How to get the most out of The Elder Scrolls Online’s February events, from the new Heart’s Week and Golden Pursuits campaign to Battlegrounds Deathmatch and charity tie-ins.
February in The Elder Scrolls Online is packed with a surprisingly dense schedule built around love, gold, and a whole lot of PvP. ZeniMax is using the month to quietly shake up ESO’s endgame calendar with a new Heart’s Week celebration, a Golden Pursuits campaign focused on riding and rewards, and a Battlegrounds Deathmatch weekend that keeps competitive players busy even after Whitestrake’s Mayhem wraps.
This guide breaks down what each February event actually offers, how they interlock, and what you should focus on if you care about account progression, PvP gearing, or just collecting more cosmetics and gold per hour than usual.
Why February Matters For ESO’s Endgame
Instead of a single tentpole festival, February is structured as a chain of overlapping micro-events. There is a PvP spike with Whitestrake’s Mayhem, a new PvE-and-companion-oriented Heart’s Week, a Golden Pursuits track that overlaps with both, and a Battlegrounds-only Deathmatch push at the end of the month. Layered on top is a charity initiative for the American Heart Association that gives ESO’s streamers and PvP scene a central focus.
Functionally, this means more XP windows, more reasons to log in daily, and more focused queues for both casual and competitive PvP. For veteran accounts this is a month where you can slam alt leveling, skyrocket companion rapport, and finish PvP collections with much better match availability than usual.
Heart’s Week: Companion Power Leveling And Social Play
Heart’s Week is the big new entry on the calendar, running February 11 to 18 and leaning into the idea of relationships in Tamriel. The headline bonus is increased XP and rapport for companions, which matters more than it sounds if you are planning for long term account strength.
Companions like Isobel, Sharp, Ember, and Azandar scale heavily with rapport and level. Rapport unlocks their questlines and extra passives, while level dictates their combat performance and access to skill lines. Under normal conditions this is a slow burn that requires daily play, but during Heart’s Week you can accelerate that grind dramatically.
To maximize the event, dedicate at least an hour per day to directed companion grinding. Pick a companion you actually intend to keep in your active roster and run a loop that combines world bosses, dolmens, and easy delves in a zone you know well. Focus your crafting writ turn ins, simple quests, and thieves guild or dark brotherhood dailies on actions that match your chosen companion’s likes to push rapport faster. Because the event also encourages more social activity, it is a good time to run public dungeons or normal trials with guildmates where your companion can quietly soak XP while you still play “real” content.
Since XP boosts stack, you should also layer in any available sources. Use Experience Scrolls from daily rewards or Psijic Ambrosia, and always train Riding before you start your session so that Golden Pursuits progress and companion XP farming line up.
Golden Pursuits: Riding Progress And Account-wide Value
Golden Pursuits is framed as a “get ready to ride” campaign that cuts across the February schedule. While ZeniMax has not detailed every specific reward tier, the positioning is clear. This is an event about movement, mounts, and account mobility, and it plugs directly into daily log ins and routine play.
Treat Golden Pursuits as your passive backbone for the month. If you have undertrained alts with terrible mount stats, this is the time to log each of them in daily and hit the stablemaster. The impact on long term account comfort is huge. Faster mount speed and increased stamina trivialize zone traversal, farming routes, and even PvP positioning.
During Heart’s Week, align your companion grind with Golden Pursuits objective types. If the campaign nudges you into riding, world content, or group activity, pivot your route to overlap. For example, ride between dolmens instead of running wayshrine to wayshrine, or choose world bosses that sit on logical horse paths. The small optimization of “never ride aimlessly” adds up over hundreds of minutes of event play.
If Golden Pursuits ends up offering event tickets or limited cosmetics, prioritize hitting any key thresholds early in the month. Leaving progress for the final days competes directly with the Battlegrounds Deathmatch weekend and may force you to pick between PvP queues and completionist FOMO.
Daily Login Rewards And The Future Tamriel Tomes System
Daily rewards for February and into March are more important than usual. On the surface they are still the familiar mix of soul gems, potions, crafting crates, and currency. In the background they are being shaped to eventually tie into the upcoming Tamriel Tomes collection system.
For now, the practical advice is simple. Log in every day, even if you do not have time to run content. Hit the login reward, train your riding, and if possible knock out a quick random dungeon or Battleground for daily bonuses. When Tamriel Tomes arrives, having a backlog of account resources and consumables will only make its collection and progression loops easier to engage with. February’s thick reward track is a soft preparation phase for that future layer of horizontal progression.
PvP Arc: Whitestrake’s Mayhem Through Deathmatch Weekend
February’s PvP arc essentially flows from the tail end of Whitestrake’s Mayhem into a focused Battlegrounds Deathmatch push from February 25 to March 4. Whitestrake’s brings the usual bonus Alliance Points, Tel Var, and drops across Cyrodiil, Imperial City, and Battlegrounds. Once it closes, many players typically vanish from PvP queues, but the Two-Sided Deathmatch weekend is designed to keep that momentum going.
For veterans, this means two distinct optimization windows. During Whitestrake’s, prioritize AP farming and any remaining achievement or motif grinds tied to the broader Alliance War. Queue for Battlegrounds when you want a change of pace but treat them as a side dish to your Cyrodiil and Imperial City goals.
Once Deathmatch weekend hits, flip the script completely. Focus on 8v8 Battlegrounds and treat this period as your primary time to finish Battleground-specific titles, dye unlocks, and any achievements tied to kill counts or match wins. With event spotlighting, queues will be faster and matchmaking more varied, making it easier to grind out objectives without endless repeats of the same small pool of opponents.
To handle the gear side, consider building or dusting off at least two PvP-ready setups per role. For DPS, have a pressure build and a burst build so you can adapt to team composition and map. For support and healers, keep one more offensive and one more defensive kit. The condensed event schedule means you do not have time to constantly respec during the weekend, so having prebuilt gear and skill loadouts on armory slots is a meaningful advantage.
Battlegrounds Deathmatch: How To Actually Win More Matches
The February 25 to March 4 Deathmatch window narrows the playlist to pure kill-focused maps. This concentrates sweaty premades and casual players in the same mode, but the shift to 8v8 also changes how fights play out.
On open maps, survivability and repositioning are everything. Classes with strong self-healing and mobility like Nightblades and Wardens tend to thrive, but any class can perform as long as you build with sustain and simple, repeatable burst combos. Avoid hyper-fragile glass cannon setups that rely on perfect coordination, since random queue teammates will not always follow up.
Stick with your team at all times. Solitary hero play is punished harder in 8v8 than standard 4v4, where you can sometimes outplay an entire enemy squad. In 8v8 stat checks and raw damage volume are much higher. Whenever possible, play around line-of-sight, pillars, and height differences, and treat ultimate usage as a team resource rather than a personal panic button. Drop your big ults when you see at least three teammates actively engaging or when you can deny a choke.
Communication is still limited in random queues, so use body language. Ping where you are going, crouch and wiggle to indicate disengage, and follow the tankiest player who seems to know what they are doing. Even this bare minimum of implicit coordination will win you more games than trying to solo roam and farm clips.
Charity Livestreams And Community Energy
The charity tie in for February centers on the American Heart Association. ESO creators are hosting a series of Heart’s Week themed livestreams that not only raise money but also spotlight PvP and event content. From a player perspective, this does two things. It drives more eyeballs and bodies into PvP queues, and it often leads to unofficial community challenges, dueling tournaments, and guild recruitment surges around the same time.
If you are looking to get into organized PvP, February is an ideal time to shop around for a guild. Check streamers who match your region and playstyle and pay attention to their communities’ LFG channels. Many groups use event months as soft tryouts, pulling in fresh players for Cyrodiil runs or Battleground squads when interest peaks.
How These Events Refresh ESO’s Endgame
What looks like a handful of themed events is actually a quiet experiment in seasonal structure. Instead of one big festival, February layers complementary incentives. PvE players get a strong reason to engage with companions and daily logins. PvP players get an extended runway of boosted activity capped by a focused Deathmatch weekend. Social players and creators get a charity cause to rally around.
For the average account, this means a tighter gameplay loop with fewer “dead” weeks. If ZeniMax keeps iterating in this direction, ESO’s endgame will feel more like a living season pass without the monetization baggage. You log in because there is almost always something time-limited worth doing, whether that is riding progress on your newest alt, pushing a companion to maximum rapport, or grinding one more Battleground title while queues are hot.
For now, the smartest approach is to map your own priorities onto the month. Decide which companions you care about, which PvP achievements or sets you still want, and how aggressively you want to fix your mount training across the account. Then let Heart’s Week, Golden Pursuits, and the Deathmatch weekend do the heavy lifting while you ride the wave of bonuses and busy queues.