Is this an option in TESO? Can I go full pacifist?

prolly yes

there was one press video where a guy levelled 2 levels by exploring only.

but it wont be easy.

Might get a few levels as Bloodlance said, if you do get exp from exploring. But I guess that would limit you somewhat, I haven't heard if you can Vahln, but that's not to say you can't.

Probably not, since you cant get of the first area without completing the quest to move on, so that prolly means you have to kill something.

Unless you can move on without doing the quests.

I'd certainly applaud alternatives

Heh yea I had seen a guy in WoW doing that. But it's so counterproductive it's almost masochistic.

There are ways to increase your experience from exploration, though. Will it be enough to hit max level? I don't know, but I know somebody will try!

Please be full pacifist, but please do it in Cyrodiil within render distance of me.

Not if you want to complete the vast majority of the adventuring quests. I suppose it may be possible to level crafting without entering combat, either through buying all of the required materials from other players, or by avoiding enemies while gathering out in the open world.

Now, you could get around the problem of "killing things" if you went fully into healing, and partied with other players the entire time. But then, of course, you are bearing witness to a bunch of killing, so perhaps you would no longer be able to truly call yourself a pacifist.

-Travail.

No

Travail beat me to it, but I would've suggested trying crafting and gathering which I'm sure would bag you a lot of XP. Don't know if healing would work though due to how few healing spells there are, but it could be possible. I have my doubts you'll be able to get to 50 just by doing this, but if you've time to spare and don't want to spend it doing anything else, go for it!

I think you kill things in tutorial, past cold harbor it is possible to lvl to 50 without killing I think, but I'm not sure about leaving starter island. Full pacifist might be impossible, for now. But I would not be surprised if retail would have the option, I think it's easily podsible to make it happen.

You get no weapon and armor expertise and would be completely useless in a party. No free beer for you

The only limitation for full pacifist is the tutorial and transfer from island to main lan, if it requres a quest involving killing a boss, you are screwed. But if it dors not, you can easily rack up exp from gathering, crafting, exploring, chest opening, book reading. Thete is deffinetely enough content there for to be possible, but exploration will be limited to areas where you can sneak past or run/ride through. So in dungeons you would only loot chrsts, bookshelvs and do on...

That's not true, you will level known skills too if you explore, dunno the rate but you can increase weapon related skills just by exploring, ofc using weapons make it faster. I have seen it somwhere, guy leveled and his sword skill went up by discovering location. Also you increase your armor skill by getting hammered by things, it does not mean you have to kill them...

I know you can level professions by reading books, the same as most other TES games, but I'm not sure about weapon skills. I would imagine you could get a single point towards a particular weapon if you did; for example, you read The Black Arrow and you get +1 to Archery.

If its possible...

Level 50 with level 1 skills, not sure what you would do then.

Complain about it probably.

You could certainly gain some character levels and some skill levels nonviolently (forgetting for the moment about the problem of getting off the starting island). Don't think you could get to max though, since the amount of XP you can get by other means is finite. When you run out of non-violent quests and places to explore, that's it. And remember that quests come in lines, so if the first quest involves killing you'd be blocked from the whole line.

Just to clarify, btw:

You gain character levels by gaining XP, which you get from killing things, completing quests and exploration.

You gain skill levels from books and also in different ways for different kinds of skills, but none of these results in gaining a character level:

- Class and weapon skills: by gaining XP while you have a skill from the line slotted in your hotbar (not by actually USING the skill). You might see your two-handed skill go up a level from exploring, for instance

- Crafting skills: through "inspiration" which comes from crafting.

- Armor skills: by gaining XP while wearing that armor type.

- Guild skills: by gaining guild rep. In the case of the mages guild you can get this just by finding lore books; in the case of the fighter's guild and Undaunted, I think you'll have to kill things.

Not sure about "world skills" like soul trap, or PvP skills.

The point is though that for most of your skills, leveling them requires gaining XP... so while they will level some just for exploration and non-violent quests, there's a limit there just as there is for gaining character levels.

So, yeah. Might be fun to see how far you can get, but it won't be all the way, for sure.

Hmm... though... there might be another approach. There are repeatable quests in Cyrodiil, and one type is a "scouting mission", which just involves getting to somewhere in enemy territory, so it's a non-violent quest... not sure whether those quests give "regular" XP or just PvP credits that you can use to buy stuff from PvP vendors. And of course, you level to 50 (temporarily) just by TRAVELING to Cyrodiil, which you can do at level 10, so that's a trivial way to level to max Don't think it should count though.

That would prolly be slightly more painful than leveling ONLY through killing

I would say no, for one you have to kill just to leave coldharbour.

There's probably some quests that have you find a certain amount of alchemical ingredients, so yeah it's entirely possible to be a pacifist. The only issue is that it will take you forever to reach level 50 or higher.

Uhh... I got nauseous by reading this.

Purely pacifist? No.