Embarking on your Sea Dog Journey in Skull and Bones can be quite daunting at first. With numerous ports, materials, and customization options to navigate, getting your sea legs can be challenging. In this guide, we'll delve into some useful tips and tricks to swiftly set you on course for plundering and pillaging ships in Skull and Bones.

1. Collect All Items Found In The Water

Near Sainte Anne, the initial major port you encounter, various Skull and Bones Items populate the waters. From torn sails to jute, broken planks, and rusty nails, the high seas offer abundant loot early on.

Though coconuts aren't constantly floating about, collecting them while sailing with your saw can prove highly profitable. Coconuts replenish 20% of your stamina while sailing, but cooking them yields a 40% stamina boost. Given their prevalence across the red aisles, they serve as a convenient snack to stave off stamina depletion during looting and exploration.

Different materials are essential for ship upgrades, obtaining weaponry from the Blacksmith, and crafting repair kits for instances of sea water ingress. Ensure to thoroughly scavenge and collect any floating items you encounter.

2. Acquire Resources From Shipwrecks

As you navigate the map, you'll begin to notice lilac-purple ship icons dotting the shores of various islands. These icons indicate shipwrecks, ripe for exploration. Armed with the crowbar crafted during the tutorial, you can unearth substantial loot left behind.

Typically, these shipwrecks contain silver, ammunition, food, and ingots, valuable resources essential for future ship upgrades. Precise timing with the crowbar accelerates the process, ensuring quicker access to loot and enabling swift progression to the next wreck.

Additionally, it's crucial to upgrade your crowbar at the carpenter to access higher-level shipwrecks. Therefore, we advise promptly upgrading all tools to maximize efficiency in looting and material gathering.

For those who find the gathering mechanic tedious, there's an auto-harvest feature in the game settings menu. Simply navigate to 'Settings', access the 'General' tab, and activate 'Auto Harvest' to streamline material collection without the need for precise clicking timing.

3. Gather Silver Currency

Silver serves as the cornerstone for aspiring pirates aiming to reign supreme across the seven seas, given its indispensable role in virtually every aspect of the game. But for those just starting out, how does one amass this wealth?

Any cargo item labeled as commodities presents an opportunity to fetch a substantial sum by selling it to vendors. Here's how you can leverage the market to your advantage.

As you navigate your map, you'll observe delineated zones within different areas. These zones are subdivided, with tabs indicating "plentiful supply" and "highest in demand." Here, you'll find a list of commodities that these territories either lack or possess in abundance. Opting for areas with high demand for specific items, like uncut sapphire, for instance, ensures vendors in these zones offer better prices compared to others on the map. Swiftly traveling to locations with high demand and offloading your goods proves the most efficient method to accumulate silver with minimal effort.

Especially in Sainte Anne and Telok Penjarah, commodity vendors specialize in selling specific items at a lower cost, which you can then resell at a premium within zones where the material is in demand. This strategic maneuver not only capitalizes on economic fluctuations but also generates silver without venturing far from safe havens and outposts.

4. Enhance Your Ship

Certainly, while it may appear obvious, we're not referring to an upgrade from the dow. Instead, the emphasis is on consistently enhancing your ship as much as possible from the outset.

To progress, you'll need to locate outposts with vendors offering various blueprints for new ships. Currently, there are 10 ships available for collection and creation, with each ship having a maximum base level of 5. Enhancing this base level involves equipping more potent weapons, armor, and furniture. However, the crucial aspect is adapting and evolving alongside your environment to match the challenges posed by adversaries in new zones.

The Shipwright is your go-to for upgrading to the next best ship, and each one comes with both ship type and perks depending on the vessel. Take the Sentinel, for example. This handy ship is a support type that aids friendly ships if they begin taking damage while you're around. When working with a team, a support ship helps out significantly to turn the tides in battle in your favor by repairing your boat without any repair kits. This ship's perk is that it will restore severe damage by 5% and whole health by 5% per second, which may not seem like a lot until you're bombarded by several ships in all directions. This boost of restoration can be the difference between you meeting Davy Jones and living to pillage another day.

There are also tanking ships, straight DPS ships, and more options to cater to your favorite play style.

Also Read: Skull And Bones: How To Craft The Best Endgame Ship? - Brigantine Build Guide

5. Attack Low-Level Ships

Before you find your footing, it can be intimidating to engage the random enemy ships you encounter while sailing.

However, this action is pivotal not only for accumulating substantial silver but also for acquiring materials that may otherwise be inaccessible. These materials include bronze ingots and higher-quality refined items like fine jute or iroko planks, essential for crafting advanced-level ships.

Additionally, these materials are integral in crafting more potent weaponry necessary for confronting formidable adversaries. Engaging ships within your level range or slightly higher can lead to disaster at sea if you're not adequately prepared and cautious. We suggest targeting lower-level ships initially, ideally between levels 1 and 3, to increase your Infamy rank and amass resources for vessel upgrades and enhancements.

From our experimentation, engaging ships weaker than yours still yields a respectable amount of Infamy, making it worthwhile to engage smaller targets to fortify your ship.

Another crucial consideration is the use of repair kits, which become indispensable as you progress. These kits, obtainable through looting or crafting, are essential cargo items while engaging enemy vessels. However, they have a substantial cooldown period, necessitating prudent usage to sway the tide of battle effectively.

6. Keep An Eye Out For Blueprints

When it comes to weaponry, blueprints are central to becoming the most formidable pirate to ever navigate the seven seas. These blueprints are forged by the Blacksmith in Sainte Anne. While some weapon blueprints can be acquired from him through purchase, other vendors also offer a selection.

Visiting every outpost and exploring their offerings is essential, as they may house some of the most potent cannons and ballistas. With a vast array of weapons available, it's normal to feel overwhelmed initially. Starting with the blueprints offered by the Blacksmith is a solid starting point. Furthermore, as you venture forth, completing bounties and contracts, you'll encounter vendors offering superior options.

Almost every vendor, including the Shipwright, requires specific blueprints to craft items, ships, weapons, and even meals. Thus, it's crucial to remain vigilant and keep an eye out for these blueprints as you progress further into your journey.

7. Master Ship Control

Mastering ship control can be challenging for new pirates, but it's essential for survival in treacherous waters. Maneuvering out of incoming attacks can mean the difference between life and death. Therefore, mastering the controls is crucial for navigating the perilous depths of the sea.

Lowering your sailing speed when making turns is advisable, as it's easier to control your ship at lower speeds. Additionally, pay attention to the arrow next to your speed indicator at the bottom right-hand corner of your UI.

This arrow serves as a crucial indicator: it turns red when sailing against the wind, indicating significant slowing. When it turns white, you can achieve moderate speeds, almost in harmony with the wind's flow. Finally, a green arrow signifies optimal sailing conditions, indicating that the wind is fully in your sails, allowing you to reach maximum speed based on your ship's capabilities.

Always strive to sail with the wind rather than against it. Otherwise, not only will you exhaust your stamina attempting to navigate against strong headwinds, but you'll also prolong your journey significantly.

Speaking of stamina, it's a delicate resource to maintain while cruising the waters. Essential for reaching maximum speed, running out of stamina will automatically throttle your speed down to the second notch on the speed wheel.

To ensure you can maintain maximum stamina consistently, always carry some form of food with you. Whether it's cooked coconuts, durian, or fish, having food readily available can help you avoid sticky situations. Remember to add food to your quick action bar so you can consume it swiftly while evading enemies.

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This is a comprehensive guide to the budget edition of the Flicker Strike Assassin designed specifically for Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction League.

Intro

The damage output is sufficient for nearly all non-Uber content, and this build seldom faces defeat while remaining relatively affordable in the later stages of the league. Realistically, you can assemble a character for approximately 10 to 15 Divine Orbs, and that character will possess ample strength to tackle all non-Uber Pinnacles.

The primary objective with this build was to be an effective Shaper Guardian speed farmer, and it excels in that aspect. While it may not be the fastest build in terms of speed, the equilibrium between speed and damage makes it an excellent choice considering its cost-effectiveness.

How Does This Build Work In POE 3.23?

Now let's talk about how this build works. There are a few interesting interactions in this build.

The first of which comes from the new sword introduced last league, Rikiata's Dance. The sword gives you inversion, which makes it so elemental resistances are inverted when you attack an enemy.

For example, when hitting Phoenix, they have a base resistance of 50% cold resistance. When using Rikiata's Dance, the inversion causes the resistance to be flipped to 50 resistance. This is why we don't try to reduce the amount of resistance a mob has. If we were using something like Frostbite, it would only lower all our damage.

Rikiata's Dance is used in conjunction with Eye of Malice, the helmet we're using, causing the enemy's cold resistance to be increased by 50%. If we use the Phoenix example from before, this increases their cold resistance to 75% or negative 75% with inversion. Eye of Malice also gives us a ton of energy shield, so we can easily run a Divine Blessing setup with a 50% aura.

About The Gear

For the chest piece, we're using Utula's Hunger, which makes you get a ton of flat life as long as you don't have any life rolls on other pieces of gear.

Make sure that you're checking the rares that you buy or craft them for this build. You want zero life rolls, including things like regeneration or leech.

In the amulet slot, we're using Badge of the Brotherhood. This makes it so we have our frenzy charges equal to our power charges.

Regarding the anoint, it's crucial to choose Tribal Fury. The effectiveness of this build is notably diminished without the Tribal Fury anointment, making it a necessary inclusion for optimal performance.

In the boot slot, we opt for Ralakesh's Impatience. This choice has undergone changes in the current Affliction League. It ensures a constant presence of maximum frenzy power, and endurance charges. These charges don't manifest as buffs on your character, but you experience their effects without the need for a source to gain endurance or frenzy charges.

For the belt, we select Auxium. This particular belt is seldom utilized in the builds I've come across. Auxium allows you to accumulate a substantial amount of elemental damage with attacks for each power charge you possess. Given the scarcity of power charge stacking elemental attack builds, this belt isn't commonly employed. However, for our specific build, Auxium provides a noteworthy 210% increase in elemental damage with attacks. Additionally, it offers a substantial amount of energy shield, facilitating the smooth running of our 50% Divine Blessing aura.

The rest of the gear consists of rares, and since they don't have life on them, it shouldn't be too hard to obtain or craft. Just make sure to get the Rage on Hit implicit roll that allows you to use Berserk. While this doesn't provide a ton of extra rage, you still get a decent amount during the end of the fight. Since we aim to keep this build budget-friendly, that's perfectly fine for the damage.

There are different ways you could potentially get more rage that using that which was taken or some form of War Cry scaling. However, realistically, it's not something that you need, especially if you don't want to spend a ton of POE Currency on this build. If you were super rich, you could also consider getting +1 power charge rings, but honestly, it's never going to be worth the investment given how expensive they are.

Also Read: A Detailed Guide On How To Craft The Golembrand Witch In Path Of Exile 3.23

How Does This Build Sustain Flicker Strike?

Let's talk about how this build sustains Flicker Strike aside from the inversion mechanic mentioned earlier. This build relies on the generation of power charges to ignore the cooldown of Flicker Strike.

Flicker Strike of Power gives us a baseline of 50% chance to gain a power charge on crit. When used with Power Charge on Critical Support, you get an extra 54% chance to get a power charge on crit. This essentially makes it so, as long as you are critting, you can indefinitely sustain Flicker Strike.

In certain instances, you might face unfortunate circumstances with critical hits after a boss is no longer at full health, leading to the cooldown triggering. This concern primarily arises with pinnacle bosses and occurs infrequently. If desired, you have the option to use a Diamond Flask for those particular bosses, although it's not a major issue and serves as a minor inconvenience. Hence, I made the decision to forego the use of the Diamond Flask.

Conclusion

This outlines the mechanics of the build. Once you've arranged all the items, simply hold down the left or right mouse button and let the gameplay unfold.

The initial aim was to develop an affordable Flicker Strike, and that's precisely what this build is. You experience the thrill of playing Flicker Strike with slightly less damage but at one-tenth of the cost. Despite the reduced damage, it remains proficient in handling all non-Uber content with ease.

…

In our guide to leveling up quickly in Diablo 4 Season 3, we will explore the optimal approach with insights from our gaming expert, Ruse Cruize.

Rather than providing specific guides for each class, we'll focus on a more universal leveling guide that can be utilized by every class in Diablo 4 Season 3.

The recommendations presented here will offer a blend of optimal strategies and casual suggestions to provide a well-rounded experience.

Do The Seneschal Quest

The paramount task at the beginning is to embark on and finish the Seasonal Questline, the Seneschal Quest.

This is crucial because the Seneschal serves as a companion and will play a significant role throughout this season, making it absolutely worthwhile to pursue at the earliest opportunity.

Whether your intention is to swiftly reach level 100 or progress at a more leisurely pace, acquiring the Seneschal is a top priority. It stands as one of the most substantial power boosts available, making it a component not to be overlooked.

Tree Of Whispers & Overworld

The Overworld/Tree Of Whispers may not be the most efficient method for leveling, but it stands out as the best approach for accumulating currency and Diablo 4 Items. This strategy ensures a consistent supply of gear, experience, and wealth, making the process both effective and enjoyable.

The key is to focus on locating clusters of Grim Favour quests, completing them, and then claiming the rewards from The Tree of Whispers.

This approach is complemented by alternating with Legion Events, which provide substantial XP. World bosses are a close second in terms of XP, and they now offer significantly improved rewards due to recent buffs.

The latest addition to Diablo 4 Season 3, Vaults, introduces an element of uncertainty. While their XP potential remains unclear, it is likely that they won't match the efficiency of the previously mentioned methods.

1. By completing Whispers, you can get Grim Favors.
2. By doing Legion Events, you can get the highest XP.
3. World Bosses
4. Vaults (Potential unknown)

It is essential to note that at level 15, you should prioritize your Class Quest before continuing with Overworld activities.

Upgrading Your Gear

As you advance, it's crucial to consistently upgrade your gear.

The optimal time to initiate upgrades is typically around level 30, but maintaining a continuous focus on upgrading your weapon is highly recommended.

This is particularly true for your Sacred and Ancestral Weapons, as they contribute significantly to boosting your damage output.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Season 3: Everything You Need To Know About Uber Malphas - How To Summon & Loot Table

Domhainne Tunnels - The Fastest Leveling

While this method may not yield the most significant rewards in terms of gear and Diablo 4 Gold, it stands out as unparalleled in terms of XP gain.

Before delving into this approach, it's advisable to complete the Seneschal questline, as the pet obtained will be immensely beneficial.

Located in Scosglen, the Domhainne Tunnels are the focal point of this strategy, and you'll want to repeat them consistently. Although it may become a bit monotonous, this repetitive process is the fastest way to level up.

Continue this until reaching level 45 to 50, at which point you should proceed directly to the Capstone Dungeon.

Upon reaching World Tier 3, return to Domhainne Tunnels for continued leveling. If World Tier 3 proves challenging, consider reverting to World Tier 2 for a more manageable experience.

Target levels 50 to 60 before transitioning to Nightmare Dungeons. This phase provides good XP and prepares you for the World Tier 3 Capstone, facilitating a smooth transition into World Tier 4.

Capstone Dungeon

Irrespective of the method you choose, it is vital that once you reach the 45 to 50 level range, you undertake the Capstone Dungeon to advance to World Tier 3. Progressing to World Tier enhances both XP gain and item ranges, making it crucial not to postpone this advancement.

This step is equally critical for World Tier 4. Ideally, achieving this transition should occur around level 60 to 65 or when you feel sufficiently prepared.

Nightmare Dungeons In World Tier 4

Upon reaching World Tier 4, typically between levels 60 to 65, the recommended course of action is to engage in Nightmare Dungeons.

A convenient starting point in World Tier 4 is to embark on a Tree of Whisper. This will provide gear and a Nightmare Sigil.

If you perceive that your strength is insufficient, returning to Domhainne Tunnels is an option. However, the preferred approach is to focus on upgrading your gear and consistently participate in Nightmare Dungeons until reaching level 100.

More Tips

With a robust groundwork in place, you should be on your way to reaching level 100. To enhance your journey, it's essential to remain mindful of a few key aspects while playing:

1. Engage in Helltides regularly: Helltides serve as an excellent source of Forgotten Souls and Fiend Roses, crucial for upgrading gear.
2. Consistently upgrade your Sacred & Ancestral gear, focusing particularly on the weapon when possible.
3. Keep track of World Bosses for valuable loot and Shattering Prisms.

Hope you will put it into practice immediately after reading this guide. Try to be the first player to reach max level!

…

I’ll discuss the various preparations I’ve made to help you be ready for the upcoming WoW Season of Discovery Phase 2.

Flight Points

Currently, there are numerous tasks at our disposal. For instance, consider acquiring all the Flight Points, not only those essential up to level 40, but every single one.

Because when we get to the max level, you could also go to higher-level zones to get new profession materials, and here there could be way less competition. So, having all the different Flight Points could definitely be a benefit.

Weapon Skills & Training

Make sure to also learn all the different weapon skills.

And talking about weapon skills, then you also got to make sure that you actually level up these.

The rationale behind this is that when advancing your character in Phase 2, you may come across new weapons. If these happen to be upgrades, you’d want to equip them promptly. Insufficient weapon skill could lead to spending around 30 minutes to an hour reaching a decent level, ensuring you don’t miss your attacks.

So, make sure to fix this now instead of when you have to level, as it’s going to reduce your leveling speed by a high amount.

Get These Consumables

Another thing you can also do when you grab the different Flight Points is to look out for particular vendors where you can purchase potions.

These will be in high demand and also increase your leveling speed, as you won’t die as often. Or, you can use them in PvP situations or if you’re about to die.

So if some of these potions are still cheap on the Auction House, then I would definitely grab these before they become more expensive. Or, you could fish in higher-level zones, but there’s also a high chance that you can get these.

Having a higher amount of health is also going to be important. Therefore, I’ve also purchased some Rumsey Rum Black Labels. These will increase my stamina by 15 for 15 minutes.

World Buff

Another thing you should also do is to go to either Thunder Bluff as a Horde player or the Darnassus as an Alliance player.

Here you should get the world buff. And once you have got this, it’s also going to be important to purchase an item that allows you to store the buff. The name of this item is Chronoboon Displacers, and this allows you to keep your world buff stored in an item.

And then, you can press on the item the moment you would also like to reactivate your world buff.

Profession Leveling

Make sure to also max out your First Aid so you have the best possible bandages for when you have to level. You could even prepare silk cloth as well so you can continue to level this profession right away.

Talking about professions, then you should also max out your main professions, whether it’s gathering professions or crafting professions.

The primary motivation for prioritizing this is primarily due to the uncertainty of the introduction of new Epic items in Phase 2, similar to what occurred in Phase 1. If such implementations are made, it’s advisable not to commence leveling your profession from the beginning.

Also, remember many of the things you can craft will be useful as you’re leveling, especially the Epic items at level 25. Those will easily last all the way up to level 40 or could even be useful at level 40.

Profession Preparation

I’ve also prepared profession materials so I can speed level my leatherworking, for example, Medium Leather, Heavy Leather, and even Thick Leather.

Collect All 12 Runes

Another important thing to do is to collect all 12 runes.

You have the flexibility to switch between these as you progress, whether you find yourself leveling or, for instance, participating in a dungeon where you may need to take on the roles of tanking, healing, or possibly DPS.

Besides this, then the runes also allow you to have up to 3 additional spells or abilities, and these will definitely increase your leveling speed.

In order to collect each individual rune, I use an addon called RestedXP that will tell me where and also how to collect them. And in Phase 2, this addon will then be updated with all the new runes so you know where to collect these as you're leveling up.

20 Completed Quests

Another thing I've also done to level up quickly is to stack up on 20 completed quests.

Instead of handing them in right now to get SOD Gold, then I will wait until I also get experience. That way, I'll get to level 26 in a matter of seconds.

To prepare as much experience as possible, then make sure to also stack up elite quests and dungeon quests as these reward a lot more experience compared to a normal quest.

Also Read: WOW Classic SOD: Farm These 8 High-Value Items To Help You Get Gold Easily!

Rank Up Now

Also, focus on getting to rank 3. Not because of the rewards you can currently purchase, but mainly because you will be able to purchase new rewards in Phase 2.

The higher rank you can get now, the easier it will also be to get to an even higher rank in the next phase.

Cheaper Mount

There's also another big benefit of getting to rank 3.

Essentially, your mount will be more affordable. I am aware that the mount price has been lowered in the Season of Discovery, but having a greater discount is advantageous. This saved gold can be utilized for other purposes.

To reduce your price even further, then you should also focus on your faction-specific reputation. So, make sure to get this to at least Honored. If you can get it to Revered, it's going to be an even bigger discount.

Quick Ranking

The quickest way to get to rank 3 is just to do Warsong Gulch.

This battleground rewards a lot of honor and also reputation that you will need. Make sure to get a pre-made group so you also increase your win rate.

Quick Reputation

Also, make sure to do the Ashenvale World PvP event.

Receiving reputation with the same faction as Warsong Gulch is significant. The reason for its importance lies in the ability to acquire items that aid in a swift leveling process, including those you can instantly utilize upon reaching, for instance, level 38.

Phase 2 Item Preparation

Achieving Revered with this faction allows you to acquire level 25 weapons. There's a possibility that in the future, there might even be a level 40 version. In the original classic, there was indeed a level 38 version.

It’s going to be easy to get this faction to Friendly. And I would highly recommend you to do this as you will be able to purchase a mount you can only use in Ashenvale. So if you plan to quest in Ashenvale in Phase 2, then this mount will also help you level up even quicker.

However, you should make sure you get this faction to at least Honored.

Phase 2 Green Items

Another thing I’ve done in order to prepare higher level green items for Phase 2 is to make sure I fish in higher-level zones.

All of these green items I’ve collected from my Rogue, and most of them I will either use when I’m leveling up or when I get to max level.

And when you’re fishing, you have a chance to get Mithril Bound Trunks and Iron Bound Trunks. And in these, you can then get these green items. Sometimes they will either be above or below level 40, or you could even be lucky enough for them to also be exactly level 40.

Supply Officers

You should also focus on the new faction where you hand in Supply Crates and get reputation with this new faction.

Getting to Revered allows you to purchase a 10-bag, and getting it to Honored allows you to get a 12-bag. It’s quite useful when you’re leveling up so you have more backspace.

You can also unlock a new room for your class. So if you’re planning to get all the runes before Season of Discovery Phase 2, then make sure to focus on the faction. And who knows, maybe in the future, it will even be mandatory to focus on the faction.

The easiest and quickest way to get reputation is simply to find chests in the open world. Here, there’s a high chance that you will also get the Supply Crates.

Focus On BIS gear

To level up even quicker between level 25 to 40, you also got to make sure that your character has amazing gear.

So, do the Blackfathom Deeps raid every single reset. And of course, also work on your professions so you can craft the Epic item.

…

As you journey across Azeroth in Season of Discovery, you may have found these uncommon items that you’ve looted across different mobs. These are called the Waylaid Supply Crates.

As of time now, so far, you’ve only been able to carry one in your bags at a time. But there’s going to be a hotfix going out later, which is going to allow you to carry multiple of these crates in your inventory.

But what are these things? How do they work? In this guide, I’ll be breaking down what these things exactly are, what they’re used for, and why you should be completing them when you find them.

What Are Waylaid Supply Crates?

Let’s first begin with what they are.

The Waylaid Supply Crates are a part of an entirely new system, and it’s all part of this new reputation grind called the Azeroth Commerce Authority.

This new reputation comes with a bunch of new rewards that I highly recommend you grind out because not only can you get some XP, but you can also get some runes for every single class. For example, if you play a Rogue and you’d like to tank as a Rogue, that rune comes from being Honored with this faction.

Also Read: WOW Classic SOD: Top 10 Things You Need To Do At Level 25

How Do Waylaid Supply Crates Work?

Next, let’s talk about how the system works.

First, you will go out and, as you’re journeying through Azeroth, you’ll kill mobs and you’ll loot one of these supply crates off said mob. And it’s completely random, whichever ones you guys find when you’re looting mobs.

As an example, let’s say that you looted the supply crate that is for Copper Bars, which means you would have to either craft 20 Copper Bars or you just buy them off the Auction House.

Once you get them, you click on the item to combine them, and it turns into a supply crate, aka a Supply Shipment.

Once you’ve got your Supply Shipment, you’re going to head over to one of the NPCs to turn it in. There are six NPCs in the game to turn these into, 3 for each faction.

Alliance NPCs:

1. Elaine Compton is in Stormwind.
2. Tamelyn Aldridge is in Ironforge.
3. Marcy Baker is in Darnassus.

Horde NPCs:

1. Jornah is in Orgrimmar
2. Dokimi is in Thunder Bluff
3. Gishah is in Undercity

And it’s really just as simple as that. You go out, complete your quests and kill mobs, and then you loot these off the mobs, and then you just complete whatever it is required and turn it in.

Rewards

So, now let’s actually take a look and see what the rewards are.

For reaching Friendly with the faction, it will unlock the purchasing options of:

• The Small Courier Satchel, which is a 10-slot bag
• The Provisioner Gloves. These are cloth gloves that are 3 stamina and 3 spirit.
• The Courier Threads, some leather boots with 4+ agility
• The mail waist is called the Hoist Strap, which is a 2 strength and 2 stamina mail belt.

And then for reaching Honored is where you get the really good stuff - the runes:

• For Mage, you’ve got Arcane Surge.
• For Paladin, you’ve got Rune of Beckoning Light.
• For Warlock, you’ve got Everlasting Affliction.
• For Shaman, you’ve got Rune of Healing Rain.
• For Hunter, you’ve got Rune of Serpent Spread.
• For Warrior, you’ve got Rune of Single-Minded Fury.
• For Druid, you’ve got Rune of Skull Bash.
• For Rogue, you’ve got Rune of Teasing.
• For Priest, you’ve got Tenebrous Epiphany.

And then there’s also two patterns here for professions. You’ve got the Phoenix Bindings and the Mantle of the Second War.

Just keep in mind that currently, the two patterns are actually bugged. So apparently, what happens is when you purchase them and then you learn them, they actually don’t show up as learned under your professions tab. So, I don’t think they’re worth getting right now, but I’m sure this will be hotfixed at a later time.

Tips

Now, let’s talk about a couple of tips for using this system.

Apparently, there are reports going out that when it comes to the amount of reputation you get for turning these in, you actually get more rep for turning in ones that require crafted items over gathering items.

So, for example, if you get a shipment and you turn it in that requires an item that you get from gathering, you get about 300 rep. However, if you turn in a shipment that calls for an item that is something that’s crafted, you actually get 450 rep.

Just be mindful that when you are turning these in, the crafted items are definitely going to be more expensive if you’re not actually crafting them.

And if you are trying to get these done while you’re leveling, you’re probably not going to have a lot of SoD Gold for buying your spells. So, I would say definitely try to focus on these once you hit Level 25, the level cap for this first phase, instead of doing it while you’re leveling.

Another important tip to remember here is that, again, there’s the level 10 items and then the level 25 ones. So, once you actually get to Friendly reputation, the level 10 Supply Crates will no longer give you reputation. So, once you get to Friendly, you’re going to have to just grind the level 25 Supply Crates.

…

Diablo 4 Abattoir of Zir Dungeon is an end game pinnacle content that players can only access once they've beaten all of the Season Journey and is incredibly hard.

The starting difficulty for the Abattoir of Zir is 20% harder than the highest tier of Nightmare Dungeons. So, this content is extremely challenging.

So, in this guide, we're going to be talking about some of the best tips and tricks to conquer the Abattoir of Zir in Diablo 4 Season 2. Of course, if you have enough Diablo 4 Gold, you'd better equip your character well, so that it will be easier for you to challenge Abattoir of Zir!

How To Start Abattoir Of Zir?

If you open up your season tab and then go to your season journey in order to start this content, all of the seasonal chapters will need to have check marks.

You need to complete the last tier. You don't need to complete every single challenge. You just need to complete enough that you get the chapter rewards. Once you do that, you will be rewarded with the Abattoir of Zir glyph known as the Tears of Blood.

In order to start using this, you're going to need to be leveling it up in the Abattoir of Zir. To access this content, you're going to want to come over to Ked Bardu. Ked Bardu is located in the Dry Steppes, and once you get here, you're going to want to come over to the glyph crafting Occultist.

When you come to the Occultist, you're going to look for the Bloodforged Sigils and craft a Tier 1. Now, there are 25 tiers of the Abattoir of Zir, each one increasing in difficulty and the amount of Sigil Powder that is required to craft it. You're going to earn them when you complete a Tier 1. You unlock the ability to do a Tier 2 and so on and so forth.

And if you're looking for Sigil Powder, you get it by breaking down sigils. So, if you have a sigil from a nightmare 100 dungeon or a nightmare 20 dungeon, anytime that you break them down, you'll earn yourself sigil powder.

If you successfully complete Abattoir of Zir, you will earn Sigil Powder. So, as long as you're not failing these, you can keep running them. But once you start failing, you can run out of Sigil Powder.

Tips & Tricks - Some Basics

The next thing to note before you jump into your first Abattoir Of Zir is your defenses.

Now, Abattoir of Zir is very different from a nightmare 100 dungeon or nightmare dungeons in general because you only have one life. That means if you die at any point, you're kicked out of the run. If you're playing with teammates or if any of your teammates die at any point, all of you are kicked out of the run. And it costs a ton of Sigil Powder to make another sigil. So, going in prepared is very important.

What do you need to be prepared? The very first thing is your resistances. You're going to want all of your resistances to 70% or as close to 70% as possible.

The next thing that you're going to want to look for is armor. Now, the armor cap of Abattoir of Zir is around 14,000 armor for fighting the hardest enemies. When you're walking into it, you're going to want around 13.3k armor. The reason you're going to want that much armor is because armor affects your physical damage negation, meaning that the more armor that you have, the more damage reduction that you take from enemies. This caps out at 85%, but it changes for the level of enemies.

For example, I have more than enough armor to fight enemies that are my level at 10,000 armor because I'm getting max physical damage negation, which is 85%. However, if I start fighting enemies that are 156 levels or level 156, then I'm going to need more armor because their damage is going to go up as their level is going up.

Also Read: Diablo 4: Best Druid Paragon Board With Tears Of Blood - Abattoir Of Zir Unique Glyph

So, walking into Abattoir of Zir, it’s really important to note that you want really high resistances. You’re shooting for around, I would say, 10,000 base armor. Then, you can use an Aspect of Disobedience to increase your armor even more so that you’re taking the least amount of damage possible via your armor.

If you’re low on your resistances or damage for the Abattoir of Zir, you can come over to the Elixir crafter and craft some Elixir to increase your defenses, increase your resistances, increase your damage.

You can also craft Incenses, which can give you more dodge chance, more thorns, more max life and so on. You can have both a potion and an incense active at the same time to increase your rate of success in Abattoir of Zir.

There are also Helltides every hour, and opening the Helltide chest can give you potions that can increase your armor, for example. This is another thing to stack up on before you go into the Abattoir of Zir.

Abattoir Of Zir Actual Run

Now that we’ve gone over some of the basics, let’s walk through an Abattoir of Zir actual run.

One of the big things that you’re going to notice about Abattoir of Zir is enemies are going to be beefy. In fact, enemies get 20% more HP per level, so their health scales exponentially. The higher you go, the more HP that they get. And if you’re playing with team members, they get even more HP.

You’ll also note that there is a time limit. You have 10 minutes to clear a run, and once you get into the later tiers, that can become a genuine issue. Right now, the big struggle with Abattoir of Zir is having enough survivability so that you don’t die in the run, but also having enough damage that you can complete the run in under 10 minutes. And this is kind of a bit of a struggle.

This struggle becomes a little easier with the new Tears of the Blood glyph. Once you complete a run, you’re going to get experience that you can socket into your Tears of Blood glyph.

Now, for leveling up this glyph, the experience required is massive and only realistically achievable in the Abattoir of Zir. The reason for this is the Tears of Blood glyph goes up to level 200, whereas all other glyphs in the game only go up to level 21. And normal nightmare dungeons just don’t reward enough experience to make meaningful level gains on this glyph.

As of the hotfix that happened on December 8th, they’ve massively buffed the amount of experience that you get from completing Abattoir of Zir runs so that you can actually earn meaningful progression on this thing. Prior to that hotfix, it was basically theoretically impossible to level up this thing to level 200 given the timeframe of the season. So now experience gains are a bit better, but it’s still going to be a lot of grinding to really level this thing up.

In terms of socketing this glyph, it’s really important to socket it in somewhere that’s going to give you more survivability for the Abattoir of Zir and hopefully more damage. There’s a lot of places in a lot of Paragon Boards that you could socket in multiple characters.

For example, the reason I’ve socketed in the Heightened Malice board for the Druid is mainly because it’s going to boost up my damage reduction from poison enemies. Damage reduction is super important in the higher tiers, and it’s also going to give me increased damage to poisoned enemies.

The reason for this is that the Tears of Blood glyph not only gives me the percent increased in damage, but it also gives me a boost to all of my rare nodes that are in radius. Rare nodes are these yellow nodes. And putting it somewhere smart that to give you more survivability is really important.

Once you complete your first two runs of Abattoir of Zir, you’ll have enough experience to level up your Tears of Blood glyph to level 1. Now, socketing this thing can be very important and critical to your success. You’re going to want to socket in it in a glyph socket that has a ton of core stats nearby as well as beneficial rare notes.

The Tears of the Blood glyph is going to give you for every 5 core stats purchased within range. You're going to get 2% increased multiplicative damage and a 50% bonus to all rare nodes within range. Bonus increases by 10% every 10 levels.

That is going to do it for our guide on the Abattoir of Zir. This is hard challenging pinnacle end game content that will push your build to the test. And if you've already gotten a character to max level and done all the content in Diablo 4 and want to try something even harder and push your build to the limit, Abattoir of Zir is the place to do it.

However, this content is brutally crushing. The enemies are incredibly strong and even on the best builds, you will most likely die. So, be careful.

…

When thinking about each new class in Path of Exile 2, we really try to think about what can make combat feel different from all the others. For the Mercenary, that difference is the crossbow.

A crossbow is fundamentally different from a regular bow because it fires instantly instead of needing to be drawn back. This means that you need immediate feedback. Clicking the fire button should make the character shoot instantly. Just like in a shooter.

As soon as we experienced that, we realised that there are a lot of design lessons to learn from shooters, and so we fully embraced them. No matter what kind of weapon you want to choose, as long as you have enough POE Currency, you don’t have to worry!

Different Features Of Mercenary’s Crossbow

In Path of Exile 2, we have crossbows that look like sniper rifles, shotguns, and assault rifles.

But in order to really get shooter-like gameplay, we wanted to go further. In Path of Exile 2, we now support WASD movement. You can now walk around in any direction, independent of aiming.

In fact, if this is your preferred method of gameplay, you can use it on any class regardless of what weapon type you are using. You can change between Click to Move or WASD at any time.

You can only hold two crossbows at a time, but Path of Exile 2 is all about interesting combinations of abilities. And this is where Ammo skills come in. This is a Burst Shot crossbow and right now, I have Armour Piercing Ammo equipped, which makes it very effective when facing a group of enemies, since it pierces right through them.

But there are other ammos, too. For a bigger single target, it might be a good idea to switch to Incendiary. The more projectiles hit the target, the stronger the ignite, so you will want to get up nice close and personal with this one.

If you have a bunch of targets running at you, you might want to slow them down. In this case, you could switch to Permafrost Burst Shot. Shooting a bunch of smaller enemies at range will chill them, and potentially even freeze them in place.

Also Read: Gameplay & Walkthrough Guide For Druid In Path Of Exile 2

Once you have some frozen enemies, though, you can switch back to Armour Piercing. Shooting a frozen enemy with Armour Piercing Burst Shot will explode the ice, doing a huge amount of damage to all nearby enemies.

Another feature crossbows have is attachments. This is a grenade launcher. When I equip it, it appears on the underside of the crossbow. These attachments are just like skill gems, so you effectively get extra skill slots, and you can augment these with support gems just like regular skills.

These grenades take a while to explode, so it’s a good idea to pair them with some kind of crowd control, like Permafrost Burst Shot. We have other grenades too, though. This attachment is a Flash Grenade. It does barely any damage, but it does do a huge amount of stun. It can be a great opener before you run into combat.

Oil Grenade is another one of the attachments. Firing one of these grenades coats the ground and nearby enemies in oil. Oil slows enemies down, so it’s another useful crowd control mechanic.

Another useful thing oil can do is to be set on fire. Any burning enemy or explosion will ignite the oil, causing extra burning damage. One of the problems with Burst Shot crossbows is that each pellet doesn’t do much damage individually. This means that if enemies have Armour, then it will be very effective preventing that damage.

But thankfully, you can equip an additional crossbow in your second weapon set to deal with the weaknesses of your primary weapon. This is a Rapid Shot crossbow. Rapid Shot is great for closing on enemies because you can shoot while running.

In Path of Exile 2, you now have the ability to use some skills while moving. Being able to create skills like this opens up a lot of new design space and allows you to really increase the pace of combat.

The Armour Piercing version of Rapid Shot slowly erodes a monster’s armour. Once the armour is fully broken, you can easily switch back to Burst shot to deal much more damage.

Being able to run while shooting with Rapid Shot is also great for when you want to perform a fighting retreat.

Using Permafrost ammo with Rapid Shot is also useful if you need to retreat. When you shoot the ground, it creates ice crystals. If you draw monsters back over these crystals, they explode, chilling the monsters. It’s great if you want to set up a safe zone before pulling the next pack.

Slowing enemies down can come in handy if you want to use the Incendiary version of Rapid Shot. Using this skill requires that you charge up a little before it fires, but as it continues to heat up, it will do more and more damage.

It has a really large clip size, so you can just keep firing and firing with it. But the other really useful feature is that when the crossbow is heated up, it adds extra fire damage to any grenade that you launch.

Explosive grenades will work equally as well with Flash or Oil grenades, too. If you use it with Oil grenades, the oil will catch fire immediately.

Another crossbow type that you can find is Power Shot. This one works just like a classic sniper rifle. Use it with Armour Piercing ammo and it will penetrate armour on targets, so it’s a good idea to use when something is really tough.

Now this skill has another interesting interaction with Armour Break. If the enemy has its armour broken then your power shot hits a weak spot and does a huge amount of single target damage, with a bunch of extra stun for good measure.

Now, the Incendiary version of Power Shot is more like a rocket launcher. It does a big explosive blast at a distance.

One of the really useful features of this version is that you can explode any grenades that happen to be on the ground. This combo also works really well with Incendiary Rapid Shot. I’m going to charge up the heat on my crossbow, shoot out a bunch of grenades, and then start the fireworks with a Power Shot.

The Ice version of Power Shot creates frost walls at a distance. This is great for crowd controlling monsters in tight passages. The wall segments have other uses, too. If they get destroyed by monsters, then they will explode doing a small amount of damage.

Do you remember that Burst Shot combo with frozen enemies we did earlier? That works with ice walls, too. Let’s put Burst Shot back on. Now I can fill up this area with ice walls, then shoot them with Armour Piercing Burst Shot for a huge amount of damage.

Conclusion

And that’s the Mercenary. It feels totally different from anything we’ve seen before and shows you the range of what is possible in Path of Exile 2.

…

In Elden Ring, you’re going to find many different items. But the Deathroot item is something that you are going to need for not only a questline, but also to get some really great rewards in Elden Ring.

So, here, I will show you where all 9 of these Deathroots are located in Elden Ring. Also, I will take you through the questline that’s going to start here at the Bestial Sanctum.

If you want this process to go smoothly, you'd better use Elden Ring Runes to buy some good weapons and armor to improve yourself!

Undead Mariner 1

But before we get to the Bestial Sanctum, let’s go ahead and gather all of the Deathroots within Limgrave and Liurnia.

Your first Deathroot is going to be found in Summonwater Village. You can start at the Summonwater Village Outskirts Site of Grace, and you can run into the village. There’s going to be a Tibia Mariner there. You need to kill him and grab the first Deathroot.

Deathtouched Catacombs

Staying in Limgrave, you’re going to Deathtouched Catacombs.

Head to the Deathtouched Catacombs and you’re going to go through the entire dungeon in order to kill the end boss. You will fight a Black Knife Assassin for the boss of this dungeon.

But after you defeat the boss, there’s a chest there. Open it up and that’s going to be your second Deathroot.

Undead Mariner 2

At this point, we’re going to move into Liurnia of the Lakes.

Right on the east side on the map, there’s going to be another Mariner. All you need to do for the Deathroot is to kill him and grab his Deathroot from him.

Black Knife Catacombs

At this point, you’re going to continue north all the way up until the Black Knife Catacombs.

You want to make your way through that dungeon all the way until the boss room. At the end, you will fight a Cemetery Shade with a bunch of skeletons.

But after you kill him, you will have access to the chest in the middle of the room. Grab that chest and there is going to be your Deathroot.

Guraanq Questline Check In

At this point, we’re going to go visit Guraanq, possibly for a second time, depending on if you started this questline or not already. I will assume that you have. But if you have not, you need to head here to the Third Church of Marika.

Right behind it is going to be a portal that will drop you off right here in front of the Bestial Sanctum. Gurranq Beast Clergyman is going to be there and you need to give him all the Deathroots you have received so far.

You should have 4 at this point, and that will net you the Ash of War:Beast's Roar, Bestial Vitality, Bestial Sling, the Clawmark Seal, and the Beast Eye (which is going to allow you to detect when other Deathroots are in the area).

There is something to take note of here within Guraanq’s questline, because after you give him the 4 Deathroots, the next time you come back to him, he is going to try to attack you because he’s gone mad. You need to get him down to half health and then he will calm down. You need to rest at the Site of Grace and then give him the rest of your Deathroots in order to complete the questline.

Undead Mariner 3

The next area in the Lands Between you want to venture to is the Wyndham Ruins in Altus Plateau.

There’s going to be a Mariner there who you need to kill, and he is going to drop for you your next Deathroot.

However, in order to get to Altus Plateau, you need to get two separate pieces of a medallion - Dectus Medallion (Left) & Dectus Medallion (Right). The first of which is going to be located at Fort Height in Limgrave, and the second piece is going to be located all the way to the east in Fort Faroth in Caelid.

Once you have both of those medallions, you can go up to the lift and you can get right into Altus Plateau to find this Deathroot.

Gelmir Hero’s Grave

Next up, you’re going to be heading into the Gelmir Hero’s Grave, and you will be following the Chariot all the way down the lava path until you get to the point on the right where you can jump down a little hole that will take you directly to the boss door.

And after defeating the Red Wolf boss, there’s going to be a chest at the very end of the room, and that is going to hold your next Deathroot.

Also Read: Elden Ring: How To Find All 13 Ancient Dragon Smithing Stones?

Undead Mariner 4

Next up, we are going to head north to the Mountaintops of the Giants, where there is yet another Mariner who you need to kill in order to get the next Deathroot.

Take out the skulls rolling around, dispose of the Mariner, and that Deathroot will be yours.

Giants’ Mountaintop Catacombs

You’re now going to head to the Giant’s Mountaintop Catacombs, where you need to make your way through that entire dungeon to get to the end boss fight. It can be a little tricky to get through, but if you feel like you’re going insane, you’re going in the right direction.

Destroy the Ulcerated Tree Spirit at the end of this dungeon, and in a chest at the end of the Boss Arena is going to be your second to last Deathroot.

Hidden Haligtree Path

At this point, we’re going to need to pick up our very last Deathroot, which is located in the Hidden Path to the Haligtree.

Now, there is a very special way you need to get here. You’re going to need the entire Secret Medallion. The first half is going to be located in the Liurnia of the Lakes, given to you by Old Albus, and the second portion of the medallion is going to be located in Castle Sol, on the Mountaintops of the Giants.

After you defeat the boss, continue running through that area and take the lift up, and you will be able to grab this medallion at this location.

You’re then going to take it back to the Grand Lift of Rold, go up to the lift, and it will give you a second option to lift the Secret Medallion, and then you can access this area.

Now that you have access to the Hidden Path to the Haligtree, you’re going to see that your Beast Eye is going to quiver. So, I want you to follow the path (the invisible pathways) until you get to the portion where you can jump off and fight one of the very large Land Octopus.

Right behind that octopus is going to be a lever, which is going to open the boss door. Dispose of the octopus, pull the lever, turn around, and follow the path all the way until you see the golden boss fog. You will not miss it because it’s going to be directly in front of you.

But before you fight this boss, take off your weapons, because it’s going to be a Stray Mimic Tear, and whatever you have equipped, it will also have equipped. So, it can be either as easy or as hard as you want it to be.

After defeating the Stray Mimic Tear, there is a chest in the back of the room. Open that chest and you will receive your very last and ninth Deathroot.

Finish Guraanq Questline

At this point, we’re going to tie up loose ends with Guraanq, so you’re going to head back to the Bestial Sanctum in Caelid, and you’re going to approach him to give him your final remaining 5 Deathroots.

After you give him the 5 remaining Deathroots, you are going to get some really cool dialogue from Guraanq, and then you are also going to be rewarded with a few different Elden Ring Items.

And just a side note here, you can also return every single Deathroot as you get it.

And after you do his entire questline, you will receive an Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone, Gurranq’s Beast Claw, the Beastclaw Greathammer, the Stone of Gurranq, and the Beast Claw Incantation.

That is going to be the entirety of Guraanq’s questline, as well as all 9 Deathroot locations.

…

In this FC 24 guide, I’ll show you all of the F techniques and how we can get the most out of them in proper situations. I’ll also reveal my secret favorite method this year that allows me to score many goals than before.

This means you will be able to win more games and earn more FC 24 Coins!

1. Precision Shooting

Before we start with the specific finishing techniques, we will take a look at the new future that affects the finishing directly, which is the Precision Shooting.

Some of the players have been complaining about the Assisted Shooting being complete garbage and they miss easy goals. If you’re one of them, now you have an option to correct this.

As you create scoring opportunities in the game, you will not have the option to take advantage of Precision Shooting. This shooting mechanic demands that you sharpen your aim when setting up a shot. It will also increase the power of the shot, meaning the ball will head towards a target at faster speeds.

Compared to the default Assisted Shooting, you are more in control of choosing the direction of the shot. That means you will have to aim perfectly with your left analog stick while shooting and the input will be directly reflected with your shot.

Let’s understand the main difference between the Assisted and Precision Shooting. With the Assisted Shooting, you choose one of the sides to shoot to. The direction of the left stick doesn’t have to be exactly towards the goal. You just pick a side and go for the shot with the Precision Shooting.

However, you can’t do that. You have to aim directly towards the goal. Otherwise, it will go miles out.

To enable Precision Shooting, go to settings menu and look for the ‘Gameplay’ settings option.

After entering it, scroll down to find the “Shoot Assistance” option once you do set it the Precision from default. The question is, should you actually use the Precision Shooting?

There is no right answer to that if Precision Shooting or Assisted Shooting is better. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and it’s actually all about if you’re willing to take your time and become better at it. Because you need a bit of patience with it. If you think you don’t want to use it, just don’t turn it on.

2. Finesse Shot

Let’s move on to our first real finishing technique, the Finesse Shot.

With this method, your player shoots the ball with the inside of his foot and adds a fensive curve to it so that it becomes harder for the keeper to catch it.

To be able to perform a Finesse Shot, hold on to your R1 & RB button and power it up with your shooting button. They work incredibly fine both in one versus one situation and from the distance.

Whenever you can get the ball towards your player's strong foot, feel free to give your shot a little curve by using the Finesse Shot. Preparing the perfect Finesse Shot, however, has a little thick. You need to set your player with an angle between 30 and 45 degrees towards the goal. With this angle, you can aim for the perfect finesse path and that will surely enhance the curve.

In a very simple example, we get past the opponent here. Because I know I want to go for a Finesse Shot, I don’t go straightforward instead give myself an angle, which favors my strong foot. And as the keeper comes out, I finish the position with a Finesse Shot.

With FC 24, playstyles were introduced, and there’s also playstyle for Finesse Shot. Players with this playstyle are extremely dangerous, especially if they have the Finesse +. You can see those playstyles on the player page and whenever you try to execute that specific mechanic, they will glove above the player’s head.

So, definitely look out for them. And if you have players with Finesse playstyle, fear no distance, take a look at the goal, and go for a Finesse Shot.

The question is how much power do I need with the Finesse Shot and where do I aim at? If you’re using Assisted Shooting like I do, you can just choose one side with a left stick angle around 45° towards the goal. This usually is the optimal direction.

The power changes depending on the distance from the goal in the Box. You can score any Finesse Shot with the power around two bars. However, the distance shots require more power. That is why I recommend shots with around three bars of power.

3. Outside Foot Shot

There will be times where you will find it hard to get the ball towards your strong foot. But don’t worry, there is indeed a perfect method to use in those situations as well. This finishing technique is called the Outside Foot Shot.

To be able to perform an Outside Foot Shot, hold on to your L2 & LT button and power up a shot while the ball is close to your weak foot. This will help you avoid using your weak foot and instead shoot with the outside of your stronger one. In my opinion, it is as strong and reliable as Finesse Shots in the current state of the game.

The trick for the Outside Foot Shot is to aim a bit further away from the far post. Don’t worry, with the curve this meta itself gives, it will reach the goal and get in if you use it correctly.

The answers to where to aim and how much power is needed are the same with the Finesse Shots. Make sure to remind yourself of the distance.

Of course, there’s a playstyle again, which enhances this shooting type and it’s called Trivela. It gives your Outside Foot Shot a better curve and with that an accuracy. So, if you have FC 24 Players with that playstyle or even playstyle +, make sure to try this method out.

4. Power Shot

Those two are very strong, but they’re not the only finishing types you will need. Sometimes, you need power to beat the keeper and that is why we have Power Shots since last year.

To be able to execute a Power Shot, hold on to your both L1 & R1 or LB & RB buttons together while shooting.

There are two things you need to watch out for with this method. Aiming with your left stick is extremely important as Power Shots get aimed manually. It is very easy not to hit the goal with it if you use your left stick carelessly.

Secondly, your player will need some time to prepare the Power Shot and become vulnerable for tackles in that time. You either need some space and time before you go for a Power Shot or a player with a playstyle Power Shot +.

Power Shot + significantly reduces the time penalty of this method and you shoot the ball rapidly as if you’re going for a normal shot.

5. Chip Shot

Next up, we have a very situational method that was very strong in previous titles but fails to impress me in this one, which is the Chip Shot.

It allows us to make the ball fly over the keeper if he tends to get out of his goal. You need to hold on to the L1 & LB button while shooting to chip the ball over the keeper.

However, like I’ve said, it is very easy to fail with it. You might fail with the Chip Shot if you’re too close to the goal. If the keeper baits you as if he’s coming out and then gets back, then you might fail again.

From my experience, it’s only viable to go for a Chip Shot once the keeper completely overcommits with coming out of his goal. Once he does that, make sure to chip the bolt towards the fire poost so that he won’t be able to get a single touch to stop it.

Here, I get the ball behind the defensive line and expect the keeper to come out. He exactly does that. And just because I’ve given myself a little angle towards the lower side, I find it very easy to chip the ball over the keeper towards the fire poost and score an easy goal.

6. Timed Finishing

Now that we’ve seen the finishing techniques, I will show you how to empower them.

In my opinion, this method takes the finishing to another level. I’m talking about the Timed Finishing.

Timed Finishing is a high-risk and high-reward mechanic that could either enhance your shot or blew everything up depending on your performance with it. The mechanic is simple.

Once you power up a shot, you have to press the shooting button a second time as your player is about to hit the ball. If you can time this correctly, you’ll see that the cursor above your player’s head glows green.

This will give the ball a better accuracy and speed towards the goal. If you can time it correctly, it will either glow red or gray. That means you need to practice more on it to get a better feeling about it.

The way I advise players to practice it is to get yourself first into an offline match, such as squat battles, and only focus on the mechanic itself. Then, try it out against real players in online matches.

Trust me with time, you will surely get a better feeling and talent on it and it will be much more natural to you.

Timed finishing can be used with different finishing methods that we have previously showed you and will greatly increase the success rate of any shot. Practice makes it perfect.

7. Near Post Shot

Finally, I want to give you my favorite method for the finishing this season. I feel like every other season this gets changed, but with FC 24, Near Post Shots became stronger than ever.

Even if sometimes it looks incredibly hard, they go in magnificently. One of the reasons that I prefer Near Post Shots is that because players tend to move their keeper towards the fire poost and open the near one. Even without that, the Near Post Shots are strong.

To make them more consistent, I advise you to use the green time finishing and make sure you blast the ball in.

…

Uber Uniques in Diablo 4 are the ultimate power fantasy, and now with Season 2, we’re finally able to reliably get them. Uber Uniques are the most powerful equipment you can possibly get in the game.

In order to do this, you’ll need to farm Helltides, whispers, and 3 of the new endgame bosses: Grigoire the Galvanic Saint, Varshan, and Duriel the King of Maggots.

In this guide, we’re not only covering how to farm them, we’re also covering the quickest methods for getting your first Uber Unique.

Before You Farm

Before you start farming, you’ll first need to get into World Tier 4 by completing the Capstone Dungeon, The Fallen Temple.

For the new endgame bosses and for speed farming in general, consider first getting your character maxed out in level, at least cap your resistance to Poison and Lightning, and get some good item power 925 equipment.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Season 2: How To Maximize Helltide Runs? - Aberrant Cinders, Tortured Gifts, Farming Strategies & More

Farming Grigoire

Grigoire is an endgame boss in World Tier 4 located in the Hall of the Penitent that you’ll need to defeat to collect Shards of Agony, one of two summoning items needed to summon Duriel.

Grigoire takes 5 Living Steel to summon and Living Steel comes from farming Helltide. Helltide is unlocked in World Tier 3. But because Living Steel only drops 1 at a time in World Tier 3, I recommend only farming Living Steel in World Tier 4.

Helltide is an event that is active for an hour and is then down for an hour and 15 minutes. Defeat enemies in a Helltide to collect Aberrant Cinders.

To get Living Steel, we’ll need to find Tortured Gifts of Living Steel. To make this easier, I use the website Helltides.com, which tells me every time a Helltide is starting, and also predictively where each Living Steel chest is.

Once you find a Living Steel chest, you’ll need to untether the mini boss, defeat them, and then open the chest, which costs 300 Aberrant Cinders. Each chest will drop 3 Living Steel and in rare cases, sometimes more.

There is a way to farm Living Steel much faster though by taking advantage of the Helltide timer, which allows us to collect up to 12 Living Steel in a single run of Helltide.

Farm Living Steel

Here’s how to farm 12 Living Steel in a single run of Helltide.

First off, it’s extremely helpful to know where to farm Aberrant Cinders quickly. I prefer areas that I either know have high mob density or specific types of mobs that spawn in larger packs. Because, I can get a lot of Diablo 4 Gold and XP.

For this, I usually farm around the edges of Helltide regions or areas that specifically have Spiders type enemies or Cannibal type enemies. Areas that have narrow pathways can also be a great source of mob density and ease of farming for Aberrant Cinders. I generally stay away from large open areas since groups of enemies can be harder to locate.

To get this trick to work, it’s incredibly important to understand the timing conventions for Helltide. Helltide is always up for an hour and down for an hour and 15 minutes. This means that Helltide will always be offset by 15 minutes with every new Helltide.

The Tortured Gift of Living Steel will reset at the top of every hour, meaning if your Helltide started at 4:30 and will end at 5:30, you’ll have before 5:00 to collect a set of 6 Living Steel and after 5 to collect another set of 6 Living Steel.

This can be incredibly difficult if a Helltide spawns at the 45 minute mark because you’ll have 15 minutes to collect 600 Aberrant Cinders in order to get the full 12 Living Steel.

Doing 4 Helltides in a row using this method can realistically get you 39 Living Steel, which is 1 Living Steel short of 8 summons of Grigoire, and 4 summons of Uber Duriel.

Here’s a summary of how many Living Steel per Helltide depending on the Helltide start times.

Farming Varshan

Varshan is the other endgame boss in World Tier 4 that is located near the Tree of Whispers that you’ll need to defeat to collect Mucus-Slick Eggs, one of two summoning items needed to summon Duriel.

Varshan takes 4 summoning items to spawn: Gurgling Heads, Blackened Femurs, Trembling Hands, and Malignant Hearts.

To farm these summoning items for Varshan, you’ll need to complete Whispers and turn in your Grim Favors at the Tree of Whispers. Opening a cache will randomly drop the summoning items needed for Varshan.

If you have too much of one body part, you’ll be able to swap these out through the Alchemist by purchasing Body Part Caches. The problem you’ll run into is having a shortage of Malignant Hearts.

Farm Body Parts

Here’s how to farm Varshan summoning items easily and quickly.

To collect 8 of the easiest Grim Favors, head over to the PVP area located Alzuuda. You’ll want to defeat the Seething Abomination, which takes about 30 seconds for an easy 5 Grim Favors.

Then, head over to the Altars of Hatred, which takes a minute to complete for another 3 Grim Favors. From here, you’ll want to complete every Legion Event or World Boss that is marked as a whisper.

Completing these will not only give you 3 or 5 Grim Favors, but they’ll also spawn something called a Grotesque Debtor. Multiple of these enemies can spawn, and each one of them will drop Varshan Body Parts.

This can also happen from completing whispers anywhere. But from what I’ve noticed, there’s only a small chance for them to spawn outside of World Bosses and Legion Events.

Keep your eye out for this indicator on the mini map, or by this summoning animation that indicates a Grotesque Debtor is about to spawn.

One of my favorite ways to collect 10 Grim Favors is running Whisper Dungeons. I clear these by focusing just on the objectives for the purpose of getting the 5 Grim Favors from completing dungeons.

Farming Duriel

After farming Grigoire and Varshan, you’re ready to summon Duriel. Each summon of Duriel is going to require 2 Mucus-Slick Eggs and 2 Shards of Agony.

Head over to the Gaping Crevasse in Southern Kehjistan and after a short distance, you’ll be at the summoning Altar.

Being well geared and maxing out your poison resistance is highly recommended for surviving this fight and doing enough damage to kill Duriel.

Use a Poison Elixir to further increase your poison resistance by raising the cap.

Preferably, you’ll want to do this with a group of people that each have their own set of summoning items. This way, you’ll get 4 times the chances at finding an Uber Unique.

You can find other players by using the official Diablo 4 Discord and going to the Looking for Group Bosses channel under your realm type.

Uber Duriel Guide

Here’s a fast guide for fighting Duriel.

When Duriel burrows into the ground, he’ll come back through the craters in the stage along with adds. Duriel’s adds will act as turrets, remaining stationary.

Both Duriel and the adds do high poison damage. Dodge the maggots that fall from the ceiling. They hit pretty hard.

When Duriel rocks back and forth, dodge behind him to avoid the projectiles.

When Duriel charges an attack like this, Duriel will grab and eat you.

When he pierces the ground, poison will erupt from the ground, creating poison areas where they land.

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If I wanted to look through every single squad, every team, and every league on FIFA, it would take me hours. Sure, it can be tempting to do this when you’re trying to pick your next career mode save. But what if I told you there was an easy way to always get the best team with just four simple steps?

Here, I’ll be showing you my step-by-step guide to help you choose the ideal Career Mode save every single time. Of course, if you want to dominate FC 24’s Career Mode, you still need to prepare a large amount of FUT 24 Coins to upgrade your players.

Just like everyone else, I used to start dozens of saves. I would play one preseason game, then get bored with playing Career Mode. Since I started thinking a little more about what I actually wanted to do in my save rather than just picking the first one, I thought of my saves are now averaging closer to a full season.

Step 1: Choose Your Playing Location

The first thing you need to find out is the general area of the world you want to play in.

If you’re totally unsure, this could be a continent. But if you’re a bit more confident, then it could be a specific nation. Each continent on FIFA has different strengths and weaknesses.

Europe offers a fully licensed Cup Competitions with the Champions League, the Europa League, and the Conference League as well as having the biggest selection of leagues to choose from. The sheer amount of teams and leagues here means there’s always going to be multiple options that meet the criteria you’re setting.

North America only features one league, but the MLS is a totally unique experience. Annoyingly, they don’t actually have any Cup Competitions here and this can make the journey a little less fun.

South America also only has one licensed league, but you can play in Brazil if you don’t mind the fake players. You do get to play in a license continental Cup Competitions with teams from leagues that aren’t actually playable in Career Mode and it does provide a chance to explore football in a totally different culture.

Finally, we have Asia, which is probably the most underrated Career Mode continent. Asia includes an unlicensed continental competition and features a surprising amount of leagues, including the Saudi, Indian, and Korean leagues, which I barely ever see anyone doing saves in.

Hopefully, at least one of these regions sounds like exactly what you want in your next save. When you’ve decided on a continent, drill down and have a look at some of the nations inside it. Each nation has a different feel. They’ll play in different ways and they have different atmospheres. This can make neighboring countries feel unique on the pitch.

Belgium, Holland, and Germany are totally different in Career Mode, despite having very similar cultures as nations. Throughout this guide, I’ll give you some examples of the system working.

So, let’s say that I wanted a fairly long save. I think Europe has the deepest league structures on the game, so that’s the ideal location for this first step of our example.

Also Read: EA FC 24: 3 Most Promising And Exciting New Dribbling Techniques!

Step 2: Define Your Desired Save

The second and probably most crucial step in selecting the perfect Career Mode save is to decide on the type of save your most interested in doing.

You can generally categorize teams into one of these four main groups.

On FIFA, I’d say every single league has at least two teams who are capable of winning the championship who call these the Championship Contenders. These teams are instantly competing for league titles in cups in Season 1. They typically feature the best players and are considered the top teams in that nation. Bayern München, Ulsan Hyandai, and Inter Miami are examples of this kind of team.

The majority of leagues also have a selection of Historic Teams. These are the teams that might have experienced success in the past, but are not currently at their peak. They often have large fan bases, maybe even impressive stadiums. But they also usually have a squad of very average and very overpaid players. I would say that D.C. United, Everton, and Rosario Central are all Historic Fallen Giants.

The majority of the rest of the teams that aren’t Championship Contenders or Historic, I would call Middle Of the Road Teams. These teams are maybe a few strategic signings here and there from becoming title contenders. While they may have a couple of top players in their team, usually up front to be honest, they usually lack the overall quality usually in defense to compete for the title. Think of Crystal Palace, Al shabab, and Orlando City. That’s three good examples of teams that are fairly average, but are very close to being very good.

Finally, the most common type of team to use on FIFA is the Road To Glory Teams. This option usually is a longer term challenge where you have to rebuild an entire squad. Typically, Road to Glory saves involve a newly promoted team or someone who’s looking to establish themselves in a higher division. This generally includes the two or three worst teams in every single league.

If you like the sound of one of these four categories, then that’s great because now you’ve got a location and you’ve got a career path.

Let’s go back to our Europe save example. I said I want it to be long, so surely a Road To Glory Team would be ideal for us here. We’ll be taking over one of the worst teams in the nation that we pick.

Step 3: Determine Your Team’s Level

For step three of our system, we also need to determine what kind of team rank we want to be using.

If you’re someone that doesn’t enjoy using 50 rated players in the lowest leagues of island, you might be looking for a 3-star team here. If you want to be trophy hunting, you also want to be in a really bad league. You might be interested in trying to find a 1-star title contender.

Have a think about how good you’d like your starting point to be because this will easily narrow down the amount of teams and the amount of leagues you can use from the continent you’ve picked.

You’ll never ever get a 5-star Polish team in Career Mode or a 0.5-star French team, so this is the step that will filter out most of the teams in this system.

I could easily pick a 4-star team for my European Road to Glory save. There are loads of teams around that rating in Germany, Spain, England, and Italy. If I wanted a long Road To Glory though, I’m going to pick a one and a half star team, which means we’re going to have a team from League 2.

Step 4: Utilize SoFIFA for Team Search

Now, let’s round off our system. If you’re struggling to find the team with the in-game tools, you can have a quick search on SoFIFA.

You can easily search for teams with certain overall ratings and you can also check things out like the squad’s average age or the amount of potential that every single team has if that’s important to the kind of career mode you’re looking to do.

Back to our example. It looks like AFC Wimbledon could be the ideal save for me. It’s in Europe. They’re at the lowest level in the country and they’re the right star rating to match with everything that I’m looking for. They definitely seem like the perfect save for me to start.

So, let’s quickly run through two other examples of using this system just so that you understand exactly how it works.

I said Asia is fun, so let’s try and find a cool team from there. I fancy playing with a Historic Fallen Giant save, so that’s a team that’s around two and a half stars in Asia. Last year, we could have picked Guangzhou Evergrande who actually spent £1.7 billion on a new 100,000 seated stadium that they never finished. But they’ve actually been relegated on FIFA 24.

Suwon Bluewings is the team we probably go for then: four Korean titles, two Asian Champions Leagues between 1997 and 2008, but nothing since. They have a decent squad. Some of our players are in the 70s, but the majority are in the 60s, so they are actually going to be able to be fun inside Career Mode.

Let’s do one last example. How about a 3-star Middle Of The Road Team in South America? I want to use licensed clubs with real players, so we only have Argentina to choose from. This makes it super easy to see that we actually have several options here. I guess I’d have to just pick on the history kits and stadium I like the most.

We actually have some pretty big teams for a save in this kind of area. We have Newell’s Old Boys, Rosario Central, Banfield, Unión de Santa Fe...... There’s so many choices. So again, one of these is likely to be the perfect Career Mode save for me on my next go.

Hopefully, you can now understand how the system works that I use for every single save I do.

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Do you want to get that Level 40 mount by the time you actually hit level 40 or get that Epic Mount at level 60? If you do, you must have enough WOW Classic Hardcore Gold. Here is a guide to help you obtain raw gold, specifically while leveling.

Intro

I’m doing this mostly from a Solo Self Found perspective. Because I believe that even if trading is allowed, some players will play on a Solo Self Found basis. And for raw gold, most of it comes from vendoring items anyway, so you can do it completely without having to rely on other people to buy whatever you are selling.

Having access to raw gold early will also be incredibly valuable as the purchasing power of each individual gold is at its absolute peak early in a server’s lifespan. And the purchasing power will go down every single day as more and more people get access to raw gold.

What I mean by purchasing power is that 100 gold will get you more stuff in Week 1 than 100 gold will in Week 2, due to how inflation works. This is important because of, for example, investments or if you just want to stack up on some materials, you might want later and get them while they’re cheap.

Get Skinning

Advice number one is to grab Skinning.

Skinning is an insane profession to have while leveling. Because it simply benefits everyone in terms of increasing the amount of gold you get while leveling up.

Skinning also allows you to skin beasts for additional materials. And although they do not give the most amount of additional to begin with, this scales incredibly well with your level.

By level 10, you might have gained a couple extra silvers. But, by level 40, you will most likely have obtained anywhere between 10 and 40 extra gold, depending on how you level.

Some of the locations where you can farm for the most raw gold per hour, you actually end up killing beasts. In that case, having Skinning will further increase your gold per hour from those locations, pushing you closer to that 40 gold extra by level 40, which is basically half of your level 40 mount.

And especially on Hardcore Servers, many people will choose professions that benefit their profession in terms of survival. Two big professions here are Alchemy & Engineering.

Alchemy is mainly supported by Herbalism, and Engineering is mainly supported by Mining. This means the most popular professions on these servers will be Alchemy, Engineering, Herbalism and Mining.

This is important. Because that means while everyone is leveling up, there will be a lot of skinnable mobs just laying on the ground giving you free skill-ups & free Hardcore Gold. And there are many locations you will find during your Hardcore Journey where you can just sit in one location and skin other people’s mobs, like, for example, the Yeti Cave in Dun’Morogh.

So seriously, if raw gold is something you’re looking for, I always recommend Skinning. Even if you want to have Herbalism & Mining eventually, I would use Skinning while leveling up to 60, then swap professions & farm herbs and mining veins with that level 60 mount. This is also because Herbalism & Mining nodes will be incredibly competitive at launch and will slow down your leveling process, while Skinning you can pretty much always keep up with your level.

Now, when farming raw gold, there are mainly 2 different farms you want to think about: Humanoid Farms & Beast Farms.

Humanoid Farms will give you raw gold by itself through looted silver values, and it will give you Cloth, which you can either sell for vendor loot, or turn into Bandages for even more gold before selling it.

The bonus of Humanoid Farms is that they also have a bigger drop rate on Grey, White & Green items, specifically grey items like Weapons, which can vendor for about a gold per piece (plus / minus). This means in some cases, Humanoid Farms can be better in terms of gold per hour, but they also rely more on RNG because a lot of gold comes from those Grey weapon drops.

From Beast Farms, you will get a very steady amount of gold per hour due to your gold value being derived from what the mob actually drops on a regular basis. Whiskers from Cats, Mane’s from Wolves, Crocodile Pelt and so on, even Gorillas drop a lot of good vendor value items.

For Beast Farms, you can also obviously increase that gold amount by having Skinning, like we just talked about earlier.

Also Read: WOW Classic Hardcore: How To Make Gold From Level 30-40?

Raw Gold Farming Locations

So with this being said, let me show you some of my favourite locations for where to farm for raw gold in Classic WoW.

First off, let’s cover 4 different farming locations I personally use in order to farm enough gold for my level 40 mount, all of which are beast farms and you want to have Skinning.

You have the Tigers in Swamp of Sorrows. Now, I say Tigers here because they will usually give you the most valuable items, but the tigers are also found throughout the entire zone, where you will also find crocodiles & spiders, which are definitely worth killing.

You also have the Gorillas in Stranglethorn Vale. And here, I will show you 2 different farms that are pretty close to each other, giving you 2 different places to farm.

These Gorillas have a pretty lucrative loot-table and will give you the best raw gold you can get at this level, especially if combined with Skinning.

And the farm I personally do the most: Tigers in Badlands.

This one is incredibly slept on and I don’t see many people farming here, which is why I personally really like it here. Because there’s almost never any competition, and they can drop really good vendor-value items, like Long Soft Tails, Bristly Whiskers, and Wicked Claw.

You also have some farms past level 40. For example, my personal favourite is this one killing Steeljaw Snappers in Tanaris.

This one is very known from farming Turtle Meat and as a pretty decent experience farm. But these turtles also drop pretty good vendor loot, even better if combined with Skinning.

How To Maximize Your Raw Gold?

With farming covered, there are a couple more steps you can take to maximize how much raw gold you make and how to make sure you can afford your level 40 mount and get closer to that level 60 mount.

First off, you can save a lot of gold by not training all of your class abilities. Let’s be real, in Classic WoW you get way more abilities than you actually need, at least while leveling. And many of your abilities are only useful in very niché situations, in which case I rather not learn them until I have to and save my gold instead.

Exactly what you should and should not train depends on each individual class. But personally, I only train spells I use on a regular basis, plus any class-buffs I get access to and any defensive abilities I get.

As a Warlock, for example, I can opt not to train Soulstone, I can also choose one or two demons and therefore only train abilities for the demons I actually use. I can also save gold by not training every single curse I get access to. Because personally, I don’t use all of them until very high levels, anyway.

Plus, some classes get a free level 40 mount, like Warlocks & Paladins. But, pick and choose which spells to actually train and upgrade, and you can save a lot of gold while leveling.

When questing, if the quest doesn’t offer an upgrade, pick the item with the highest vendor value. This sounds obvious. But some leveling addons have auto-complete enabled where they automatically pick items in slot 1 or slot 2 or anything your class can use, or maybe you personally also always choose whatever Cloth Item you get from the quest if you play a Cloth Class. Then, check if it’s an upgrade atferwards.

So my advice here is, check if the quest offers an upgrade before accepting a quest reward. And if there are no upgrades, choose whatever has the highest vendor value.

Of course, if you want to involve trading and using the Auction House, you can also make a lot more gold.

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