Whether you’re a long time PC gamer or someone coming to the Elder Scrolls Online from consoles, you’re going to want to improve your ESO gameplay experience by using addons and changing around your keybinds. Well, I’ve got you covered! Keep on reading below for my Addons, UI, and Keybinds Guide for ESO.
User Interface Settings
First up I’m going to take you through what I do per character before I’m starting out on my journey through Tamriel. After hitting the Escape button on PC, the user interface will pop up with several tab suggestions on the left side of the screen. The first thing you’ll want to click on is Settings. From there, here are the changes I make, going from top to bottom, left to right:
- Video
- Under Graphics, turn the Shadow Quality to LOW or OFF. This may not apply to everybody, but it’s one of the biggest performance tips I can give you.
- Under Graphics, turn Bloom, Distortion, Sunlight Rays, and Show Additional Ally Effects all OFF. Same reason as above.
- Under Graphics there are three sliders for: Maximum Particle Systems and Particle Suppression Distance. Dragging those sliders all the way to the right will also dramatically increase performance.
- Audio
- Under Output at the bottom. Turn Plays in Background ON. This is helpful if you’re alt-tabbed and you’re queued for something – you’ll hear a q-pop that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise.
- Gameplay
- Under Combat, turn the Combat Cues ON.
- Under Combat, look at Custom Colors. The default Friendly Color can be really dark and hard to tell if it’s friendly or enemy. Change it to something you like. I have mine set to 255 green only. If you hit ‘Test Friendly’ the game will show you want that looks like and you can adjust if needed.
- Under Combat, look at Custom Colors. There is also a default for Enemy Color. This works the same as Friendly and can be even more important to change than Friendly.
- Under Combat, find Double Tap to Dodge and turn it OFF. Seriously, if you do nothing else on this list, DO THIS. You will avoid losing all your stamina to dodge roll fatigue. It will be the death of you in PvP. Don’t worry, I’ll show you how to keybind it soon.
- Under Combat, find Prevent Attacking Innocents. Unless you’re working on your assassination skill like, this help you avoid accidently confrontations with guards.
- Under Combat, find Quick Cast Ground Abilities. Turn this on to prevent having to click twice to cast a targeted ground AoE.
- Camera
- Under Global, find Screen Shake. I slide this all the way to the left to turn it OFF.
- Under First Person, find Field of View. Move the slider all the way to the right. You will be able to see what more of your surroundings on the screen, which is valuable in both PvE and PvP.
- Under Third Person, find Horizontal Position. My personal preference is to move the slider a bit to the right so that my cursor sits right above my character. May not be necessary, depending on your playstyle, but it can be idea to have your crosshair where you’re looking at all times.
- Nameplates
- Under Nameplates, unless you’re RPing and looking for 100% immersion, turn all of these things ON.
- Under HealthBars, turn them ON. On Self (Show), choose Injured from the dropdown box. This will display a small version of your health bar above your character’s head when they are injured in game. This is really helpful to see at a quick glance rather than having to rely on looking farther away at the bottom of the screen. This is especially vital in PvP.
- Combat
- Under Heads-Up Display, find Ability Bar. Choose Always Show from the dropdown box.
- Under Heads-Up Display, find Attribute Bars. Choose Always Show from the dropdown box.
- Under Heads-Up Display, find Resource Numbers. I choose Number and Percent from the dropdown box.
- Under Heads-Up Display, find Ultimate Number. Turn ON. Particularly in PvP you’ll want information on your Ultimate cooldown.
- Under Combat Text, find All down through Outgoing Crowd Control and turn them ON. If you’re using pets on your build, turn all the pets options ON. Also be sure to turn Show Overhealing ON.
- Under Buffs & Debuffs, you should turn most of these ON. However, I don’t recommend turning Long Effects or Permanent buffs on as these can get in the way on the screen.
- Accessibility
- The single selection here will turn your user interface into something that looks more like what console players see. This is totally personal preference whether you want it on or off.
Keybinds
Keybinds are incredibly important for PC players – knowing what button does what and having the proper placement for the most important movements are key to feeling confident about your playstyle. Many people may have their own keybind set ups that suit their own playstyle or are perhaps based on other previous games they’ve played.
My personal keybind setup is influenced by my gaming mouse, which is a Razer Naga with 12 buttons on the side. You may have to make adjustments depending on what your own mouse is like, but I’m actually only using 6 of the buttons on the side. Here are my recommendations for the most important/vital keybinds:
Movement Forward, Backward, Left, Right: W, S, A, D keys. This is pretty standard and will have your pinky, ring, and middle finger doing all of your character movement. This leaves your index finger free to hit these vital keybinds:
- Roll Dodge: Set to the V key
- Crouching: Set to the T key
- Interrupt/Break Free: Set to the C key
- Use Synergy: Set to the F key
Moving on to the mouse button keybinds:
- Weapon Swap: Middle button (the scroll wheel)
- Abilities 1-5: The corresponding 1-5 buttons on my mouse.
- Quickslot Item: Button #6 on my mouse.
Addons
The third-party software you’ll want to use to download and install addons in ESO is Minion – Premier AddOn Management.
Keep in mind that once you have the addons installed, when you get in game you hit the Escape button, click on Settings, and then click on Addons. Here you will see a list of your installed Addons, and when you click on each an interface will pop up with information and further customization settings.
Pro Tip: Within each of these customization and settings, many addons will provide a check box somewhere (typically right up top) that enables Account Wide Configuration. Doing this will save you tons of time clicking it – then you only have to make changes once and it will have those settings for all of your characters.
Here is a list of the Addons that I use, which are also linked/clickable for your convenience.
- Action Duration Reminder: Displays the cool down timers of abilities on your off bar.
- Suggested Further Customization: Turn the Pop-up Alerts OFF
- Advanced Filters: An inventory management addon and helps sort through all your stuff
- Auto Invite: Very helpful if you’re putting together some kind of zerg group for PvP or grinding. You toggle this on and off by going into the Group & Activity Finder. AutoInvite will be at the bottom of the list.
- Bandits User Interface: My personal holy grail of user interfaces. Further customization can be found by clicking Escape, Settings, and then Bandits UI.
- Suggested Further Customization: Under Base options: Move frames allows you to put many of the different elements where you want them on the screen.
- Battleground Coffers: Allows you to see which of your characters have Tier 1 Alliance Rank. This is important because end of Cyrodiil campaign rewards give you 50 transmutes and I like to try and hit that on as many characters as possible.
- Beam Me Up: Provides a short cut to ‘Travel to Player’. Pull up the map and an interface on the left lists all of your guild friends, any of which can be traveled to for free. If you’re a new player this is hugely helpful. Find a guild or three to join early on and help you get around Tamriel!
- Code’s Combat Alerts: A must have for anyone doing hardcore veteran trials. If you don’t know all of the mechanics, this holds your hand and tells you when and were to get out of stupid.
- Combat Metrics: A very detailed report in what you do for damage and why. Be sure to bind Comat Metrics to a specific key on your keyboard, otherwise you won’t be able to pull it up.
- Craft Store: Shows and managed your traits as you work on researching for crafting.
- CyrHUD: Specifically for Cyrodiil, when you port into the PvP zone this will display in the upper right hand corner a snapshot of where combat and fights are happening on the map.
- Dolgubon’s Lazy Writ Creator: After picking up your crafting writs from the boards, go to the relevant crafting table and the addon will auto craft the item(s) for you, so long as you have the needed materials.
- Dressing Room: A mini armory that lets you set up and save multiple builds. Similar to the Armory system in game, but Dressing room will save your Mundus stone and outfit. Dressing Room can be a nice short cut to swap about ability bars in a trial, without resetting everything else.
- Dynamic CP: Shows the text names for all of the stars so you don’t have to go searching and hovering with your mouse trying to find the one champion point you need. Also allows you to set up presets on characters.
- Global Cooldown Bar (GDCbar): A visual display of the one second timer on your non-channeled casted abilities. This is incredibly helpful for light attack weaving!
- Inventory Insight: Must set up in Keybinds like Combat Metrics. When you hit that keybind a popup list will display the inventory of every single character who has the addon active. If you’re looking for an specific armor piece, this addon will let you know which of your characters has it without you having to log out and back in repeatedly.
- Lights of Meridia: A great addon for group play, whether dungeons, trials, or PvP. It will put a beam above their head and helps you see where other group members and the leader are. You can also go in and sort by role, so each type of player (DPS, Tank, Healer) has a different color.
- Lost Treasure: Very helpful if you have a lot of writ surveys. Will point out the location on the map.
- Map Pins: Another extremely helpful addon. Open up the map and on the right hand side click on the filters icon. This will let you turn on and off all kinds of locations. A must have to find lorebooks, skyshards, treasure chests, etc.
- OdySupportIcons: Similar to Lights of Meridia, except instead of beams of light group players are marked by large icons above their heads. Also had unique icons for leader, healers, etc)
- WritWorthy: Another writ addon, this one focuses on Master Writs. Especially helpful if you have access to a friend or guildmate’s house who has all of the craftable table sets.
- XL Gear Banker: Very helpful if you’re trying to keep track of a lot of armor sets and weapons across multiple characters. When interacting with a bank or banker two UIs will pop up allowing you to save as a set and remove a full set of armor and drop it into the bank at once. Then log into another character and pull all the same items out of the bank at once.
Additional Guides:
If you’re looking for a one-bar PvE builds click HERE, one-bar PvP builds HERE or one-bar Werewolves builds HERE. Also, consider watching me on TWITCH where you can ask me questions about my current builds.
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