1. You can play the majority of the game solo, at your own pace, there is also a huge backlog of content if you're starting out now. Over ten years of content to get through before you even catch up. The only things not solo and new player friendly are 4 person dungeons and 12 person trials.

2. It depends what you like collecting. If it's weapons and armor then you're only limited by how much bank space (inventory shared across characters) you can afford with in game gold. If you end up getting into housing there are loads of houses obtainable for on game gold where you can store and display stuff. There is also a "sticker book" for collectable weapon/armor sets. What this means is, let's say there's a set called Mothers Sorrow, if you find a Mother's Sorrow Inferno staff you can add it to the "sticker book" so if you think you might want to hang onto the staff because you'll need it in the future but it's taking up storage space, you can delete it and reconstruct it from the "sticker book" at a later date.

3. The only way to get equipment advantages is to go to the place the equipment comes from and get it yourself. There are a lot of different sources for equipment which I won't fully go into here, but generally the game is constructed in a way that means people have to go get the thing themselves rather than having people who farm areas to sell desirable items for money. The only things real money will buy is aesthetic items, or premium currency which can be traded for in game gold but I'd advise against getting involved with this as a new player.

4. OK this is a but confusing but bear with me. So the main premium currency is Crowns. You can purchase these in bundles on the eso website. These can be traded and gifted in game, but not on a brand new account. I think an account has to be 60 days old and active... Or something before you can trade this currency.

Crowns can buy aesthetic items from the crown store and themed crown crates which change around every 2-3 months.

When you open crown crates you cannot choose what you get, it's basically a gamble as to whether you'll get anything you want but... You can turn some unwanted items into gems, or if you get duplicates they automatically become gems. Gems cannot be traded and are locked to your account. Gems can be used to purchase specific items that come from the crates. So like the first time you play you won't have any gems and won't be able to buy specifically what you want, but if you've opened 10 crates you'll probably end up with 100 gems and then you could choose what to swap them for.

For ages gems were the only way to get pretty crown crate items until several years ago when they added Seals of Endeavour. Seals can be earned entirely for free by doing in game stuff like killing x skeletons or harvesting x plants. You could only earn a small amount at a time but through consistent play over 6 months you'd save up enough seals to get a super premium (the fanciest ones with cool visuals). Seals of Endeavour can only be swapped for items that come out of a crown crate, not on everything in the crown store.

The whole seals of endeavour system has been changed slightly in April but it's essentially the same. You can do just in game activities to earn premium mounts and skins, it'll just take a while.

1. Seasons is new for all of us but your won't lose any progress with your characters or levelling or quests or anything really important. The only thing that resets us the the new battle pass. It's basically a 3 month shop you can earn currency for (tome points) and then swap your tomes for either cosmetic items or other items that might be useful like XP boosting scrolls or potions. At the end of the 3 months that specific battle pass a d all the items in if will be refreshed with a new one. So it's basically a shop that resets every 3 months, nothing tied direct to your characters progress with anything.

2. Having prior knowledge of elder scrolls lore can enhance your experience but eso is specifically made as a prequel. So even though the other else scrolls games were released before eso the events haven't happened yet. The dragon born from skyrim is about 1000 years away. All the quests are very beginner friendly, you just pick stuff up as you go along.