Skill Points make your character more powerful in ESO, but how do you get them FAST?

What Are Skill Points?
Skill Points are an essential part of playing the Elder Scrolls Online. They are what you use to purchase abilities either active or passive, and their various morphs from the plethora of skill lines available in the game. Your skills are ultimately what determines your character’s playstyle, build, or more simply put, what you can or cannot do in-game.
Base Skills Versus Morphs
In The Elder Scrolls Online, Skills have a base effect. A Base Skill costs 1 Skill Point to unlock, allowing you to use it/level it.
Leveling a Base Skill also makes it stronger with each rank you increase it. Each skill has 4 ranks. You achieve the ability to morph a skill after maxing out rank 4. Morphing a Skill means that for the cost of 1 Skill Point, you get to pick one of two advanced versions of the Base Skill.
The various Morphs can be very different from the Base Skill. A former skill based on Magicka can now turn into a Stamina-based skill and vice versa, or a former Single Target skill can now become a Multiple Target skill.
A Base Skill plus its Morph will cost you in total 2 Skill Points, so we can now easily imagine why it’s vital to have plenty of Skill Points banked to spend on your various Skills and Morphs to breathe life into your character build. But how do we get them!?
How to get Skill Points in ESO
The ways you can get Skill Points in ESO are:
- Leveling your Character 2-50
- Completing the Main Story Quests
- Completing Alliance Story Quests
- Completing Zone Story Quests
- Completing the Story quests for the Base game and DLC Dungeons
- Killing the Final Boss in Public Dungeons
- Absorbing Skyshards
- Ranking up in the Alliance War (PVP)
What is the FASTEST Way to Get Skill Points?
As you can see from the above list there are many viable ways of gaining Skill Points in the Elder Scrolls Online. However, not all the methods were created equal, the absolute fastest and most efficient method of gaining lots of Skill Points in ESO is by running through Public Dungeons solo or with 1 trusty friend.
Find the Public Dungeon in any given Zone, get in there, and make a mad dash towards the main boss within. Killing this enemy will immediately net you 1 Skill Point. Furthermore, within Public Dungeons there is always a guaranteed Skyshard within. Absorb it, then move on to the next Public Dungeon and repeat this process in rapid succession. For every three Skyshards collected, you’ll gain an additional 1 Skill Point. If you are a new player, you might be wondering how to get to different locations quickly? Fear not!
Simply open the Guild Finder by pressing the G key on PC or navigating to the correct menu on consoles, then join an active guild that has lots of members. This will allow you to teleport to Guildmates across all of Tamriel, allowing you IMMEDIATE access to otherwise undiscovered and harder-to-access zones.
Once successfully teleported to the nearest Wayshrine closest to your selected Guildmate, full steam ahead to the public dungeon, then rinse and repeat the above process. The amount of experience you’ll gain along the way from discovering new areas, killing the creatures/bosses, and completing any associated quests within the Public dungeon will also help level you rather quickly, especially if you are doing this with 1 friend which will grant you an additional 10% XP gain and even better if you are using one of the various types of XP scrolls in ESO. You will not only be gaining a bunch of Skill Points from the Dungeon bosses and Skyshards but also from each time you level up. Within just the base game there are a total of 16 Skill points to earn from killing each boss in the Public Dungeons and a potential 14 more from all the DLC Public Dungeons. Calculating the Skill Points from the associated Skyshards is a little trickier, speaking of which, let us expand on those now.
Skyshard Skill Points in ESO
Skyshards are important locations in the Elder Scrolls Online. They can be found in remote locations throughout the game world. As mentioned, for every three Skyshards gathered, a character will gain one Skill Point to spend.
You can view how many Skyshards you have left until you earn your next skill point by checking on your character’s page.

Console players can see the list of Skyshards available in Tamriel by navigating to the following menus:
PlayStation User:
- Open the Player Menu [Options].
- Navigate to Journal Menu.
- Navigate to Achievements Menu.
- Navigate to Character.
- Navigate to Skyshards.
Xbox Users:
- Open the Player Menu [Menu].
- Navigate to Journal Menu.
- Navigate to Achievements Menu.
- Navigate to Character.
- Navigate to Skyshards.
For PC users there is a great, reliable add-on called simply Skyshards that can be installed via the game launcher, which will make Skyshard hunting an absolute breeze as it will populate your map with the locations of all Skyshards in the game.
Speaking of which there are hundreds upon hundreds. For the sake of brevity, we will focus just on the total amount of Skill Points you could gain from going all out and absorbing all the Skyshards within the game.
As of writing this article, there would be a total of 113 Skill Points to gain from the hundreds of Skyshards found within the base game. An additional 62 Skill Points can be gained from the Skyshards included within all the DLCs.
ESO Skill Point Quests
In the Elder Scrolls Online, you can gain Skill Points for completing certain quests, reference the list from the How to Gain Skill Points section above for more guidance. The most succinct breakdown is:
- The Main Story Quests (Harborage) will grant you a total 11 Skill Points
- Completing the overarching Alliance questline will grant you a total 18 Skill Points
- DLC Zones are better for netting Skill Points versus the base game provinces. This is because each Zone quest will net you 1 Skill Point whereas in the vanilla provinces 1 out of every 3 quests grant you a Skill Point and the quests take about the same amount of time anyway so better to spend your time efficiently.
Can You Buy Skill Points in ESO?
Yes, you can technically buy Skill Points using the Crown Store within ESO (Although we do not recommend it as this guide outlines fast and free ways around this) to buy and unlock all the Skyshards for a given Zone. Remember every three Skyshards will grant you a Skill Point. However, to do so you must have collected them all on at least one character in the first place, otherwise, you will be ineligible to purchase them. The Crown cost also varies wildly depending on the size of the Zone, with starter zones being the cheapest at 150 Crowns and the most expensive zones such as Western Skyrim costing a steep 900. Regardless, if you like to purchase the Skyshards, open your menu and navigate to the crown store. Once there select the Upgrades tab, from the drop-down menu scroll down, and select Skyshards. Scroll through and purchase your desired/eligible Skyshards as pictured below.

How do you get Skill Points in ESO after Level 50?
After hitting character level 50 you are still able to gain Skill Points freely using all the other traditional methods mentioned in the list above in the section How to Gain Skill Points, so even if you haven’t had a chance to try our Public Dungeon method while being at max character level there’s never such a thing as too late in regards to farming your Skill Points. Mount up and travel to those dungeons, explore every corner of Tamriel, and dive into the presented quest lines if you haven’t had a chance to yet. Truly one of the best aspects of the Elder Scrolls Online is the sheer amount of content that you can play through and even after hitting maximum character level 50 there’s still so much more to do and see, Skill Points to earn, and Champion Points to grind! Below I’ve gone through the painstaking ordeal of calculating all potential Skill Points you could earn through the most completionist of playthroughs so that you don’t have to.
How Many Skill Points Would You Need To Max Out Everything?
Now you might be wondering at this point, just how many Skill Points could I possibly need in this game to truly max out my character in every single skill line? Well, the answer is 586 on an uncursed/mortal character, 606 on a Werewolf (devour skill is free), and 608 on a Vampire.
However, this is not possible because currently as of writing you can only feasibly obtain 521 Skill Points total from completing all the above methods with some caveats listed below:
- Leveling your character, up to level 50 (64 Skill Points)
- Completing quests in the main quest (11 Skill Points)
- Completing quest chains for the Aldmeri Dominion, Daggerfall Covenant, Ebonheart Pact, and Coldharbour main storylines (3 Skill Points for Coldharbour: 16 Skill Points for Daggerfall Covenant, 15 Skill Points for Pact, 15 Skill Points for the Aldmeri Dominion)
- Completing the Imperial City storyline (1 Skill Point)
- Completing the Reforging Orsinium storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the Divine Power, Morag Tong, and House Telvanni quest chains on Vvardenfell Morrowind (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the Summerset storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the Elsweyr storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the Greymoor storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the Blackwood storyline (2 Skill Points)
- Completing the High Isle storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Reading the Folium Discognitum (Optional quest reward from Mages Guild quest chain) (2 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Thieves Guild storyline (6 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Dark Brotherhood storyline (8 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Clockwork City storyline (8 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Murkmire storyline (7 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Dragonhold storyline (6 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Markarth storyline (6 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Deadlands storyline (6 Skill Points)
- Completing the primary quest chain of the Galen Firesong storyline (6 Skill Points)
- Completing the epilogue of the Season of the Dragon Elsweyr Dragonhold storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the epilogue of the Dark Heart of Skyrim Greymoor Markarth storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the epilogue of the Gates of Oblivion Blackwood The Deadlands storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Completing the epilogue of the Legacy of the Bretons High Isle Firesong storyline (3 Skill Points)
- Playing or skipping the tutorial quest The Gates of Adamant or any previous Chapter tutorial (1 Skill Point – characters created prior to the Morrowind cannot get this)
- Absorbing Skyshards (113 Skill Points in the base game: 62 more including all DLCs (Morrowind, Summerset, Elsweyr, Greymoor, Blackwood, High Isle)
- Ranking up in the Alliance War (50 Skill Points)
- Completing group challenges in Public Dungeons (16 Skill Points in the base game, 14 more in expansions and Chapters – 2 each in Orsinium, Vvardenfell Morrowind, Summerset, Elsweyr Greymoor, Blackwood, and High Isle)
- Completing the public dungeon quests in High Isle (2 Skill Points)
- Completing the Story quests in Group Dungeons (24 Skill Points in the base game, one for each completed dungeon storyline quest: plus 26 more including those added by Imperial City, Shadows of the Hist, Horns of the Reach, Dragon Bones, Wolfhunter, Wrathstone, Scalebreaker, Harrowstorm, Stonethorn, Flames of Ambition, Waking Flame, Ascending Tide, and Lost Depths)
- Completing Orsinium Maelstrom Arena (1 Skill Point)
This concludes our extensive in-depth look at gaining Skill Points in the Elder Scrolls Online and what the Fastest method for gaining them currently is. We hope this was of help and value to you and given all of these potential Skill Points if you would like help with learning how to reset your Skill Points be sure to check out our guide here.
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