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Wondering how to level skills in Elder Scrolls Online (ESO)? After leveling nearly all skill lines to max, I figured this would be a good time to share how I’ve done this and maybe save some people time. Let’s get started with our ESO Skill Leveling Guide!
Video coming soon
Table of Contents
- Skill Basics
- Class Skill Lines
- Weapon Skill Lines
- Armor Skill Lines
- Soul Magic
- Werewolf and Vampire
- Fighters Guild
- Mages Guild
- Undaunted
- Assault Support and Emperor
- Racial
- Crafting
Skill Basics
When I started playing ESO, I was very confused on how skill lines leveled. I had individual skills which could be used, then a morph and a skill line. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense and I couldn’t determine if skills and or skill lines were connected or not. This guilds is going to help go through each line talking about how they level, what I did to max them out (or close) and some tips on doing such. First let’s define some key terms:
Skills: Active abilities that you can place on your bar. Generally these gain experience over time. At rank four, one can pick between two morphs. After you morph the skill, you’ll still be able to rank it up to four which you’ll receive maximum benefit.
Morph: An upgrade to an existing active skill that changes the original skill. This does not add additional leveling speed to a given skill line but benefits the skill generally.
Passives: A inactive skill that gives you character a certain benefit in or out of combat. These cannot be placed on your bar nor leveled.
Skill Line: An overall group or cluster of skills that ranks up by performing certain task. Some are as easy as gaining experience and more complex as dungeon specific achievements.
Class Skill Lines
The first and most common are class skill lines. These are generally the most easy or least complicated to level. In order to advance, simply put one or more class skills on your bar and earn XP. This can be done by killing mobs, questing, etc.
TIP: After leveling about 100 alts (joking), I found an easy way to accelerate this process for specific skill lines. Say I wanted to level Ardent Flame but my current build doesn’t use any of these skills. You can quest as normal only to place ALL of the skills on your bar before you turn in the quest You’ll get a multiplier or additional experience for each ability on your bar thus breezing through a specific skill line. The same can be done with most other skill lines.
Weapon Skill Lines 
For all weapon skill lines, the same thing applies as above. As long as you have one or more abilities on your bar, you’ll get credit.
TIP: During leveling, I usually buy all the abilities in a specific skill line say Destruction Staff. The reason being, I can level the skill line much faster by placing all the abilities on my bar. Once I reach near end-game or max the skill lines I need out, I always respec. This gives me a lot more skill points to use on important passives rather than useless abilities while leveling.
Armor Skill Lines
Once again, Armor skill lines work in similar fashion. 
Not only does wearing the armor give you experience, but having a skill on your bar will also level this skill line. Essentially you 
could have zero medium armor on, yet still get experience by having the armor ability Evasion on your bar.
TIP: Want to get this done event faster? You can craft gear (weapons and armor) that have an added experience bonus to them. Each piece giving you a percentage for leveling that set. I made a purple set of light/medium/heavy for my characters. Just like class skill lines, I’d swap on all this gear before a quest turn in and bang, my heavy armor would be at 50 in no time.
Soul Magic
This is probably to easiest of the group. 
All you’ll need to do is complete the main story to unlock this. I’d had the main story completed by level 47 on one of my characters.
TIP: The passives on Soul Magic still seem to be broken. Specifically the Soul Shatter explosion upon death. You might want to save some skill points until this is fixed. Additionally, the Soul Lock passive is great for unconsciously filling soul gems. I’d say this a must passive prior to end-game.
Werewolf and Vampire
I’ve done a pretty detailed guide on each of these so I won’t be covering them again. Please check them out for very in depth leveling tips.
Fighters Guild
This is one of the more difficult skill lines to level. You’ll increase your rank by kill Daedra but that usually isn’t enough to max the skill after reach Veteran Rank 1. Another strange part of this skill line is you can’t increase it by placing skills on your bar. You’ll only get this increased by killing Daedra, nothing skill related.
TIP: While leveling, try to complete all the Dark Anchors in each zone before progressing. I’d even get a group of buddies together and explore Cyrodiil’s Anchors. If you do all of them, you’ll be close to Fighters Guild 10. If you haven’t reached it, go to Coldharbour in the City of the Lost Public Dungeon. This can net you around 1,000 points an hour just farming the mobs in an orbit. Not thrilling content, put the Fighters Guild ultimate, Flawless Dawnbreaker is one of the best in the game.
Mages Guild
Yet another interesting skill line the Mages Guild. You’ll only be able to level this through collection of Lorebooks. These are the oddly colored blue/purple books you’ll find throughout the world.
TIP: For those of us that don’t want to find these the natural way, I recommend the addon “Undiscovered.” It will show you on your world map every single skyshard, lorebook and area containing content. I consider this a must have addon though can take some exploration out of the game.
Undaunted
By far the hardest to level is the Undaunted skill line. I was able to max this out but it’s difficult. Yes only through achievements can you do this. There are many to be had and what I recommend doing is completing all of the group, public, and vet dungeons. That’s a lot of content but doing that alone still won’t get you to max. You’ll even need to do speed runs, give Undaunted members drinks, and a kill count achievement if you want to hit rank five. But trust me, getting Necrotic Orb is well worth it.
TIP: Some of the hardest achievements are the speed vet dungeon runs. While kind of cheesy, you can reach the final boss with four players. Have one player level the group that needs the achievement and invite them back. This will reset the timer and give you credit if you finish. I did not do this to earn my achievements, but the mechanic is out there for those wishing to take advantage.
Assault Support and Emperor
The Alliance war skill lines are also some of the hardest to level and mine are still not max. And I haven’t even started on the Emperor yet (though I will soon 🙂 There’s really only one way to level this and that’s through earning AP or Alliance Points. Complete quest, take over keeps and kill enemy players. This will all add up towards your rating and slowly progress the skill.
TIP: My only tip is play PvP a lot if you want to level this. I’m still not quiet the expert in PvP but will update if I find more useful information.
Racial
And the Racial leveling is probably the easiest. Just reach level 50 to unlock all of your passive skills. Make sure you take them as some are incredibly powerful even while leveling.
TIP: If you’re looking to reach end-game or VR content ASAP, the fastest way to do so is grinding. I don’t have the exact locations, but generally each zones public dungeons provide tons of mobs with good XP. Get a buddy and zerg through killing countless mobs if you just must reach end-game. On my main character Deltia, I’ve done literally every quest in the game. I recommend taking it slow first play through than maybe speeding it up second time around.
Crafting
This leveling process with require a whole series of guides. We’ll be introducing a new author soon, Nines, who has tons of guide writing experience and will head our Crafting Corner section. Stay tuned for more information on that.
So, was this helpful? Any tips you’d like to share with the community? Thanks for reading as always and I’ll be making a video guide to go along with this soon.
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