ESO: Where should you start as a newcomer or returner?

The Elder Scrolls Online has got an adapted entry with the newest expansion Blackwood. New players and fresh characters now have the choice in which chapter and with which story they want to start. But which ones are best?

Where to start Basically you can start in any of the chapters. Because ESO is built in such a way that the world around you scales with you. The mobs adapt to your level and the equipment doesn’t play a big role either.

After the new tutorial from Blackwood you can choose from the following beginnings, provided you have all the extensions:

• Summerset
• Elsweyr
• Dark Forest (Blackwood)
• Western Skyrim (Greymoor)
• Vvardenfell (Morrowind)
• Khenarthis Rast (Aldmeri-Dominion)
• Stros M’Kai (Daggerfall Alliance)
• Ödfels (Ebonheart Pact)

However, there are certain advantages and disadvantages to playing a certain chapter.

For beginners, entry into Blackwood is ideal. Because here you get the new companions after a relatively short time. These are NPCs who support you in combat in the open world. And that is precisely what is very useful for beginners.

An alternative is to start in Elsweyr. The area is visually beautiful, plays very modern and lets you fight huge dragons again and again, which is great fun. Even the developers recommended starting directly with Elsweyr in 2019 and designed the content accordingly well.

The only downside to both areas is that you don’t start the story in the right order. You start practically in the middle or, with Blackwood, even “at the end” and do not experience the story of the original base game. For this you would have to follow the campaign of your respective alliance.

Is that a big problem with the story? No, because on the one hand you can catch up on all story content later and on the other hand the NPCs in the story, who you might already know from previous stories, react to you as if you were meeting them for the first time. In most cases this is solved really well.

Play ESO in the correct story order

How do you play ESO in the correct order? If you want to play the story in the correct order right from the start, you have to start in your own campaign. Then you need special DLCs that you can buy for real money or get with the ESO + subscription.

The first major expansion is then Morrowind with the Vvardenfell area. This is followed by a wild mix of DLCs and expansions.

If you are interested in seeing the ESO story in all the right order, check out this article:

This is how you play ESO “right” – The optimal order for all 17 DLCs and chapters