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Just finished the main storyline quests in summerset. Looking for suggestions of what to do next. I am at level 20. I just started playing when Summerset was released.

What else do you have as far as DLC? Did you pre-purchase Summerset so you got Morrowind and the base game as well? If so, you can travel to Morrowind and do the quests there, and/or travel to the zone where the capitol of your alliance is located and start doing the quests there. Even without all of the other DLCs, there should be other zones that you can travel to, either by wayshrine or by boat. When traveling by wayshrine you'll probably only see one wayshrine in your alliance's zone, but as you explore the zones and discover more wayshrines they'll be available for fast travel as well.

My alliance is the the Ebonheart pact. Is my capitol Coldharbor?? I've somehow ended up there a few times and done some quests(just stumbled onto coldharbor while wandering around).
What I'm looking for is some sort of quest I could begin that would have on ongoing story line with several quests, rather than just doing one and done side quests.
Thanks for the response!

You could go wherever you'd like, but I suggest you take a crack at your alliance quests throughout the Ebonheart Pact (your capitol hold being Deshaan, actually). It will take you through dozens and dozens (and dozens!) of quests that will be about your alliance, and give you plenty of background story as well as skill points.

Typically there's an order to the zones, which would be Bleakrock Isle > Bal Foyen > Stonefalls > Deshaan > Shadowfen > Eastmarch > The Rift > Coldharbour. Of course, you don't have to do the zones in that order, but it flows nicely from quest to quest that way.

My understanding is that, if you start in one of the Chapters (i.e., Summerset), upon teleporting to your home alliance, you'll be approached by a mysterious guy in a hood and given a quest to meet someone. That will introduce you to your Main Story of having your soul stolen, if you haven't otherwise, and start you off in the alliance quests. When I did my EP-Chapters character, I think I met them in Stonefalls.

But yeah, go forth and have fun! So much to do here.

Thanks so much!! That's great advice. Really enjoying this game and can't believe how huge it is. You could spend months just reading the lore.
The other thing that's very confusing for a newbie is the crafting. Ive been working on blacksmithing and Enchanting. I've done the introductory quests, and have picked up work orders to complete from the boards, but making anything worth a crap seems like a complicated process.
Thanks again for the advice!!

Crafting can be fun, although researching traits takes an obscene amount of time, learning styles can be frustrating as far as finding the motifs, and obtaining materials can be a major hassle since they differ for the various levels, type of gear (heavy/medium/light), and the materials for the more exotic styles can be hard to find. But as long as you have the skills and materials, it can be fun to craft your own gear, or craft gear for other players.

This is an important truth; toward the end of your learning, it can take literal weeks to finish researching some style traits! If you want to get into crafting, start now and don't stop! Decon anything that isn't ordinate (sell that for the gold!) and research what you can. I would say the daily crafting writs can be useful and I found at low levels they helped me with gold, but if you aren't going to harvest and/or collect all the things required, they can become a pain. I didn't do it very seriously on my first character as I got used to the game, but when I came around a second time I took crafting much more seriously. It can be very rewarding, but it's a big time investment.

But most importantly? Play the way that brings you the most joy! As long as you're having fun, that's what matters. Have great adventures!

Thanks SeaGtGruff! I'll be spending some amount of time each day on crafting

Regarding trait research-- initially you can research 1 trait at a time, but as you level up each crafting skill you can choose to spend skill points on perks that increase the number of item types you can research at the same time, up to 3 item types per crafting line (except for jewelry, which I think is limited to 1 item, although that's not much of an issue because there are only 2 item types anyway, necklace and ring).

For a particular type of item, there are 9 possible traits, and at least 1 of them-- Nirnhoned-- will be extremely rare, such that you'll normally end up having to buy a Nirnhoned item at an obscene price from another player just so you can research it.

You can research 1 trait per type of item at a time-- for instance, if you're currently researching a trait for Sword, you can't start researching another trait for Sword until after the first trait is finished, although you can research a trait for some other type of Blacksmithing weapon (including Greatsword) as long as you had "bought" that perk with a Skill Point and are not already researching your maximum number of items.

For any given item, the first trait takes 6 hours to research. That's real time, not online time, so if you start researching a trait that will take 6 hours to learn, then log out for 6 hours, the research will be completed when you log in again.

After that, it seems like the amount of time doubles-- that is, it takes 12 hours to learn the second trait on an item, 24 hours for the third, etc. But I'm not sure if that's strictly true, because there are also perks that let you speed up your research times (as well as scrolls for shortening the research time on a single trait I believe).

If you have all of the perks for speeding up research times, the maximum research time is 30(!) days (unless you buy scrolls to shorten that).

As for crafting in general-- an item can have 5 degrees of quality, which are color coded with white text, green text, blue text, purple text, and gold text.

When you craft an item, it has normal (white) quality.

To improve the quality you must have materials for improving the item, and the materials have increasing rareness-- that is, the material for improving purple to gold is the rarest if you're farming it yourself, and therefore it is the most expensive to buy from other players.

Furthermore, each improvement takes an increasing amount of material to ensure a 100% chance of success-- and if you try to use less of the tempering material, you have a chance to fail at the improvement, which will destroy the item! Thus, unless you have a lot of materials to craft another item and try again, you'll want to use the number of pieces of tempering material that ensures 100% success.

White to green takes the fewest pieces to ensure 100%, and that tempering material is also the most common and least expensive.

Purple to gold takes the most pieces to ensure 100%, and that tempering material is also the rarest and most expensive.

There are perks which increase your chances of success at tempering-- that is, without the perk it will take more pieces to ensure 100% chance of success, but with the perk it will take fewer pieces to ensure 100% chance of success.

These perks-- number of items that can be researched at once, how long the research takes, and how likely you are to succeed at improving items-- have different levels, so to get the maximum level of all the perks you will have to spend even more skill points on them.

There are also perks that make it easier to spot the raw materials in the wild, which is extremely helpful for farming them yourself.

And there are perks to hire helpers who will mail you some raw materials every day, which turns out to be not as great as it sounds because they don't send you very much and you can easily farm far more materials by yourself.

EDIT -- Another thing is that you can increase your level in each crafting skill line by deconstructing items, although the amount of experience gained depends on the level and quality of the item, plus other possible considerations like if it's "intricate." So as you accumulate items in your loot (swords, rings, staffs, hats, shields, etc.) you will need to start managing what to do with them:

- You can use them yourself (which may bind them to your account such that you can no longer sell them to other players, although you can still sell them to NPCs).

- If an item has a trait that you don't know yet, you can research it.

- If an item doesn't have a trait, or has a trait you already know, you can deconstruct it to help increase your skill level in that craft.

- If you've already maxed out your skill level in that craft, you can sell the item to NPC merchants, in a player guild store, or via the chat box.

EDIT #2 -- Also, there are different levels of items to match the player's level, but some levels are skipped; it usually goes from even number to even number, such as level 10 to level 12 to level 14, etc. There are specific materials which are good for a specific range of levels, and you increase the level of item you're crafting by including more pieces of material.

At first you will be able to use only the lowest level of material. There are perks to let you use the higher levels of material, and each perk must be increased several times before you can craft the highest level of gear (CP 150 and CP 160).

The nodes which contain the raw materials will change as you increase the corresponding perk-- that is, the same nodes which let you farm iron will still be there, but instead of containing iron they will contain some other material, depending on the level of that perk.

This means that if you want to craft gear for other players who are at a wide variety of levels, you will either end up having to buy lower-level materials that you can no longer farm yourself, or hope that you get some of that material as part of your reward for completing a crafting writ, or create a number of alternate characters for yourself who can still farm that particular level of material.

Wow! That's a lot of work....lol Really appreciate the info.Quick question:
I pick up every weapon and piece of armor I can, thinking that I will research them at a blacksmith station. Most of them don't show up to be researched. Only maybe 1 out of 10????

Crafting is definitely a war, not just a battle.

For something to be researched, it must have a Trait with it (not all armor and weapons do). These are things like Divines, Training, etc. that give that particular item a boost in some way. If you have a Trait that can be researched, it will show up with a magnifying glass in your inventory as well as in the box with the weapon's/armor's information, usually shown when you hover over or click on it.

Edit: Took a screenshot to show what I mean, so you could see. I'm on the PC so I can't promise it looks the same on other platforms.

You can see the Rubedo Leather Jack of Magicka has a Trait I can research; it shows up with the magnifying glass. The other two things there don't, so they don't have one.

Colors are also different qualities, if you haven't noticed those. White is base and there's a system of better (white > green > blue > purple > yellow, I believe) toward the best.

Items generally come in different "flavors" based on the following considerations:

- Level: Gear, food, drink, potions, poisons, and enchantments have different levels just as your character does, but not all levels are represented. For instance, I think only the even-numbered levels are represented (with the exception of Level 1), some of the even-numbered levels are skipped (such as Level 2, so it jumps from Level 1 to Level 4)-- especially when you get into the Champion levels (for instance, it jumps from Level 50 CP 150 to Level 50 CP 160)-- and it stops at Level 50 CP 160. At least, this is true for gear you can buy or craft. When you pick up gear in the wild as loot, it will normally match your current level, so I think you can pick up gear with odd-numbered levels that way. And enchantments are an exception, because they start at Level 1 and then occur at multiples of 5 (Level 5, Level 10, Level 15, etc.). As for consumables-- food, drink, potions, and poisons-- they scale within a range of levels. You can use gear that matches your current level or is below it, but not gear that's above your current level. And you can apply an enchantment to gear that matches or exceeds the level of the enchantment-- for instance, you can apply a Level 5 enchantment to Level 6 gear, but not to Level 4 gear. The amount of crafting experience you gain by deconstructing an item is related to its level (among other things), although you might not be able to recover certain materials from the item by deconstructing it if your level is lower than the item's level.

- Quality: Gear, enchantments, and treasure items come in 5 different degrees of quality, which are color-coded for easier identification-- white, green, blue, purple, and gold. Higher-quality gear is better than lower-quality gear as far as damage done (weapons) or protection (armor), although the level is also a factor-- so a white/normal item might be better than a gold/legendary item if the white item is of a higher level than the gold item. You can use gear of any quality, as long as its level is equal to or below your level. And you can apply any quality of enchantment to any quality of gear-- for instance, you can apply a gold enchantment to a piece of white gear, or vice versa. As for treasure, its quality determines how much money you can get by fencing or selling it-- although since treasure is stolen, you can't sell it to NPC merchants unless you launder it first, which costs just as much as the treasure is worth, so it's best to fence stolen treasure rather than launder it (especially if you have the perk that increases how much you can get for fenced items). I think the highest-quality treasure (gold/legendary) can't be fenced, laundered, or sold, because it's priceless; but if you have the Thieves Guild DLC then you can put it on display at the Thieves Guild headquarters in Hew's Bane. When you deconstruct gear, you might be able to recover a given tempering material as determined by the quality of the gear.

- Style: There are many styles besides the basic racial styles (Breton, Khajiit, Nord, Orc, etc.), including extremely rare exotic styles. You can't craft gear in a particular style unless you've already learned that style by reading (using) the appropriate motif-- which might apply to all types of gear, or just to specific types of gear. For instance, you can learn how to craft any gear in the Orc style by finding and reading the Orc style motif, but the Ancient Orc style motif is divided into chapters for specific types of gear, such as swords (which covers both one-handed and two-handed swords) or legs (which covers light, medium, and heavy armor for legs). I think some of the newest and most exotic styles are now split into pages rather than chapters, so to craft a greatsword you would need to find and read the page for that, since the page for one-handed swords doesn't cover two-handed swords. When you deconstruct a piece of gear, you might be able to recover the style material from it-- so you should look at what style a piece of gear is in before deciding to sell it, in case you want to try to recover its style material by deconstructing it.

- Trait: Some pieces of gear have no special traits, but some do. There are nine possible traits for a given type of gear, and a piece of gear can have only one special trait. To craft a piece of gear that has a particular trait, you must first learn that trait for that specific type of gear, plus you must have the appropriate trait material. Unfortunately, if you learn a given trait for a specific type of gear, it won't let you craft a different type of gear that has that same trait-- even if it uses the same trait material-- so you'll need to learn each trait for each type of gear. Any piece of gear that has a trait you haven't learned yet for that type of gear will have a magnifying-glass icon by it-- although if you're currently researching that trait on that type of gear then it won't have the magnifying-glass icon anymore, even though you can't actually craft that type of gear with that trait yet. When you deconstruct a piece of gear that has a special trait, you have a chance of recovering the trait material from it.

- Set: Some pieces of gear-- including jewelry-- might be part of a special set, meaning you will get special bonuses for wielding two, three, four, or five pieces of gear from the same set. Most sets have bonuses for up to five items, but a few sets are for up to only three items. Some sets can be crafted by going to special crafting stations located out in the wild (possibly inside a ruin or house) in various zones, but each of these craftable sets requires knowledge of a certain number of traits, ranging from just two traits all the way up to nine traits. Thus, you might be able to make certain types of gear in a particular set-- say, inferno staffs, shields, maces, greatswords, and sashes-- but not the other types of gear because you don't yet know enough traits for them. Other sets cannot be crafted, but are found by defeating enemies in specific zones, delves, or dungeons, or you might receive a piece from a friendly NPC as a reward for completing a quest. You won't receive any special materials for deconstructing gear belonging to a set-- that is, other than the usual materials-- so if you don't want to keep a piece of gear that's part of a set then you might want to trade or sell it to another player, because players will pay much more for set items than for non-set items.

- Stolen: If an item is stolen, it will have a red hand-and-sack icon by its name. You can use, deconstruct, research, or fence stolen items, but not sell them to NPC merchants (other than fences), sell in a guild store (I think), store in the bank, or store in a container-- and if you have a bounty and a guard stops you (you criminal scum, you), he or she will confiscate all stolen items in your possession unless you successfully cut and run or use the "I have powerful friends" excuse (which requires a perk and works only once a day). There's an achievement where you outfit yourself entirely with stolen gear, get caught by a guard, have all of your stolen gear confiscated, and get left standing in public mostly-naked (in your underwear, as close to bare-naked as possible in an ES game). So if you have a stolen item that you want to sell or store, or that you want to use without risk of confiscation, then you should launder it. But if you intend to deconstruct or research it, sell it to a fence, give it to some NPC as part of a quest (which I think you get only if you have the Thieves Guild or Clockwork City DLCs), or use it while remaining bounty-free, avoiding guards, or trying to earn that mostly-naked achievement, then there's no need to launder it. For instance, if you steal a treasure map, you can just use it to find the buried treasure-- unless you're afraid it might get confiscated by a guard, in which case you should launder it just to be safe. Stolen treasure becomes bound to your account, so once you've laundered it you can give it to one of your alternate characters, but you can't trade, sell, or gift it to other players.

- Enchanted: If an item is enchanted, it will have a bar below its name showing how much charge is left on the enchantment. Researching enchanted items won't teach you anything about the enchantments-- so unless an enchanted item has a special trait, it won't be listed on the research tab. Deconstructing enchanted items won't give you any enchantment glyphs or runes-- so if you've already reached the maximum experience level in a particular craft, have no need or desire to recover any materials from the items, and they have no researchable traits that you don't already know, then it's more profitable to just sell the enchanted items, either to NPC merchants or player guilds. If you're wielding an enchanted weapon and use up its charge, you'll see a red sword-and-bow weapon icon at the bottom of the screen to alert you. If you have a filled soul gem, you can use it to recharge the depleted enchantment by right-clicking on the weapon and choosing "Charge."

Thanks SeaGtGruff! Learned a lot from that one. And you cleared up something I was confused about. I didn't know what that Red sword and bow and arrow icon was. Also did not even notice a bar below the enchantments on items.
Another question- I'm on bleakrock isle, and have hit the blacksmith and enchantment crafting tables. But can't find any boards to receive crafting requisitions. Are those only found by certain crafting areas??

We got to get SeaGtGruff to write a guide!

I don't think the starting locations have the crafting boards to pull daily quests from, so you will probably find it starting once you hit Stonefalls (specifically, Davon's Watch).

I would definitely pick up that guide. I spent 40 bucks on the summerset guide, and it wasn't worth it. A beautiful book, but the info isn't very valuable for a new player. Looks like it can be snagged for 20 now. May be worth 20 for the maps, but they only pertain to summerset, nothing beyond.

I don't see that crafting station marked on the map-- at least not on the map on UESPWiki-- but the Bleakrock Isle page indicates that there's a set available on Bleakrock Isle:

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Bleakrock_Isle

Usually when you find a crafting station out in the wild-- and I think Bleakrock Isle is supposed to be just a small colony, so it might qualify as "the wild"-- it's used for crafting a craftable set. You can tell if this is the case by looking at the crafting station, because it will show the name of the set in parentheses.

But the Bleakrock Isle page identifies the set as an "overland" set, and it's "Armor of the Trainee"-- which, as far as I know, isn't a craftable set-- so I believe it's just one of the sets that drops from a particular zone.

So I don't think the crafting stations on Bleakrock Isle can be used for crafting anything other than normal gear.

Note that you can't perform any daily crafting writs until after you've been certified in a particular type of crafting, and as far as I know there is no one on Bleakrock Isle who can certify you. Also, you're supposed to turn in your crafted items to a crafting writ master, and I don't think there's anyone like that on Bleakrock Isle. Besides, Bleakrock Isle is a small colony that's under attack, and as soon as you complete that questline you're expected to move on to the next zone, so it wouldn't really make sense to have any crafting writ boards on Bleakrock Isle.

EDIT: As far as not being able to perform writs unless you're certified, this is why you can't perform jewelry crafting writs unless you have the Summerset chapter-- despite the presence of jewelry crafting stations all over Tamriel-- because the only person who can certify you in the jewelry craft is on Summerset.

Thanks SeaGtGruff! I just left Bleakrock isle by boat for the next step in the Ebonheart string of quests. I'll check out the crafting area when I get to Davons watch

My recollection is that after Bleakrock Isle you go to Bal Foyen. After you're through in Bal Foyen and have gone on to other zones, you might find yourself wanting to go back to Bal Foyen from time to time to do some farming, because it's loaded with raw material nodes and is fairly small, so you can literally run around in circles farming endless supplies of raw materials. There are also quite a few treasure chests to be found, so you can collect a lot of treasure as well.