Do you remember the 1.4 Chasm with Baizhu and Dendro Copium leaks? Cause I sure do. Those were some nostalgic times for Genshin Impact. I’ll tell you that much.

If you don’t remember or know what I’m talking about, all you need to know is that after almost 3 years of Baizhu’s existence in the story, we finally get to play him.

He fills a fairly empty role as a dendro healer and mini-shielder, joining Yaoyao as one of the dendro survivability options. This guide will teach you everything you need to know about Baizhu from his best artifacts and weapons, to general playstyle and team compositions.

Elemental Skill Basics

Baizhu’s elemental skill is quite unique and simple. He sends out a spirit that deals dendro damage to up to three enemies in an area around him and then returns to the player to heal the party.

Unfortunately, the damage scales on attack and the healing scales on his max HP, which means that for the most part, the damage from this ability is negligible as we mainly want to focus on the big heals for the party.

Elemental Burst Basics

Like Baizhu’s skill, Baizhu’s burst also has an attack-based damage and HP based survivability mechanic. Upon casting Baizhu’s elemental burst, it will create a shield for the active character.

This shield only lasts for 2.5 seconds and has a very low damage absorption compared to other shields in the game, but that’s where the rest of Baizhu’s burst come into play.

Not only does the shield have a 2.5 second duration, but it also refreshes itself every 2.5 seconds as well. Everytime the shield refreshes or is broken, your active character will be healed based on Baizhu’s max HP and a dendro spirit will emerge to attack a nearby enemy based on Baizhu’s attack.

With Baizhu’s second ascension talent, the character who is healed by this shield will gain increased bloom reaction damage, as well as increased aggravate and spread reaction damage. This buff is calculated with every 1,000 HP increment that Baizhu has, up to 50,000 max HP. Specifically, aggravate and spread reactions gain 0.8% increased damage for every 1,000 HP that Baizhu has, so that equates to 40% when Baizhu is at 50,000 HP.

Meanwhile, bloom reactions gain a little more than that at 2% per 1,000 max HP that Baizhu has, which maxes out at 100% increased damage with the 50,000 cap.

No matter how small the shield is, blocking any damage with a shield will prevent the character from being knocked off their feet, which means a benefit of Baizhu’s burst is a pseudo-resistance to interruption when his mini-shields block damage.

Theorycrafting

Baizhu is a really cool character on paper, but as we take a deeper dive into his mechanics, he doesn’t come without his minor issues.

*The first issue is very common among other characters and that issue is energy. Baizhu has the standard restrictive burst cost of 80 energy with a 20 second cooldown, while his elemental skill generates 3 to 4 particles on a 10 second cooldown.

Of course, this restrictive burst cost can be met with help from dendro teammates or energy recharge weapons like Jadefall’s Splendor, Prototype Amber, or Favonius Codex.

However, I want you to note that energy recharge benchmarks heavily change based on the type of team you play. For example, teams like Nilou Bloom give Baizhu more field time to absorb energy particles and cast 2 elemental skills while in a Cyno hypercarry team, Cyno often hogs too much time for Baizhu to absorb particles or cast his skill a second time.

*The second issue is lack of AoE damage. His catalyst attacks are similar to Heizou in the sense that they are melee, but they lack the sweeping AoE that Heizou has.

Not only does Baizhu lose the advantage of range, but he also loses dendro application in situations with multiple enemies. Nahida attacks in a fixed line in front of her and can apply dendro to multiple enemies in that line. Once we add in the elemental skills of these two dendro catalysts, it becomes no contest that Nahida is the queen of AoE dendro application.

Baizhu’s burst applies dendro every single hit, but unfortunately, the AoE on each hit is practically non-existent. This ultimately results in a limitation for solo dendro application in specific teams like triple hydro Nilou setups, so he’s not a replacement for Nahida.

Constellations

Baizhu’s constellations are not very game-changing given how much constellations will cost you, so let’s just quickly run through their biggest effects.

Like many other first constellations, Baizhu gains an extra charge on his elemental skill with C1. This is a solid first constellation that gives him better energy generation and flexibility when it comes to certain team rotations, but it’s nothing to chase after.

C2 grants Baizhu to unleash a miniature elemental skill every 5 seconds when your active character hits an enemy. Because C2 is a miniature version of his elemental skill, the healing is 20% of what his normal skill would heal for, but the biggest catch of C2 is that it also can apply dendro, increasing his rate of dendro application.

C4 is a team-wide 80 elemental mastery buff, but this number is quite small even when compared even when compared to 4-Star artifacts like the 4-set Instructor, so it’s a bit unfortunate that C4 is nothing more than a stepping stone to C6.

Regarding C6 itself, it increases Baizhu’s burst damage based on his max HP. And when elemental skills or his C2 effect hits an enemy, it will generate one of his shields from his elemental burst. As you would probably guess, since his shields also launch dendro attacks when they expire or break, creating extra shields once again can increase Baizhu’s rate of dendro application but is very expensive to justify chasing C6.

It’s much easier to pair him with dendro characters like Dendro Traveler and Collei because they’re free, or Nahida and Yaoyao since they’ve been available recently and many players might have them.

Artifacts

Similar to Yaoyao, Baizhu prefers simple healer builds due to his split scaling and low damage multipliers. The two safest artifact sets for Baizhu are either the 4-set Deepwood Memories or the 4-set Ocean Hued Clam.

In the case that no other character on your bloom, burgeon, or hyperbloom teams can hold this set, Baizhu should hold this set to reduce the dendro resistance of enemies and buff the damage output of your bloom DPS. If this is a scenario that doesn’t apply to you, then the 4-set Ocean Hued Clam is your best generalist set.

Baizhu constantly grants big heals to the team when his shields expire or break, so it’s pretty easy to get free damage out of Ocean Hued Clam’s bubble. While this free damage is definitely nice, some may prefer to use Baizhu for solely buffing the team and don’t really care about his damage contribution or healing output.

In that case, the 4-set Noblesse Oblige or the 4-set Instructor are your go to options for team buffs, each with their own strengths. For example, the 4-set Instructor can shine in a Nilou Bloom team, where the ATK% from Noblesse Oblige is negligible with characters like Nilou and Kokomi who have HP scalings.

Another example would be in an aggravate team where your electro DPS may have enough EM buffs from a character like Sucrose, and would prefer the 20% ATK from Noblesse, since maybe you’re not running an attack buffer like Bennett or Kujou Sara.

Choosing between these two sets is purely up to your own evaluation of what type of team you want to build with Baizhu, but both are nice options and easy to farm, so don’t be afraid to switch around later down the line.

Regardless of what set you run on Baizhu, his artifact stats are energy recharge or HP in the sands, HP in the goblet, and HP or healing bonus in the circlet.

Energy recharge in the sands is highly recommended, especially if you run a weapon without an energy recharge stat or passive. Otherwise, it’s pretty standard to run healing bonus in the circlet and HP everywhere else to maximize healing, with HP in the circlet as a substitute if you don’t have a healing bonus circlet yet.

Substat focus should be as much energy recharge as possible, and then HP for healing and elemental mastery for Nilou Bloom teams.

Weapons

I’ve already alluded to the fact that Baizhu heavily relies on energy from his weapons to not have insane energy recharge requirements in artifacts, and already name-dropped a few weapons, so let’s go over the best catalysts right now.

The two weapons that you want to prioritize on Baizhu are his signature weapon, Jadefall’s Splendor and the craftable 4-Star Prototype Amber. It’s undeniable that Jadefall’s passive is wonderful for energy generation, but with how little damage Baizhu does at a base level, the passive’s elemental damage bonus goes to waste.

It’s not recommended to pull for this weapon unless you just love Baizhu, because Prototype Amber exists. Prototype Amber is the F2P option of Jadefall, also providing energy over time when casting an elemental burst.

Some other options aside from these two best options are Everlasting Moonglow and A Thousand Floating Dreams. These 5-Star catalysts are delicacies for whales who have extra copies of them. By the way, if you want to get 5-Star catalysts easily, then getting Genshin Impact Accounts directly will be a good choice! Everlasting Moonglow is just a pure stat stick for healing bonus and HP, while A Thousand Floating Dreams provides a small EM buff in exchange for having no energy recharge stats or passive.

Other F2P friendly options for Baizhu include Favonius Codex and Thrilling Tales of Dragon Slayers. Just like A Thousand Floating Dreams, the idea of Thrilling Tales is to provide buffs to your team. But it also provides no solution to Baizhu’s energy problems. Favonius Codex is a part of one of the best 4-Star weapon lines in the game and it can work wonderfully on Baizhu given that it provides a hefty amount of energy and he doesn’t need to focus damage stats.

Baizhu In Nilou Teams

Moving into the last section, teams are pretty standard for Baizhu given that he doesn’t really do anything special. He’s a solid choice in the several different dendro archetype teams and Nilou Bloom highlights that flexibility he provides to teams.

The Nilou and Baizhu pairing always runs the pair plus one more dendro character and one more hydro character. Without Baizhu’s healing, most of the time, the hydro slot had to be Kokomi or Barbara for healing, unless you also have Yaoyao.

Baizhu adds a layer of flexibility to choose an offensive hydro character like Xingqiu, Yelan, Ayato, and Childe, but you can also still choose the defensive options with Kokomi and Barbara.

The second dendro character should provide sustained dendro application, which means Nahida is your best option, and Dendro MC is your best F2P option.

However, Collei and Yaoyao’s shorter duration of dendro application also work fine if you decide to on-field Baizhu for dendro catalyst attacks, or have Baizhu’s C2/C6, which increases his rate of dendro application off-field.

Also Read: Genshin Impact: How To Win While AFK?

Aggravate & Quickbloom

Another archetype where it’s easy to see the effects of flexibility that Baizhu provides to teams is in quicken and aggravate.

Before Yaoyao and Baizhu, these teams were locked into two options. Either you forfeited a second electro DPS to run Dori or Kuki Shinobu for healing to keep Kazuha or Sucrose in the squad, or you dropped Kazuha/Sucrose for a defensive option with Jean, Sayu, Kokomi, C6 Diona, etc. With Yaoyao, and now Baizhu, this issue is solved.

What makes Baizhu an upgrade over Yaoyao in these aggravate teams is Baizhu’s ascension talent, that provides extra aggravate and spread reaction damage. This can be non-negligible, especially for characters like Cyno who take a long time on the field and get a lot of aggravate reactions in one rotation.

Generally, the team consists of your main electro DPS, Baizhu, and off-field electro DPS, and either Kazuha or Sucrose in the last slot for extra buffs, or an off-field hydro character for a “quickbloom” setup which offers both hyperbloom and aggravate reactions at the same time.

Main electro DPS characters are your on-field characters like Cyno, Keqing, Raiden, or Razor, while the off-field electro DPS characters are more along the lines of Yae Miko, Fischl, and Beidou.

The hydro characters you can pick to pair with characters like Cyno or Keqing for quickbloom are generally Xingqiu, Yelan, or Kokomi, given how sustainable their off-field hydro application is.

Hyperbloom/Burgeon

The last team archetype to consider is hyperbloom and burgeon, which use very similar options to that of an aggravate team.

However, instead of an on-field electro DPS, we now have a dedicated off-field hyperbloom and burgeon trigger with Kuki Shinobu and Thoma, respectively. Other teammates should include a mandatory hydro character and a flex slot that usually consists of another hydro or dendro applicator.

99% of the time you’re going to want to select a second dendro character in the last slot, given that Baizhu’s dendro application is slow and pyro can eat up your dendro application with burning. The options outside of Baizhu generally include Nahida, Dendro MC, Yaoyao, or Collei as per usual.

Unfortunately, since Kuki and Thoma are going to be off-field triggers for hyperbloom and burgeon, it will be hard to make use of Baizhu’s ascension talent for the extra bloom reaction damage. This is because the effect only lingers for 6 seconds and the effect only refreshes for the on-field character.

It’s a bit of an inconvenience to switch back into Kuki and Thoma constantly, so generally, don’t worry about utilizing this buff too much.

If you’ve logged into the game even once, you know that the scale and scope of ESO are absolutely enormous. Because of the huge variety of things that can capture a player’s attention, a lot of really helpful features can go unnoticed.

Along with that same vain, some things that might seem obvious to long time players may be obscure to those new to the game. So, here, I’ll be pointing out ten of those features that every ESO player needs to know about.

1. Tutorials

Our first feature is located in the Help menu of all places.

The devs have put together a huge amount of information in the Tutorials area to help new and old players alike learn more about the game. The chapter and DLC sections really just include descriptions of the associated content, but the sections before and after those like Player Basics, Character Progression, Combat, Battlegrounds, and the like contain some really helpful tidbits of information about several aspects of ESO.

While you won’t become a professional PVPer just by reading through the Alliance Warfare section, for example, you will have at least a general understanding of the topic, so I definitely recommend checking the Tutorials out, especially if you’re new to the game.

2. Options Tips

The second item on our list is really an amalgamation of different settings changes that will help new and veteran players alike get more out of ESO.

Up first is the Performance versus Fidelity setting. This setting appeared back in June 2021 and allows you to swap between high-quality graphics in Fidelity mode (4k for the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 and 1440p for the Series S) and high-speed performance with Performance mode at 60 frames per second.

Performance mode results in a bit of a loss to graphics with the visuals coming in at 1080p, but it’s well worth the loss in largescale or complicated content, such as Cyrodiil or some dungeons and trials.

The audio area really allows you to customize the way you want the game to sound. Every aspect of the audio can be reduced or increased based on your preference. If you’re doing a lot of group content, I highly recommend turning up the player voice option to be louder than everything else so you can easily hear callouts from your goupmates.

Another little feature that I just recently found out about in this area is the ability to change the intro music to that of previous chapters. I definitely recommend checking out the Elsweyr chapter intro if you’re not a fan of the current chapter’s music, or you’re just looking for something a little different. It slaps.

There are just a couple of settings in the gameplay section that I want to highlight, but they’re both gamechangers if you haven’t used them before.

First, you can change the color of enemy ground effects to really pop out at you, which I’ve found is super helpful in fast-paced content. I’ve set mine to bright pink, but you can change yours to any color you like.

The other modification I recommend making is switching your ground abilities to a quick cast. When it’s set to automatic, you have to press the button twice to cast the ability. Changing this setting will automatically cast your AoEs in the area of your reticle, which really makes combat feel a lot smoother and more intuitive.

A quick change I recommend making in your camera settings is your third person field of view. If you’re unaware, you can hold the down button on the d-pad and pull back on the right joystick to expand your third-person view. This camera setting allows you to expand it even further, which is really helpful in all kinds of content.

If you’re the social type, you can have your text chat display on screen with the hud chat display setting. Additionally, if you’re in multiple guilds, you can change the text color of each guild chat to differentiate between them easily .

The last few options I recommend changing are in the Combat area.

First, we’ll look at the attribute and ability bar settings. Typically, the more information you can get in ESO, the better off you’ll be. Adding your attribute and ability bars to your display, turning on attribute numbers and percents, and activating front and back bar ability timers will help you keep up with your resources and improve your AoE and dot uptimes.

Next, you can turn on combat text to see how much damage you’re doing with your abilities. There’s something innately satisfying about watching all those numbers pop as you crush your enemies.

The final setting I recommend turning on is the buffs and debuffs option. By keeping up with the buffs, you’re giving yourself and the debuffs you’re applying to your enemies, you can really improve your overall damage per second. These options changes are undeniably powerful tools that will help any player get more out of every aspect of ESO.

3. Endeavors

The Endeavors system is a daily reward system that allows players to earn rewards by completing various tasks and objectives. It was introduced with the Waking Flame DLC back in September 2021.

Each day, you can complete certain tasks in exchange for a specified quantity of Endeavor currency and a small amount of either ESO Gold or experience. These tasks may include activities, such as killing monsters, completing quests, crafting items, or using specific abilities.

Five Endeavors are available each day, but you can only earn the rewards from three of them. Additionally, you can complete one of three weekly Endeavors that include more extensive requirements and reward greater amounts of the Endeavor currency and gold or experience.

The Endeavor currency can be used to purchase various rewards from the Endeavors store. These rewards include items from the variety of crown crates currently available in the Crown Store, such as mounts, skins, non-combat pets, costumes, and more.

The Endeavors system is account-wide, meaning that tasks completed by each of your characters count toward each of the daily and weekly Endeavors. This reward system is great because you’ll basically complete Endeavors passively by just playing the game.

Although it does take quite a while to amass enough of the currency, Endeavors are essentially a way to obtain crown crate rewards for free, so I definitely recommend taking advantage of them as often as possible.

4. Bank Tips

For our fourth spot, I’ve recently heard a few misconceptions about how the player bank works, so I wanted to quickly describe some of the attributes of the bank to hopefully help clear up any confusion for newer players.

First, your bank is account-wide. All of your characters can access the items you store there from any banker in Tamriel. Additionally, if you don’t have ESO+ and use your bank to store your crafting supplies, you can access them on any crafting station in the world without removing them from your bank.

Along that same vein, gear stored in your bank can be deconstructed or used for research at any crafting station without removing it from the bank as well.

I hope this explanation helps clarify the player bank and its uses for those of you who are new to ESO.

5. Zone Guide

Number five on the list is a great tool that isn’t directly introduced in regular gameplay and is therefore often missed entirely by new players: the zone guide.

If you’re unfamiliar, the zone guide is a feature that provides you with a comprehensive overview of the current zone you’re in. It can be accessed on Xbox by pressing select to go the map, then holding down the X button.

The zone guide is really helpful for getting a zone to 100% because it points you in the direction of your next objective, whether that’s the remainder of the zone quest, a delve or public dungeon you haven’t explored, or a set station or skyshard you haven’t discovered.

The only thing the zone guide can’t help you find is the lorebooks in the zone, but it does give you the name of each book, which is helpful if you need to google the location or search for it in some other guide like The ESO App–another tool that I highly recommend.

When you’re having trouble finding a location or the next quest giver, be sure to try out the zone guide!

6. Continuous Attack Passive

The sixth item on the list is the Continuous Attack Passive in the Assault skill line.

Continuous Attack provides some PVP-based buffs, but those aren’t what we’re after. What really makes this passive shine is that it provides Major Gallup at all times, thereby increasing your mount speed by 30%!

When you first create your character, you’ll probably be able to run faster on foot than on your mount, so this passive is really nice for helping you get to the next part of your adventure a little more quickly.

To gain access to Continuous Attack, you’ll first need to reach rank 3 in the Assault skill line, and the only way to do so is by participating in PVP activities, such as Battlegrounds or Cyrodiil. Even if you’re not really into PvP, you’ll definitely want to do a few daily BGs to unlock this helpful passive.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online: How To Get Undaunted Keys? - Quick Guide

7. Leaving PVP Zones

Speaking of PVP, number seven is another topic I’ve seen discussed in several posts over the years: easy ways to leave Cyrodiil and Imperial City.

Travel in these PVP zones is different from PVE in that you can’t just select a wayshrine and travel to it in exchange for gold. In Cyrodiil, transitus shrines are used to move from keep to keep, and in Imperial City there is no fast travel method other than dying, which causes you to lose half of the Tel Var you’re holding.

You can choose where you revive after dying in Cyrodiil, but if you don’t want to give the enemy alliance the satisfaction of murdering you to death, then there are a couple of quick and easy ways to leave both of these zones.

One option is to queue for whichever campaign you’re not in (that is, either Cyrodiil or Imperial City). Then, you can either use the wayshrine at your alliance’s home gate in Cyrodiil or just walk through the exit door of your alliance’s base in Imperial City.

If the other campaign is full, then another option is to just queue for a random dungeon or battlegrounds match. After you leave the dungeon or BG, you’ll be in the PVE zone you were in before going to Cyrodiil or Imperial City.

If you’re more of a PVEr, who casually PVPs from time to time, I hope this helps you stay safer out in the streets and sewers!

8. Gear Improvements Passives

For our eighth spot, be sure to take the gear improvement passives in each crafting skill line before upgrading your gear’s quality.

Each of the Blacksmithing, Clothing, Jewelry Crafting, and Woodworking skill lines contains a passive in which you can invest up to three skill points to reduce the cost of improving your gear.

For example, with no skill points in the Resin Expertise passive, it takes 20 rosin to upgrade a woodworking item from epic to legendary. After maxing out that passive, only eight rosin are required for the same upgrade. That’s a whopping 60% reduction in the improvement cost!

With the high cost of legendary improvement materials, it kills me when I hear about someone who upgraded their gear to gold quality without these passives.

So, if you only take one piece of advice from this guide, please make it this one!

9. Mundus Stones

Number nine on the list is mundus stones.

The boons you gain from these stones are some of the most important buffs in the game, and yet I’ve met some newer players who weren’t even aware that these stones exist!

If you’re in the same boat, there are 13 mundus stones scattered around Tamriel, each of which provides a unique bonus to your character. Some of these boons are more powerful than others, but they’re all helpful in some capacity, so I recommend taking the first one you come across and then swapping it for one of the more useful bonuses when you get the chance.

If you’re a member of a well-established guild, you might get that chance sooner rather than later, as most fully-stocked guild houses will have all 13 stones available for use in one place.

As I mentioned before, each mundus boon is useful in its own right, but as a DPS main, I tend to lean toward the thief for PVE and the lover for PVP.

Of course, the choice of stone depends on the content and the rest of your build, but these boons will generally serve you well in most damage dealing applications. No matter what role you play in ESO, make sure you pick up a mundus boon early on in your adventures.

10. Free Player Home

The final topic on our list is how to get access to free (or essentially free) player homes.

Housing is a huge aspect of ESO, so much so that some players make it their number one focus. If you’re the creative type, or if you’re like me and just looking for a place to store all the furnishings you pick up through questing and achievements, you can gain access to several houses without spending a dime on crowns or even using your hard-earned gold.

Many large cities will have a sign posted somewhere with a quest marker labeled “Seeking Tenant!” Through completing this short quest, you’ll receive a player home in the respective city.

Keep in mind that you can only claim one such home per character. Also, you’ll still see the “Seeking Tenant!” quest on new characters even if you’ve claimed that city’s home is on a different character in the past. So, make sure you only do the quest in a city where you don’t yet have a house.

These homes are typically very small, but they’re great starting points for the aspiring designer. If you’re looking for something a bit more substantial and you have access to the Elsweyr chapter, you can complete a few achievements to earn the keys to a fairly large house in Rimmen: the Hall of the Lunar Champion.

The home has four rooms, each of which is unlocked by completing a different achievement or quest. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages wiki has a great guide on how to unlock the entire home.

The house has plenty of space for any housing aficionado. Be sure to complete the required achievements so you can get your own little slice of Tamriel. So, I know I said that was the last item on the list, but I do have one last bonus tip for new and old players alike: don’t be afraid of veteran content!

My advice is to pick up a couple of base game undaunted pledges, queue into them on vet with whatever role you’re most comfortable playing, and see what it’s all about. Of course, there are some challenges you’ll probably want to hold off on until you have a good bit of experience, like vet DLC dungeons, hard modes, trifectas, and things like that. But most of the base game dungeons can easily be completed by a group of CP 160 characters, even on hard mode!

As many of us begin to reach closer to level 30 on our battle passes, I wanted to review and analyze which light cones are the ones you should consider adding to your lineup and which are not worth taking for now.

There are a total of seven different Light Cones to choose from. Each corresponds to a path in the game, so no matter what characters you have, you should be able to get value out of one of these. Each Light Cone will be timestamped. So, if there’s a certain one you wanted my insight on, feel free to skip to that portion, and the order they are covered does not have anything to do with their usefulness.

Since this will be our first battle pass, I will be reviewing each light code at their superimposition level one just to make things simpler.

Carve The Moon, Weave The Clouds

We will begin with our first Light Cone, Carved The moon, Weave The Clouds for their Harmony, which states at the start of the battle and whenever the wearish turn begins.

One of the following effects is applied randomly. All allies’ attack increases by 10%. All allies’ critical damage increases by 12% or all allies’ energy regeneration rate increases by 6%. The applied effect cannot be identical to the last effect applied and will replace the previous effect.

The applied effect will be removed when the wearer has been knocked down. Effects of the similar type cannot be stacked. This Light Cone has a lot of useful buffs. However, the biggest issue with it is just the lack of consistent support. The best support here being the critical damage and having a 1/2 chance of appearing can be a real coin toss and in the best-case scenario, it would only have 50% uptime, but realistically more close to 33%.

When compared to the consistency of Chorus or Dance! Dance! Dance!, and Planetary Rendezvous, even with the type restriction, it is a hard Light Cone to sell even more so since it doesn’t really boost any of our three main harmony units or change their play styles.

It’s not awful and can be great for damaged showcases if all situations line up, but I wouldn’t recommend it since I like consistency.

Related: Honkai Star Rail: All Details On Combat & Characters - Beginners Friendly Guide

Return To Darkness

Next, we Return to Darkness for the Hunt, which increases the wearer’s crit rate by 12%.

After a critical hit, there is a 16% fixed chance to dispel one buff on the targeted enemy. This effect can only trigger once per attack. Another RNG Light Cone, however I’m a bit more favorable for this one as it does have a consistent boost to a critical rate and a high amount at that.

My only issue here is the chance of this proccing can be annoying, but the spell is not something to take lightly and just that utility alone can make some fights a lot more manageable, such as the fight against the Searing Prowler and Forgotten Hall Stage 12.

Don’t worry, more enemies like this will appear in the future, as well. If you have no plans on building Pella, who is your main source for dispel, this might be a decent pickup even if you don’t run it 100% of the time, just for the small times you may need it.

Nowhere to Run

Next up, we got Nowhere to Run for the Destruction, which increases the wearer’s attack by 24%.

Whenever the wearer defeats an enemy, they restore health equal to 12% of their attack. While not as good as Something Irreplaceable, this could make a good substitute for anyone wanting to throw this on their Clara.

Arlan and Trailblazer Physical can use this, as well. But I think On the Fall of an Aeon works better for them and it’s also free to play.

The only issue with this Light Cone is situations where some other character steals to kill when you needed it to heal. But outside of that, it’s pretty solid and might be useful for some nasty Clara solo.

This Is Me

We are now on to This Is Me for the Preservation, which increases the wearer’s defense by 16%. It also increases the damage of the wearer when they use their ultimate by 60% of the wearer’s defense.

This effect only applies one time per enemy target. This is probably the most optimal Light Cone for Trailblazer Preservation for a good mixture of damage and defense and will help great against fights, such as Cocolia when she spawns her Ice Spears.

Also, I feel like this isn’t my first time mentioning this funky March 7th setup. But for a few of you looking to push her into some weird counter DPS, this is another Light Cone to help push that narrative.

Today Is Another Peaceful Day

Next up, we have Today Is Another Peaceful Day for the Erudition.

After entering battle, it increases the wearer’s damage based on their max energy. Damage increases by 0.2% per point of energy up to 160 energy.

To make this a bit easier to understand, every multiple of 10 is 2%, so a unit with 120 like Himiko will gain 24%, which honestly isn’t bad. However, when compared to the free to play option, The Seriousness of Breakfast, which is super easy to superimposition due to it being free to play, becomes much harder for this to become a worthwhile pick, not to mention on some units like Serval. It’s not good at all and it is not something really worth recommending at the moment.

We Will Meet Again

Second to last, we have We Will Meet Again for the Nihility.

After the wearer uses basic attack or skill, the wearer deals 48% of attack as additional damage to a random enemy that is attacked by abilities. This one is a kind of funky. It doesn’t offer any real boost to your base stats.

However, you get additional damage based on attack on a more support debuffing unit, making it very weird to use. Not to mention, our current Nihility units aren’t the biggest damage dealers, with raw attack numbers being average at best, such as with Welt. Not really something I can say is worthwhile, but maybe someone in the future can make great use out of this.

Warmth Shortens Cold Nights

Lastly, we have Warmth Shortens Cold Nights for the Abundance, which increases the wearer’s maximum health by 16%. When using basic attack or skill, it restores all allies’ health by an amount equal to two percent of their respected maximum health.

In the previous time, I’ve mentioned this Light Cone as being a very good option. Unfortunately, this has not changed and I think it’s great for people who want to do auto battle since I am sure people have noticed by now healers suck on auto battle since they will take until the lowest amount of health before they even consider healing you, which can result in your death.

Outside of that, I don’t think this is too great to pick up since Abundance is one of the rare paths with almost too many good options in their Light Cone choices. Only pick this up if you’re looking to use it for auto battle just for a quick.

By the way, if you want to have the Light Cones or chacracters with five stars, geting Honkai Star Rail Accounts will be a good choice!

What’s the point of doing damage if there’s nothing to kill?

I’ve been around gaming for way too long and the best groups always have somebody in a role when we’re trying to push harder content. We saw this in Diablo 3 even when it wasn’t really intentional by the designers, players still just figured it out. So, while everyone was worried about all the juicy info that Rhykker got from the dev talk and the service land weekend, I honed in on the subtle drop that supports are going to be required for Diablo 4 endgame.

Let us start with limited deaths and Nightmare Dungeons. The Sacred Nightmare Dungeons will have a death limit of 12. And the Ancestral Nightmare Dungeons will have a death limit of four. Four deaths per run. That’s going to be rough. Who doesn’t die in Diablo 3? They are the guys who use zBarb builds.

What is zBarb? It is also called the support Barbarian and is one of the strongest supports in the game and the addition of Crowd Control Resistance. By the way, if you want to improve your Barbarian, then you have to prepare a lot of Diablo 4 Gold in advance. In the meantime, you can also build more powerful builds.

But here’s the thing and I’ve been playing Rhykker’s video since right after beta weekend because I saw how much damage some people can do and there’s just not enough mobs for everyone to be killing 100% of the time.

Also, from Rhykker’s video, we learned that monsters are going to hit really hard. So, if you don’t spec into defense or some kind of utility, you’re going to die. It is one of the reasons we have zero damage builds in Diablo 3. Speaking of DPS, you’re going to need a Barb to group things again. Here is a side note: I’m very happy about that because I love being a zBarb in Diablo 3.

Then, that’s kind of my next point. Some people just enjoy playing support roles. It’s what I like to do, and this is also a way for casual players or players that just don’t have time to provide their skills to join endgame content. This allows everyone to provide value and play with friends and enjoy the game.The difference is that Diablo 4 supports are going to do more than just buff the party. I’ve been calling them S-Builds (Support Builds).

Let’s get a little deeper into that. The support classes are going to have different roles. It’s really impossible to say which class will have which role because there’s going to be a lot of synergy to figure out with the endgame.

One of the main things is Crowd Control. We know monsters will get CC immune just like in Diablo 3. And just like in Diablo 3, we can’t have everyone trying to CC everything. We’ll end up with a ton of unstoppable monsters coming after us and running all over the place. Veiled Shot just dropped the video on this topic, but he just barely scratches a surface that will need support builds. If you are interested in it, you can check it out.

And then, we’ll have to complete objectives. There’s a lot of endgame to do in Diablo 4. Unless you’re on a mount, you move pretty slowly between objectives and running around maps. So, if an objective focused support role comes in, he can grab the idle. He can run back and put it on the pedestal or whatever you got to put it. That means that we’re just going to be doing boss fight after boss fight and if you want farming, that’s farming.

Also Read: Everything About Diablo 4 Co-op, Open World, PVP & Strongholds

This is going to be the most useful for leveling glyphs. If this works right, we can just form the bosses and clear dungeons a lot faster and while we’re trying to kill stuff, vulnerability is just too powerful not to take advantage of. But if a DPS has to spec into it, then they miss out on more damage. So, if a support class can cause almost constant vulnerability, then they’ll provide more value than trying to do damage. And with all that, the supports are also going to be there for typical reasons: buffing and debuffing monsters. Some can do this better than others. But that’s going to be something to look at once these rolls start to flush out a little better.

As far as the classes go, I love the Barbarian and it has a lot of options for support classes and for damage, there’s a lot of a lot to work with there. Rogue is also going to be probably something to look at. Necromancer has a lot of opportunities with Bone Prison, which I think causes vulnerability. The Sorceress does a lot of CC with her ice build, so that might be a great option for like taking out the world boss.

All in all, we’re going to see supports playing a huge role in the meta for Diablo 4.

2023 for Elder Scrolls Online is going to be a very interesting year indeed. Every year, ESO will release four DLCs with big game-changing updates and will release within each quarter of the year.

This year, however, ESO is breaking tradition, but in my opinion, for a very good reason. As much as I love ESO and have done for the eight years I’ve played it, it has its issues. I think anyone who has played the game for longer than two years can agree with me on that. These issues have divided the community and have left some feeling ignored by ZeniMax Online Studios.

For whatever the reason, the majority of these issues have never been addressed or fixed. But, let’s look on the bright side that will all change within 2023.

The first half of this year will remain the same as any other. We have already received our first DLC, the Scribes of Fate, which added two new dungeons to the game: Scrivener’s Hall and Bal Sunnar. Along with that, we have new item sets and of course the usual update, which buffs, nerfs and changes parts of the game.

In June, we can expect to see a chapter. As usual, this year is taking us back to Morrowind with the Telvanni Peninsula, focusing on the city of Necrom and the Daedric Prince, Hermaeus Mora.

Following on from that, in the third and fourth quarter, we won’t receive any new DLC for ESO. We were told that something secret is being planned for the end of the year, something to do with an endless dungeon experience.

However, we are breaking norms and are not receiving another dungeon DLC or Zone DLC. Instead, ZeniMax Online Studios has promised to tackle the many issues plaguing ESO and focus entirely on fixing and updating instead of adding.

Personally, I think this is a great idea. I’ve always said that it’s better to stop adding content and fix what already exists within the game rather than continue adding to what’s already broken. Although I think so, I am also very curious about your thoughts. You can try to answer the following questions. How you feel about the change coming to this year? Do you think it is a good idea or a bad idea? Are you looking forward to the fixes and updates or are you worried that it may be made worse by the plan for 2023?

Now, I want to talk about Necrom. The Necrom Chapter for ESO will be releasing on June 5th for PC and Mac and then June 20th for console. Now, although the year's plan is different. This chapter, in comparison to others, is no different.

Related: Elder Scrolls Online: How To Prepare For Arcanist Class Release?

This chapter will take place in the Telvani Peninsula in Morrowind. Our main city is Necrom, which is where the chapter gets its name and is heavily focused around the Daedric Prince, Hermes Mora.

The chapter will allow the player to explore this magical and fungi-infested part of Morrowind, but also have access to Apocrypha - Hermaeus Mora’s realm of Oblivion. Whether Apocrypha will be like the deadlands in regards to size and exploration is yet to be revealed.

However, we know for a fact that we will be able to see a good portion of that realm. What attracts players most in this realm is, of course, is the new class we will be receiving along with the chapter.

Now, a big disclaimer: you must own the chapter in order to be able to play as this new class. The class in question is The Arcanist, a class that heavily revolves around using spells and attacks in the design of our Daedric Lord, Hermes Mora.

Sadly though, unless you’re able to access the private test servers on PC, ZeniMax Online Studios haven’t released anything about this new class as yet. But if your curiosity is getting the better of you, you actually fight and go up against enemy Arcanists in the new dungeon, Scrivener’s Hall. Anyway, if you like this new class, you can prepare lots of ESO Gold in advance to make more powerful builds for this class.

Not only are we getting a new class, but we are also welcoming two new companions to the game. We have Azandar Al-Cybiades, who was an Arcanist Redguard and also Sharp-As-Night, an Argonian Warden.

Companions are a great addition to ESO and I’m sure these two won’t disappoint. Just a shame that ZeniMax Online Studios skipped over Necromancer for a companion.

Tales of Tribute is also receiving a new Patron, which has been revealed as Almalexia, Morrowind’s Healing Mother. Apart from this, we have no information in regards to what she brings to the table quite literally on that one.

All in all, I think this is going to be a very interesting year indeed, with big changes and updates coming later this year and a great-looking chapter coming very soon.

With the AI advancing more and more, we wanted to ask ChatGPT how to play FIFA 23 better. As I asked my questions about it, I was completely shocked by how much information it had to offer. So, if you’re curious about it, keep reading!

Attacking Tips

Let’s start with attacking. I asked the AI how I can improve my attacking in FIFA 23 without knowing what to come. But as it started explaining, it gave me seven unique tips that are too much. Let’s test a couple of them to see if they are correct or wrong.

Quick Passing

The first tip is about passing. “Good passing is the foundation of any successful attack. Use short, quick passes to move the ball up the pitch and create space for your attackers”.

I can agree with this one as it’s one of the most important parts of the attacking. Short passing seems to be working in most of the situations. However, I struggled a bit when I tried to do it in a quick way, as the AI mentioned. Especially when you’re facing good Defenders, they might punish you for the careless quickness while passing.

So, on top of what the AI told me to do, I also paid attention to a couple of factors: the direction that my passer faces, the availability of my receiver, and the behavior of the opposition defense played a huge role with it.

As long as those three conditions were optimal for me, I was able to create space for my Attackers with short passes, as the AI told me to do so. It’s a very nice tip.

Crossing

Next up, crossing. The AI says “crossing the bolt into the box is a great way to create scoring opportunities.” Correct until this point. “Use the right stick to control the direction and height of the cross, and aim for your target player.” Obviously, this is wrong.

I guess the AI might get confused sometimes. Anyway, the initial idea is correct as crosses could be powerful situationally. Use the left analog stick to select their target and power up the cross regarding the distance. The power level of the cross will be decisive on how far it will go.

As I was trying to work with the crosses, I realized that they are powerful like the ChatGPT mentioned, especially when I get on the counter with a man's advantage. As I was exploring the side with my Winger, there has been always one player going into the box and crossing the ball to him allowed me to get dangerous without putting too much effort.

Even though the AI messed up with the controls, the initial idea allowed me to have better attacking options. These are the part of the FIFA fundamentals.

Defensive Tips

But what about defending? Can the AI teach me how to get better in defense? There were again a lot of tips. I am going to choose two of them and see what I can do with them.

Jockeying

First off, it starts with jockeying. “Jockeying is an essential defensive technique in FIFA 23. Use the left trigger/L2 button to slow down and position your Defender in front of the Attacker. This will make it harder for them to get past you”.

That is 100% accurate, as jockeying saves you most of the time. Jockeying allows me to have a very special defensive stance against my opponents and sometimes allows me to retrieve the ball without doing anything else.

However, I’ve seen that only worked out once I positioned my player directly in front of the opponent. If I position my player a bit towards this side or don’t have a strong stance against the opponent, he was able to go through.

So, remember what the AI says. Position your Defender in front of the Attacker while jockeying.

Tackling

Moving on to the next step, we got tackling, which is “another important defensive technique”, according to the AI. “Use the right trigger/R2 button to make a strong tackle or the B/Circle Button to slide tackle. Make sure you time your tackles correctly to avoid giving away fouls”.

With the default configuration, Circle Button allows you to go for a standing tackle and square button for a sliding tackle. That was a bit misleading.

However, the second tip is golden. We can only benefit from the tackles at the right time, which is when the opponent pushes the ball out of his feet for a brief moment.

If you try to tackle in a position where you don’t have the opportunity, you will probably get yourself in disadvantage. So, what I did was to wait for the perfect moment to get a tackle in as I waited for the opponent to make his move while pushing the ball away and made the fitting tackle to win the ball.

Related: FIFA 23: How To Master The Art Of Defending? - Complete Guides On Jockey

Tactics Tips

At the end, we wanted to ask a very controversial question to the AI, which divides FIFA community by far every year. And the question is: what is the best formation to play in FIFA 23?

It’s quite satisfied me with the answer. “There is no ‘best’ formation to play in FIFA 23 as it largely depends on your playstyle, the team you are using and the opponent you’re facing”.

This has been probably our argument for a very long time. Most of the players copied informations that pros or content creators offer without knowing or thinking about how to play with it, just because others get successful with it. That doesn’t mean you will do the same with it.

As the ChatGPT dictates, the best formation for you will depend on your playing style and the players you have available. Experiment with different formations and find the one that works best for you.

For starters, I recommend playing with 4-2-2-2, 4-2-3-1, or 4-4-2. Those are the classic formations which are suitable for every year. But like mentioned, try them out one by one and see if they work out for you. Of course, if you can add more strong players to your team by using FUT 23 Coins, it will be better!

To be honest, although the AI’s answer surprised me, it also worried me a lot. I am afraid that my job will be replaced by it in the future. So I reluctantly asked AI another question: “What do you know about the best player instructions and custom tactics in FIFA 23?” To my delight, AI doesn’t have a definitive answer to this question. Now I don’t have to worry about losing my job.

Anyway, the player instructions should be also set on the purpose. I am going to give you an example of it. Whenever I play with affirmation, which contains a CDM in it, I give that CDM three instructions: Cover Center, Stay Back While Attacking and Cut Passing Lanes.

The reason I put him on Covering Center is that mostly, I have side players to cover the wing and if my CDM also goes towards the wing, the center will be wide open. Putting him to cover Center defines his area to defend.

Cutting Passing Lanes let them move towards the potential passing targets. Even if I don’t control them, that will help me to switch to my intended Defender in the right position and just because he got close to the passing lane by himself, it makes me win the ball easier.

Staying Back While Attacking is often misunderstood. My CDM also joins the attack, but with this instruction, he remains closer to the Midfield. And he doesn’t rush inside like the box. So, whenever you get stuck on the wing and need to reset your attack, you can use the players with these instructions as your target and change the side of the ball. Pretty smart, right?

Today, we’re going to be looking at how you can get free Human Ward and Human Bane gear in New World.

Why We Need Human Bane And Ward Gear?

With the release of Season 1 - Fellowship and Fire, we got a new expedition in a world called the Empyrean Forge. In this new dungeon, there are tons of great new gear to collect and even a really powerful new Heartrune gem that everyone is after. Since this expedition can be quite tricky, everyone is after the newest Bane and Ward gear to make themselves more efficient in this dungeon, and that’s the Human Ward or the Human Bane.

Being that it’s a new kind of Bane, prices for any gear with this on it are astronomical at the moment on the Trade Post. So, in this article, I’ll show you a couple ways to get free Human Ward and Bane gear so that you can get through this expedition easier and start getting yourselves that new Heartrune gem.

Silvers Crows Seasonal Questline

The first and easiest way is simply to play through the Silver Crows seasonal questline. It’s all very easy and you can start by going to the Crow’s Nest hideout, south of the Brimstone Sands, and talking to Grace O’Malley.

Along this questline, you’ll get yourself a really nice light helmet called the Mask Of The Fearless, which not only looks awesome for Transmog but also has awesome Perks and the Human Ward on it as well.

Also, you’ll get yourself a pretty cool Blunderbuss, called Grace’s Thunder Pipe with Human Bane on it. So, if you’re a Blunder user, you’re already two steps closer to a full set.

There’s also some other great rewards along this questline, but these are the only ones with Bane or Ward Perks on them.

Related: New World: How To Farm Harbinger Set?

Battle’s Embrace

The next way to get yourself some Ward gear is by completing a newly added quest in Brightwood called Battle’s Embrace. It’s really easy and takes about three minutes.

Simply go talk to Gwendolyn Drake over here in Brightwood. Then, head up to Great Cleave and complete the objectives. Head back to any Forge and make the gear and then turn it back into Gwen. She will in return give you the armor, which is a full set of heavy gear with Human Ward on it.

Of course, there are some limitations to this gear though. For starters, it’s only gear score 500, so you can never bring it up to 625. Also, it’s all heavy gear. So, if you’re not a fan of heavy gear, you might only use a couple of these pieces and finally it has a Sword and Shield Perk on it and an Accelerated Resolve.

That all being said, though, it is free and can do a very good job for you until you get the best in slot Ward gear. Especially if you’re a Sword and Shield tank, this could make your run through a lot easier and can hold you over until you get the Human Ward drops from the dungeon itself or when the prices drop back down to a reasonable price.

Flame Cores

Another way to get some human gear is simply by using your Flame Cores at the forge located beside the entrance to the Empyrean Forge. This will take 10 Flame Cores to create an Unstable Cast, which can be broken open for some Umbral Shards and a random Human Bane or Ward piece.

As prices stand though, I highly recommend you do not do this method. It cost me 6K New World Coins for 10 Flame Cores. And most of the time, the gear you get is pretty garbage. Plus, eventually, when you get the Heartrune, you’re going to need these Flame Cores to upgrade it, so I would save them for that. Maybe once the prices of Flame Core go down, this method will be more viable.

Expedition Itself

Finally, you can get Human Ward and Bane gear from running the Expedition itself even in its easiest difficulty. All the Bane and Ward gear that drops from the non-stated version of this Expedition are as follows: Ranger’s Focus, Withering Gloves, Warrior’s Respite, Sparkpowder, Hunting Blade, Allegro, Heatshot and Heavy Knocker.

Maybe use the gear from the methods above to make this dungeon less difficult, but once you get good at the Imperium Forge and can consistently complete it, then just keep grinding that out until you get a full set and then from there, if you’re good enough, you can move on to the mutated version of the Expedition for a chance of the Fire Lord’s gear, which looks awesome for Transmog.

Don’t be put off if you’re not the best at PVE. I’m not the best either. I struggled with Brimstone Sand’s Expedition. But this one is a lot easier. I completed it with a random group first try with only one wipe on the final boss and it doesn’t take that long either. It’s really quick to get the hang off and there are very generous with the loot. I got seven named items on my first run through and the Heartrune as well.

Even if you don’t beat the last boss, it will still get some human being and Ward gear along the way that you can level up to make your next attempt even easier. But that about covers all the current freeways to get Human Bane or Ward gear in New World at the moment. Hopefully, this can help some of you out and you can go forth and get your gear.

Today, we’re talking about everything you know in Noblegarden.

Why Do This Event?

The Noblegarden Event is going to give you a bunch of different rewards, mostly Cosmetics as well as the Noble Title. The main reason we’re doing the event is because we’re nearly done with the “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been” meta achievement.

Of course, I’ve met an achievement will give us the Violet Proto-Drake, which is one of the best mounts in Wrath of the Lich King.

But be careful, the Noblegarden Event only runs from April 9th to 16th. So, you don’t want to miss it.

Where To Go First?

If your Horde head to either Bloodhoof Village, Razor Hill, Brill or Falconwing Square and if your Alliance had to either Goldshire or Kharanos, Dolanaar or Azure Watch, you’ll definitely want to pick up the daily intro crafts from the Spring Gatherer. That quest is called "The Great Egg Hunt", and it requires you to bring 20 Shell Fragments.

While we’re in the area, we should also head to the spring vendor of the merchant. At the merchant, you can pick up the quest at “A Tisket, a Tasket, a Noblegarden Basket”. That quest rewards an Egg Basket, which increases your movement speed by 60% near the aches.

But weirdly enough, the quest giver actually gives you this basket when you get the quest. So, I wouldn’t even do this quest until way later while we’re at the vendor, though you should definitely check out all the potential Noblegarden loot you can get. Everything from the Noblegarden vendor requires chocolates as a currency.

In fact, in order to get all the different items, you’ll need 465 total chocolates. But don’t purchase a single thing yet. I’ll explain in a second.

The main thing we’re going to be doing for the next couple of hours is collecting as many eggs (Brightly Colored Eggs) as we can. The egg spawn at approximately a two to three-minute timer all around the starting areas. Inside the eggs, you’ll be getting chocolates. You’ll be getting the shell for the daily quest and random items you could get from the vendor.

So, I’m going to get started with my egg collection. I’m aiming for at least 250 eggs. But you may need way less than that if you get lucky with drops.

In terms of your egg strategy, realistically all the different towns are viable. My personal favorites are Falconwing Square and Azure Watch. One super pro tip is to actually go to the other Faction City if you’re on an imbalance server.

Achievement 1: I Found One

The very first achievement we’ll be doing is the “I Found One!” achievement. That’s really simple. You just need to find a Brightly Colored Egg. With that out of the way, let’s scale things up with Chocoholic.

Achievement 2: Chocoholic

Chocoholic requires you to eat 100 pieces of chocolate. It is a super easy achievement, though unfortunately you’re also spending your WOTLK Classic Gold from this point forward. All these achievements require you to purchase something from the vendor. You could do these in any order you want.

Achievement 3: Blushing Bride

I’m starting with a Blushing Bride. For a Blushing Bride, you can either get the Tuxedo Pants in the shirt from one of the eggs or purchase them from the vendor.

Then, you’ve got to go to a location like Gallery and it really doesn’t matter where and you’ve got to kiss a player wearing an elegant dress. You can actually trade these items after using them, so you could do a Suave Rooney.

Achievement 4: Desert Rose

For our fourth achievement, we’re going to be doing a Desert Rose.

A Desert Rose requires you to get the Spring Robes for one of the eggs or from the vendor again. Then, we’re going to go to each of the desert zones and plant a flower in the desert. You’ll have to go to the Badlands, Silithus, Thousand Needles, Desolace and Tanaris.

For Tanaris, and a Thousand Needles, I can definitely recommend using the Caverns of Time teleport and for the Badlands as a Horde member, I like to use a Direbrew Remote you can just gain Hearth out of BRD (Blackrock Depths) and save a bunch of time.

Achievement 5: Shake Your Bunny-Maker

For the fifth achievement, we might have the stupidest named achievement I’ve ever seen. We’ll be doing “Shake Your Bunny Maker”.

This is a really simple one again. You are going to get the Spring Flowers from either an egg or the vendor. The Spring Flowers have an usability on them, so we’ll be using them on every single race in the game as long as they’re level 18 plus.

Historically, you can only do this with a female player for it to work. But I do believe they changed this recently. I definitely recommend hitting up Dalaran, but if you’re on a server like Faerlina, you can also try to win a grasp.

Achievement 6: Noblegarden

For our sixth achievement, we’ll be doing Noblegarden.

Noblegarden is actually my favorite achievement by far you’ll actually have to purchase a Noblegarden Egg since you can’t get it from one of the eggs.

Then, if you’re bored, you’ll have to hide in the Silvermoon City or if you’re Alliance, you’ll have to hide it in Stormwind. You could just put the egg on the ground somewhere in the city and then pick it up again and get a chocolate or you could make it more fun and hide it in some really weird and hilarious place for a friend to find.

Achievement 7: Spring Fling

Moving into number seven, we have Spring Fling.

For Spring Fling first, you’re going to need a Spring Rabbit’s Foot. Again, you’re either going to get this from one of the eggs or for 100 chocolates from the vendor.

Then, you’ve got to find someone else with a Spring Rabbit’s Foot and you’ve got to go to a bunch of different locations and summon your rabbits together.

Horde will be going to Bloodhoof Village, Falconwing Square, Brill and Razor Hill that Alliance will be going to Azure Watch, Goldshire, Dolanaar and Kharanos. This achievement definitely pushes you to find a friend who is guilty to help you.

What if you want to do it solo? You can actually get the Rabbit’s Foot on two different characters on the same account. Then, activate the rabbit on one character and then force log out and do it on the second character. That’s solo gaming.

Achievement 8: Hard Boiled

Our last achievement is Hard Boiled, and this is the hardest achievement by a mile. You have got to be a rabbit and go to the Golakka Hot Springs and go around. The easy way to do this is to go with a friend with a Blossoming Branch. Your friend just uses the Blossoming Branch on you. You become a rabbit. You just wait around. You lay an egg. You’re good to go.

If you’re solo, though, and you don’t have any friends to help you, it’s going to be a lot harder. First,you’ll need to set your Hearthstone to catch sand. Then, go back to one of the starter areas and elude eggs until you transform into a bunny. Then, quickly hearth the gadgets in and make a beeline for Galaka Hot Springs.

Related: WotLK Classic Phase 3 Prep Guide: How I’m Dominating Trial Of The Crusader?

Remember, if you mount or take damage, this will break the effect, so be careful. But, we just did it. All eight achievements done no problem at all. Our meta achievement is nearly done. Only a few more holiday events to go and you’ve got that Violet Proto-Drake. But in the meantime, the Trial of the Crusader is nearly here. You want to be as prepared as possible for ToC, so you should definitely read my prep guide.

Just a few weeks after the announcement of Shadow of the Erdtree - Elder Ring’s first DLC coming sometime unknown, we have patch 1.09, which has balancing to PVP and general gameplay balancing.

Ray Tracing Update

The first thing obviously is that Ray Tracing was added to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and PC. I can’t really notice too much of a difference between the two versions.

And Elden Ring isn’t like the most graphically advanced game I’ve ever played, either. So, I can’t really notice much of a difference. Maybe you guys can. I will say it did feel like my performance took a bit of a hit with it on, so you might want to be careful exactly what your settings are.

General Gameplay Adjustments

Next, let’s talk about the general balancing changes to the game before we get into PVP. This is going to apply to everyone that’s not in PVP mode of the game, which is single players and cooperative, so let’s talk about that first.

*The first thing on the list is that they’ve increased the scaling of the following attributes when infusing weapons with certain Ashes of War, magic, fire, flame art, lightning and sacred.

I’m assuming this means that those weapons are going to have more damage when using very specific Ashes of War. I’m assuming it’s magic, fire, framework, lightning, sacred, Ashes of War ones that would default give you those types without using a knife of some kind.

So, we’ll have to see what those are that are very vague. I’m not exactly sure like how much we’re talking either in terms of like the value of the scaling of weapons. This will probably take some time to get sorted out what exactly that means. That generally means probably that you’re going to have more damage with these infusions than it you did before with most weapons.

*The next point is “increased the attribute scaling of the following weapon types: Colossal Swords, Great Axes, Hammers, Flails, Great Hammers and Colossal Weapons.” These are primarily strength based weapons, so it seems like the strength scaling is being improved on these weapons.

My guess is that the difference between two-handing and one-handing these weapons when it came to strength scaling wasn’t that great. And maybe they’re trying to improve that to incentivize people to use strength builds more, although strength builds are already wildly popular.

*Next is “increased the speed range and recovery time of some attacks from the following weapon types: Great Hammer, Great Axe, Great Sword and Curved Greatsword.”

This is really interesting because I think Greatsword is a very popular weapon type in this game. Maybe Great Axes, Great Hammers and Great Swords are not. I’m not exactly sure, but it seems like this weapon group is getting buffed again. This weapon group seems to keep getting buffed or some variation of this weapon group. So, these weapon types are going to be even stronger.

Flails are also getting a buff, increasing the speed of some of their attacks, reducing the attack recovery time and increasing their poise when two-handing through. So, they can two and through attacks, I guess.

Not too many people use Flails. I know that some people have very specific builds but this is obviously not a super popular weapon. There’s only four Flails in the game, anyway. So, it seems like they need a buff here.

*Increased running attack speed and reduced attack recovery time for the following weapon type: Straight Sword, Curved Sword, Katana, Twinblade, Ax, Hammer and Halberd.

Apparently, their running attacks of these weapons are getting faster. I didn’t think they’re that slow to begin with. I guess the Straight Sword and Katana have a bit of a delay before they attack. I wouldn’t call it the delay exactly, but it’s a little slower than you’d think.

Maybe they’re speeding that up. But I mean Curved Swords running on attacks with curve starts is what people spam already. That’s crazy. It’s hard to say exactly.

*Increased the first attack speed for the falling weapon type: Straight Swords, Curved Swords and Whips.

This is interesting because I always felt like Straight Swords were in a bad place. They didn’t exactly have the best damage, and they didn’t have very good status effects compared to other weapons.

I guess the same is happening for Curved Swords and Whips. Obviously, this is probably applying to R1 attacks in that dual wielding with Curved Sword. So, this is really interesting. They’re crawling to entice people to probably one-hand these weapons more.

*Increased the speed of guard counters with the falling weapon types: Straight Swords, Great Swords, Colossal Swords, Great Curved Swords, Katanas, Twinblades, Axes, Great Axes, Flails, Great Hammer, Spears, Great Spears, Halberds.

That’s like half the weapon types in the game. Guard counters have had slow follow-ups on just about every weapon type save a few in this game, mostly like Straight Swords, which is weird why they’re getting a buff here.

I guess because everything else is I don’t know. But that’ll make block counters a lot more viable, which is great. So, hopefully, people will use them more. I mean, block counters are fantastic, so maybe that’ll make them more viable with these weapon types. By the way, if you want to become stronger, in addition to choosing an appropriate weapon, you'll still need to upgrade your weapon of choice with Elden Ring Runes.

Again though, I’ve sort of given a feeling that’s in a change that’s probably supposed to be aimed at PVP even though it’s a PVE change since they’re nerfing basically jump attacks and bleeds I think they want people to use block counters more. And obviously, it’s nearly impossible to land on the block counter with some of these weapon types. So, maybe they want people to use that play style more in PVP.

*Reduced the attack recovery time for Whip weapons.

*Increase the damage of Claw weapons.

*Added Holy damage and Faith scaling to the Great Club. (So, that weapon now has holy damage and Faith scaling that’s interesting.)

*Increased damage negation when blocking Holy damage and decreased damage negation when blocking damage from other affinities.

So apparently, you’re able to block holy damage more easily now with shields or weapons, but you’re not able to block other affinities as easily again. These feel like changes that are aimed at PVP. They want people to use other damage types rather than just like believe, etc. So, maybe this is the whole change this whole patch is really aimed at PVP even though it looks like a PVE patch.

*Increased the effectiveness of the Twinblade Talisman.

I literally know nobody who uses this in a build, so that’s probably good that got buffed.

*Slightly, reduced roll traveling distance for light equipment weights.

They just made light rolling better in like the last patch, if I’m not mistaken. The fact that they’re nerving it here seems weird again unless they’re nerving it for PVP purposes.

*And finally decreased the hitbox size for some attacks of the falling weapon types: Thrusting Sword, Heavy Thrusting Sword, Spear, Great Spear and Halberd.

Again, this seems like this is aimed at PVP. These weapons aren’t really considered busted in DB. I mean, they’re good weapons in PVE. But I don’t know why would the developer nerved them. This seems like a PVP nerf as well. So, all in all, a lot of changes that change the gameplay for everyone, but that seemed mostly aimed at PVP.

Ashes Of War Adjustments

There are also some Ash of War adjustments. I’m not going to go through all this. You can see them on the screen if you want to go through them. Great Oracular Bubble increased the projectile generation speed and reduce recovery time, that makes this very viable even more viable in PV than it already was. So, that’s really good.

Shriek of Milos increased the close range Poise damage. This is good for this ability because it’s hard to get this ability off. So, I’m glad they added that.

Spearcall Ritual will increase projectile generation. This ability was already busted, so it seems like that’s making it even more busted.

Cursed-Blood Slice increased the projectile generation speed and reduce recovery time.

I Command Thee, Kneel increased attack generation speed. This is good because it’s hard to get off because of how long the wind-up takes.

Starcaller Cry increased the speed of the follow-up attack. The follow-up attack for that takes forever. I’m glad to see that is sped up, too.

Bug Fixes

I’m going to go through some of the bugs. I’m not going to go through all of them.

But the first one I know people will be interested in, which is a fixed debug where the Scarlet Rock buildup was not properly reflected when giving the Antspur Rapier a Cold Affinity. This has been bugged since like launch. So, this is like a huge change here or not launched, but like patch 1.03 or something like that. It’s been bugged for a very long time, so just get that fixed.

Finally, I’m sure people will be thrilled about that another bug similar to this was that the Scarlet Rock status was not properly reflected when giving the Rotten Greataxe of a Blood affinity. So, those two have now been patched.

Another one is that fixed a bug where the Roar Medallions Talisman didn’t affect the increase in power of some incantations. Dragon communion spells are now affected by the Roar Medallion Talisman. This is a huge change.

Those are the main ones. There are other bug fixes and performance improvements of the game you can read through them if you want to see them all.

PVP Exclusive Adjustments

When it comes to the PVP exclusive balance adjustments, even though it feels like the PVE balance adjustments were really for PVP. If you look through the list here, you’ll see there’s a decrease in effectiveness in Lord of Blood’s Exultation and the White Mask. There’s a decrease in the effectiveness of the Claw Talisman. There’s a decrease in the effectiveness of two-handed jump attacks and the power of heavy and heavy running attacks of Fist and Claw weapons.

So, I feel like generally speaking here, the nerf to PVP is nerving jump attacks and nerving blood. I feel like this is going hand in hand with them, buffing the other infusions of other elements in the regular balancing changes.

Also, they decrease the damage buffs of the tires that you could use with your flasks because, obviously, those were probably very deadly in PVP. I’m not a huge PVP player.

Other things that were nerved: Raptors Black Feathers, the jumping attack damage again affecting jump attack damage and then waves of Gold were also nerved. And Founding Rain of Stars has had its attack power reduced as well.....

Last month was a pretty big month for Nintendo. They dropped a whole new direction for us of all kinds of fun new reveals. But nothing too out there. What’s weird is that the leak I mentioned in the title actually comes from the Pokemon Presents that happened about a week ago.

Now, when I hear the word leak, I’m thinking fake instantly and I know a lot of you feel the same. This is true for so many leaks out there. But this one actually seems to be accurate. For a start, they correctly shared pretty much everything. That was going to happen within the Pokemon Presents days before it actually happened and that’s not the interesting part. It’s what they shared at the very end of this leak that concerns all of Nintendo and especially their biggest games like Animal Crossing.

This supposed leaker works at an outsourcing company for Pokemon and they’ve been working on the latest DLC, which we’ll be releasing this year for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. At the very end of their league, they mentioned that they’ve been working on a graphics enhancement patch for new Nintendo Switch models, which will release alongside the second DLC.

Then, in a follow-up reply, they actually elaborated on this, showing that this would be Nintendo’s next gen console, which is a successor to the Switch. If this is true and it’s seeming like it is. Then, it’s an enormous piece of news, which will affect a lot of different Nintendo games, which have been waiting for new releases. Think about the new Metroid game and maybe the sequel to Super Mario Odyssey and of course potentially a new Animal Crossing release, as well.

Now, there’s a lot of speculation about what this new model would be. Nintendo Switch just celebrated sixth anniversary, so we’re definitely heading to the end of this particular console I feel.

Of course, a big thing that a lot of Animal Crossing fans know is that Nintendo doesn’t really release two main Animal Crossing games on the same system. But if a new system or effectively a new improved version of the Switch is arriving sometime in 2024, then the opportunity for a new Animal Crossing game would become available. After all, it’ll have been four years at that point since New Horizons, which is a standard amount of time the Animal Crossing games usually release in with the exception of New Horizons itself.

Given that Animal Crossing is a major system seller and New Horizons is one of Nintendo’s biggest games of all time, it seems fairly likely that they would want a new one to release alongside a new console as that would boost sales drastically. Even if it doesn’t release in 2024, I think we’d start seeing teasers and trailers for the future for sure, like they did with New Horizons to build excitement with the huge crowd of people, who brought the original switch purely to play New Horizons.

I’ve seen a lot of you saying that 2025 would be a good year for a new Animal Crossing game. Maybe in that year you will experience more game content and interesting ACNH Items. And honestly, I think this makes a lot of sense. So, we definitely learn about it alongside a new model of the Switch in 2024 or whatever this successor is.

Now, if this is effectively an upgraded Switch and they’re working on a graphical enhancement patch for existing games like Scala and Violet. It’s possible New Horizons could get the same treatment, which might be interesting too personally at that point into 2024. I just prefer a totally new game.

But if New Horizons got some love again, I don’t think that would be a bad thing. It seems likely from this league that we’d be able to play Switch games on this new system, so New Horizons would be included in that even if it’s not graphically improved. I’m sure in some way, the experience would be better though on a new system. I think it’s safe to say that from a business point of view Nintendo would do something to encourage the New Horizons crowd to purchase their new console, even now they still use New Horizons to sell their online services.

They could also use this as a way to tide Animal Crossing fans over until the next main game, just like they did with the huge welcome Amiibo update for New Leaf back in the day.

Right now, this is all speculation in terms of Animal Crossing and the other major Nintendo games. But this leak about a new Nintendo system seems fairly certain at this point. I know a lot of you will be skeptical, especially after all the switch pro rumors that kind of went nowhere.

But given this person accurately sheds so many details from the new Pokemon DLC without anyone else knowing at all, it seems like at the very least Nintendo is planning what they have shared. We’ll just have to see if it actually comes to fruition or not.

The Meta, a term that has shaped the FIFA community and often divided it throughout the past few years. Using and abusing the game's most broken formations, mechanics, skill moves and finishes to play as good and efficiently as possible and to win.

What if I told you there was another way to be a good player and another way that's going to allow you to win most of your matches comfortably and climb all the way up into the elite division by playing simple and beautiful football? Today we say goodbye to the meta and we go back to the fundamentals of FIFA.

Today, I'm here to teach you old school FIFA, one fundamental skill for defending, build up and attacking each. Let's start off with defending.

Defending - Defend Multiple Options

When it comes to defending, one of the most important things is to be ready for anything the opponent is throwing you away. That's why a fundamental defensive skill lies in positioning yourself in a way that allows you to defend multiple options at once.

When you get better at anticipating, it can happen quickly that you fully commit towards one side because you think the opponent is going there. And if you're right, that's great because you're most likely going to win the ball. However, if you're wrong then you got a problem.

So, what you need to do is quickly analyze the different options your opponent has and take a position from which you can impact each single one. We are in a little bit of a tricky spot here as the opponent is able to play forward with tempo.

If we pause the scene here, there are two major options for the opponent. He can either pass the ball onto his other Striker, who's in a promising position or he can try and go into a dribbling himself to push inside the Box.

Our job is to position in a way that allows us to cover the passing option, but at the same time also keeps us in reach to a potential dribbling move. That's what the opponent decides for in the end as he pushes forward with a heel to heal. That's no problem though because we are ready for this option and so by cutting him off we are able to win the ball back. You just never want to leave one door wide open for the opponent and invite him to walk through.

Instead, keep both doors half open and close them right. When the opponent tries to walk through. It can be situations as simple as this one. The opponent has a passing option on the wing and we control our Center Back and instead of committing to covering the through ball or covering the short pass we just position in the middle of the two and this way temp the opponent.

He tries to go for the through ball and we intercept it easily. You're going to be surprised how often opponents play into your cards If you defend like this.

To make the most out of your positioning, it's also important to watch the opponent's ball contacts and to defend proactively. These are two more fundamental defending skills.

Related: How To Use German Cross To Score Easy Free Goals In FIFA 23?

Buildup - Watch Opponents Defender

Now build up is pretty much the other side of the metal compared to defending. When you defend, you try to figure out what the opponent is up to in his attack. When you're the one attacking, then you need to figure out what the defending opponent thinks you're up to.

How do you do that by watching his selected Defender? This is the fundamental skill for build up and many players have not mastered it yet. You can't be fully occupied by looking at your player when dribbling or looking at your teammates to scout good passing options. Of course, if you use FUT 23 Coins to get some good players, along with some strategy, you'll have a much easier time winning games.

The most promising passing opportunity does not mean anything if the opponent is selecting a close by Defender and covering it. So, make a habit of always having vision on that little white triangle above the defender's head, which player does the opponent have selected and how is he moving, what is he trying to defend... This will make it much easier to counter him.

In this clip, we win the ball in our own half and play our first pass forward right away. We can see that the selected Defender is aggressively pushing towards us and we're about to get pinched by just letting the ball bounce back first touch. We can get away from that pressure easily.

Now, the defender close to us gets selected and so we take the ball away with a ball roll upwards and then pass to our full back. We would like to continue the play forward but the opponent selects his Winger and covers that pass because we see that early. It's no big deal. We just turn around and pass back to our Center Midfielder.

Now, we are getting aggressed on once again and so we turn away in time and play back on the wing. And the opponent this time switches early and heavily commits to covering the next natural pass for us, which is towards our Striker. You can see though how a little bit later it comes back to the player because we don't fall for a strap as we are watching what he's doing with his selected Defender.

Our Striker now makes a run into the open space behind the fullback and that's the pass we play. You can see how easy it really is to counter your opponent by simply knowing what he's up to, so make sure to enter internalize this concept and you're going to lose the ball much less in build up.

Attacking - Increase The Speed Of Your Attack

I will say one thing right away for attacking. It is definitely the most meta dependent aspect of FIFA. Because without the strongest skill moves mechanics and finishes, you're going to have a harder time. It's as simple as that.

However, there is an important fundamental skill that has nothing to do with those. Increasing the speed of your attack when you're trying to create a chance, this has to do with passing, simple passing. And what you need to understand is that the more time you're giving the opponent to react to your latest action, the easier it's going to be for him to get into a good defensive position and correct mistakes.

So, when you do see an attacker being free in a good position and a passing combination opening up then play one touch football. Two touch is as slow as you can get. But one touch is still much better.

Here, we have a typical spot in which we're able to play from outside towards inside. As soon as I see my Winger coming back and then my two Strikers in the center being somewhat open, as well. I know right away that that is going to be our passing combination.

Now, it's time to execute quickly to make the opponent fumble his player switching and positioning, so we play two one touch passes and as you can see the opponent is still trying to defend against our first Striker while we are already one step ahead and have enough space to finish the chance with CR7.

In this Wo Long Fallen Dynasty guide, we'll be covering the unparalleled spear build, which is a tank build. This is a very forgiving build, making it perfect for newcomers that want to go through history without having to worry too much about getting killed in a single strike.

For this build, we'll be focusing on the Wood Virtue, which significantly increases our health in combination with heavy armor to greatly reduce the physical damage we take. In addition, we'll be adding some healing spells and a Divine Beast that heals us to make us even tankier.

The negative aspect of this build is its lack of mobility and rather low damage. We'll mitigate that though by equipping the unparalleled spear, which has a unique Martial Art called Whistling Vortex. When you use this martial art, it helps you spin forward and automatically track enemies you mark.

We'll also be using the Inner Breath spell to increase the accumulation of Divine Beast gauge and Absorb Vitality to heal while we attack.

Attributes / Virtues

When it comes to the stats for this build, this build focuses on the Wood Virtue as I mentioned earlier but it's also necessary to assign some points into Earth and Fire Virtues.

You should first focus on Wood and then assign enough points into Earth to adjust your weight proportion. At level 72, your stats should look something like this:

• 50 Wood Virtue. This is our main stat, which gives a huge health boost and increases our weapon damage and lightning damage.
• 8 Fire Virtue. This is required to unlock the amplify damage spell.
• 14 Earth Virtue. We need just enough to maintain our weight proportion just below 100 percent.

This will depend on the armor you're currently wearing, so you may need to move a point or two in either direction.

Unrivaled Spear Spells

Next, we'll take a look at what spells we use for this build.

First is lightning weapon. For a certain period of time, enchant your melee weapon with lightning. By the way, you can use Wo Long Fallen Dynasty GQ to help you. This scales with the Wood Virtue greatly increasing our damage output and helps us deal Elemental Damage that goes through enemy guard.

The accumulation of Divine Beast gauge has increased by Inner Breath increases during a certain period of time. This spell greatly increases the amount of Beast gauge you gain when dealing damage to enemies or when getting hit. Make sure to keep it active at all times.

Absorb Vitality. You and nearby allies gain HP when you damage enemies. This spell allows us to be more aggressive since we'll be healing back a portion of the damage that we deal.

Finally, Amplify Damage for a certain period of time increase both the damage you deal to enemies and receive from them. This is specifically useful before Fatal Strikes. Here's a small window before the enemy recovers you can use that time to cast the spell and then perform the Fatal strike for better results.

Unrivaled Spear Divine Beast

Next, we'll take a look at the Divine Beasts we use for this build and we use Qinglong as our Divine Beast, which you can obtain fairly early on in the game.

Qinglong's favor increases your HP by plus 18 and provides plus 2.4 HP restoration, which works perfectly in combination with her Absorb Vitality spell. You also get reduced spirit consumption to cast Inner Breath spells.

The Divine Beast summon creates a pool on the ground that will heal you while you stand over it. The pool lasts a very long time and will keep you at full health even if you're getting hit. It is helpful when you want to reduce the amount of dragon pot uses and is very useful when you are in boss fights.

If you want to play more offensive, you can use the Divine Beast restoration instead of summons, which provides lightning damage and damage reduction, allowing you to go all in without hesitation.

Unrivaled Spear Equipment

Moving on to the equipment section.

First, we'll take a look at our main weapon, which is the Unparalleled Spear. As previously mentioned, the Whistling Vortex Martial Art found on it will be our main way of attacking enemies and it compensates for a lack of mobility.

You can acquire the sphere by increasing your relationship with Zhao Yun to sworn brother. If you don't have the spear yet, you can also use any other spear that has the Monkey's Wisdom martial art, which acts similarly to Whistling Vortex.

For special effects on your weapon, you'll want to slot lightning attack power to further increase Elemental Damage and Divine Beast gauge gain to further increase how quickly we can cast Qinglong and damage dealt your backup melee weapon will be the curve-headed glaze.

We're only really interested in wheeling this weapon to gain all the set bonuses together with the complete Dauntless Tiger Servant Set. But other than that, it's not even important to use this weapon in combat. When it comes to ranged weapons, you can basically use any ranged weapon you want to use. But you can still get good use out of ranged weapon special effects. Equip your ranged weapon with the following special effects.

Enemy Detection. It is very useful to see enemies on the minimap and track them flag detection great for finding flags and increasing your fortitude, lightning attack power and damage dealt. All these will benefit your character, so try and put these on your ranged weapon if possible.

When it comes to armor, you can equip any type of heavy armor you want. Just make sure you keep your weight proportion below 100, so you're still mobile enough to be efficient in combat.

I personally recommend the Dauntless Tiger Servant Set as it provides very high physical resistance and great set bonuses. You can acquire this set by increasing your relationship with Han Dang to sworn brother while using its corresponding pieces. You'll get the Unflinching Bravery Set Bonus providing the following benefits, minus damage received, guard spirit consumption, power gain upon martial arts and damage dealt in perfect condition.

When it comes to the special effects, you want to add to your armor. You'll want to include martial arts damage to increase the damage of Whistling Vortex. You'll want lightning attack power in order to increase your damage with lightning and Divine Beast gauge gain in order to be able to use your Divine Beast more frequently.

As it is the build is fairly complete, so you can use any accessory you want from main and secondary. Just consider trying to gain any benefit for the build, such as spirit gauge, gain martial arts, damage, etc.

Why don’t you get sent to Azkaban in Hogwarts Legacy for using the Unforgivable Curses? That’s the whole point of them calling them unforgivable. You go straight to Azkaban one-stop trip. Also, why can’t you go to Azkaban at all unless you’re playing as a Hufflepuff?

It seems strange the developers would make these kinds of decisions, seeing as though they go so against the in-universe lore. We saw that all throughout the Harry Potter series, anytime, an unforgivable curse is used. It’s a direct trip to Azkaban, so why isn’t that the case in Hogwarts Legacy?

There is only one mission in the game which allows you to go to Azkaban and to go there you need to be playing as a Hufflepuff, which is a kind of funny seeing as though Hufflepuff are the least violent and most pushover house. It’s almost like a reward for playing as a Hufflepuff. It’s like you get the trip to Azkaban and no one else does.

But even when you get to go to Azkaban, there’s not really that much to do. You get to walk around a little to see some creepy people and some cells experience, such as a Patronus Spell, which you don’t even get to cast since casting a Patronus Spell is another thing you can’t do in Hogwarts Legacy.

As said by Professor Moody at the time in the Goblet of Fire, those three curses: Avada Kedavra, Imperio and Crucio are known as the unforgivable curses. Using any of them on a fellow human being is enough to earn a life sentence in Azkaban. These three dark arts curses were classified as unforgivable in the year 1717.

Now, Hogwarts Legacy takes place in the 1890s, meaning that by this point these curses are classified as unforgivable when you have already been using them and learning them or even you were supposed to be sent straight to Azkaban over in Hogwarts Legacy.

You can even use these spells in front of your professors, in front of your teachers, in front of your fellow peers, and there will be no consequence. Nothing will happen. You’ll cast a spell and everyone goes about their merry day.

Honestly, I don’t think this is an enormous problem from a gameplay perspective. But when it comes to an in-universe lore perspective, it completely screws everything up. The fact is that there is no consequence at all. You can basically learn the dark arts in Hogwarts Legacy at little to no cost. This completely goes against the lore of the dark arts and the entire purpose of Azkaban.

Now, I’m surprised that using these spells in the game has no consequence at all. There could be some GTA style wanted level where the Dementors potentially come after you. The more curses you use, they join the fight and you have to use a Patronus to fan them off.

I feel like the developers of Hogwarts Legacy are leaving this open to future DLC ideas. They’ve clearly built Azkaban as part of the story. It exists in some form in the game. You can go there even though it’s kind of brief and you don’t get to see much of the prison. But I feel like they’re leaving this open as an option for future DLC to go there as other houses to experience the prison first hand and to not have to replay the game as a Hufflepuff.

I think it’s likely that down the track they could also introduce the Patronus Spell just as the Quidditch field is still in the game. Even though there’s no Quidditch, that could be out of down the track as well. The same goes to the Great Lake, a giant open area in the game where there’s not really that much to do apart from flyover and swim. It’s possible in future they’re going to add DLC, which allows you to dive down and explore, potentially using Gilly Weed to breathe. Then, there’s also the chance.

The developers just ran out of time and resources. That’s why you can’t cast a Patronus. That’s why you can’t actually fight Dementors. That’s why there’s no Quidditch. That’s why there’s no explosion of the Great Lake. Because the game is already too big and there’s already way too much to do as fun as it is using the unforgivable curses. I know for some players this is immersion breaking. Being able to use these on other characters right in front of your professors just seems dumb.

Even if Hogwarts Legacy gets DLC, there’s likely never going to be any consequence for using these spells as that would change the way the game is built. But that said, I think we could make our way to Azkaban at some point, just like we’ll hopefully. Also, we could play Quidditch at some point.

I’ve experimented with all the weapons and abilities throughout my Atomic Heart play through and there are some that I found to be much more useful than others. The correct answer is bucket. Just use the bucket. But just in case that doesn’t work, I’m going to break down all the active abilities you can use. Instead, I’m also going to give you some of my personal picks for the best upgrades to slap onto yourself and give a few combat tips along the way.

Ability: Polymeric Jet

What is slightly more deadly than vanilla soft serve? It’s the Polymeric Jet. This will spew out its fluffy globules wherever you aim it at and those can adopt any properties of elemental effects.

You can use other abilities or elemental cartridges. You can slap onto your weapons to ignite these spots with either electricity, fire, or ice. Enemy attacks can also influence the effect that these take on. Usually, that’s purely by accident, though Polymeric Jet is a favorite of mine since there are so many other gameplay mechanics that synergize with it.

You can use it to create tactically placed barriers that daisy chain the effect along the path or spray it all over the place. Hoping someone just wanders into your death trap. There’s no enemy around for this place, so use your imagination.

In the upgrade tree, there are a few things I highly recommend you focus on, which will improve the potency of the Polymeric Jet. Mixture Efficacy will make those elemental effects applied just overall more effective. Environmental Resistance will increase the time that will stay active and Neuro-polymer Air Defense will make it. So, you can instantly take down those annoying flying bots that are kind of all over the place.

I almost always had Polymeric Jet equipped during my play through and it’s one of the more fun ones to just mess around with and not practical ways. The Polymeric Jet combined with elemental effects is one of the best abilities, since it handles crowd control defense and offense.

Ability: Mass Telekinesis

The next ability is Mass Telekinesis, which lets you dangle your victims up in the air. While holding this effect, you can still be one-handedly firing your guns since, thankfully, your right hand is a beefcake.

You can also unlock the ability to slam airborne enemies back down into the ground by hitting the telekinesis input again after you see your hand do this. If you don’t wait for that, you’ll just let the enemies nicely fall back to the ground and they definitely don’t deserve that upgrade for Mass Telekinesis.

I suggest grabbing Forced Fall Acceleration, and that’s the ground slam. Move Amplified Modulator will increase the Telekinesis’s area of effect and increased power, which will let you levitate even the larger chunky enemies.

Weapon: Zvezdochka

Now, let me shift for a moment and talk about a weapon combo real quick.

After you get the blueprint to craft the Zvezdochka, I recommend seeking the reverse shot attachment, which can be grabbed out of a gold chest in the Polygon 1 area. This will make the alternate attack for this weapon arrange swirly blade thing. But if you also grab yourself the Lower Blade attachment, this adds what you might just assume is visually another blade to the weapon.

However, that synergizes with the reverse shot attachment to launch two blades out at a time. You can find that extra blade attachment in a bronze chest in the Polygon 8 area. Also, adding an elemental cartridge slot is worth putting on this, as well.

Now, back to the Mass Telekinesis ability combined with this strong weapon build and you can pop even the larger tanky enemies into the air.

Juggle them with those blades electrified ones in this case and take them down without expending a single bullet. Normally, these guys will drain your resources because they can take quite a beating. If you’re playing on the highest difficulty, you’re going to want to be saving ammo wherever you can.

Ability: Polymeric Shield

Next is the Polymeric Shield, which turns you into a safe little Bubble Boy. When this is active, it will block some incoming attacks and after a few upgrades can even reverse incoming damage back onto the attacker. This is pretty useful for mitigating damage while running and gunning. But if you’re adopting more of a melee play style, this ability is nearly required. It’s one of the more basic abilities. But being able to attack and be redirecting incoming damage at the same time can make things drastically easier.

If you go this route, I recommend you also get the Kinetic Reflector that doubles the melee damage that’s reflected back. Neuro-polymer Reflector will also reflect back ranged attacks and Med Unit Feedback will regenerate your health when the shield absorbs damage. They are pretty useful.

Ability: Cryo Jet

With all that, you can turtle a ton of damage and greatly increase your overall survivability. Next is the Cryo Jet, which is primarily a crowd control ability that can popsicle enemies.

Mostly, this is more of a combat deterrent rather than offensive ability. If you’re going with the Cryo Jet, I suggest grabbing Intensive Spraying, which will freeze enemies faster. Absolute Zero will deal with some damage over time while they’re frozen and Careful Disassembly will increase the materials you gain from killing frozen enemies.

Overall, the Cryo Jet is another pretty straightforward ability. But if the Polymeric Jet from before isn’t enough crowd control for you, this one can more immediately limit the amount of things that actively trying to rip your face off.

And for the last main active ability, it’s actually one that you don’t have to equip at all since you’ll have it at all times. Shock will send out a short-range electrical arc, which can stun and continually damage most of the robotic enemies. This has a pretty quick recharge and is a lot more useful with a few key upgrades. I recommend you get Chain Lightning, which bounces that Shock to another nearby target Extended Topology.

Now, you’re Palpatine and Resistor Malfunction, which increases the damage enemies take while they’re electrified. Since you’re always going to have Shock on you at all times, you might as well focus a few upgrade points into it as soon as you can.

Role Upgrade

Now, before I close this out, here are a few upgrades I recommend from those other two skill trees under Character and Energy Management.

The skill Born Marksman is a must-have since it flat out reduces the spread while firing from the hit. The one on the left is without that perk and on the right is with it active. It’s a pretty big difference in that pattern. So, you should definitely get this one.

There’s a lot of scooting around on foot in this game and with no traditional sprint, you’re going to need the movement boost from Morning Exercise, which might not seem like much. But it adds up in the long run.

In Energy Management, I suggest getting both Energy Densities, which give you an extra energy bar each and Thrift, which reduces the energy drain from certain weapons.

Weapon: Dominator

The Dominator gun, for example, can become much more useful with a higher energy capacity. Its alternate fire combos really nicely with the Telekinesis ability since it can arc some extra damage to nearby enemies before it collides with something.

I love the energy weapons because they don’t cost any ammo to fire, so always feel like royalty-free murder. They’re all just a bunch of feral Amazon Alexa, though. So, it’s all good.

Those were just a few of the combat tips I had for you today, just in case the bucket didn’t do the job already.