Updated: 2025 / 02 / 10

Introduction

Some of you may be entering Cyrodiil for the first time. For others, itโ€™s just another day with more mass killing of opponents. The intent of this guide is to provide a high level overview of what players who are new to Cyrodiil should consider to ensure that they achieve the goal of making a lot of AP, getting a lot of reward boxes, and participating in as much mayhem as possible!ย Please note that this guide is not meant for experienced players who likely already have their play styles and builds relatively set, and know what to expect from the mayhem that is the Mayhem event.

While you can enter Cyrodiil, collect quests, and make your way around surfing the zerg (following where the most players go), and you’ll probably make some good alliance points (AP), there are quite a few small things that you can do to ensure that you bring the most value to the faction and contribute well to fights – rather than being a hindrance to success.

During Mayhem, there are a lot of PvE players coming into Cyrodiil, and most of them haven’t read this guide. This means that they’re either very squishy and easy to kill, or they’re set up as tanks who will bring little to no value to fights. Most bombers will build for crit, penetration, or pure glass cannon raw data. They will be using builds that cause chain reactions of death such as Vicious Death, Plaguebreak, and the Occult Overload CP. If they get one single kill on someone squishy, almost everyone else around that person will also die. It’s very simple to say “don’t be squishy”, but doing so without being a tank can be challenging.

Crashing & Game Bugs

Your game will crash. As much as you want to believe that they’ve fixed all the issues we’ve been dealing with since launch over 10 years ago, your game will crash and you’ll get bugged out.

When you crash or disconnect, before you log back in, wait for someone in voice or Discord to tell you that you’re offline. If you try to log back in right away, you will often get an error message, then have to wait for your session to time out on the server, and you’ll be out of Cyrodiil dealing with a multi-hour queue to get back in. If you wait for your account to show offline before logging back in, you’ll usually get back in right away. Sometimes if you’ve crashed or disconnected in big fights, your game client won’t be able to load everything up again, and you’ll crash again when logging back into Cyrodiil. If this happens, repeat the procedure of waiting until you’re offline before coming back in, and on the third or fourth time coming back in you’ll be at the gate rather than the location you were when you crashed or disconnected. If you don’t have any friends in game that you can speak with or message on Discord, waiting about 120 seconds (two minutes) is usually sufficient for your account to show offline.

If you find that every time you try to bash you go through the breaking free animation, this is called the “Streak bug”. The only way to reliably fix it is to enter a delve or Cheesemonger’s and then return to Cyrodiil. Note that when you try to return, it may give an error that the campaign is full. If this happens, just try again. It can sometimes take up to 10 minutes of retrying before you’re back to Cyrodiil, but that’s better than a few hours in queue.

If your list of debuffs shows items that will last days (or years), then sometimes that’s just a UI bug, and others you may in fact have those debuffs. Going into a delve or Cheesemonger’s per the above (like with the Streak bug) is the only way to eliminate them.

Builds, Equipment & Champion Points

  • Read through the grouping framework for information on how to build to best succeed in a group.
  • Read through the builds spreadsheet if you want to know what kinds of builds the min/max ball groups use. Note that if you’re not in a ball group where everyone is contributing to the group, then these builds can still be great, but you will need to get a source of major expedition for yourself (usually Race Against Time from the Psyjic tree) and you may feel squishy without all the group buffs and consistent HoTs (heals over time) that would otherwise come from the rest of the group following min/max builds and play styles.
  • Be aware that most PvE builds don’t work well in PvP. You may do great damage, but you’re “VD fodder”. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as for every death in range of a keep, resource, or outpost the AP from that death helps to build bigger ticks.
  • You should have approximately 35k health. Put all of your 64 character points into health, and then balance your gear enchants to achieve your other goals. If you can’t quite make 35k, do your best to keep your health as high as possible. In most builds, 64 points in health and tri-chants on your major pieces (head/chest/pants) should get you to about 33-34k, and you can get another 1k from red CP.
  • The food/drink you use should give you health and the stat you need. I tend to prefer tri-food for health/mag/stam from Bewitched Sugar Skulls, but there are many viable options. Your priority (per above) should be reaching 35k health, then adding the stat you need most of. If you’re in a magicka-oriented build, having above 15k (even closer to 20k with tri-food) stamina is very helpful for breaking free, dodging, and the occasional blocking.
  • All of your gear should have the Impenetrable trait to reduce critical damage. This is what will kill you most often (along with siege).
  • In the red CP tree, take Celerity for movement speed, Slippery to help automatically break free from hard crowd control (CC), and Pain’s Refuge to reduce incoming damage when you have negative effects on you (there will be many). This leaves one red CP of your choice, and I usually recommend Boundless Vitality for more health (if you’re under 35k), Bastion if you’re running shields in a group (Barrier, or a set such as Imperium or Combat Physician), or Spirit Mastery to resurrect your allies faster (especially if you’re playing a Templar).
  • In the blue CP tree, if you’re playing more defensively, take Ironclad, Unassailable, and Enduring Resolve to reduce incoming damage of direct, area, and over time. This leaves one blue CP of your choice, and I usually recommend Occult Overload so that when you get a kill, it can chain reaction kill others around your target. If you’re playing more offensively then you’ll likely still want to mitigate area damage, and go more higher damage output CP.
  • In the green CP tree, take Gifted Rider and Steed’s Blessing to increase your speed getting from keep to keep when you don’t have transit. This leaves two green CP of your choice, and I usually recommend Rationer and Liquid Efficiency to save gold on consumables, though during this even you do get additional resources from nodes, so faster harvesting and extra chance for more materials are viable.
  • When picking the sets you want for your build, choose one set that is more defensive, and one that accomplishes your goal (more healing, more damage, or a proc). If one of those sets is crafted, make that the medium armour one so you can run Elude or Shuffle for Major Evasion (mitigates of area damage). If one of those sets is light or heavy, use neck, rings, and one weapon – or neck, rings, and two body pieces so you can still maintain 5 medium. If one of those sets can be run on only one bar (such as Clever Alchemist or many other proc sets), then you can use a back bar arena weapon.
  • Monster sets can bring enormous value, though if you will be using a Mythic item such as Snow Treaders (can’t be snared) or Wild Hunt (speed ring), then you’ll have to either break one of your 5-sets or your monster 2-set. Many solid builds include a monster 2-set, a Mythic 1-set, two arena weapons (master’s, maelstrom, asylum, or other), a 5-set, and two extra pieces (Trainee or one Trainee and one Druid are most common for the 2 extras).
  • There is no absolutely wrong build, but there are many builds that are less effective (or ineffective) for you to achieve your goals. One of my favourite solo builds is back bar Clever Alchemist, front bar Rallying Cry, Balorgh for more damage, Wild Hunt mythic for speed, and one Trainee (for health bonus).
  • If your goal is to play defensively (defending keeps from attack), the Earthgore set for healing and purging ground effects is likely best, though the Sellistrix monster set is also a great choice if you’re doing some damage, as it will provide an area stun up to every 6 seconds.
  • Use 5 medium armour. Most players who don’t die to area damage bomb chain reactions or Plaguebreak (per above) will die when they run out of stamina. Medium armour gives you the ability to run the medium armour skill for area damage mitigation. Both morphs give you Major Evasion which reduces area (and siege) damage by 20% (this is VERY important). Shuffle removes snares and lasts for 20 seconds, while Elude (the other morph) lasts 35 seconds and gives you Major Expedition when you take area damage. If you’re going to use Snow Treaders or have Race against Time slotted, pick Elude as it lasts longer.
  • You must source your own Major Evasion skill. If you’re not in 5 medium, and not a NB who have their class skill (Mirage), then the Spectre’s Eye set on your back bar is a great option. You can also use Quick Cloak from the dual wield skill line if you’re using dual wield weapons.
  • If you’re not sure what build to use, a good combination is Order’s Wrath (5 medium armour) and an area weapon on one bar, and Wretched Vitality on the other bar (for amazing resource regen) with a monster set, 1 Trainee and 1 Druid.
  • If you want to be more defensive or you don’t believe that you’ll have the reaction times needed to fight well, and just want to run around having fun, a great set to use is Imperium. It will put a shield on you and your allies when you take damage, gives some extra health, and can contribute to your team’s success (by you and your group members dying less).

What To Do

  • Use cross heals as much as you can. Echoing Vigor and Radiating Regeneration apply Heal over Time (HoT) effects to your allies, and will help a LOT when they are bombed or otherwise take damage. If everyone in Cyrodiil who was close to others cast a few echoing Vigors (16 second timer on 6 players per cast), your faction and team would die a lot less. If you have a Maelstrom resto staff, you can spam Radiating Regen when people around you are taking damage and it will self-sustain your magicka.ย 
  • Use immovable potions (the PvP vendors sell health/invis/immovable ones for AP) when going through a breach or when you believe that there’s going to be something that hard cc’s you.
  • Hold block when people around you are being bombed. Block mitigates enough damage that with a few heals and moving away from the bomb (slower since you’re blocking) you can usually survive most bombs.
  • When you’re on siege, fire then immediately get off and cast at least one skill (renew a HoT, buff, cast an area skill, etc.) before you get back on and fire again.
  • Most players can easily run three siege in a perfect triangle if they’re not casting in between, or two if they are (per above). If there aren’t 20 offensive siege at a keep you’re attacking, drop and use more siege!
    • Note that fire siege does less damage to doors and walls. You should always use basic (stone) siege when you want to open a keep.
  • If you’re a healer, please read through the information on Healing. That knowledge will help a lot. Healers should always be casting while in combat, and spamming Radiating Regeneration with the Maelstrom resto staff will ensure that your magicka sustain is adequate (while in combat).

What Not To Do

  • Don’t get frustrated.
    • You will die. Probably a lot. There will be bombers, gankers, 1vPotatoers (most call them 1vX’ers, but as those players don’t actually fight similarly skilled players – otherwise they’d never win, this term is more accurate), and chain reactions of Plaguebreak and Vicious death that will leave huge piles of bodies.
    • Death happens in PvP all the time, and you shouldn’t be discouraged. Every time you die, try to think about why you died, and if there was anything you could have done better – such as holding block, and not stacking too close to other masses of players who haven’t read this guide and who aren’t following these recommendations.
    • When you die in range of a keep or resource, you contribute to the tick! Dying every 5 minutes (that’s how long it takes for you to be worth full AP again) is a good thing as if you win the fight, your team will get more AP!
  • Don’t roll dodge a bomb. You’ll still take damage. Blocking and moving away from the bomb is likely the best option.
  • Don’t take other peoples’ siege unless they’re sitting empty. Many run three in a tight position moving from one to the next, and if you take one then you render them less effective.
  • Don’t purge if you’re around other players. If you’re playing in a group or are intending to zerg surf (be in the same place as a lot of others), it’s not a bad idea to take the skill(s) off your bar. If you’re a healer, don’t run the Curse Eater or Stendarr sets (both only work in your group), and don’t run the blue CP that removes negative effects on low health targets. If you don’t follow this advice, you will probably be responsible for killing (a lot of) players on your own faction due to the Plaguebreak set as it causes area damage when purged.
  • Unless you’re in a large group, don’t run Barrier. Barrier only applies to people in your group – NOT the people who happen to be around you, and is a waste of an ultimate in most cases (when not in a large group running stacked).
  • Don’t block for more time than it takes for big damage to hit you. You’ll be tempted to block all damage, but that will just drain your stamina and you will likely die a few seconds later. Pay attention to when there’s a pull such as Dark Convergence or when you hear the “chains” sound of Rushing Agony.
  • Don’t attack the super tanks until all other opponents are dead. You will see some players permanently blocking – those are niche builds meant to just stand there and block. They don’t do much other than sometimes burn siege, and they’re not worth your time. You can ignore those players and they won’t be able to do anything other than.. stand there and hold block. In PvE, there are taunt skills that work. In PvP, these players rely on your team mates being uneducated (or obsessive about killing every last thing) so they waste a minute or two killing the one tank target rather than killing 20+ other targets in the same time. TLDR: If you have anything better to do, don’t waste time killing tanks (unless you’re firing meat bags and cold fire siege on them – which will often help kill them).

Play Styles & Groups

  • If you just want to make AP, there’s a page for that.
  • If you’re looking for a group, rather than just typing “LFG” in zone, try letting the group leaders know what you’re set up for and/or capable of. Something like, “Necro Healer in Rallying Cry / Earthgore / Snow Treaders LFG” or “NB Healer in Pillager / Ozezan / Master’s / Maelstrom LFG”. While some groups are open to everyone, the groups that try to maintain at least a somewhat reasonable composition will have higher likelihoods of success.
  • If you want to play solo, most of my solo builds involve being a troll, running scrolls, bombing (Dark Convergence back bar / Vicious Death / Balorgh / Master’s 2H), or sieging while just chilling. The details of builds change from patch to patch, and I prefer having this information be more consistent long term, so while I won’t put up too much build info on these pages, you can look through the Builds links or join us on Discord to ask questions.
  • If you see large swords on the map of your faction’s colour, there’s probably something interesting happening.
  • You can use the RDK or CyrHud addon for a list of all locations where your faction has siege up, as well as any already-flagged locations with opponent siege. More siege = higher likelihood of fun things happening!
  • You can head to any of the towns to do quests, though be aware that a LOT of gankers stalk those locations as they consider PvE players easy kills!
  • If you come across a ball group that seems to be unkillable, read through the section on how to fight ball groups.

Cheating & Boosting

You will likely see a lot of things that don’t make sense to you. You will also likely see other players talk about cheaters in zone chat. Most of the time what they’re talking about is simply the way that some sets, set combinations, or set and skill combinations work. If you’re confused, you’re welcome to join Discord or the Just Chill guild in game and ask us about it.

Sometimes however, there are players who are cheating, and it’s important that you report these. You can run an application such as OBS to provide a replay buffer, so at the press of one button you can record the last period of time (like 60 seconds) of video to provide as evidence. Note that the Zenimax team are not usually able to do anything unless you provide video evidence, so a tool such as this is very important if you want to report someone.

During the Mayhem event when multiple campaigns open up, it’s a very simple time to achieve Emperor. Read through the info on Making AP and Achieving Emperor if you’re interested. An unfortunately common method of reaching the top of the AP leader board is boosting. This is when a player arranges for others to feed them kills so they can get AP very quickly. Some important notes:

    • If more than two players are killed in a small area within 30 seconds, there will be swords on the map. You may be able to identify the locations where players are being fed or boosted by these swords.
    • If a player increases by a consistent amount of AP every scoreboard update, it’s possible that they are being fed AP (or they may just get consistent numbers of kills for a few periods).
    • If you believe that someone is being fed or boosted, you can ask them if they intend to drop campaign after they achieve emperor to let the next person have a turn. Very often they will do so, and in that case it’s probably best to keep playing as you would, and wait the few hours until Emperor cycles so they drop campaign. Sometimes if the player is malicious they won’t drop campaign, in which case there’s very little that you can do. The Zenimax team have stated that it’s not against the TOS for some players to die repeatedly to others.

Final Thoughts

The most important point to the Mayhem event is to have fun. There are many things that you can do in Cyrodiil, and as long as you understand that fights and deaths will happen to everyone, you should be able to enjoy yourself. You will run across players who behave like children, send hate whispers, teabag, and generally try to ruin others’ fun. It is important to remember that not everyone can spend hours every day honing their skills as a duelist. People have real life responsibilities, families, jobs, and things to do other than play video games. When toxic players start whispering you, the best thing to do is /ignore them and continue doing what is most fun for you!