Elder Scrolls Online Combat & Skills Glossary
Active skills, passive skills, burst, Alliance Points and guild halls are the terms that most often confuse new Elder Scrolls Online (ESO) players. This page explains how the skill system works, what burst means in practice, how Alliance Points are earned and spent, and why a guild hall in ESO is not what players first expect.
State on 2 November 2026: ESO moved to a seasonal model in 2026. Season Zero, "Dawn and Dusk", ran from 2 April to 8 July 2026 and brought a visual and skill-line rework for the Dragonknight class, so older class guides may be out of date. The live season is Season Two, "Echoes of Skyrim", which started on 21 October 2026 and runs to 27 January 2027; Update 52 is planned for 19 January 2027.
| Term | Short answer |
|---|---|
| Active skill | Ability you slot on the bar; costs Magicka or Stamina |
| Passive skill | Permanent bonus from a skill line, no activation |
| Burst skill | Community term for high damage in a short window |
| Alliance Point Vendor | Cyrodiil shops that sell gear, siege and more for Alliance Points |
| Guild hall | NPC faction buildings; player guilds have no hall of their own |
Active Skill
Active skills are the abilities you place on your action bar and use by hand. Most cost Magicka or Stamina. You get five slots, bound to keys 1 to 5 on PC by default, plus an Ultimate slot. At character level 15 you unlock weapon swapping, which gives a second bar with five more slots.
- Active skills cannot be upgraded with points; they improve through use and have four ranks. After rank IV you can morph the skill into one of two versions with different effects, and the morph then ranks up too.
- A class skill line only levels while at least one of its skills is slotted on the bar you are using when you earn experience.
- Each class has three skill lines available immediately, plus weapon, armor, world and guild lines.
- Ultimate skills are active skills that use a third resource, Ultimate, which builds as you fight. No skill line holds more than one Ultimate, and using one drains the whole bar, with one exception.
Tip: when you swap weapons, remember the other bar earns skill-line experience only for the skills slotted there.
Scribed skills are a newer kind of active skill, added with the Gold Road chapter (2024) and now free for every account through the Crown Store upgrades tab. You combine a Grimoire with Focus, Signature and Affix scripts at the Scholarium to build your own version of a skill. Scribed skills cost Magicka or Stamina like other actives, but they need no skill points, do not level through use and cannot be morphed; you change them by rescribing, which uses Luminous Ink. Only one scribed skill per Grimoire can be in use at a time.
Passive Skill
Passive skills give a bonus all the time. Some need a particular item or an active skill slotted; most just work. They come from the same skill lines as the actives, and they unlock upgrades as you raise the skill line level. In most lines you raise that level by using the active skills of the same line; in crafting lines you raise it by crafting items or research. Each upgrade costs a skill point.
- Classes, weapons, armor, world, guild and crafting lines all have passives.
- Some passives only work while a certain item is equipped or an active skill is slotted, so check the tooltip before you rearrange a bar.
Burst Skill
"Burst" is a community word, not an in-game category: it describes damage packed into a short window instead of spread over a long fight. What the game does define are the pieces a burst is built from:
- Active skills cost Magicka or Stamina, so a burst is limited by how much of that resource you hold when it starts.
- The Ultimate resource builds over time as you fight and, with one exception, is completely depleted when you use an Ultimate skill. Each skill line has at most one Ultimate. That is why a burst is usually timed around a full Ultimate bar.
- Two bars help here: weapon swapping unlocks at character level 15, so you can keep a second set of five actives and a second Ultimate ready for the moment you want to hit hard.
Which skills count as burst depends on your class, weapon and the current patch, so community build sites list them per build rather than as a fixed set. In practice a burst window means three things lined up: full resources, a full Ultimate bar, and your damage buffs active at the same moment.
Alliance Point Vendor
Alliance Points (AP) are the currency of the Alliance War in Cyrodiil, the PvP zone. They buy gear, siege weapons, repair kits and other items from Alliance War vendors. According to the UESP wiki you earn them by:
- killing other players and taking or defending keeps and resources (flat points, plus a pool that grows as players die in the fight);
- recovering Elder Scrolls;
- completing repeatable quests from faction notice boards and commanders, and daily quests in the minor towns Bruma, Cheydinhal, Vlastarus, Cropsford and Chorrol;
- Battlegrounds matches, where the amount depends on your team ranking and medal score;
- Daily Rewards.
AP also count toward your Alliance War rank and the Alliance War skills. Grouping splits the points from a kill among the group. For the Cyrodiil vendor lists and prices, check the in-game vendor, because the stock changes between updates.
Guild Hall
In ESO "guild hall" means two things. In the world, guildhalls are NPC buildings for the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild and other factions: examples are the shared Guild Hall in Fargrave and separate Fighters Guild and Mages Guild halls in Wayrest. Among players it usually means a house a guild uses as its base.
Player guilds have these documented limits:
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Guilds per account | 5 |
| Members per guild | 500 |
| Guild bank | needs 10 members; holds 500 items |
| Guild store | needs 50 members; 30 listings per seller, 14 days each |
| Store fees | 1% listing fee, 7% on sale (half goes to the guild bank) |
ESO has no guild-owned building. A "guild hall" in player talk is a house owned by one member, who uses the housing permissions to open it to a guild; an account can share one house with several of its up to five guilds. Player housing arrived in Update 13 with the Homestead update in February 2017, and every character gets a first inn room free from the quest Room to Spare. Guild traders, which put a guild store in front of non-members, are bought by weekly bid.
Heavy attack
A heavy attack is the charged attack you make by holding the attack button, and it restores Magicka or Stamina depending on the weapon. It is covered on its own page: Heavy Attack.
Guides and services
Onlyfarms offers ESO power leveling, trials and PvP services.
Related terms
FAQ
How many active skills can I slot in ESO?
Five on each bar, plus one Ultimate. The second bar unlocks at character level 15 with weapon swapping.
How do I level an active skill?
By using it. It has four ranks, then you can morph it into one of two versions. Passive skills are raised by levelling the skill line.
Is there a guild hall for player guilds?
No. ESO has no guild-owned building. Guilds use a member's house shared through housing permissions, plus a guild bank from 10 members and a guild store from 50.
How do I earn Alliance Points?
Through PvP kills, keep captures, Elder Scrolls, Cyrodiil quests, Battlegrounds and Daily Rewards.
What is the current ESO season?
Season Two, "Echoes of Skyrim", which started on 21 October 2026 and runs to 27 January 2027. The Greymoor and Wolfhunter DLCs joined the base game on 19 October 2026.
