The Elder Scrolls Online PvP Battlegrounds provide a great opportunity to hone your skills as a player, whether it be for PvP or PvE. In this guide, I will focus on Food, Potions and Mundus Stones. These are all things that you should be considering even before entering into a BG. This is part 2 of my beginner’s guide. If you missed part 1, please take a look here:
Elder Scrolls Online PvP Battlegrounds Beginners Guide | Gear, Enchants, and more
Food
Food is one of the three things you can use to fill in the gaps in your stats after your Gear and Enchants/Traits have been acquired. You can carry more than one type of food and keep them on your quick slot bar. Your Food is a really crucial part of your ability to stay alive and can make some of the biggest differences in the outcome of a BG. If you were to have 2 teams equally geared on a level playing field and one team had food and the other team was without food, the team with food should win ten out of ten times!
TIP: There is an addon that you can get that will tell you when your food is about to run out. Search for Scootworks HUD on whichever platform you use to get your addons. This is for PC only of course. (Sorry to rub it in console players)
When looking for the right food for your build you need to be aware of a few things:
Health when inside a BG should be at least 20k. This should be the bare minimum and you should be trying to achieve 25k health. You will notice a huge difference in survivability between 20k and 25k health while inside a BG environment. Food is the easiest way to buff your health stats in the game. Most food lasts for at least 35 minutes or an hour and some last for two hours.
Max Stat is referring to how much Stamina or Magicka you have. Are you Magicka or Stamina? This is your primary stat. Going into BG’s with less than 30k of your primary stat is probably not a great idea. On my Magplar I run 35k inside the BG and strive to hit 40k. I still use stamina, just not for abilities, but for things like dodge roll and break free. On the secondary stat, you should have between 12k and 15k if possible. Your max stat directly affects the tooltip damage on your abilities, so the higher max stat you have the larger that number on your abilities tooltip will be! Max Stamina buffs stamina abilities, and Max Magicka buffs Magicka abilities.
Recovery is how fast you can get back your Magicka or Stamina and is good for sustainable damage inside a BG. The higher your recovery on your max stat the longer you will be able to engage in combat. This can be an advantage in BG’s. If you have more recovery than another player you potentially have the ability to do more damage and win the battle. Some builds will rely on recovery more than others, and you will have to see how it works for you and your build.
There is a wide variety of different foods out there that can all be purchased at a guild trader, guild store or you can craft them yourself. As I mentioned earlier, food is one of three ways to fill in the gaps on what stats you may be lacking from your gear and enchants/traits. The other two gap fillers are potions and Mundus Stones.
TIP: The provisioning profession in-game is a great way to craft these foods yourself allowing you to keep food on supply at all times and increasing the duration of drink and food buffs.
Potions
Potions are the second way to fill in the gaps that you still have. They can be very situational as well. My favorite potions right now are Essence of Immovability and Essence of Invisibility. I use both in almost every BG that I get into.
TIP: The Alchemy profession will allow you to craft potions. When you get high enough in Alchemy its passives will increase the duration of your potions.
The first one, Immovability, makes you immune to all knockbacks and disabling effects for eight seconds which is a long time in a BG. Potions can be crafted with different variations of stats as well. As a Magicka Templar the Immovability potion that I use restores health and Magicka. It restores 9205 health immediately and grants Major Fortitude which increases your health recovery by 20% for 36.6 seconds. The second stat restores 7582 Magicka immediately and grants you Major Intellect which increases your Magicka Recovery by 20% for 36.6 seconds. I call this potion an Offensive potion to be used when entering combat. This way when you enter combat and take a little damage you can use your potion restoring health and Magicka and become immune to all knockbacks and disabling effects and get off your full rotation without any interruption from enemy players. This is really important because when you are disabled most of the time you are going to take a lot of damage and may not survive the onslaught.
The second potion, Invisibility, allows you to Vanish for 12.5 seconds. As with every potion, there are a number of different potential stat combinations. The Invisibility potion I am using only has one more stat on it and that is Major Expedition which increases your movement speed by 30% for 12 seconds. This potion I call a Defensive potion. It allows me to get out of combat if I have gotten to low on my resources to win the current encounter. It is always better to try and stay alive if possible when in a BG. Remember you can’t do anything to help yourself or your team when you are dead.
Here is a link to The Elder Scrolls Online Potions, where you will find all potions and the reagents needed to craft them and what they do.
There is a wide variety of potions so you will need to look through them all and see which ones are going to work best for you and your build. I use the first potion to fill in the stat gaps that I have after equipping my gear and eating the food that I use. The second potion is really just for survivability and not taking an unnecessary death. The Invisibility potion is a potion I believe every player should have on them at all times, it’s a must-have.
TIP: There is an addon called Greymind Quick Slot Bar that allows you to switch between the items you have added to your quick slot bar without using the default circle. Trying to hold Q (or whatever you have changed the keybind to) and use your mouse to select a potion while in the middle of combat is really hard and time-consuming. This addon allows you to bind the location of your potion to a specific key bind you can hit and that potion will now be selected on your quick slot bar. All you have to do is hit Q and you will use that potion. You can make a keybind for every location on your quick slot bar using this addon.
Mundus Stones
Mundus Stones are the third way to fill in the gaps that you may be left with after you have selected your food and potions. You can only have one Mundus Stone active at any given time. If you are not using a Mundus Stone currently you need to look through the list of them and see which one is going to work best for you.
There are thirteen different Mundus Stones. Some of them buff your main stat some of them buff resistances or increase your damage and some of them increase your recoveries. There is even one that increases your movement speed by 10% which would be very useful in a BG if it will fit your build. You should try different Mundus Stones out and see how they fit your build while in a BG. Remember to always check your stats inside the BG as there you will get your stat totals minus what you are getting from your CP Points enabling you to get a clear picture of what stats you are lacking.
There are three locations for every Mundus Stone in the game. Each faction has its own Mundus Stone location though you can use any of them. They are not faction specific in any way just like BG’s.
I am currently using The Lover Mundus Stone for extra penetration in BG’s. Most players are going to be running high physical and spell resistance, and you should be as well, so this paired with the Spinners allows me to penetrate through their resistances and do more damage to the player.
TIP: There is a set of gear in-game that allows you to have two Mundus Stones active at the same time. The set is called Twice Born Star. It is a craftable set and can be crafted in light, medium and heavy. This gear set is situational so see if it is something that would fit your build and play style.
Emob produces live content on Twitch. He has been playing MMO’s since 2006. Switched games to Elder Scrolls Online in 2016, which is where you will catch him playing these days. He currently plays a Magicka Templar. Find him at EmobTV on Twitch. Go watch some PvP!
