Navigating TES: Legends Free-to-Play
Hi everyone, my name is Paulo (PauloDiogo in game) and I’m here to tell you about what it’s like to be free to play (f2p) in TESL.
I started playing as a f2p player by choice in order to make my journey to legend more difficult and rewarding. After finishing the story mode where I received rewards that are spectacular for f2p players, I started my first month grinding in the solo arena and versus arena where I was amazed by the rewards that this game offers us. Achieving an average of 4/5 wins per run will get you a good amount of packs, gold, and soul gems that make the 150 gold investment more than worth it.
After several arenas, I got to a point where I felt satisfied with my collection and ventured into ranked play. I tried out all the classes and found the decks that felt most comfortable to play with and started my journey to reach legend. I reached rank one after some time of playing the decks which felt most satisfying to me and continuing to expand my collection through arena play in order to improve those decks. I did not reach Legend that season due to a lack of time to play but in the next month (November), only a week and a half into the season, I reached legend playing my own version of Crusader and prophecy Monk decks.
That’s my story of getting to legend as a f2p player. Now, let’s go over some tips for those who want to do the same.
Let’s start with some arena tips. For those of you who come from other card games with an arena system, this will be familiar. For those of you who do not have experience with this game mode, the BetweenTheLanes tier list will be very helpful for learning how to draft your own deck.
I recommend picking classes like Scout, Assassin, and Archer in the arena because they have some of the strongest card pools currently and it is easiest to build strong decks from those classes. If you don’t have any of those as an option I normally go by color; classes with Green, Blue or Purple are generally strong choices because of their card pools.
Advice on Soul Trapping
Now let’s talk about soul trapping cards, or getting rid of the copies you own in exchange
for Soul Gems. After some arenas you will have some bad cards
along with your good cards from packs, and it’s important to know which is which. I’ve included the following “guide” to help with that. The cards are ranked either 1 (not playable) or 2 (only somewhat playable). Hopefully this will give you a baseline of cards that are generally pretty safe to soul trap.
Strength (Red)
1: Intimidate, Improvised Weapon, Silvenar Tracker, Bog Lurcher, Orcish Warhammer, Fireball, Trebuchet, Dread Clannfear
2: Plunder, Covenant Marauder, Alik’r Survivalist, Bone Bow
Intelligence (Blue)
1: Moment of Clarity, Wisdom of Ancients, Dres Renegade, Glenumbra Sorceress, Staff of Sparks, Baron of Tear, Ice Wraith, Studium Headmaster
2: Brilliant Experiment
Agility (Green)
1: Elixir of Light Feet, Arenthia Swindler, Murkwater Savage, Elder Centaur
2: Feasting Vulture, Spider Daedra
Endurance (Purple)
1: Elixir of Vigor, Siege Catapault, Yew Shield, Blackrose Herbalist, Night Predator, Plea to Kynareth, Watch Commander
2: Wrothgar Kingpin, Gloom Wraith, Grim Champion, Archein Elite
Willpower (Yellow)
1: Blackmail, Snow Wolf, Alpha Wolf, Hive Warrior, War Cry, Hero of Anvil, Legion Shield, Elixir of the Defender, Tower Alchemist
2: Helgen Squad Leader, Spiteful Dremora, Auroran Sentry, Artaeum Savant
Hopefully this starter list will allow you to get some more soul gems out of your rewards. Premium cards are also a good way to get the soul gems you need. I know that it can be sad to lose some of those shiny premiums, but in my opinion, it’s worth it in the end as a free-to-play player. You can also acquire a lot of soul gems by farming the AI opponents but that takes much more time. You need to play the expert AI and win in over four turns to get fifteen soul gems and the soul gems you can earn cap at 300 soul gems.
Which Cards to Make?
With all that said I have some small tips about soul summoning, or crafting, cards. This will depend on which decks you want to play, of course, as well as what style they are: Aggro, Midrange, Control, or Combo. I advise you all to start with Aggro or Midrange builds because they are cheaper then control. To get you started with a well-rounded collection, some of the best cards to craft early in the game from the common and rare card pools are
as follows:
Daring Cutpurse: Good 2-drop with the prophecy mechanic that can snowball fast and or wins you the game or makes your opponent spend a lot of resources to remove
Shrieking Harpy: Amazing defensive (and sometimes offensive) tool for blue decks
Young Mammoth: The best body for the 3-drop slot in the game
Triumphant Jarl: One of the best card draw in the game – helps aggro decks refill their hands or gives the slower midrange style decks a good way to find removal or extra damage
Cliff Racer: One of the best offensive cards, nearly a staple in aggressive green decks
Piercing Javelin: Great targeted removal
Hive Defender: one of the better cards in this game a four magicka 3/6 with guard that helps you by protecting your creatures in Aggro decks and is also used as a tool to counter Aggro by most Control decks using Willpower.
This ones are safe cards to craft now if you want to dive into crafting depending of the deck/archetype i will give you some safe advises from epics to legendarys.
Aggro:
Strength: Lumbering Ogrim; Relentless Raider; Mage Slayer; Earthbone Spinner
Agility: Mournhold Traitor; Tazkad the Packmaster
Class-specific: Rift Thane
Midrange:
Strength: Reive, Blademaster; Markath Bannerman; Blood Dragon; Earthbone Spinner; Belligerent Giant
Agility: House Kinsman; Tazkad the Packmaster
Intelligence: Supreme Atromancer; Daggerfall Mage
Endurance: Bone Colossus; Shadowfen Priest
Willpower: Divine Fervor
Class-specific: Thorn Histmage; High King Emeric
Control:
Strength: Vigilant Giant; Earthbone Spinner; Belligerent Giant
Intelligence: Breton Conjurer; Ice Storm; Daggerfall Mage
Willpower: Cloudrest Illusionist; Pillaging Tribune; Mantikora; Dawn`s Wrath; Miraak, Dragonborn
Agility: Giant Snake; Leaflurker
Endurance: Preserver of the Root; Shadowfen Priest; Night Shadow; Nahagliiv; Blood Magic Lord
Class-specific/Neutral: Ayrenn; Red Bramman, Edict of Azura; Odahviing
For a list of Epics and Legendaries, you can check CVH’s top 10 Epics and Legendaries to craft on his youtube although recent card changes have changed some of the cards since then.
One more thing: if you have time to watch streamers (like CVH, Boomslife, MattOblivium, Snaxximan etc.) or YouTube (CVH, JustinLarson, GymClassHero) I would recommend doing that. These guys helped me a lot with their knowledge about the game. By watching and listening to them share their ideas and experiences you can learn a lot.
Well, guys, these are all the tips I can give you for now. I hope you enjoyed this article and that I have helped you in some way to understand this game better and make your free to play journey more rewarding.
My last piece of advice is that you should have fun and enjoy this amazing game and this community!
Between The Lanes 
I really don’t understand y all of u pros keep calling really good cards unplayable… What does that mean “unplayable” anyway? Intimidate has won me many games. Orcish warhammer is easily more “playable” then heavy battleaxe. I just would really appreciate a little more explanation as to why a card is unplayable rather then just being expected to take ur word for it. Especially when experience flies in the face of your statements
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Arenthia swindler… oh man that card allows you to swing the entire game against battlemage in one play yet u call it unplayable. That card has helped me jump rungs on the ladder many times… I just don’t understand your reasoning and with no explanation how could i?
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Now, bear in mind this is not my article and I don’t always 100% agree with every part of every article even though it is my site, but hopefully I can offer some clarity.
When someone like me uses “unplayable,” obviously the card could still be played. However, what I generally mean is a card that has no reason to be played in an optimal, constructed deck (almost every card in the game has been in one of my Arena decks and performed decently at one point or another). There are also times when they could be good. For the Orcish Warhammer example, you are correct that it’s better than many other cards such as the Battleaxe, but there is currently no constructed deck that wants to play it as anything more than a budget replacement. In competitive lists, it just sees 0 play because very few decks want that kind of card and in Battlemage for example, it is strictly worse than Sentinel Battlemace. Now, that’s where things get tricky, as there are definitely times where Warhammer is better than Battlamace if you need Breakthrough or added health instead of Ward, but those times are few and far between enough to where the general consensus is there is no non-budget reason to make the swap.”
Intimidate and Swindler are other cards you mentioned that can potentially be great in JUST the right circumstance, but are so narrow that they see 0 play in optimized decks of any class that I’ve seen in the last nine months. Other cards simply accomplish what they do better without the risk of being dead in your hand. So while these “unplayable” cards can indeed be good and even great in a very small percentage of cases, they are narrow enough to be deemed unplayable since you will almost definitely be losing more percentage points by including them in your deck in the first place due to their inconsistencies.
I strongly caution against using something like “this card performed very well for me in this exact situation” as a reason to play it, and look at the big picture. I think sample sizes are very misleading until at least 50/100 games bare minimum have been played, and it’s easy to see the results you want to see in a smaller sample size. This is an article on the concept that explains it fairly well and should be applied to deck-building as well: https://www.channelfireball.com/articles/owens-a-win-results-oriented-thinking/
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Thx that was very helpful.
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Glad you liked it thx buddy
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