland set. You do not need to do any instanced group content to get this set. You can farm it yourself in Deshann (base game zone!), or buy it from other players.
Necropotence is pretty much a given for all pet sorcs! You can find this set in Rivenspire (base game zone!) or buy it from other players.
Infallible Aether comes from the 3 (base game) Craglorn trials, which you can often find PUGs (pick up groups) looking for more in that zone that you can join. If you are struggling with sustain on your magicka sorcerer you may find yourself using a lot of heavy attacks, or maybe it’s just part of your rotation. If so, this is a great set that will not only benefit you – but everyone around you! This set means the enemy you applied it to take 8% more damage from everyone! This used to be a standard healer set, but with other great options for healers now you generally won’t have to worry about a healer also wearing it.
Julianos also fits in this category as an amazing crafted set option for magsorc gear, but I didn’t include it here as I covered it earlier. Mechanical Acuity is not best in slot by any means, but I wanted to include it because I figure you may already have a set from when it was previously BIS. I’m a big believer in using what you already have. If you don’t have a set of mechanical acuity already, I don’t really think it’s worth making, but if you have it – it’s worth using! I use this on my magsorc currently. If you do use mechanical acuity you must be using crushing shock (or force pulse) as your spammable. This is because that ability counts as 3 direct damage hits and therefore gives this set a much better chance at proccing.
The asylum staff speaks to a crushing shock sorcerer very well. Master staff is okay, and more is just “I want to use it because I earned it dammit!” rather than it actually being great – but great DPS can be achieved with it too! Both of these staves require you use a specific skill for them to be of any use though!
The Asylum staff is great and something I use on my sorcerer! This staff can be found from the Asylum Sanctorium trial in the Clockwork City DLC. You are not required to do the veteran version to gain the non-perfect staff as I have shown. You must use crushing shock (or force pulse) as your spammable if you are using this staff. I really love it as it’s a simple staff to get (the trial is very short), and it’s jsut fun!
The Master Staff comes from Veteran Dragonstar Arena that is in Craglorn – a base game zone. This staff isn’t best in slot by any means, but allows for a simpler dot based rotation with sustain help!
This is maybe why you came here, but also why I wanted you to learn all those basics first! Best in Slot gear is only the best if you are using it to it’s fullest abilities. Both Siroria and Spell strategist rely on you constantly weaving properly – as it’s the light attacks that generally proc the set bonuses. Zaan comes from a difficult DLC dungeon – and also requires you stay quite close to your enemy – which is a bit off as a ranged magicka character. If you go this route, you’ll want spell strategist to only be front barred – so you can use both a monster set and VMA staff.
If you have a VMA staff – use it. It will be a considerable DPS increase.
My magplar is currently my main, so she is holding on to all the BIS gear I have so this is currently what my magicka sorcerer is wearing! She still pulls 30k+ DPS even though I don’t play her as much as I used to. This is a mix of gear I already owned from when I did play her as my main, and just spare gear I found as I farmed gear for my magplar. Both weapons I use are gold, but still have the “old” best in slot enchants on them. Don’t get too hung up on your gear, and just go play!
