Elder Scrolls Online: The Various Sources of Skill Points
Elder Scrolls Online has been a blast to get back into ever since I purchased a fresh account and started streaming it as my main game again. My twitch community has really enjoyed the content, and our guild, The Beasts of Burden, has started to take off. Since creating the guild on April 17th, 2026, we now have 18 members and counting. As we continue to have fun in the game, there are some immediate goals that always take a priority when leveling up a new character on a fresh account, and that is the all-important priority of farming skill points. Skill points are required for all of the various skill lines as they allow you to invest in both active and passive skills that make your character stronger. There are multiple ways in which you can acquire skill points in Elder Scrolls Online, as I will describe briefly below.
The first major way in which you acquire skill points is during the leveling process from level 1 to 50. Every level, you gain skill points, with some levels offering 2 or 3 skill points per level. Along with this leveling process, you also will be receiving attribute points in which to spend across the three resource pools of Magicka, Stamina, and Health. In the early stages of leveling, it is recommended to add at least 1 skill from each of the three class skill lines and weapon lines to your skill bar you plan on leveling as your first major investments, because not only does your character level increase from 1 to 50, but your skill lines also increase from 1 to 50 as well, unlocking additional active skills and passive skill to invest in along the way. The only way the skill lines level though is if they are on one of your two skill bars (you unlock your second skill bar known as the back bar at level 15).
As you accumulate more skill points, you will want to invest in the skills you wish to use, or in all of them, so that you have a flexible skill point allocation that you can use on the fly to change your build up. Elder Scrolls Online recently made it so that you can re-specialize your talent points directly from the skill window instead of going to an NPC to do it, so it is highly customizable and convenient to mix things up when the situation dictates. This change has made the ESO community very happy, and I was able to utilize this change myself last night when I needed a different skill during a Veteran Hard-Mode Dungeon.
Another way to earn skill points is through the main story quests such as the Harborage quest line and the zone main story quests. The Harborage is one of the oldest quest lines in the game that has been around since the beginning and offers skill points after each quest completed in the chain. I personally decided to complete the whole thing as fast as possible for this very reason. I then focused on map completion and doing zone quests for the next big chunk of skill points earned, which also helped me gain a lot of experience for my character levels and skills. There are also additional quests to undertake to earn skill lines like the fighter's guild, mages guild, undaunted, and more than may also reward skill points in addition to the skill lines they provide and so those are also very worth unlocking and leveling up along the way.
4-man dungeons are another exceptional way to earn skill points in Elder Scrolls Online. Each dungeon has a quest line the first time you complete them that awards a skill point, and because there are so many dungeons in Elder Scrolls Online to complete, this turns out to be a substantial farm of skill points for your character. At the time of this writing, there are approximately 58 4-man dungeon variations that provide a successful quest completion reward of skill points, so this turns out to be a substantial amount of character progression. Dungeons are also necessary to farm the undaunted quest line for the keys that are rewarded for doing daily pledges, so you will also be farming dungeons early on to level up your character, earn champion points post level 50, and farm various gear sets for whatever you are trying to accomplish in the gear department.
Public dungeons are experiences designed to be solo and also have a group encounter within them that awards a skill point for successful completion. There is usually at least one public dungeon per zone in which you can farm these skill points, but they also include sky shards which are components of skill points whereby once you accumulate 3 sky shards it converts them into 1 skill point. Delves are a smaller version of a public dungeon that again, is designed to do solo, but does not have the skill point encounter that public dungeons do. It does however have 1 sky shard per delve, which is why both Public Dungeons and Delves are very worth to do for the purposes of gaining skill points by converting the sky shards into them.
Sky shards are not only in these dungeon experiences mentioned in the previous paragraph but are also scattered throughout the open world of Elder Scrolls Online. Given the massive size of the game, sky shards account for a massive chunk of skill points and are worth going and collecting each time you enter a new map. The good news is, Elder Scrolls Online allows for addons that help with the hunt for Sky Shards and other points of interest. In fact, I only use one add on in Elder Scrolls Online, that being the Map Pins addon that shows me all sky shards and lore books in the game. Without this addon, you can still find all the Sky Shards in the map by using the built in GPS system of the zone guide located in the map. This zone guide however is for map completion as a whole, so you may have to complete everything else before the Sky Shard GPS system kicks in, making it less efficient in terms of time to use over the Map Pins addon.
I hope this blog post helps you on your character's development to farm the most skill points possible for the active and passive skills you wish to invest in your character's skill lines. The leveling process, main and zone story quests, dungeons, and sky shards will ultimately give you more than enough skill points to fill up every skill line that you desire, and it is my hope that you enjoy the process of exploring the world of Tamriel in Elder Scrolls Online in the process. There is so much to do and see in the game, and this should keep you busy for hundreds, if not thousands, of hours as you develop your character into the hero you were destined to be.
Until next time,
Blackboa