Online:First Time Players

First Time Players may have some initial difficulties with their adventures across Tamriel. The below guide is intended to provide information on how to start playing the game on the right foot.

This introduction is intended to be spoiler free, so you can enjoy the story or multitude of stories unfolding during the game. 

For Complete Elder Scrolls Newbies

If you've never played an Elder Scrolls game in your life, and ESO is your very first adventure in Tamriel, well then... the most important piece of advice is: Play the game! 

As this is an online game with some pay-walls there are only a few essential considerations and tips before you just dive into the adventure head first.
Select the server to play on (and the device if there is a choice). Resist spending or at least be careful on what to spend real money early-on in case you are willing/able to spend at all. So as you are already here you might as well also want read the next chapter as a primer on those issues. Most other long term decisions can be reverted (at some reasonable costs) later on.

And there is one more essential tip: as this is a MMO in the long run it is all about reputation. Once it is broken it is hard to impossible to fully mend it.
Be nice, be unobtrusive, be polite. The different servers may have a different etiquette, so watch and learn.

Beyond this information stop reading this Wiki, and just go have fun enjoying the game. When you're starting out, don't worry about making mistakes, and don't worry about playing efficiently. The premise of this page is that at first, it is most important to spend as much time as possible playing, and as little time as possible reading. Although many links are provided to pages with more information, you do not need to read those linked pages at first.
But, if you've already played an Elder Scrolls game before (such as Skyrim, Morrowind or Oblivion), this page will give you some tips to help you hit the ground running.

The Infrastructure
Devices & Megaservers
The game is available in versions for PC (Windows), Mac, Stadia, Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
PC, Mac and Stadia share a common server, Xbox and PlayStation have their own ones respectively. This means you cannot play together with someone on another hardware system and you cannot transfer characters between the platforms.

Within each hardware platform there are two separate "Megaservers". One is "North America", the other "Europe". Each server has a separate set of 8 character slots and you cannot transfer items between servers.
In principle you can play together with anyone that is on the same platform and server, but to facilitate performance and load balances, the servers are organized into parallel "shards", in one of which you are put on logging into the game. When you join a group and travel to the group leader you should be put in their shard.

There are also sometimes different versions of the same physical area/zone based on the progress in certain quests. You might happen to land in a different one than the rest of your group as you/they progress through the quest stages at different speed. An easy example is a battle going on also between NPCs and you fight a boss; once you succeed the enemies flee and you get back to the battle site to a victory scene.

Crown Store
Since Elder Scrolls Online removed its subscription requirement after the Tamriel Unlimited update, the Crown Store is the storefront where in-game items may be purchased for Crowns, the store's currency. The current exchange rate is approximately $1 per 100 Crowns with the conversion rate becoming more favorable as more Crowns are purchased in a single transaction (30,000 Crowns for $25, for example). On consoles, these transactions are enabled via the consoles' online shop.

The items which can be purchased in the Crown Store fall into several categories, but they are generally cosmetic and aesthetic items.
Chapter packs and Expansions: these introduce new playable areas, new classes, new quests, new storylines, and so forth. Once purchased, they are permanently associated with a player’s account and are available for use by all characters. They are also included as part of an ESO Plus (ESO+) membership but are deactivated if the membership is cancelled.
Collections items: these include mounts, non-combat pets, costumes, homes, furniture, etc. They are available to all characters associated with a player’s account but need to be manually activated through the Collections menu on a per-character basis. These are mostly cosmetic.
Upgrade Items: these include tokens for changing a character’s name, appearance, race, outfit, etc. These are single-use items which are normally applied on a per-character basis. Some upgrades, such as bank upgrades, are account-wide with the difference being that they are purchased for a flat amount of Crowns rather than with increasing amounts of in-game gold.
Consumable Items: these include soul gems, potions, food items, research speed-ups, etc., which are single use items applying temporary effects. Most are given as daily rewards or quest rewards, so the Crown Store is a method of getting more of what can already be had in-game.
Crown Crates (loot boxes): these contain various random items. Each crate will contain something (usually several items), but the probability of any given item appearing is a randomized function of the item’s rarity.
Packages and Bundles: these contain multiple kinds of items and are usually cheaper than buying the items individually. They will often include items which cannot be purchased individually.

ESO Plus (ESO+) is a membership which can be purchased on a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual basis. Zenimax occasionally offers time-limited trial periods (about a week) at no cost. The ESO+ subscription is not required to play the game and is more expensive than buying the chapters and expansions. But the combination of its benefits may make it cost-effective for many players. Any benefits of the subscription will stop when the subscription does, but any gear or items obtained through the subscription remain.

The Basics
Character Creation
Four decisions must be made during character creation: the character's race, class, name, and appearance.
Race determines your racial skill line, as well as the general appearance of your character. Without the Explorer's Pack or the "Any Race, Any Alliance" bundle from the Crown Store, character race will also determine which Alliance the character will hold membership in.
Alliance affiliation is important for participating in the Alliance War in Cyrodiil and it dictates where parts of the Main Quest happen, but it does not otherwise affect the rest of the game.
Imperial characters are not included in the base game and are not automatically associated with any Alliance; they must choose an Alliance during character creation. Note that while the 2014 Imperial Edition of the game allowed the creation of Imperial characters account-wide, the Digital Imperial Edition from the Crown Store is server specific and must be purchased on each server where the player wants to create an Imperial character.
Players may purchase tokens from the Crown Store which allow changing a character's race. Alliance Change tokens may also be purchased if the player owns "Any Race, Any Alliance" from either the Explorer's Pack or from its own bundle. Tokens are single-use items and aside from using tokens, race and alliance should be considered permanent character choices.
Class determines which set of 3 class skill lines are available to your character. Character class may not be changed after character creation.
Character Name is limited to 25 characters, including no more than four spaces, hyphens, or apostrophes, so players can be quite creative or consult the Lore-Friendly Names page for inspiration. Character name will not affect any in-game interactions, but offensive character names may be removed by Zenimax moderators if someone complains. Otherwise, Name Change tokens may be purchased from the Crown Store.
While physical appearance allows a great degree of customization, it will not affect any in-game interactions.

Attributes 
Characters have three attributes that comprise the three core resources: health, stamina and magicka. 
Health (the red bar) determines how much damage a character can take. Some abilities, such as some in the Undaunted tree, use Health instead of Magicka or Stamina, but Health is mostly a measure of how much damage can be absorbed. When Health reaches zero, the character dies and must be resurrected.
Stamina (the green bar) is a measure of physical endurance. Activities such as sprinting, blocking, and sneaking will drain Stamina and many class and weapon abilities will use Stamina when they are activated. If a character does not have enough Stamina to use an ability or to do an action, nothing happens. Having zero Stamina only means that the player will need to replenish it or wait for it to recover before they will be able to do the action or activate the ability again.
Magicka (the blue bar) is used to activate Magicka-based abilities. Like Stamina, having zero Magicka means that a Magicka-based action or ability cannot be used until the character has recovered Magicka over time or replenished it through using a consumable.

All attributes will automatically recover over time. Either the recovery rate or the total pool of an attribute can be increased by equipping gear with an appropriate enchantment. Note that individual gear piece enchantments do one or the other (not both), but it is possible to equip a piece that increases Health and a different piece that increases Health recovery, for example. Consumables can provide temporary increases to the recovery rate with food or beverage items improving either the total pool and/or the recovery rate for several minutes and potions restoring some number of points and/or improving the recovery rate for a few seconds. The increased recovery rate will usually be a secondary effect. Activating certain abilities can also provide a short-term boost to the recovery rate while the ability is active.

Characters will tend to rely more heavily on one or two of the three attributes. Tanky characters will generally rely on Health and Stamina, for example, while Healers will rely on Magicka, and damage-dealers will tend to be either Magicka- or Stamina-based. It is usually more effective to focus on one attribute rather than spread points around all three. Look at which attribute is being used by the various abilities to determine where attribute points should be assigned.

At default settings, attribute bars are displayed at the bottom of the screen only when they are not full. When and how the attribute bars are displayed can be changed in the Settings menu.

Leveling
Characters gain Experience Points (XP) for various actions in the game, such as killing or helping to kill enemies, handing in quests, discovering new locations while exploring, clearing a dungeon, and so forth. Each level requires an increasing number of experience points to trigger the next level-up. Except for the first level-up, which takes 70 XP, it's a few hundred more experience points than it took to gain the current level. The maximum level is 50, after which a character begins earning Champion Points.

When a character has gained enough XP to trigger a level-up, the player must manually accept it. Through Level 50, a level-up will always award at least one attribute point and one skill point, but will often award one or more bonus items which depend on the level. For example, upon reaching Level 2, the player gets a scroll which buffs experience gains for two hours; upon reaching Level 3, the player gets a food consumable which buffs Health, Magicka, and Stamina for two hours; upon reaching Level 5, the racial skills unlock; upon reaching Level 12, the character gets 10 additional inventory slots; and so forth. For gaining levels which end in five (5, 15, 25, etc.) two attribute points and two skill points are awarded. For gaining levels which are a multiple of ten (10, 20, 30, etc.) three attribute points and three skill points are awarded. There will be a total of 64 attribute points which can be placed before the character moves into earning Champion Points.

Skill Points also stop being awarded as part of the level-up process after Level 50, but they can still be earned through completing quests and finding Skyshards.

Attribute and skill points do not need to be assigned immediately and level-up bonus items do not need to be equipped and used. While items cannot be transferred to another player or sold, some bonus items can be used for research or deconstructed for materials.

Attribute and skill points can be redistributed either through using a Crown Store scroll which refunds them (a couple will be awarded as level-up bonuses) or by visiting a rededication shrine and spending some in-game gold. The in-game gold cost will vary depending on how many points are involved.

Skills
Skills control what a character is able to do and is a way of making a functionally unique character. Skill lines and abilities must be unlocked before they can be used. All characters will automatically have their three class skill lines unlocked. Weapon skill lines are unlocked when an opponent is defeated while a weapon of that type is equipped, armor skill lines are unlocked when three or more pieces of the same kind of armor (light, medium, or heavy) are equipped at the same time (at least one piece of that armor type needs to be equipped after that), and the character's racial skill line will automatically unlock at Level 5. Unlocking all other skill lines requires that the character take some other action such as joining a particular guild, interacting with some type of world object, completing some quest phase, or something along those lines.
Crafting skills unlock by interacting with a crafting station or cooking fire
Alchemy will unlock if the character eats an ingredient
Enchanting will unlock if the character harvests a Runestone
Provisioning will unlock if the player learns a recipe
World skills unlock through interactions, completing quests, or finding certain items
Soul Magic will unlock when the Soul Shriven in Coldharbour quest begins, but is unlocked automatically if the the player skips the tutorial.
Legerdemain will unlock if the player picks a pocket, loots a Thieves Guild trove, or picks a lock outside of the tutorial
The Scrying and Excavation skills unlock after joining The Antiquarian Circle in Solitude (Western Skyrim)
The Lycanthropy skill line unlocks by becoming a werewolf and completing the Hircine's Gift quest.
The Vampirism skill line unlocks by becoming a vampire and completing the Scion of the Blood Matron quest.
Guild skill lines unlock when joining the appropriate guild.
Fighters Guild and Mages only require asking to join at an appropriate guildhall
The Undaunted requires talking to an Undaunted NPC in one of the starting provinces (Auridon, Glenumbra, or Stonefalls), completing their quest, and observing the induction ceremony. Note that the quest involves entering a public dungeon. The player only needs to ENTER the dungeon; they do not need to clear it.
The Dark Brotherhood, Psijic Order, and Thieves Guild skill lines require particular expansions or an ESO+ membership before they are available. Joining the Psijic Order is the more complicated of the three as the player must complete part of the main story quest for the Summerset expansion before they can access the quest which gives Psijic Order membership as its reward. That quest is rather lengthy.
The Alliance War skills (Assault and Support) become available at Level 10 and unlocking them requires completing a series of short quests in Cyrodiil.

Skill lines are broken down into three types of abilities: Active, Passive, and Ultimate. With very few exceptions, mostly in the Crafting skills, abilities must be unlocked by expending a skill point before they can be used. Once unlocked, passive abilities are always operational, while active and ultimate abilities must be activated from the hotbar. The player may have no more than five active abilities and one ultimate ability slotted at any time. This increases to ten active and and two ultimates once the backbar unlocks at Level 15, but only one hotbar is active at any time, so it is better to think of it as five and one. Active abilities will require having enough Magicka or Stamina to activate them, but there are a couple of Undaunted skills which require Health. The number of skill points needed to max out an ability varies but it is commonly two points for active abilities (one to unlock and one to morph) and two or three points for most passive abilities.

Class skills have five active abilities, four passive abilities, and one ultimate ability. 
Weapon skills have five active abilities, five passive abilities, and one ultimate ability. 
Armor skills have one active ability and five passive abilities. 
Racial skills have four passive abilities.
Some World skills are strictly passive abilities (Excavation, Legerdemain, and Scrying), Lycanthropy and Vampirism have several active abilities, and Soul Magic has a couple of actives and a couple of passives.
Guild skills have five active abilities, five passive abilities, and one ultimate ability.
Alliance War skills have four active abilities, three passive abilities, and one ultimate ability. The current Emperor gains five passives which operate only while they are Emperor, only while they are active in their campaign, and only while they are in Cyrodiil.
The Crafting skills are passive abilities only.

Activating an Ultimate ability drains all accumulated Ultimate (there are a couple of exceptions which do not) and it must be refilled before the ability can be used again. Ultimate regenerates when light- or-heavy-attacking opponents, blocking attacks, or healing others (healing yourself doesn't count). Using weapons with the Decisive Trait provides a chance to generate extra Ultimate.

Using an ability increases its level while also increasing the level of its associated skill. Once an ability has advanced to Level IV, it may be morphed into a more powerful ability but the player must choose which version of the ability they want. Morphed abilities may be reset at a rededication shrine in exchange for a small amount of in-game gold. All other skills may be reset at a rededication shrine, but the cost in gold will depend on the number of skill points being refunded.

New abilities unlock every few levels of the associated skill. Because of this dependence upon the level of the skill line to unlock new abilities, it can be a good idea in the early game to slot one ability from different skill lines on the hotbar rather than multiple abilities from the same skill line in order to level up a variety of skills. When turning in completed quests or quest stages, only the skills on the currently active hotbar and any equipped weapons or armor will be increased. Once the backbar is unlocked, swapping to it before turning in a quest can be an effective way of keeping less-used skill lines from lagging too far behind.

Skill points are earned by gaining character levels (up to Level 50), from handing in specific quests, and from collecting skyshards. Skill points can be invested in the various individual abilities as long as you have made sufficient progress in the skill line to unlock the ability. Progress in the skill lines is mostly made by using the skills in that line or performing the associated tasks (e.g, deconstructing gear for its materials in some of the crafting skill lines). Additionally, each skill line has a few books which award a skill increase when read, and each class has a few books which will increase all three class skills if the character is a member of that class. Faction skill lines increase by gaining reputation with the faction; usually by doing their quests and tasks.

Combat
Attacking enemies can be done by using light weapon attacks, by charging a light attack to be a heavy one and by using attack skills. You can only use five skills and one ultimate in addition to the light and heavy attack. 
At Level 15 you gain a second weapon slot with another 5+1 slots. It is possible to use a second identical weapon type or a different one.

Furthermore you have countering moves. Attacks can be blocked, you can dodge roll out of an attack and you can break free of impeding enemy skills.

Attacks while sneaking do more damage but take you out of sneak directly.

There are group specific combos called "synergies" you can use when prompted on the screen after somebody near (not necessarily grouped) has cast an appropriate spell.

Quests
There are a myriad of quests in all of Tamriel.
There is a main story quest-line and an alliance story quest-line, which mostly mark your progress through the different areas. On the way you will bump into tons of side quests. 
Furthermore there are three quest lines for the major neutral factions and quest lines for the DLCs.

Quests, enemies and reward in the a subzone of a normal areas have a predefined level. For quests of the main story line and those with their own skill-line (mages, warrior, undaunted) the enemies and rewards are matched to your current level. For DLC content and PvP in Cyrodiil you are "battle-leveled" (=adjusted) to the max level to give everyone equal chances.

For normal PvE quest areas other players are concurrently present and you can group or just help each other ungrouped. When ungrouped but sufficiently near and contributing to fights you will progress both but you have to do all other quest stages separately. Some critical quest stages like speech checks have to be done individually even when grouped. In addition to this regular PvE story areas behavior, there are also dedicated solo dungeons where you will always get your individual instance.
There also is content distributed over all areas where enemies of that level are so much harder or higher in number, that they should better be tackled in (small) groups. Those are marked with the cross-bones/skull. Undaunted quests have their own icon and dungeons intended to be done in larger groups.

Factions and Guilds
Factions
You join your first faction when creating your character from one of the three warring alliances. This comes with its own story/quest-line.

There are 3 (+2 in DLC) factions independent of the warring alliances and present in all of them that can be joined in game by talking to certain people. All of those bring their own story/quest-line and their own skill-line.

There are further minor factions that the player character can join after some quests. Those do not have any impact on the game-play further on except some remarks from bystanding NPCs later on.

Factions are also an essential tool of the game as well.  On the one hand add some richer content flavor and on the other to technically enable interactions between various characters. Thus there is a plenitude of other non joinable factions, some of them in favor of, some neutral to and some hostile to the player. Reputation with such factions can change progressing in the game and so may the reaction of faction member NPCs to the player.

Player Guilds
In addition to the in-game guilds and factions, ESO also has player guilds similar to many MMO games.

A player may join a maximum of 5 non-faction guilds per account as guild memberships are tied to the user account, not the character.

In addition to having their own chat channels, guilds offer a guild bank (500 slots, available from 10 members and up and access is set by the guild). A guild store is available from 50 members and up. Guild members can offer items for sale at the guild store for up to 30 days, after which the item is returned to the seller if it does not sell. Selling costs an upfront offer fee and a share of the sales return. Guilds can bid for the use of a guild trader, which is an NPC trading character present at preset locations across Tamriel. Guild traders sell both to guild members and to the general public. Guild members may access the guild store either at the designated trader or at any bank, while nonmembers must go to the trader.

There are various types player guilds. Most are social guilds where the Alliance War is inconsequential, even though player guilds are officially aligned with one alliance. Some guilds are role-playing guilds where members are expected to role play. Others are trading guilds where the members are expected to offer goods for sale. Other guilds are organized around cooperative play and members are expected to contribute to and participate in raids, group delves, world boss fights, and so forth. Most player guilds are very clear on what kind of guild they are and what they expect from their members, so read the guild description before submitting an application to join.

Services
You will find plenty of services gathered in various settlements with usually only one per area that has all of them. Among those services are traders, (player) guild traders, banks, (game) guild halls, crafting and dying stations, inns, shrines, stables and outlaw refugees. Guild traders and traders can also be found in many out of town locations and some travelling the roads.

Activities
There are plenty of things to do besides questing.

Exploring
While exploring you may come by treasure maps, locked box treasures, rare books (achievement), sight seeing locations (achievement), Skyshards, semi-boss monsters, and world events. You may also find materials for crafting (alchemy, enchanting, metal working, cloth making) and fishing grounds.

Crafting
There are currently seven crafting professions: 
Alchemy: potions and poisons
Blacksmithing: melee weapons and heavy armor
Clothing: light and medium armor
Enchanting: glyphs for armor, jewelry, and weapons
Jewelry: necklaces and rings
Provisioning: food and beverages
Woodworking: bows, staves, and shields 

Each craft has its own station for refining raw materials, creating new items, improving items, deconstructing items, and making furnishings. The blacksmithing, clothier, jewelry, and woodworking stations are also used for researching traits which can be incorporated into items the player makes. Most crafting stations can be found in towns and settlements. Blacksmithing, Clothier, and Woodworking stations will be the most common, but players will typically only find all seven stations in the major cities. 

There are additional crafting locations around the world where players may craft set items and these set crafting locations will commonly have two or three stations. Sets differ from regular items in that they provide additional enchantment effects depending on the number of pieces from the set the character has equipped (at least two pieces, but no more than five). In order to craft pieces from a set, the player must have collected the item they wish to craft and the character must know some number of the nine traits the piece could have. Set crafting stations may be used as regular crafting stations for research, improvement, and deconstruction, however. Note that two-handed items (bows, staves, and two-handed weapons) count as two pieces in a set.

Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry crafting, and Woodworking work similarly. First, raw materials are harvested from resources nodes in the world or picked up as loot. The raw materials are refined at a crafting station in multiples of ten. Ten raw materials will produce between eight and ten refined materials, 20 raw materials will produce between 16 and 20 refined materials, and so forth; stacks of less than ten raw materials cannot be refined. All characters know how to make the basic pieces of equipment and they know their own racial style. What they do not know and must learn are other racial styles and item traits. Racial styles can be learned by finding or buying motifs and using them from inventory. Note that jewelry currently has no learnable style, but all characters can work with the lowest-level raw materials for all four crafts as soon as the appropriate skill unlocks and they can harvest the raw materials from the moment they enter the game. Higher quality materials are unlocked by spending skill points, with the last unlockable material requiring Level 50 in the skill.

Equippable items (armor, jewelry, and weapons) have traits which provide useful bonuses to the player. In order to learn a trait so it can be added to a crafted item, the character must first get an item with the trait. This is usually through loot drops, but purchasing items from guild traders or getting items from friends are options. Then the character must research the trait at the appropriate crafting station. The item will be consumed, so it is best to research common (white) items and deconstruct or sell items of better quality. Researching traits takes real time and researching each additional trait takes about twice the time of the previous one. For example, the first item trait researched takes about six hours, the second takes about 12, the third takes about 24, and so forth. ESO+ members get a 10% bonus to research times and all players may use skill points to both shorten research time and increase the number of items which can be researched at the same time; three items is the current maximum. The final skill point for the research passive limits research time to 30 days and learning the last trait without that point would take about 60 days. Scrolls which subtract time from research are common daily rewards and may also be purchased from the Crown Store.

The first three Jewelry traits (Arcane, Healthy, and Robust) are common traits and easy to find. The other six traits are much more rare and players may need to resort to buying items from guild traders or asking friends/guildmates craft a common (white) item with the trait so they can research it. For weapons and armor, the ninth trait (Nirnhoned) can only be found in items in Craglorn or items crafted by other players who know the trait.

Crafting skills are improved by spending skill points on them. New skill passives can be unlocked as the skill increases, up to a maximum of Level 50. Except for Alchemy and Provisioning, crafting skills increase by either crafting or improving items or by deconstructing items. The major crafts (Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry, and Woodworking) will mostly increase by deconstructing. Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning will mostly increase by creating items, but glyphs can be deconstructed for small amounts of Enchanting XP.

Alchemy and Enchanting work somewhat differently from the other crafting skills in that the properties of the components can be learned through trial and error. 

Each Alchemy reagent has four effects. The first effect may be discovered by eating the reagent and the rest by combining the reagent with another which has the same effect. The solvent (or grease in the case of poisons) determines the magnitude of a potion's effect and the final level. The ability to use better solvents and greases is unlocked by increasing the Alchemy skill and spending skill points, but any reagent may be used by any level player and it is only the solvent which is level-locked. A character earns alchemy XP by learning reagent traits (there is an achievement for learning all four for each ingredient) and by making potions and poisons. Potions and poisons which have more than one effect produce more Alchemy XP than single-effect potions and poisons. Because of this, Columbine and Mountain Flower will produce a potion that restores Health and Stamina and more XP than producing individual Restore Health or Restore Stamina potions. Using a better solvent to produce a larger effect will also produce more XP. Once created, potions may be added to the quickslot wheel and poisons may be placed in the poison slot next to the weapon. Note that a slotted poison completely overrides the weapon's enchantment, so a Fire Glyph will not burn the target if there is a poison in the poison slot.

Runes and glyphs work similarly to Alchemy. Any character may use any Essence rune to create a glyph to enchant or change the enchantment of an item. To increase the magnitude of the enchantment effect, a character must spend skill points to unlock the ability to use stronger Potency runes (the square runes) and better quality Aspect runes (the round runes). Stronger Potency runes produce larger effects, as does using higher quality Aspect runes.

Provisioning is a completely different craft. In order to produce foods and beverages, the character must first learn a recipe, get the ingredients, and then craft at a cooking fire. Both recipes and ingredients may be found as loot, bought from merchants or guild traders, or given by other players. The ability to learn higher-quality recipes and produce higher-quality food and beverages must be unlocked by spending skill points, but all players can learn green-quality recipes and produce green-quality foods. Aside from finding and reading a handful of skill books, the only way to increase the Provisioning skill is to craft foods and beverages.

Daily Crafting Writs

Players may want to improve their crafting skills by completing daily crafting writs. In order to do these writs, characters must be at least Level 6 and must travel to one of the major zone cities to be certified. There are two NPCs who will offer certification. One will offer certification in Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking, while the other will offer certification in Alchemy, Enchanting, and Provisioning. The seventh crafting skill, Jewelry, can only be certified in Alinor on Summerset Isle and the master crafter is located just outside the crafting area.

The certification quests are short and follow the same basic pattern: request certification, gather raw materials, report back, refine raw materials, report back, craft an item, report back, deconstruct the item, report back, and complete certification. If the player already has enough raw materials (at least 10) and/or enough refined materials in their inventory, they can skip those steps. If the player has already achieved Level 10 in any of the crafting skills, they can request immediate certification in that craft. 

Each completed crafting writ will reward the character with some crafting XP, gold, and a few materials. Note that the daily crafting writs will require the character to produce items at the highest level they are currently capable of producing, but will not require that the character know any particular traits or to produce items with traits. Blacksmithing, Clothing, and Woodworking writs will require using a style material, but do not require any particular style.

Controls
Although the physical control method is substantially different between PC/Mac and Xbox/PS4 the controls you can use are mostly identical.

There are controls for moving around, sneaking and sprinting. 
In fight you can block, interrupt, dodge and use a normal weapon attack and a heavy charged weapon attack.
For various skills there are only 5 usable slots and one for an ultimate skill. At Level 15 you gain a second set of weapon and skill slot.

You have a set of consumables you can map to quickslots when in your inventory. You can preselect one of the slotted ones for immediate use.

The only real difference between the platforms is the chat system. Consoles rely on speech-chat, PC/Mac uses text-chat.
In addition both offer a wide set of visual emotes and some quicktexts for social interaction. Those can also be mapped to a few quickslots.
The speech-chat offers a variety of distinctive channels for surroundings, group, and guilds. You can listen to multiple but only speak to one.
Text-chat offers distinctive commands on whom to address your text to.

Furthermore there are toggles for map and third person / first person view and to call your active mount

All other activities can be accessed via menu.