Crest of Desire is a very interesting unique helmet. It has almost no stats in just one socket for a gem, which will be upgraded by up to eight levels, 50% in quality and will deal double damage. We’re putting Herald of Thunder there. Spells like these benefit greatly from extra gem levels.

Build Overview

Elementalists ascendancy offers some great offensive and defensive keystones. Mastermind of Discord and Heart of Destruction will increase your damage, especially if you can reliably apply exposure. Bastion of Elements provides a defensive layer against elemental and reflected damage.

To further enhance damage of the Herald, use medium cluster jewels with Dark Messenger and Empowered Envoy, two Storm Secret rings, Lone Messenger keystone and good staff. Your Herald of Thunder skill gem should reach level 30. Note that spell damage and cast speed have no effect on your DPS.

Your character will need a lot of lightning resistance as Storm Secret deals lightning damage to you. You can also use it to your advantage and hook up multiple spells to cast when damage taken. You will also need Life Leech, E.S Leach and Recoup to survive the self-inflicted damage.

DPS Skills

As you kill shocked enemies, a storm attached to you is created, hitting enemies and dealing lightning damage. With Shaper of Storms, all your hits will cause shock. So, that’s one less thing to worry about.

Note that Herald of Thunder cannot inflict Shock by itself. You will use other skills for that.

Defenses

It’s a build that uses maximum life and Energy Shield. Your total health pool should reach 5k or more. Get the Corrupted Soul keystone. It grants ES based on your maximum life. These resources should be leached and recouped back. You won’t be able to use auras. But you can use Arctic Armour.

Clear Speed

Clear speed is good with Storm Secret rings for more frequent hits and Inpulsa’s Armour for explosions.

Single-Target Damage

The damage against bosses is not high enough to take on Uber Bosses but enough for most content in the game.

Budget

All the unique and rare items are extremely cheap. Good flasks and cluster jewels may be the most expensive. So, if you want to make this build, you’d better prepare enough POE Currency.

Gear, Jewels, Flasks

Around the time you finish the Acts, you should already be able to equip most of the unique items. Be wary, with two Storm Secrets and no Agnerod South. You will take a lot of lightning damage unless you plan to mitigate it in some other way. There are a lot of unique items that are best-in-slot. In our case, we’ve used only rare boots, a belt, and an amulet.

Mandatory Uniques:

• Crest of Desire
• Inpulsa’s Broken Heart
• Strom Secret (2x)

Recommended Uniques:

• Agnerod South
• The Annihilating Light
• Storm’s Gift
• Algor Mortis
• Voice of the Storm

Crest of Desire is where you should put your Herald of Thunder to squeeze all the potential this single skill gem has to offer. This is the build defining helmet that boosts the DPS of socketed skills significantly.

Agnerod South pushes your required strength to 158. But it’s the best weapon for this build due to the increase in maximum lightning resistance, level of lightning spell skill gems, lightning damage, lightning penetration, and intelligence.

The Annihilating Light triples your damage. It is the most powerful staff that introduces a few problems that you’ll need to solve - Reduced Elemental Resistances and no extra Lightning Resistance.

Inpulsa’s Broken Heart as a body armor that grants shock immunity, maximum life, increased damage and the effect of shock and makes enemies explode.

Storm's Gift is a nice boost to Lightning Resistance and Energy Shield. It inflicts shock on more enemies, making them good for clearing maps. The Synthesized Implicit mods could be really useful, too.

If you can consistently create chilling areas via skills like Cold Snap, you can use Algor Mortis gloves. These perform better against bosses.

You will rarely deal any Critical Strikes. Combined with a huge range of lightning damage hits, it makes the "Lightning Damage With Non-Critical Strikes Is Lucky" modifier very good. You can get it on the Voice of the Storm amulet.

Storm Secret rings are absolutely required although you will take a lot of lightning damage as hits. It enables your build to have few CWDT setups with a reliable cast frequency. Your Herald of Thunder is vastly improved, striking more often, and creating more storms.

Lone Messenger is a keystone from Calamitous Visions that disables your auras but enhances the effect of the one single Herald you're using.

Put three of the Grand Spectrum jewels in your sockets for 135% increased elemental damage. With the Doryani version of Glorious Vanity, you can transform a keystone into Corrupted Soul for more Energy Shield.

There shouldn't be any issues with getting the required attributes. You don't need to look for Spell Damage, Critical Strikes, or Cast Speed on your gear. Seek Lightning Damage and Penetration instead. Your defense will consist of both maximum life and Energy Shield. Focus on maximum life, it's more beneficial. Get some life in Mana Recoup and have an item with one free suffix, so you can beast craft Aspect of the Spider.

Elemental Resistances, Maximum Life and Increased Movement Speed are the most important mods to look for on your boots. Maximum Life and Elemental Resistances will be the stats that you should aim to get a lot on a belt.

Crusader's Amulet has a prefix, which makes you penetrate lightning resistance. Look for this specific mod. The rest of the mods should be maximum life and Elemental Resistances.

Recommended Annoitment:

• Persistence
• Circle of Life
• Melding
• Whispers of Doom

Recommended Affixes:

• Increased Maximum of Life
• Increased Maximum Energy Shield
• Increased Elemental/Lightning Damage
• Strenth or Dexterity

There are a lot of affixes to choose from on jewels. Aim for maximum life and lightning damage. Corrupting one might result in an implicit mod that makes you immune to Corrupted Blood.

Recommended Affixes:

• 1 Added Passive Skill is Doryani's Lesson (Mandatory)
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Supercharge (Just One, High Priority)
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Storm Drinker
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Scintillating Idea
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Prismatic Heart
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Widerspread Destruction

Large cluster Jewels with the base for increased lightning damage with eight passive skills and two or three of the listed notables should be implemented. You should use two or three of these. Doryani's Lesson is mandatory here. Supercharge is great, too.

Recommended Affixes:

• 1 Added Passive Skill is Dark Messenger
• 1 Added Passive Skill is Empowered Envoy

4 medium cluster jewels with two specific notables listed here are the best way to enhance the build.

With properly adjusted Elemental Resistances, the Wise Oak offers a lot of lightning penetration, which is impactful.

Rumi's Concoction is a great defensive flask that boosts your chance to block spells and attacks.

Bottled Faith increases your Critical Strike Chance that is somewhat irrelevant here and increases damage taken by enemies on Consecrated ground. Don't prioritize it.

Progenesis is the most effective defensive flask in the game, especially when combined with Life Recoup. However, it is very expensive.

Use one magic life flask that would stop bleeding and replenish your life instantly. And depending on your preferences, a Silver or Basalt Flask for more mobility or armor.

Also Read: How Exactly The New Skill Gem System Is Going To Work In Path Of Exile 2?

Skill Gems And Sockets

The build has three fully automated CWDT setups as you're constantly hitting yourself. You can keep them at a low level if you have good Mana recovery.

The first one is a Storm Brand great for applying shock quickly to enemies all around you and triggering Herald of Thunder's Storms.

Conductivity is the recommended curse for this build. It reduces the monster's resistance to lightning damage.

Storm Brand & Conductivity are supported by:

• Cast When Damage Taken
• Hextouch (Optional)
• Culling Strike
• Energy Leech

Link these with Hextouch so that you can increase the gem level of the curse. If your Storm Brand has a high level, link it with energy leech support and abandon Hextouch; if not, just Culling Strike support.

The second setup hosts many various gems. Cold Snap will allow you to generate frenzy charges by killing enemies in the chilling areas it creates.

It's also good with Alger Mortis gloves. Purifying Flame creates Consecrated ground by releasing a wave of fire and physical damage that after its initial burst creates another one. Get a Divergent version for increased damage.

Wave of Conviction applies lightning exposure to enemies hit, reducing their lightning resistance.

Cold Snap (level 1), Purifying Flame (level 1) & Wave of Conviction (level 1) are supported by:

• Innervate
• Life Leech
• Cast When Damage Taken (level 1)

You could implement life leech support for a small portion of the damage to be leached back to you.

The third setup has three spells:

Immortal Call briefly decreases the damage you take from physical and elemental hits.

Phase Run grants you phasing, which increases your movement speed for a duration.

Shock Nova spell deals lightning damage around you, shocking many enemies at once. This skill has a second stage that is similar to the first one.

Shock Nova (level 1), Phase Run (level 1) & Immortal Call (level 1) are supported by:

• Cast When Damage Taken (level 2)

Since you can't use any auras and have a lot of unreserved Mana, Arctic Armour is one of the best spells you can have. It chills attackers and grants you freeze immunity.

Flame Dash allows you to dash to the targeted location, leaving a path of burning ground behind. It will also shock. So, use it to initiate the loop after entering a map.

Flame Dash are supported by:

• Acane Surge (low level)
• Second Wind

Keep Arcane Surge at a low level to make the Arcane Surge buff trigger after a single Flame Dash cast it grants more cast speed and Mana regeneration.

Second Wind support stores an additional charge for Flame Dash and makes it more expensive.

Herald of Thunder is the most important skill gem. Make sure it has high quality and level, which can be done by corrupting it. It adds lightning damage to your skills and creates storms, which are the main source of DPS in this build.

I’m going to share with you 10 productive ways you can spend your time in FFXIV while waiting for the queue to pop. And these suggestions are very valuable because they will either save you time in the future or they have worthwhile rewards.

1. Island Sanctuary Gathering

My first suggestion is to gather materials on Island Sanctuary, such as Island Laver or Island Sap.

Island Laver seems to be a popular ingredient needed every single week. And I can sit all of my granaries on it all week long and still never have enough. It’s irritating to have to gather them myself, but what else can I do?

It’s a great idea to gather any materials you are low on on the island during queue. This way, you don’t have to waste your time on it later.

2. Crafting & Gathering

Talking about gathering on the island gave me another brilliant idea: gathering and crafting in general. Both of these can bring you some cash or materials you need to craft things that you want for yourself.

If you’re unsure about what to gather or craft, I would suggest doing a little market research by using websites like Universalis or Saddlebag Exchange. The latter even has a search function that can show you the best-selling furnishing items. For gathering, you can filter your search by materials even down to the material type.

Another reason to gather while you queue is to fill out your logs. This way, if you have a retainer that is a gatherer, you’ll have a wider variety of Ventures you can assign to them. You can actually make a solid income by just sending your retainer out for materials and then selling them on the market board. But if you have not gathered something, then your retainer can’t get it either. So, it’s definitely worthwhile to spend your queue time completing those logs.

3. Shadowbringers & Endwalker Fates

My next suggestion is doing Fates, specifically those in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. Because completion of them rewards you with Bicolor Gemstones.

The Bicolor Gemstones are the main reason to do this as they can be used for a variety of desirable items, such as crafting materials, Orchestrion Rolls, Furnishings, Glamours, and even Minions. Some items also don’t become available until you have capped your shared Fates for a particular region. So, that’s just one more reason to farm this during queue.

Fates will also provide XP for any jobs you’re leveling. And if you do enough of them, you’ll also get an XP bonus through the weekly challenges log. So, be sure to do your 5th and 10th fates on the jobs you want XP on the most.

4. Beast Tribes

Speaking of leveling, Beast Tribe quests are a fantastic way to do so as they often give a pretty sizable chunk of XP upon completion.

Another reason to complete Beast Tribe quests is because they offer cool rewards, like Materia, Dyes, Glamours, Housing Items, Mounts, and Emotes.

Pre-shadowbringers, maxing out each tribe, also allows you to do an Allied Tribal Quest for even more rewards, like the Gratuity Emote, for example.

You can do up to 12 Beast Tribe quests per day and it typically takes 10 minutes or fewer to complete three quests from a tribe. It’s so worthwhile and a great way to spend your time while waiting for the queue to pop.

Also Read: Final Fantasy 14 Dungeon Guide

5. Levequests

Going along with the leveling theme still, let’s talk about levequests.

Levequests are an easy way to level battle, crafter, and gatherer jobs. For the latter two, you can often just buy stuff on the market board to turn in. So, if you hate crafting as much as I do, you can level up without having to actually do that much crafting at all.

Levequests can also be used to make FFXIV Gil. Once upon a time, you could just make coffee biscuits and turn them in. Now, it takes a bit more effort on your part. You will need to do the math yourself. Find something that is being sold for cheap on the market board, especially if it’s high quality, and then turn it in and reap the profit.

6. Hunt Marks

Sitting there constantly clicking is pretty boring, but what else do you have to do while you queue?

My sixth suggestion is hunting marks. you guys know how much I love hunt trains, but unfortunately you can’t really do trains while you queue as hunt trains require you to be in a party. However, you can do Overworld hunt marks.

There are different types of seals you can get depending on what expansion you’re hunting in. And, of course, different types of rewards, such as minions, mounts, furnishings, and more.

I would suggest checking out the rewards for each expansion and seeing what you want. Lots of people like to hunt for Centurio Seals because with them you can buy Aetheryte Tickets and save a lot of money on teleportation.

7. Blue Mage Spells

Speaking of hunting mobs, if you’re interested in playing Blue Mage, there are a number of mobs in the Overworld that drop Blue Mage spells.

So, if you don’t have them all, you can farm them while waiting for queue. There are lots of guides online for where to get each spell.

8. Gold Saucer

My next idea is to hit up the Gold Saucer.

Unfortunately, you can’t do any of the gates or your queue will stop. But you can do the mini cact pot or any of the other mini games. If you’re farming MGP, you’re going to want to complete as much of the weekly log as you can, and doing mini-games is part of that.

9. Triple Triad

Speaking of the Gold Saucer, collecting all the Triple Triad cards up to I think Shadowbringers will get you a cute little flying card mount, so you can play Triple Triad with the NPCs in the Gold Saucer or in the Overworld to work on your collection while you wait for queue.

10. Practice Your Rotation

Finally, my 10th and last idea is to practice your rotation.

Lots of players are interested in doing higher difficulty content like Extremes or even Savages. But they often feel hesitant for many reasons. And one of them is often a lack of experience and skill level.

Therefore, you can take that extra time waiting for queue to visit resources (like the Balance or YouTube), figure out what your rotation should be, and test it out on a Training Dummy.

You can start to build muscle memory for this rotation so that once you’re in encounters that require you to dodge mechanics, it’ll be a lot less overwhelming since you’ve built up that memory of where your buttons are and what to hit next.

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!

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.

Gems and links are such a fundamental part of Path of Exile that you have to understand them. By the end of this article, you may know what I mean.

Intro

Gems are how your character gets their abilities. These are socketed in a corresponding color socket in your gear and have stats requirements to be used. A green gem in this case, Ice Shot will fit into your green socket here, and now I can fire a single arrow.

Gems come in two flavors: active and support gems. Active skill gems give you the actual abilities, while support gems buff the active gems or instead they could change them in some way.

Sockets come in four colors: red, blue and green and much later in the game or early, if you’re really lucky, white. White sockets will house a gem of any color.

Support Gems

If we take the added cold support gem, this adds cold damage to my attacks, making it do substantially more damage. If I hover over some support gems in my inventory, then this little control comes up to indicate which of the active gems I have socketed will be supported by the gem in question.

You can also somewhat work this out by matching the keywords from the top of each gem card. For support gems to work, they must be socketed in the same piece of gear as the active gem and be linked by one of offhand gems through these bars. 

Offhand Gems

If it isn’t linked, it will do nothing. Continue to get XP. It should also be noted that gems in your offhand weapons will also continue to gain XP, so use this to your advantage as your level. 

Now, for some examples of other gems that will mutate the skill, almost changing fundamentally how it reacts. The Arrow Nova Support causes my arrows to fire up into the air, and when it lands, it spreads out to the surrounding targets. 

Greater Multiple Projectiles, otherwise known as GMP, will increase the number of arrows and Volley Support will do the same, but the arrows will come out in parallel to the original. We can also combine these together to do crazy things like this. 

Related: How I Made Tons Of Currency With Ease In POE 3.21? - Zero Investment Strategy

Gear Sockets

Gems sometimes have a drawback as well as a buff. For instance, GMP reduces the damage to the original scale whilst giving it the extra projectiles. 

Different pieces of gear have a differing number of maximum sockets. Most gear has a maximum of four except for body armor and items that go in weapon slots. Body armor as well as two-handed weapons can have up to 6-Linked sockets, whereas one-handed weapons and shields can only have three. This maximum does take a while to achieve and is based on the level of the item. Lower-level items will have fewer maximum slots.

How To Get Gear Links?

So, how do you get gear with the right sockets and links?

Initially, these will come from vendors in towns or from items that drop. If your vendor doesn’t have what you’re looking for, then check back later, as the fender will get some new items each time you’re level.

In previous leagues, this used to be a complete refresh. But as of POE 3.21, items will persist between levels, with only the oldest items being swapped out. If you’re lucky enough to drop an Orb of Binding early, this will allow you to take a normal item and turn it into a rare as well as giving it falling sockets. It will retain the colors already on the original gear and just add missing ones colored randomly. Do not use these on an item that is five or six linked or you may cry.

Later in the game, you’ll start it to have a mass enough POE Currency to be able to craft the sockets links and colors on your gear to make the gear the most optimal for your build. The Jeweler’s Orb will re-roll the number of sockets randomly. The Orb of Fusing will add random links and the Chromatic Orb will re-roll the colors.

Vendor Recipes 

There are vendor recipes for both the Chromatic Orb and the Jeweler’s Orb. 

For a Chromatic Orb, get any item that is red, green and blue linked. For the Jeweler’s orb, find any six socket item not linked and sell it to a vendor.

There are also currency vendors in Act 4 and Act 9 that will allow you to train Jeweler’s orbs for the other two. 

Later in the game, you can also drop powerful items that will have active and support gems built in. And any gems socketed in the item will be affected by or will affect them as if they were linked to them. 

When you first enter the wonderful world of Elden Ring, you should realize that fighting various bosses is inevitable. With a huge world view and an open game mechanism, we can freely build characters and skills, which may lead to different performances of the same class in battle. When you are still a novice, you need to start your battle journey step by step to farm loot, such as runes, weapons and more.

In Elden Ring, the type of boss and the difficulty are actually not directly related. However, if we are lucky enough to kill a powerful boss, the rewards we can get are still very rich. But stop fantasizing, combat is not a 100% success rate thing. For example, if you need to face the most hard boss, Malenia, can you say that you can definitely defeat it? I estimate that no one can answer this question with great confidence. However, we can still defeat other seemingly powerful bosses, such as Godfrey, with some neat tricks.

This is The First Elden Lord in Elden Ring. Recently, a player posted a video on r/Eldenring of himself easily beating The First Elden Lord with “This Ash of War”. Here I will introduce to you what This Ash of War is. You can use this special item to replace your own equipped weapon skills and affinities, so the build you can create has more expansion options and is more suitable for everyone’s fighting style. If you learn how to use This Ash of War correctly, even defeating Malenia easily should no longer be difficult.

When this Elden Ring player fights Godfrey, it’s clear we can see the fight unfold in two phases. Initially, the player fought Godfrey using the Dismounter and the Ash of War called Lightning Slash, successfully dodging every attack and striking him hard at every turn. And when Godfrey is in the latter phase Hoarah Loux, you have to be careful at this point, because his attack can change drastically, and many people suffer here. Of course, although Godfrey at this stage looks particularly powerful in attack, his defense against lightning is not very strong, so we can use the Lightning Slash a perfect Ash of War, to kill him in one fell swoop. The trick to this whole fight is being able to spot Godfrey’s weak spots and understand how he moves.

Going back to the original topic, after more than a year of development in Elden Ring, players have gradually become more advanced in the development and exploration of in-game builds. If you encounter other more tough bosses in the future journey, you also need to focus on some smarter and less laborious methods, so as not to waste your precious resources and energy.

If you are currently suffering from a lack of sufficient Elden Ring Runes, Bundles, Consumables, Ash of wars and more items, you can use the code “CSCCA” to get 5% off Elden Ring all in-game products at IGGM.com. Just have a go!

If you’re having huge problems while defending the attackers in one versus one situation, then this is the exact guide you need to read to improve yourself. We are going to give you the core elements of one versus one defending to let you become a brick wall in the back.

Why 1v1 Defending Is Important?

Your defensive problem might already start a step earlier with understanding when you have to take charge and go for a manual one versus one defense against the Attacker. 

In my experience, there are a lot of players who hold themselves back defensively and try to cover the back area or they just try to let the AI (AI Defending) defend the Attacker. Both of these are going to give the opposition tons of space and they might do whatever they want without getting blocked.

Here as I receive the ball with my Attacker, my opponents, which is away from the player, who actually needs to defend him and he lets the AI do his work. However, with the skill move, I beat the Defender in square nice goal, which could be prevented by a manual one versus one defending. 

So, that means you have to take control, be confident, confront the opponent by yourself and try to block as many opportunities as possible. Of course, if you put the outstanding players, which you get by using FUT 23 Coins into the game, you will win the game more easily.

In a counter-attack situation, I know that I need to take responsibility as danger grows. I get close to Dribbler and also cover the passing lane at the same time. And once the other thread is over, I make my final move towards them in a one versus one and safely get the ball back.

We can safely say taking responsibility, observing what the opponent does, and taking action accordingly brings you to success in your defense. 

2. Positioning Defenders

Positioning your Defender is the most important thing in a one versus one situation. However, it is not easy since you have to watch out for different aspects.

Attackers will have different opportunities. They can dribble the ball, pass it to another teammate or even shoot it if they find the chance. Analyzing the occasion and seeing the next potential steps will decide your optimal positioning.

As a player myself, I tend to position my Defender directly in front of the opponent in a one versus one situation. You can always imagine a line between the Attacker and the Keeper and position yourself directly on it. I’ve seen that this method helped my students in my coachings a lot, so it might be also useful for you.

Instead of getting directly atom, I keep a safe distance between his Attacker and myself as long as he has the full control of the ball. This distance allows me to control all of his potential moves. 

If the Attacker tries to shoot, you are already between him and the goal, so you block it. If he tries to go left or right, the distance you gave him will allow you to do the same moment so that you can mirror his movements. 

There is one specific mechanic that will help you with the mirroring, which is to get the jockeying. Holding onto the L2 & LT button will let you go into a jockey, which is a magnificent defensive stance that allows you to keep your defensive positioning. Especially in tight 1 versus 1 situations, joking will help you avoid getting beaten by Attackers.

You can also use the jockey with the sprinting mechanic to go for a fast jokey if you see that the opponent is pacing up to things. Let’s see an example.

As the opponent approaches our box patiently, he looks for an opening, but we need to make sure that we use the imaginary line between the ball and the keeper and remain on it. 

Pressing the L2 and jockeying allows us to do little moves towards the sides, which don’t break our defensive positioning, and we remain in front of the opponent all the time, blocking every single opportunity.

Right after he decides to go in one of the directions and pushes the ball away, we chase him down confidently and get the ball away from him. 

After getting into the perfect position, it is time for you to decide when to execute a defensive mode to retrieve the ball.

3. When To Execute Defensive Moves?

In a one versus one, you will eventually have the opportunity to go for a defensive move. But if you do it too early or too late, you can give your opponent an unnecessary opening and concede to an easy goal. That is why waiting for the perfect moment is important.

But when it’s actually okay to execute the defensive moves, the answer is simple. The Attacker is most vulnerable right after he pushes the ball away from his feet. So, between two consecutive wall contacts, there is a brief moment that he’s not in full control of the ball and you need to catch this moment. Let me show you what I mean by this.

Here, as I received the ball with my Striker inside the box, the Defender positions himself in a suitable spot between me and the Keeper. However, he remains impatient with his tackling. He doesn’t pay attention to my ball contact and in the end, he goes for it in the wrong way, loses his defensive shape and concedes an easy goal.

In another scenario, I quickly take a look at the ball contacts of the opponent just because I see that he sprints and pushes the ball away. I know that this will delay his second contact on the ball, so I decide to select my Defender go on a one versus one challenge with him and retrieve the ball dominantly.

So, that means keeping your good positioning and patiently waiting for the Attacker’s vulnerable moment are the core elements of a one versus one defending position. 

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.

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.