Beginner’s Guide to Elder Scrolls Legends

Elder Scrolls Legends is a digital card game that is in the vein of Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone. One of the most important questions you may have is: why you would play Elder Scrolls Legends, rather than a game like Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering. A full answer to that question is beyond the scope of this article, but I will touch on my personal answer: Elder Scrolls Legends is quite fun. It rewards thoughtful deck construction, the higher ranks have a healthy meta with a range of playable decks, and the developers work hard to maintain a healthy community. Although there are some common archetypes, there is no single deck that is overwhelmingly oppressive, which is a common concern in other collectible card games. Additionally, I really enjoy the flavor and style of the game.

In addition to the above, the game is mechanically distinct from Hearthstone and Magic through a few new core mechanics. These mechanics are:

• Runes and prophecies. When you or your opponent is reduced to 25, 20, 15, 10, or 5 HP, a rune is broken. This draws the player taking damage a card. If that card is a Prophecy card, it can be played. This means that highly aggressive decks need to play around this runes, and reactive players have an additional chance for hope on the opponent’s turn. What this means is that, generally, you need to think about how hard you want to press your advantage. Are you so far in the lead that you can risk giving your opponent a card advantage, or activating a prophecy (which can not uncommonly be a 4/4 creature, like a mystic dragon, or a single target removal, like a javelin).
• Two lanes, including the Shadow Lane. In the shadow lane, creatures begin with “cover”, which means enemy minions cannot attack them. This seems like it adds a lot of extra complexity to the game, which can initially seem intimidating to new players. While it does add a lot of possibility to strategy, the core strategy is not actually that complicated. You initially play to fight for control over the “Field Lane” where creatures do not have cover, because it is easier to dictate minion trades there.

That being said, some new players may be a bit thrown by the range of important choices they make throughout the game. They may want to roleplay, but they may be worried about hurting their chances of collecting the cards for the decks they want to play in competitive as they go through the initial quests.

There are a lot of things to consider for a new player when building their collection. Here’s a few things of them:

• One easy way to build your collection as a free to play player is through Twitch drops. Connect your bethesda account to twitch, and whenever you watch a stream, you can get rewards, including the possibilities of: 50 gold, 100 gold (enough for 1 pack), 50 soul gems (enough to craft any common), 100 soul gems (enough to craft any rare), 600 gold, 1200 soul gems, or a random legendary. Full disclosure, you can follow my twitch stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/whymustisignin/
• While the avatar you select can be fun for roleplaying purposes, if you are purely interested in building your collection, most people agree that the “Breton” is the best for collection purposes. The game gives you a random legend based on the race of your avatar at level 24 and 32, and if you want to be a different race for the rest of the game, you might want to consider switching to breton just when you hit those levels.
• As you are going through the initial quests, you are presented several choices in cards. A lot of these do not matter a lot, so don’t worry about it too much, and just go with what makes sense for roleplaying purposes. Of those that “kinda” matter, I would say to pick “execute”, “haunting spirit” and for one of the last choices in story mode… “bros before bling.”
• A more complicated matter are your level up choices. When you are leveling up, the choices you make are somewhat more impactful to your collection than the quest story choices. Here are my suggestions: Level 4, Hive Defender. Level 5, Vicious Dreugh. Level 12: Orc Clan Captain. Level 14: Lurking Crocodile. Level 23: Night Shadow. Level 50: Blood Magic. There are several other choices, and if I didn’t give a suggestion here, it either doesn’t matter because they’re both bad, or the cards are close in power and either is fine based on different decks.
• As you get gold, the best use of gold will be the pre-constructed starter decks of Heroes of Skyrim. The biggest priority among these, I would say is the Ancano deck. After this, I would say the Paarthurnax deck. But all of them are good and useful for building your collection. When you buy these decks, you get all the cards in them, and even if you have copies of some of the cards, the soul gem value is very high.
• Once you have the pre-constructed starter decks, the next highest value is the Dark Brotherhood. The Dark Brotherhood is an adventure, and the cards you get for completing it are very important. But, it can be just a little frustrating if you are just starting out, because some of the missions can be a bit challenging. But in the long run you will definitely want the Dark Brotherhood.
• If you are the type of player that might spend real money, the best value for real money are the Starter packs for Heroes of Skyrim and the Core set. My rough estimate is that the $5 starter packs, which offer 10 packs and an extra legend, are approximately giving 440 soul gems/dollar, and a $70 big bundle is giving about 160/soul gems a dollar.
• The Dark Brotherhood is $20, and the two starter packs is a total of $10 (price may vary by region?). So if you are the type of player willing to spend real money, you can get a pretty good start on your collection for $30, which for digital collectible card games, is not that bad. I would recommend holding off on the Madhouse Collection until you know for certain you need one of the cards for a deck you really want to play, and you do not ever really need to get the Mad Prince collection unless you want the alternate card art.
• As you collect Soul Gems, you may wonder what you want to craft first. Something to consider is that there are a group of cards called “Promotional” cards, that are monthly rewards for ranked play. If you have not been getting monthly rewards, you should bear in mind that you cannot open any of those cards from packs, so you may want to prioritize crafting some of them since you don’t need to worry about opening duplicates. Of these, the highest priority should be the card “Hist Grove” which is an epic that is included in every ramp deck and is actually essential to the ramp archetype. After you craft 3 Hist Groves, you should consider crafting Odahviing, which fits in a lot of dragon, ramp, and control archetypes.

As you are collecting gold for pre-constructed packs and the Dark Brotherhood (if you didn’t buy it with money), you may wonder if you should also occasionally spend money on solo arenas. Solo arenas are a great way to get used to a lot of the core mechanics of the game while also building your collection. While it is important to get the pre-constructed decks to build your collection, don’t be afraid to buy the occasional solo arena ticket, since once you get used to solo arenas, it should not be too hard to do a full clear, and with a level up you usually get a full refund.

That’s it for now! Hopefully this was helpful to players starting in the post-Heroes of Skyrim expansion!