ESO Enchanting Guide: How to Level Enchanting

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Penned by Angus Green

Angus is our resident Elder Scrolls Online specialist. He lives in Eugene and is a teacher by day.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Enchanting in Elder Scrolls Online is often overlooked by new players, but it’s incredibly valuable when it comes to customizing your build. It’s great for boosting your group’s damage, letting you seriously increase your overall DPS. Making good use of glyphs of crushing, flame, and other damage enchantments can shoot your damage through the roof!

Its impact on your survivability is great, too — Glyphs of Weakening on weapons or Prismatic Defense on armor can help you take on more difficult content you may not have been able to play otherwise. Depending on what you want to do, changing your weapon and armor enchantments can greatly affect the way you play.

The difficult part, of course, is figuring out how to even begin. To help you out, we’ve put together an ESO Enchanting guide to help you get into the skill and level it up through optimal play. We’ll start with a breakdown of the basics — how to get Enchanting materials, how to research new runes, and how to start crafting them. Then, we’ll move on to a more precise leveling guide with skill recommendations and the best enchantments in ESO.

Let’s get started!

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Enchanting Resources — Where to Find Enchanting Materials

Before you can even think about leveling Enchanting, you’ll need materials. Thankfully, Enchanting resource nodes are among the easiest to spot while you’re out and about in Tamriel. They’re easily found overland in fields, but can be found more often near runes or other magical locations. You can also luck out and find five of each type (Aspect, Potency, and Essence) in heavy sacks.

You can identify Enchanting nodes by their appearance, as they look like small stone statues with glowing embers inside. This glow makes them easy to see (especially at night), but if you have trouble spotting them, the Keen Eye: Runestones passive can help you out by illuminating them further.

You can also use the passive Hireling to get Enchanting resources, which will net you materials just by logging into the game. At its max level, you’ll gain a bundle of Enchanting resources every twelve hours. This can take up some serious bank space if you don’t have ESO+, so keep that in mind before investing in the passive!

Finally, the most efficient way to gather Enchanting resources is through Enchanting Surveys, which you can receive from turning in daily Enchanting writs (more on that later). Once you find the location on your map, you’ll find six rich runestones that’ll net you a lot of runes. You can also deconstruct glyphs, which we’ll also discuss the benefits of further down.

Enchanting Research — Finding Out What Each Rune Means

Next, let’s touch on research. All the runes you’ll be asked to craft are unknown to you when you first start out, and you’ll need to craft each one to discover what it does. Thankfully, you’ll net some Enchanting experience when you find out the meaning of a new rune.

If you’re not interested in going through each rune to find out its meaning, check out “Votan’s Rune Tooltips.” This is a handy add-on that tells you what each runestone does without you needing to craft it yourself. This saves you from wasting a more expensive rune just to find out what it is (like Hakeijo, which currently goes for upwards of 37K on the trading guilds!).

Crafting writs (which we’ll discuss in a moment) always require you to craft a standard rune with normal White rarity Ta aspect. The main runes you’ll need to know are as follows:

Increasing Potencies (in increasing level order): Jora, Jera, Odra, Edora, Pora, Rera, Derado, Rekura, Kura, Rejera.

Essence: Deni for stamina, Makko for magicka, Oko for health. 

Enchanting Writs — How to Complete Crafting Missions

Once you have your materials and research, you can start picking up crafting missions. Enchanting writs are a solid way to increase your level and gain useful crafting materials. Enchanting missions only ever ask you to craft various levels of stamina, magicka, and health runes, so it should be relatively easy to complete these writs once you know those three runes.

You’ll get a nice inspiration boost upon completing the crafting mission, which will help out with leveling your Enchanting skill. Once you hit Level 50 in Enchanting, you’ll start getting those desirable Enchanting Master Writs.

Enchanting Stations — Locations and How to Get Your Own

Finally, you’ll need a crafting station to start Enchanting. Once again, these are relatively easy to find — if they’re not out in the open, they’re usually found near other crafting stations inside a shop, usually next to either Alchemy or Jewelry stations.

The easiest cities to find them in (with all the crafting stations in close, convenient proximity) are Rimmen in Northern Elsweyr, Vivec City in Vvardenfell, and Leyawiin in Blackwood. Alinor in Summerset is another great place that’s slightly further away from the wayshrine. Deshaan in Mournhould is probably the best base game zone, with an Enchanting station in The Kind Enchanter close to the wayshrine.

If you want an Enchanting station in your home, you can obtain one through a few different means. The first is to simply buy it from the crown store for 3000 crowns — easy, but not fun. If you don’t want to spend money, you can instead purchase one with writ vouchers earned by completing Master Writs. This method is more cost-effective, but takes a little longer since you only get 2–5 writ vouchers for each Master Writ you turn in.

When you’ve earned enough writ vouchers, you can visit Rolis Hlaalu in Elden Root (Grahtwood), Wayrest (Stormhaven), and Mournhold (Deshaan) to purchase your Enchanting station.

Enchanting Leveling — Tips and Tricks

With all those basics covered, let’s get into the actual leveling part of our Enchanting guide. It can be truly annoying to level Enchanting, as you need to go through a lot of creating and deconstructing glyphs to gain the necessary experience. Here are a few general tips to help you get started!

1. Invest in the “Inspiration Boost” passive. This passive is found in the Champion Point crafting tree, and saves you a lot of time and resources by increasing the speed at which you level up your crafting skills. There are three stages costing 15 points apiece, each giving you a 10% increase in your crafting inspiration gained. The total 30% increase helps you max out your crafting skill lines much faster!

You can get another 10% increase to your crafting inspiration with ESO+. If you don’t have ESO+, consider keeping an eye out for free weeks and doing a lot of crafting in bursts when you can take advantage of the bonuses. This can potentially net you a solid 40% increase to your crafting inspiration, saving you plenty of time and money in the long run.

2. Use better materials when creating glyphs. You get more XP based on the Essence you use (the rune that determines the rarity, and therefore the strength, of what you make). Creating a glyph with Ta results in a White rarity glyph, Jejota in a Green rarity glyph, Denata in Blue, Rekuta in Purple, and Kuta in Gold. We recommend sticking mainly with Green and Blue, as you’ll want those higher-rarity options for Enchanting your own gear.

3. Try to avoid deconstructing the glyphs you make. Deconstructing is the best way to level up your Enchanting skill, but deconstructing your own glyphs earns you less XP than deconstructing ones you find. Aim for higher-level, higher-rarity glyphs that you either find or are crafted by another player.

4. Enchant with a buddy. If you’re playing on your own, you can always simulate another player by only buying glyphs from a trader and deconstructing those, but crafting with a buddy is by far the best strategy. Find someone else who wants to level Enchanting, and work together to craft the highest-level and highest-rarity glyphs you can. Once you’ve crafted an agreed-upon amount of glyphs, trade with your buddy and deconstruct them to increase your level super quickly.

You’ll want to level up your Potency Improvement (which lets you craft higher-level runes) and Aspect Improvement (which lets you craft higher-rarity runes) whenever you get the chance. Once these passives are as high as you can get them, you can craft another wave of glyphs with your buddy, rinse, and repeat.

(Note: If you don’t have enough Enchanting resources to do this, you can buy them in bulk from a guild trader. Check around on TTC (Tamriel Trade Center) for reasonable prices before buying!)

Enchanting Leveling — Best Enchanting Skills

If you want to really get into Enchanting, you can invest in all of these passives. Personally, I only ever get Aspect Improvement and Potency Improvement as soon as they are available. The other passives seem redundant or not so useful, as you can manage without them fairly easily.

Enchanting Leveling — Best Enchantments

The best enchantments vary depending on role, class, and playstyle. However, there are some golden rules to what’s most important, and what will be expected from you in most higher-level groups.

Note that any rarity of glyph can be placed on any rarity of item and retain the glyph’s power. For example, if you put a Gold enchantment on a White weapon, you’ll get the power of the Gold enchantment. This essentially means that you don’t have to re-enchant the item later on if you upgrade the item itself.

The best enchantment for tanks in ESO is the Glyph of Crushing. Good tanks will almost always have this on their back-bar ice (or other destruction) staff. This glyph increases group damage by reducing enemy resistances from the ever-present use of Elemental Blockade, which will proc its effect. Combine Deteri (the Essence rune that affects armor) with Itade and Kuta for a Truly Superb Glyph of Crushing that decreases enemy resistances by 1622. With an infused trait on a Gold destruction staff, this enchantment’s value goes up to 2108.

The best enchantment for healers in ESO is the Glyph of Weakening, which decreases enemy spell and weapon damage. Combine Okori (the Essence rune that affects spell/weapon damage) with Itade and Kuta for a Truly Superb Glyph of Weakening that decreases enemy spell/weapon damage by 348. With an infused trait on a Golded-out destruction staff, this enchantment’s value goes up to 452.

Finally, the best enchantment for DPS in ESO is the Glyph of Weapon Damage. This is often a great choice for the back bar if you aren’t using a flame (Rakeipa) or poison (Kuoko) glyph. Using weapon skills that stay up for a while will constantly proc this, so consider investing in Elemental Blockade, Endless Hail, or Blade Cloak to keep this bonus active. Combine Okori with Repora and Kuta to get a Truly Superb Glyph of Weapon Damage, increasing your spell and weapon damage by 348. A weapon with the infused trait will net you 452 instead.

Join the High Ground

Becoming a master enchanter is no easy task, but with some time, friends, and that ever useful Votan’s Rune Tooltips add-on, you’ll get to Level 50 in no time. We hope this guide helps you to level up your Enchanting skill more quickly so you can better customize your characters to spec them into the best DPS, tanking, and healing possible in ESO.

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