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In this ESO Armor Leveling Guide I’m going to take you step by step through the process of leveling the Armor Skill lines. If you take the time to follow these steps and get your armor set up and leveling properly, you’ll reap the rewards at end game!
The last update for the Necrom Chapter, on January 1, 2024.
Armor Basics
There are three types of armor body pieces in ESO: Light, Medium and Heavy.
Just like weapons and class skills, each armor type has its own skill lines and passives which can be leveled. There are no regular abilities to unlock, but there are Ultimates which unlock once the armor line gets to level 50.
When you’re just starting out, with a limited amount of gold and resources, armor may not seem all that important. BUT because each type of armor has its own skill line and very essential passives you’ll want to take, making sure to unlock and level all three right at the beginning will give you a great head start.
Unlocking the Armor Skill Lines
In order to unlock an Armor skill line, you need to equip three pieces of the same type. So: 3 Light pieces, 3 Medium pieces and 3 Heavy pieces.
But there are only 7 body slots! That’s okay. You just have to put 3 pieces of each gear type on to unlock the skill line initially and then you can switch out with what you want to play in. Once the skill line is unlocked, the skill lines will increase in level based on how many pieces of that type of armor you have equipped as you engage in combat.
In theory, if your ultimate goal is to be a magicka range dps with a destruction staff, you could equip all light gear in order to level that skill line the fastest. This is NOT recommended, however. There will be times when even the seemingly small amount of the sustain that the passives in the other lines provide will be critical to have access to. In ESO, there are no top-tier, endgame players who deck themselves out in only one type of gear. The current combination meta is typically 5-1-1. So you will absolutely want to level all of the armor lines to 50.
Leveling the Armor Skill lines
On your keyboard, click ‘I’ in order to access your Inventory. On the righthand side of the screen, you can hover your mouse over the body pieces to see what you are wearing.
So the best way to level armor is to wear 3-2-2 while leveling a new character. This way the three skill lines will level (mostly) evenly. Hopefully by the time you get to endgame and are ready to gear your character out properly, you will have hit or come very close to hitting level 50 on each of the Light, Medium, and Heavy skill lines.
What is the easiest way to find all of those pieces of gear? No matter which alliance you choose, your character should have early access to a city/town’s marketplace where you can purchase cheap ‘starter’ gear. The Armorer merchant will carry the Heavy pieces, the Leatherworker will carry the Medium, and the Tailor will carry the Light.
As you play along in the game and collect overworld armor pieces, feel free to switch out that starter gear for the higher stat green, blue and sometimes purple pieces you find. Just remember to keep an eye on the ratio of your armor types and try to keep it at 3-2-2.
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