Game-Changing Addons for ESO

{This guide seems a bit out-of-date now, so I will try to go back through it and modify it as needed.}

I've been putting off writing this for a while, probably because I knew how monumental a task it would become.
A quick walkthrough on what addons are and why you may want them:
ESO's basic UI is, well, basic. It's lacking in a lot of different ways, but other players have created many different add-ons to add extra features to the game. I'm going to try to walk you through my top picks and how they ended up on my 'must-have' list.

A quick note: after one of the recent updates, lib files must now be downloaded separately from the addons that rely on them. If you download an addon without the lib it needs, it will show in red in your addon list. (See pic.) If you click on that addon's name, it will show you in red which lib it's missing.

Here are some screenshots of my UI and my addons list.

I put a black box over my chat box to hide names.

It needs some work but it's serviceable. I actually need to go through and thin out some addons that are resource hogs or that I'm just not getting enough use out of. I'm going to attempt to keep this post updated with changes and information pertaining to game updates that render some addons useless or break them.

Before you get any addons, head to Minion.gg to grab the addon manager from ESOUI.com. It automatically updates your addons and you can download new ones directly from Minion (think of it as an old-school Curse for WoW addons). It's important to note this here: You do not need to log out from ESO to update your addons. You can download updates, remove, or add addons while playing ESO. Just type /reloadui once the addon has finished installing and voila! 

1) The very first addon I recommend picking up is Addon Selector. It lets you view all of your addons and choose which ones to turn off/on and save them to sets. That's especially helpful if you end up with a buggy addon (if it breaks due to patches etc) as this can help you isolate which of your addons is causing the issues. Addon Selector overtakes the basic addon menu.

2) Now that you've got Circonian's Addon Selector, the second addon you should get is pChat. It's a feature-rich chat addon that adds so many customizable things to the standard chat box. With basic ESO chat box, you can change colors per guild and add extra tabs. You can do that and so much more with pChat. Two awesome features are the ability to save chat - so it doesn't disappear when you have to reload your UI (/reloadui) or when you get disconnected. You can choose how long you want chat saved, up to a period of 24 hours! This is huge (especially since sometimes updates create issues that cause frequent DCs)!

3) Coming in at third, there's Advanced UI (AUI for short). AUI overrides many of the basic ESO graphical UI elements and replaces them with a highly customizable and very informative display. In this screenshot, I've drawn red rectangles around the AUI parts. It includes a minimap, unit frames (yours and your targets health bars), and action bars (the bar that displays your active abilities). It also includes a quest tracker, but I've chosen to use FCMQT instead, due to its additional functionality (you can drop a quest from the quest tracker, rather than opening your quest log). {Since starting this post, I've replaced AUI with Bandits UI}

old setup (AUI)

Now, Bandits: Bandits is an all-in-one UI (user interface) addon that adds a lot of goodness to your view of Tamriel (really, all of Mundus). It has so many options to customize it to your liking. It has combat frames, a HUD, of course it has Attribute bars, target frames, your action setups. You can use Bandits Gear Manager to save sets of gears and abilities to easily swap before starting a raid or solo excursion (or even RP if that's what suits your fancy). It has so many options. It has a built-in minimap and quest tracker, but I still prefer FCMQT for quest options (it lets you change focus and do a bunch more just by unlocking the cursor, directly from your normal screen. Just hit default . (period) to go into cursor mode and click on your quest tracker.) Bandits also has damage meters but I still prefer Combat Metrics. 

4) Map Pins. This addon is amazing. It shows map pins (duh) for everything, and you can choose which you want to view at any given time, no reload required. You can even view the locations of the Psijic quest portals, and where treasure maps are, etc.

Now that you've got the basics covered, you may be set or, if you're like me, you're looking for more things to tweak. Do you participate in in-game fishing? There are addons for that. What about damage meters? There's an addon for that, too.

Here are the rest of them:

Advanced Filters and AutoCategory: adds the ability to filter and track your inventory. You can track specific sets so that they're in their own category when you open your bags. "Sellables" are their own category (trash items and ornates) as are stolen items, etc.

AlphaGear 2: lets you create gear sets and attach them to bar setups. You can set aside a "thieving" set that includes your Night's Silence armor and the skills you use when you're doing Dark Brotherhood sacraments and Thieves Guild heists. If you also make a set for regular questing, you can toggle between the two with a single button push. (this one isn't necessary if you use Bandits, which has its own gear manager)

Assist Rapid Riding: this is a simple addon that recognizes when you're mounted and equips Rapid Maneuver in the button of your choosing. If you dismount prior to entering combat, it will unequip that and reequip the spell that was in that slot. (If you get dismounted by something attacking you, it will not be able to switch back due to restrictions put in place by the game - you can't change a skill while in combat.)

Azurah: lets you move every piece of the UI. I've been having some issues getting my settings to stay once I move them, but I assume it's a user error and I just need to read up on it.

BeamMeUp: this is the fast travel addon to get. It can be accessed via the main map. It shows a list on the left side of all the zones you can fast travel to for free, by utilizing the 'port to guild member/friend' features. It alphabetizes the list and also lets you further filter them to zones you have treasure maps or surveys in, quests in, only the zone you're already in, etc. Another excellent feature it has (that FasterTravel does not) is the ability to unlock all wayshrines within a zone, if possible. There's a special button for this. It takes a little bit of time, during which your character will pop up at all the wayshrines in that zone, so be prepared for some loading screen and travel time. However, it's so helpful, especially if it's your first time in a zone or if it's a well-populated zone (or if it's Elsweyr with dragons you need to run around to find). Free travel is so awesome. I think I've saved 100s of thousands of gold at this point and I've only been using BMU for a few months. (It shows how much it calculates it's saved you.) It also saves you a ton of time that would be spent running to wayshrines and running around trying to find the wayshrine you need in the other zone.

Chat Window Manager: a probably-unnecessary modifier that adds a few small functions to the chat box, including a button that I accidentally push that reloads my UI.

Combat Reticle: this one is good. It lets you customize your reticle (the target mark in the center of your screen) to different things, including letting you change whether or not it's animated and what functions set off the animation.

Combat Metrics: this (or an addon like it) is pretty much necessary if you want to run trials or veteran dungeons. It shows you what your DPS is so you can work to improve it. It's hideable so it only shows when you want it to (like after a fight).

Crafting Writ Assistant: this lets you view a frame that shows you what your writ requires, that way you don't forget and accidentally create the wrong thing. While it's not necessary for armor and weapons when used in conjunction with Dulgobon's Lazy Writ Creator, it is still helpful for the stuff that isn't covered by that, like provisioning, alchemy, and enchanting (consumables).

CraftStore: this lets you view all your alts to see what traits they have learned and whether it's time to train again. It's very helpful if you have a bad case of alt-itis (of course I do).

Dolgubon's Lazy Writ Crafter: this addon is crucial if you do your daily crafting writs - and you definitely should be doing them! Whether you're just leveling, a new player, or a master crafter, daily crafting writs have rewards and benefits for you. Almost everyone will want to be able to craft at some point, and daily writs - when not yet maxed - give you inspiration that level your crafting skills as well as crafting materials and recipes. If you are rank 50 in a crafting skill and you have your passive maxed, you have a chance to receive master writs in the reward sack. Master writs have you craft specific, high level crafting items and reward writ vouchers. Those vouchers can be used to purchase a variety of things from Rolis Hlaalu and Faustina Curio (found near the three major cities - Elden Root, Wayrest, and Mournhold). More information on master writs can be found here http://lovelynorth.com/master-writ-vendor/ Lazy Writ Crafter is for the daily writs. It automates creating writ items so you no longer have to search through the items you can craft to find the ones you need to make. You just hit one button and it crafts the items for you. It shows up when you use a crafting table after accepting that type of daily writ. It's awesome!

ESO-Database.com Export: if you use ESO-Database.com, this will upload your characters and all their stuff onto the website. It's a nice web-based way to view all of your characters skills, abilities, achievements, everything.

FasterTravel: this addon is a life-saver and a game-changer. If you are in five player guilds (the maximum allowed), you can use this addon to port to anyone in any of those guilds for free, at any time. It adds a tab to the map UI and lets you choose which zone you want to go to from an alphabetized list. It does not show player names. When you port to a guild member, it takes you to the wayshrine closest to them. I have since replaced this one with BeamMeUp, which has much more utility and awesome features. (See above.)

FCM Quest Tracker: as previously mentioned, this is an awesome quest tracker. I turn off AUI's quest tracker module so I can use this. It lets you highlight a quest and perform certain functions (like abandoning) straight from the quest tracker on the right of your screen. It also lets you track all of them at once, sorted by zone.

Go Home: this adds some neat features for those of us who own a few different homes. You can assign homes with numbers and type /gh1 etc to fast travel to them.

Of Harven's addons, these are the ones I use:
Harven's AS to LAM adapter
Harven's Custom Map Pins
Harven's Extended Stats
Harven's Improved Skills Window
Harven's Stack Split Slider
Harven's Trait and Style

HarvestMap: this one's quite useful if you gather everything in sight (and if you have ESO+, you should!). It marks on your map (and adds 3D pins in the world if you want it to) to show you where items you've gathered spawn. They tend to respawn in the same spot, so that's helpful.

Idle Timeout Reminder: this one is simultaneously tiny and huge! I don't know how long the timer is, but ESO has this annoying thing where they boot you if you're afk for a short period of time. This contrasts with the other two MMORPGs I've spent extensive time in, WoW and BDO. In WoW you can be afk for what seems like half an hour. ESO is between 5-10 minutes, I think. BDO actually encourages you to go afk, and lets you work on tradeskills through an automated system. (It's super weird.) If you're about to get marked as idle, this addon sends you a notification (accessible via N) to let you know.

Inventory Insight: this addon is precious. It lets you search all of your characters' inventories and equipped items, and your bank and craft bag, to find items.

ItemPreview: I don't know if this is working 100% yet, but I use this, Furniture Catalogue, and ESO Master Recipe List to preview furnishing items. You can preview items from the blueprint, before crafting them! ItemPreview is no longer being supported, unfortunately. As of today, there is no known fix that makes it work.

Leo's Altholic and Leo's Trainer: these let you see who needs what trained and when. It also notifies you when one of your alts has completed their training. (Honestly, I deleted these because the notifications got to be too annoying.)

Librarian Book Manager and Lore Library Search: these let you look through the lorebooks you've collected so you can read them at your leisure and not hold up a group while in a dungeon, for instance... Not that I'd ever do that, heh...

LoreBooks: shows icons on your map for the location of Mage's Guild lorebooks and eidetic memory books. (This one isn't really necessary with Map Pins.)

Master Merchant: this is basically a necessary addon if you want to profit. MM tracks the items that have sold in your guild stores and gives you a value on each item. It can be a resource drain, so make sure you set it to only poll from the server at certain times, otherwise it will cause framerate drops. I use this along with TTC to determine the best prices for items I sell in guild stores. TTC (Tamriel Trade Centre) is an addon and desktop client (you need to run both for accurate prices) that shows you the data for all the found listings of items matching the one you're selling. It adds this information to the item's tooltip. The prices shown by TTC reflect listings, not sales, while MM reflects sales but from a much smaller sample size, so I tend to roughly average the two of them. [TTC's client sometimes sets off red flags in the Windows firewall, so just beware of that and ready to select 'more details' and 'run anyway' when you install it, and be vigilant to make sure the app finishes installing.]

MiniMap by Fyrakin: this addon has a ton of potential but I can't get it to stop lagging. It's a very detailed minimap that allows you to track things like movement speed percentage. It's very nice, but it frequently lags and takes time to catch up to my movements, which can really throw you off if you're using it to navigate. Also a pain, it lags when I use a treasure map or survey, so it still shows on the minimap even though it's no longer in your inventory because you've already harvested everything. (I'm going to check out their page on ESOUI and see if I can figure out what's happening and if there's a way to fix it.)

Port to Friend's House (PTF): This addon lets you save all of your friends' houses in one list. To open the menu, type /ptfopen. To use it, type the friend or guildmate's name in the first box, then select their home from the drop-down menu. You can assign these numbers and make them your favorites, so you can later use /ptffave1 to return to that home quickly. (This is great if you're in a guild that has all the crafting stations set up - 2 of my amazing guilds have this!)


WritWorthy: this is a necessary addon if you do master writs. It shows in the writ's tooltip whether or not you're able to make it and why: motif not known, trait unknown, etc.

I hope this helps you. Either way, please let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading!