After you’ve read our Starting Out in ESO guide, the next step will naturally be creating your character so you can head out into the world of Tamriel.

Picking the right class and character will make a big difference in how you experience the game and what your journey will be like as your playthrough the various quests, engage in combat and level up your character for new weapons, armour and more.

Gender and Voice

The first choices are choosing what sex you’ll like to play as, you can choose from Male or Female. You can then change the sound of their voice and you’ll get this same combination across all the different races in the game.

Alliance

While choosing a race a sometimes overlooked choice is the Alliance of your new character. This is the faction in the game you align yourself with and has an impact on your starting location and who you are going to be fighting for in the faction wars to try and take the Imperial Throne.

It’s important to note that if you are playing with friends and want to start out together, being in the same Faction will make you start in the same area unless you have the Imperial Edition DLC.

• Ebonheart Pact – Set up during a time of crisis, three races that make up this faction and would have likely not worked together before now. The Pact include the Dunmer, Nord and Argonian people to keep their homelands free against the Empire.
• Aldmeri Dominion – Formed by the Altmer so that they can protect the land with the help from Bosmer and the Khajiits. Unlike Ebonheart, The Aldmeri Dominion want to rule all of Tamriel much like the Empire.
• Daggerfall Covenant – High King Emeric formed this faction to which the Covenant comprises of the Bretons, Orcs and Redguard. The goal is simple to reclaim the Ruby throne and restore order to the lands.

Race & Species

It would not be an Elder Scrolls game if you can not play as a sexy female cat or lizard. The first step to what your character actually looks like it choosing what race you’d like to play as. There’s a total of 10 different species to choose from but the Imperial race is locked behind a paywall unless you have the Imperial Edition.

Daggerfall Covenant

• Breton – Bretons get bonuses for Magicka, spell resistance, and light armour skills. These are the base mage class.
• Orc – Born tanks, Orcs excel on the front line and have bonuses to their health, health regeneration, and heavy armor.
• Redguard – Powerful frontline DPS with a sword in hand with traits to boost their effectiveness with a sword and shield and increased stamina regeneration.

Aldmeri Dominion

• Altmer – Known as the High Elves, with abilities to add to their destructive powers and the Magickaregeneration rate. Good for mage class that want to do massive DPS.
• Bosmer – Known as the Wood Elves granting bonuses to stealth, bow skills as well as stamina. Great base class for the Assassin or Warden.
• Khajiit –  With claws, it makes sense they have bonuses for melee combat agile and stealth.

Ebonheart Pact

• Argonian – Their racial traits give bonuses to healing, disease and poison resistance which makes sense for a reptile based race. Great for tanking classes.
• Dunmer – Known as the Dark Elf their skills provide large bonuses towards destructive magic for fire and fire resistance.
• Nord – Massive strong warriors used to the cold mountains of Skyrim and have traits which increase their two-handed abilities, health, and frost resistance.

The Imperials

Imperial – The one race that is allowed to be a member of any of the three alliances. Imperials specialise in shields, giving bonuses to their health and stamina

Choosing a Class

https://odealo.com/articles/best-eso-builds-and-guides-for-all-classes

• Dragon Knight – Offering a mix of DPS and tanking power, a Dragonknight can be played a few different ways. Whatever your choice, they are most likely to be in the front lines, swinging swords or large weapons.
• Sorcerer – As you might expect, the Sorcerers are potent spell casters that can buff themselves up with lightning from the skies, sling damaging spells at their enemies, or summon in Daedra help from Oblivion.
• Nightblade – A powerful DPS class, the Nightblades excel at hurting their foes, disorienting them and then disappearing. They work well in parties, or even alone thanks to their strong sustain skills.
• Templar – Similar to the Dragon Knight, the Templar is a class that offers a mixture of skills. They can be powerful tanks, offer strong AoE support or heal their allies with restorative Magicka.
• Necromancer – The newest playable class in ESO which launched with the Elsweyr expansion. As it suggests a powerful magic-based class with the ability to raise the dead to fight on their side and has curse based debuffs.
• Warden – Wardens are the ranger based class of ESO which are twined with nature that focuses on Frost damage and summons animals to aid them in combat. They are well suited for Tanks, Healer or DPS.

Advanced Customisation

After choosing your class you can then go into more detail about how your character looks. It might not be as “pretty” as some of the other MMORPGs on the market but you have a nice robust set of sliders and presets to have a chance at creating your ultimate character.

The body can be changed from thin, muscle or large which is in a triangle that changes the detail and overall size of the body.

The head gets similar treatment being able to change the structure of the face, the size of the various features and add colour and additional decals like makeup, scars and accessories.