Elder Scrolls Online Release Content Order

Morning Friends! Once again I treat you to a post about Elder Scrolls Online nonsense. I mean if you have been around the blog for awhile you know that I tend to get stuck on these sequences of posts because I ultimately post about whatever the heck I am into at any given moment. Right now I am super into Elder Scrolls Online again and I have my friends Zuu and Bells to thank for it. Had we not been talking about them returning to the game after being frustrated with Shadowlands, I likely would not have also booted up the game and dove head first into it. It is amazing what a difference having people to hang out with while playing makes. Like we are not actually doing much of anything together, but just the presence of other human beings occupying guildchat brings me joy after the guild effectively being dead for years.

Another thing that I am known for is my weird tangents. When I approach Elder Scrolls Online I attempt to do so in a manner that reflects the order in which the content was released. I am not sure why this is super important to me, because it legitimately does not matter at all given that everything pretty much can be done at any time of your choosing or straight up skipped altogether. I think part of my logic here is that ESO has a deep structure that ends up lending NPCs a “memory” of sorts, in that they remember your actions previously in the game. Having played through the original three content blocks and a couple of expansions worth of story afterwards, I have noticed how characters that you meet in the newbie zone end up combining with characters that you meet in totally different faction areas, and all of them remember your interactions before.

As such it is my intent to play these in order for the most accurate representation of what it would have been like to do the content when it first released having consumed the content beforehand. Once again this is not at all necessary because every drop of content in the game scales and can be tackled at pretty much any time and has been this way since the Tamriel Unlimited patch back in 2015. However if you are weird like me, I cobbled together a rough content order sheet in an attempt to replicate what it would have been like to stay current with the content as it was released.

Your First Faction

When you start the game you are asked to choose a faction and a race. For the most part these are cosmetic choices unless you intend to pvp an awful lot, but for the purpose of this guide I am going to treat these decisions like they actually matter. The content flow order is going to vary a bit based on which faction you start with. Essentially to finish “Caldwell’s Silver” and “Caldwell’s Gold” you end up rotating through the factions in a specific order. I started as Daggerfall Covenant originally for example and my second faction was Aldmerri Dominion and my third faction was Ebonheart Pact. Basically the easiest way to remember this is if you look at the Ouroboros signet each head represents a faction Lion Daggerfall, Hawk for Aldmerri, and Dragon for Ebonheart. The faction order essentially flows backwards around the circle from your starting faction.

Since you no longer start in Coldharbour and since at some point they began the process of starting some folks in Summerset and others in Morrowind there is a bit of fiddling to get back on the original path. Generally speaking there will be someone with a boat in the first town you arrive at that can take you to the other starting areas. There will be a sequence that is faction specific and then once you end up in the DLC the path ends up merged together. So here goes nothing in trying to outline as close to the release order for content as one can really get these days.

The bits marked with * are for your first time through the content only. They won’t appear in subsequent factions.

Daggerfall Covenant Content Order

• Take the Boat to Stros M’Kai
• Stros M’Kai
• Betnikh
• Travel to Daggerfall
• Talk to the Hooded Figure*
• Complete Coldharbour Escape Quest Chain*
• Glenumbra
• Stormhaven
• Rivenspire
• Alik’r Desert
• Bangkorai
• Coldharbour Epilogue*
• Start Aldmerri Dominion

Aldmerri Dominion Content Order

• Take the Boat to Kenarthi’s Roost
• Kenarthi’s Roost
• Travel to Vulkhel Guard
• Talk to the Hooded Figure*
• Complete Coldharbour Escape Quest Chain*
• Auridon
• Grahtwood
• Greenshade
• Malabal Tor
• Reaper’s March
• Coldharbour Epilogue*
• Start Ebonheart Pact

Ebonheart Pact Content Order

• Take the Boat to Bleakrock Isle
• Bleakrock Isle
• Bal Foyen
• Travel to Davon’s Watch
• Talk to the Hooded Figure*
• Complete Coldharbour Escape Quest Chain*
• Stonefalls
• Deshaan
• Shadowfen
• Eastmarch
• The Rift
• Coldharbour Epilogue*
• Start Daggerfall Covenant

Combined DLC Content Order

• Imperial City – Cyrodil – PVP area skip if not your jam
• Orsinium – Wrothgar
• Thieves Guild – Hew’s Bane
• Dark Brotherhood – Gold Coast
• Morrowind – Vvardenfell
• Clockwork City – Clockwork City
• Summerset – Summerset
• Murkmire – Murkmire
• Elsweyr – Northern Elsweyr
• Dragonhold – Southern Elsweyr
• Greymoor – Western Skyrim
• Stonethorn – Blackreach
• Gate of Oblivion – Blackwood – Releases June 1st

Currently at this moment I am roughly a third of the way through the Clockwork City content. I would love to think I will be caught up by June with the latest content drops, but I sincerely doubt that will be the case. Each of those content blocks is pretty beefy as far as the amount of quests and world content that you would end up experiencing. My personal preference has been to focus on doing ALL of the content available including side quests so that I effectively turn the entire map from Black Icons indicating that I have not completed something to White Icons indicating I have done everything in that given area.

However doing all the quests is not everyone’s jam and thankfully Elder Scrolls Online has made adjustments for the “do only the necessary things” play style as well. In each zone there will be a main story through line and these are marked with a unique icon. As to WHAT that icon represents is up to your own interpretation. I think most folks seem to refer to it as the shield icon versus the arrow icon which works for me. If you follow the main story symbol you will take the shortest route through a zone and should encounter all of the characters that will have the most long term impact on your play through. That is not to say that the side quest character are not pretty excellent, but I am not remembering too many of those that I have seen again once I left the zone.

This iconography thankfully continues through each of the expansions allowing you if you choose to focus on only the most important story beats and progress through the content more quickly. Like I said before that isn’t exactly my style, at least not on my very first character. On subsequent playthroughs of the game story I am not sure what I will do. I have been weirdly resistant to “Alting” in Elder Scrolls Online since in theory I can do everything on a single character. The thing is experience is experience and until you hit 50 you are effectively trying to soak up as much of it as humanly possible before you begin your Champion Point grind. Because of that I personally don’t see much of a point in skipping the side content because it is all money, gear and experience.

Is this guide useful to anyone? Probably not. However I cobbled this together in spreadsheet form yesterday and decided to go ahead and make a full post today with it. Figured it was a reasonable way to close out the week.