Top 10 Worst Zones in Elder Scrolls Online

Collection of my top 10 worst zones in ESO, from really difficult to navigate to the abandoned, empty zones and those that just frustrate.

The dungeon that inspired this worst zones post. Not a particularly large zone, but it has lots of strong daedric mobs and a teleport system between islands which makes navigation difficult to even understand, let alone to move around. Together with the fact that this dungeon rarely attracts players makes it a tough slog to complete the two quests inside. One involves visiting various locations and sealing portals (which are guarded by mini-bosses) and the other involves travelling around defeating mini-bosses before heading to the final boss and killing yourself by jumping off a tall cliff. Not a fun zone and my least favourite place in all of Tamriel.

This whole worst zones was a never-ending slog through swamps where simple navigation around story missions resulted in getting stuck in water, stuck on vines or roots or just pulling in loads of mobs because there is no other way around. It wasn't a particularly fun zone for me, and I'd rather not go back.

Intended to be a group zone, Craglorn is a sparsely populated wasteland filled with very strong overland NPC and stronger delve and dungeon mobs. When I was doing the zone there were few other players around and nobody was interested in grouping, and soloing group content is very tricky. Sometimes you'll be lucky and a CP2000 player will help with a world boss but mostly they'll leave you to the mercy of a mob of undead.

Good landscape but the bad story and quests were boring, at least to me. A lot of running from A to B and back to A to be sent back to B and a lot of content was either far from a waypoint or some annoying mountain or cliff was in the way forcing a long walkaround. Not the worst area, but not a good area either.

The only zone to make me feel a little claustrophobic with all the running around dark forests and trees hanging on your head everywhere. That and the cliffs make getting from A to B particularly difficult and the boring quest line.

The capital city, Rimmen, frequently has very poor performance and for some reason, my frame rate (and of others) drops from 70+ in the rest of the game to a paltry 15 in the main Rimmen area. Inside the building, such as the Catspaw Bank, the frame rate improves. Speaking of the bank, whilst you are busy doing banking stuff, there is an annoying NPC that walks in front of the counter with the banker and pushes you out of the way closing the bank dialogue. So frustrating!

Imperial City is a zone I've yet to complete. I'm not a fan of PvP battlegrounds or PvP in general. I've been to Imperial City several times and ganked each time. It's no fun trying to get somewhere and ganked by a bunch of kids, and it's impossible to get anything done there. Cheap PvP deaths are annoying enough as it is, but in Imperial City there is another penalty - the players can take what little Tel Var stones they've managed to acquire.

For the huge volcano in the middle makes navigating one side to the other really time-consuming. The story isn't so bad and the landscape is really good-looking, but it's just a pain to go anywhere or do anything. I was glad to complete the zone and get out.

A group dungeon, and not a bad one, but makes my list for the very poor drop rate on leeching plate set items. I spent over three months farming over and over and over again, at least 150 times, for the leeching bow. I even raised a support ticket to confirm that the item does indeed still drop and hasn't been removed from the game. Such a poor drop rate for a set piece. When it finally dropped I vowed never to return.

I groan whenever this comes up on the random daily, along with ICP. Technically it's not bad, but I just find it a maze and never really know where to go, and the constant mob pulls. City of Ash II is much better in my opinion, even if it is rather long and drawn out.