Levelling As A Tank In ESO

Levelling as a Tank in ESO can take a while to do if you are levelling as an actual Tank, but this is also an opportunity to make sure you have all skill lines unlocked, everything collected, abilities levelled and you’ve develop an understanding of your character class and how skills/passives work. This is our handy guide for any new Tanks in The Elder Scrolls Online!

The very first thing you should do is try to find a few guilds to join, you’re able to join 5 guilds in The Elder Scrolls Online. You are looking for social / PvE based guilds with 300+ members so that you can find some help with getting some crafted gear.

You’ll also want to have a good number of people you can press on in the guild members list so you can fast travel to them to unlock new zones and so you can use the chat to ask for any assistance with things in the game. You might also be lucky and find a guild that has a Trader that you can make use of to sell some things and make a bit of gold.

There are a few ways for levelling up:

Overland solo levelling and questing
Dungeon levelling
Master Writs levelling
Experience grinding

Setup

You need to get Skill Lines levelled up so first of all kill something with a Destruction Staff to unlock the first Destruction Staff skill, you will need this later in the game. Equip a One Hand and Shield and kill something to unlock the first One Hand and Shield Skill this is the main skill line for Tanking. You then have 3 class skill lines; you need to get the first skill from each of those and put those on your active ability bar.

As an Arcanist your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Arcanist

As a Dragonknight your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Dragonknight

As a Necromancer your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Necromancer

As a Nightblade your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Nightblade

As a Sorcerer your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Sorcerer

As a Templar your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Templar

As a Warden your 1st ability bar would look something like this:

Warden

With your skills setup, you need gear also. The best thing to do is ask for help with crafting some Training gear if you cannot do so yourself.

If you are Overland solo levelling it is a good idea to set up with 5 Light Armor, 1 Medium, 1 Heavy using a Destruction Staff – this is because levelling as a Tank is incredibly slow as you have low damage and high defence. Levelling this way includes doing Delves, Public Dungeons, Dolmens, Quests/Psijic Quests and more.

If you are levelling by doing Dungeons (Random Normal Dungeons) then you should set up with 5 Heavy Armor, 1 Medium, 1 Light using a One hand and Shield and at level 15 using a Destruction Staff on your second bar. Levelling this way is great for learning how to Tank on your class and you should use the group finder and search for Random Dungeons as you get bonus experience for doing this.

See More: ESO Beginner Tank Build

Top 10 Crafted Sets for Beginner Tanks | Elder Scrolls Online | High Isle

Levelling Checklist

Use Training Gear as it will level you up much faster. Ask for help in a guild, zone chat or The Tank Club Discord.
Pick up Mages Guild Skill Line, Fighters Guild Skill Line, Undaunted Skill Line:
- Once you complete the Tutorial, to join the Fighters Guild and Mages Guild you must travel to a large city. (See maps)
Pick up Psijic Order Skill Line (Summerset DLC or ESO+ only)
- Complete the Summerset main story until you reach Artaeum where you will be able to speak with Loremaster Celarus to join the guild.
Level up Mount daily at the Stables (250 gold per day) start with mount Speed.
Complete Cyrodiil Introduction at level 10 for Support and Assault Skill Lines (Level 10+)
Complete your Group Finder: Random Daily Battleground (Level 10+)
Complete your Group Finder: Random Daily Dungeon (Level 10+)

Best Ways of Levelling

The best way to level up overall is to combine all of the above, completing your random daily dungeons and battleground, collecting skyshards and lorebooks and completing your Psijic Order quests. Before you even start levelling up you should collect all of your important skill lines which you will need later in the game and it’s much easier to level them up immediately rather than waiting until later. You need to travel to your Alliance major city and go to the Mages Guild, the Fighters Guild and the local Tavern to meet the Undaunted, pick up the 3 skill lines by talking to the NPCs.

Ebonheart Pact – Davon’s Watch – Stonefalls
Daggerfall Covenant – Daggerfall – Gelnumbra
Aldmeri Dominion – Vulkhel Guard – Auridon

If you have either the Summerset DLC or ESO+ you then you need to start the Summerset main quest – you can do this by going to your collections, press on Summerset and click the “Accept Quest” button. This will then send you to Summerset and Shimmerene where you need to complete the main story quests in this area until you meet Valsirenn. Follow her and complete the tasks until she invites you to Artaeum. Once you reach Artaeum, look for Loremaster Celarus and complete his tasks to unlock the Psijic Order skill line.

Once you have the Psijic Order skills, you can start travelling around Tamriel doing the Psijic Order quests. When you are sent to a zone to close Psijic Portals, also pick up all Lorebooks in that zone, while you are doing that collect all of the Skyshards including the ones inside Delves and make sure you do any Dolmens that are active as they are a good experience boost. Levelling your skill lines at this point has a huge benefit and will help you to have a lot of options available for useful skills in the future.

Complete Psijic Order quest/close Psijic Portals
Collect Lorebooks
Collect Skyshards
Kill World Bosses
Complete Dolmens and Delves
Complete Public Dungeons and Public Dungeon Group Events

PvP Skills

Once you are level 10 it’s a good idea to travel into Cyrodiil and complete the introduction quest, this will unlock the Support and Assault skill lines and also unlock the Continuous Attack passive which is worth putting 1 point into so you can to travel around Tamriel on your mount much faster. There are some very useful PvP skills especially War Horn and Purge, and if you reach Support 9 you can use Barrier and the Magicka Aid passive.

Leveling up your PvP skill lines is crucial for tanking. Engage in PvP activities, such as daily random battlegrounds, to reach Support level 9. This unlocks the Barrier skill and the Magicka Aid passive, providing a 10% boost to your Magicka Recovery—essential for Tanking content.

PvP Rewards:

PvP also offers valuable End of Campaign rewards. Every 30 days, PvP campaigns reset, and by reaching at least tier 1 rewards (25,000 Alliance Points), you earn a gold Transmutation Geode. These are vital for changing gear traits, allowing you to optimize your equipment without endless grinding. While it’s usually easier to farm gear in the correct traits, transmuting is often reserved for Monster Sets and jewellery, as these are harder to obtain in the desired traits. Using 50 Transmute Stones, you can switch traits on gear, making this an invaluable resource for tank optimization.

Other Levelling

Crafting Writs

You can do a number of other things to gain experience including Crafting Writs. This is daily crafted that can be done in every town in The Elder Scrolls Online, you just go to the noticeboards, pickup the writ and it should be aligned towards your current crafting ability. These reward experience for completion along with other potentially useful crafting materials.

Undaunted Pledges

You should already be part of the Undaunted as we mentioned at the start. At level 45 you’ll receive mail to go to the Undated Enclave. Follow the quest marker and complete the introductory quest to gain access to pledges. These are basically dungeons that are on a daily rotation and each day you can complete a specific set of dungeons and you get rewarded with experience points, Undaunted keys and Transmute Crystals. These can be done easily at level 45 when completing Normal Dungeons and the keys are useful later to gain powerful Monster Sets.

Grinding

You can grind out levelling which is not advised if you are inexperienced. You’ll need to be in a group to do these in most cases and it can be useful for the extra experience gains by being in a group of 2.

This is done by killing enemies quickly over and over again. There are a number of places located all over the place in The Elder Scrolls Online where you can do it but the most popular as Skyreach Catacombs in Craglorn and Blackrose Prison in Murkmire.

With Skyreach, you walk in the door, run around and kill everything and then walk back out of the door, reset the instance by switching between Normal and Veteran and then walk back in. For Blackrose Prison go in and kill the first few waves of enemies then die, resurrect and kill them again for as long as you want.

Master Writs

If you’ve got some experience in the game and just want to level your character quickly, this can be done with Master Writs. It’s an expensive way to level up but very effective. You will need to obtain a lot of Alchemy and Enchanting master writs, pre-craft all of the items needed then go to the NPC and hand them all in.