Our Elder Scrolls: Blades Tips Guide features a bunch of information to get you started in your early days of this new game! As you start rebuilding your town, you’ll no doubt come up with some questions that could use answering. Hopefully, these tips will help answer some of them for you.

Elder Scrolls: Blades is a pretty interesting action RPG that has you looting dungeons, questing, and rebuilding a town. This gets pretty detailed, so it’s important to know what’s going on early in the game before you get too deep into it.

Blades General Tips

  • The help menu that you can find within the main menu is pretty helpful with some stuff that isn’t directly explained. Hit the ? icon to learn more about a variety of different things. Don’t purchase too much armor and weapons early on. You will likely be swapping out pieces quite a bit while you level up initially, it’s better to save your resources for future things. Make sure to repair your armor and weapons! Your stuff degrades as you use it in dungeons, so don’t forget to repair before you go out hunting again. Check your challenges every hour or so and see what you can complete. This is an easy way to make some gold on the side, it’s usually stuff like dealing damage and performing combos. Leveling up your town is pretty important. The fastest way to do this is to build buildings like the Smithy, Alchemist, Enchanter, and so on. You can build two of each of these, but I’d start with two Smithy because they give you a lot of XP towards your town. Don’t start building houses, dwellings, and homesteads until you’ve run out of other things to build (at least one of each of the major crafting buildings). Build your major crafting areas closer to where you spawn in the initial part of your town. You’ll be bouncing around this area the most, so it’s best not to bury the important buildings further away from where you spawn in town. When you are opening a Wooden Chest be careful how quickly you tap on the open button. It only takes 5 seconds to open, but you can spend 1 Gem to open it quicker for some reason. If you tap too fast, you might accidentally burn a Gem on this.

Blades Fighting Tips

  • When you are holding to attack, release or swipe only when the circle is full to get a critical hit. You will want to try to get good with this so you are hitting consistently big damage strikes. Use your shield! Block an incoming attack by press and holding the shield icon, and then fire off an attack of your own. Your enemy will sometimes stagger when they run into your shield. You will want to wait for your enemy to just about attack before raising your shield. For a short period you will be “blocking high” and after a certain amount of time of holding your shield up you will “block low.” Blocking high protects you better, and you have the chance to stagger the enemy. You can also block with your weapons if you don’t have a shield. Each weapon has a Block Rating, and heavier weapons (two handers) have the highest rating which makes them the best for blocking attacks. Weapons use the same “blocking high” mechanic as shields. Do not attack if your enemy is holding their shield up. You can be staggered just like your enemy. Wait a bit if they continue to hold their shield so you hit them when they are blocking low. Higher level enemies will deal damage through your block, so be careful when blocking too much against tougher foes! If you are fighting an animal, you can only hit them when they are lunging in to attack. They are too far away otherwise if you are using a melee weapon. Spells are really good for taking out animals since they can hit further away. Combos can be performed by swinging your weapon from one side, and then making your next swing from the other side. You can repeat this to continue the combo. You can either hold and swipe left then hold and swipe right and repeat, or you can tap hold on one side, then tap hold on the other side and repeat. Some enemies have resistances or are weak to certain physical and magic types. So, if you are fighting tougher enemies, make sure to switch to the right tool or spell for the job. Daggers deal slashing damage, Axes deal cleaving damage, and Hammers and Maces deal bashing damage. Consider getting the Absorb spell even if your character isn’t focused on magic. You can use it to heal yourself without wasting an item. Adrenaline Dodge is another very solid ability that you get a bit further into the game that will heal you up when you use it. Don’t use your healing potions unless you absolutely have to. There’s usually food around that can heal you up in most dungeons. Save these for very hard quests and deeper parts of the Abyss. You can craft healing potions at the Alchemy Laboratory once you’ve put one in your town, although they do use pretty hard to find ingredients.

Blades Dungeon Tips

  • Don’t immediately eat every bit of food that’s not nailed down. The food heals you up, but if you are very near full health it’s just a waste. Leave it alone and come back for it if you need some health. Explore around the dungeon looking for anything that’s flashing. Pick up everything, that especially includes any rare ingredients. You can actively avoid fights if you move around the enemy and don’t get too close. This can be helpful if you are low on health. Once you finish the dungeon/quest, make sure to explore around before completing it. There’s usually a bit more to see and some items that might be lurking around a corner you might have missed. Keep an eye out for secret areas. There’s one early on where you come to a closed off hut. You can tap on a nearby totem (it’s a pole in the ground with a skull on top of it), and it will open up the door to the hut. If you go inside you can find yourself a chest!

Blades Chest Tips

  • Do NOT start opening a chest that will take hours to open while you are actively playing the game. You can only open one chest at a time, and you will likely be getting chests you can open pretty much instantly if you are actively playing. Open those while you play, and once you are done then you should queue up one of the longer opening chests. If you are hitting the chest capacity often, it is relatively cheap to upgrade your capacity with gems. It only costs 10 gems for +10 additional slots, and this is probably worth it. You don’t have to spend money on the game to gain gems. Silver Chests are a bit of a problem in this game. They take a long time to open, so you are actually better off maxing out your chests with a bunch of wood, a few silver, and then some gold if you can find them. You can then do jobs, and when you find a wooden chest in the wild, you should open one of the ones you have in your inventory and then pick that one up. Once you get to the end of the job, you can discard the silver chest that’s rewarded to you. This way you can open up chests to grind out materials, but you won’t get inundated with silver chests that take forever to open.

Blades Store, Gems, & Gold Tips

  • Gold is pretty readily available, so don’t feel like you need to hoard and save it for some specific thing. Gems are harder to come by, but you can collect them just by playing. Gems can be obtained by leveling up, dropped in dungeons from enemies and chests, and collected by completing quests. Make sure to check the store each day, they offer a free item each day so be sure to take advantage of it! Gems should be saved for the most part, I would not waste them on chests or speeding up crafting. The best thing to use them for is to get resources. There will be multiple times when you level up that the game offers you a bundle that can be purchased with Gems that will give you guaranteed resources. The most important of these are the limited time Imperial Shipment Offers. These include a full batch of different materials, and will allow you to build up your town a lot quicker. If you’re going to spend money on the game, it’s best to use it for these. The other thing I would consider using Gems on is expanding your chest and item inventories. These are relatively cheap, so I wouldn’t sweat using some of the Gems you get in game to upgrade them.

  • You will want to wait for your enemy to just about attack before raising your shield. For a short period you will be “blocking high” and after a certain amount of time of holding your shield up you will “block low.” Blocking high protects you better, and you have the chance to stagger the enemy.

  • Spells are really good for taking out animals since they can hit further away.

  • You can either hold and swipe left then hold and swipe right and repeat, or you can tap hold on one side, then tap hold on the other side and repeat.

  • Daggers deal slashing damage, Axes deal cleaving damage, and Hammers and Maces deal bashing damage.

More Great The Elder Scrolls: Blades Content

  • Elder Scrolls: Blades Best Race, Perks, Skills, & Abilities
  • Elder Scrolls: Blades Enemy Weaknesses & Resistances Guide
  • Elder Scrolls: Blades Town Upgrades & Decorations Guide – Town Level, Prestige, Town Map
  • Elder Scrolls: Blades How-to Get Resources – Copper, Limestone, Etc.
  • Elder Scrolls: Blades Abyss Guide – Tips, Floors, Loot