The latest character in Honkai Star Rail is the 1.1 version of Silver Wolf. But the game has actually revealed a lot of new characters. Today, we are going to list all 15 currently known new characters that are likely to be playable in the near future.

It should be noted that all of the characters listed in the article have officially appeared in the game, with the exception of the Dragon form Dan Heng.

1. Luocha

Everyone knows him from the second half of 1.1.

He can heal, cleanse, and deal damage at the same time without consuming skill points, and can be fully functional at E0. And he is a super OP must-have unit. If you want to experience Luocha as a character as soon as it goes live, you might as well just buy a Honkai Star Rail Account with Luocha.

2. Yu Kong

Yu Kong is a 4-star imaginary harmony support.

She comes with the event banner of Luocha, who can buff ally’s ATK, Crit Rate and Crit Damage. You can also get her free at the 1.2 event.

3. Kafka

Kafka is a 5-star Lightning Nihilist. She is also the leader of the Stellaron Hunters who push the Stellaron Core into your chest, affectionately called “Mom” by all the Trailblazers.

Everyone tried Kafka in the tutorial, and her skill animations were just too good to be ignored. Kafka is the synergy core of a continuous damage team and works well with Serval and Sampo.

4. Blade

Blade is a 5-star wind destruction damage dealer.

He has an immortal body in the story, a terrifying Stellaron Hunter. His skills are all blood related. By burning it and healing it back, he can not only tank damage, destroy the enemies but also support more skill points to the team.

5. Luka

He is the handsome guy on the popular Light Cone Resolution Shines as Pearls of Sweat.

As the underground king of the fighters in Boulder Town, Luca is a 4-star physical nihility carry, more suitable for an F2P team.

6. Fu Xuan

She is the head of the Xianzhou Alliance’s Divination Commission, who is good at fortune telling.

She always wanted to be the general of Luofu, but Jing Yuan does not give it up easily. Based on the information we have, Fu Xuan will be a five-star quantum preserver.

7. Yin Yue

Yin Yue, who is the dragonborn of Dan Heng, is a 5-star imaginary DPS.

Dan Heng’s past is probably the most mysterious plot in the game, and HoYoverse is doing its best not to spoil it, even though his animation has already been leaked for a long time. So, we will not talk too much about him, but we know he will be with us soon.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail: A Complete Guide To Arlan! - Builds & Skills & Teams

8. Jing Liu

Jing Liu was the former general of Xianzhou, Jing Yuan’s master, but lost herself in the cursed body.

In the animated film, Jing Yuan killed her in tears with his ultimate. However, in the promotion video for 1.1, she came back again and fought Yanqing, who is the disciple of Jing Yuan.

From the scene, we can guess that she is an ice-type damage dealer, most likely a 5-star. But her path is unknown. Some people speculate that the body in Luocha’s coffin was Jing Liu, and Luocha managed to help her resurrect, leading to the scene in the PV.

9. Gui Nai Fen

She is the pretty girl on the Light Cone Subscribe for More! That also says like before you leave!

She’s Sushang’s best friend, with an optimistic and positive character, possibly a fire type. She likes to fool around, like live streaming crushing rocks on Sushang’s chest.

Although the light cone is for the hunt, we cannot tell her path yet because Sushang is also on it.

10. Lynx

Lynx is the other girl on the Light Cone Warmth Shortens Cold Nights.

She’s the younger sister of Serval and Gepard, who is very thoughtful and caring for others. To match the light cone’s type, she should be on the path of Abundance.

11. Screwllum

Screwllum is the new character who debuted in the 1.1 event and is an important figure at the space station.

He fought Sliver Wolf both on the Light Cone We Will Meet Again and in the 1.1 event. So, he might as well be a nihility character.

12. Ruan Mei

There are 3 characters on the Light Cone Geniuses’ Repose: Herta, Screwllum, and Ruan Mei, who together built the Simulated Universe.

From her appearance, her path is more likely to be either harmony or abundance.

13 & 14. Xueyi And Hanya

Xueyi and Hanya are the sisters on two light cones: Under the Blue Sky and Return to Darkness.

Xueyi is older, and Hanya is younger. Xue Yi has been transformed into a puppet lying in Hanya’s arms. We can assume that one is the Hunt, most likely Hanya, and one is destruction based on the types of their light cones.

15. Topaz

She is the character on the Light Cone Trend of the Universal Market, who is the manager of the Pan-Galactic Commercial Enterprise.

Even though the light cone is for preservation, there are rumors that Topaz has been designed to be a damage dealer. So, let’s wait and see.

The Other Three

In addition to that, there are three characters that have not yet appeared in the game, but are already of great interest to the community.

The first is Black Swan. She showed up in one of the official trailers, but we know nothing about her identity. She looks like a nihilist to me, but we will have to wait for more information.

Finally, people are hyped about the possibility that two of the most popular swords women in Honkai Impact, Raiden Mei and Yae Sakura. They may both join the Honkai Star Rail as 5-star carries of the hunt. There are no visuals yet for their models, but we hope to see them soon.

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.

Silver Wolf quite literally has made a huge impact on the meta. So, here, I am going to talk about her place in the meta, things that you need to know about her, whether you already have her or not, as well as cover some important questions like how game-changing her first Eidolons are. Most importantly, I will showcase the most insane teams you can build with her.

New Teams

Let’s first talk about the new amazing teams you can build with Silver Wolf and how different they are from what we’re used to.

I won’t be delving too deep into Silver Wolf’s kit, since there’ are already a lot of guides about that. Instead, I want to show you something different.

The biggest thing about Silver Wolf is her ability to implant a weakness type to an enemy that doesn’t have it. This one mechanic alone allows you to build more than 5 new teams and all of them are interesting in their own way.

*So, the first team is Mono Fire, which is made up of Asta, Himeko and Fire Trailblazer. The survivability here goes out the window without the healer. But, because of the upcoming changes to Memory of Chaos, this team is going places already. So what’s so great about it?

First of all, Silver Wolf can easily implant Fire Weakness on enemies who don’t have it, even though there is a 50/50 chance. It could be also Quantum, if the enemy doesn’t have it. It is a bit of a bummer. You have to flip a coin and hope this works out, since it doesn’t matter how many team mates you have from the same element in the team. The game’s programming basically just weighs the two elements and considers one of the two before implanting the enemy. Of course, if the enemy has Quantum Weakness but doesn’t have Fire, then it’s a 100% guarantee that Silver Wolf will just be able to keep applying this weakness.

Now, Fire Weakness matters a lot to Asta. Her whole schtick is to boost the team’s ATK when she damages an enemy. But, if the enemy has Fire Weakness, she gains an additional stack. This allows you to rapidly build those stacks, boost everyone’s ATK and in addition, she also provides 18% Fire Damage increase for the whole team from one of her major traces. I cannot tell you how good this is when Silver Wolf can literally implant Fire Weakness on any boss who doesn’t have it. And this makes the team super consistent with Asta’s buffing.

Also, breaking enemies’ weakness is Himeko’s bread and butter. The more you break, the more she unleashes her strong follow-up attack. And you will have an easy time doing this, thanks to Silver Wolf’s Fire Weakness Implant. But with that being said, I would say this is the weakest team out of the all I am going to show you. But, it couldn’t exist right now without the Wolf.

*The next team I am really excited to talk about is Mono Ice, which is made up of Gepard, Pela and Yan Qing. Probably the most amazing thing here is the absolutely disgusting amount of DEF shred you can achieve with both Pela and Silver Wolf.

All of their DEF shredding stacks together. For example, you can see Pela’s burst DEF reduction. She’s also equipped with the Pearls of Sweat Light Cone, which shreds DEF. Then, we have Silver Wolf’s Ultimate and Bug Implant, both reducing defense. All of this totaling up to 96% of reduced DEF. That’s almost attacking an enemy without any DEF at all.

And my Pela’s traces aren’t even leveled. So you can imagine what a field day Yan Qing gets to have when he delivers insane single target damage. And what’s also great is that Gepard can actually keep the team alive pretty well. So, this is legit an amazing team you can go for if you wanna build a Mono Ice team comp.

*Moving over, there’s also Mono Lightning with Jing Yuan, Tingyun and Bailu. I am sure you saw this team already, so not much needs to be said here. Thanks to Silver Wolf’s Bug Implant and the ability to reduce the enemies’ Elemental Resistance, Jing Yuan’s damage actually gets boosted by quite a lot. I don’t even have to tell you how much stronger Lightning Lord strikes become.

*Now one other great team is Mono Physical with Clara, Natasha and Sushang. Thanks to Clara’s pseudo tanking and Natasha’s healing, I can actually use this team really well in Memory of Chaos. And Sushang actually shreds the weakness bar by a lot. So, once the enemy gets Physical Weakness implant, the team’s performance skyrockets.

*And then, of course, we have Quantum. Currently, I see a lot of people running double Lightning/Quantum with Tingyun/Bailu and Seele or QQ. Honestly, this is my new team for farming Simulated Universe and thanks to Silver Wolf’s debuffing, I almost doubled Seele’s damage output going from 90k to 170k with her ultimate.

*Finally, one last bonus team to showcase. You could also go for Seele, Silver Wolf and QQ together with either Natasha or Bailu. Just so you can keep those Quantum maniacs alive while they are busy decimating the bosses. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of what potential teams you can build with Silver Wolf. And her ability to enable so many different Mono teams is actually quite staggering.

It’s not something we’re used to and even though you do have to play the coin flip game if the enemy is missing both of the weaknesses. It’s a gamble that you can live with, especially if you strategically build teams against enemies who have the Quantum weakness if it’s not a Mono Quantum team. If that is the case, Silver Wolf will never implant her own weakness.

Meta Analysis

What about Silver Wolf’s place in the meta?

*First of all, we have to look at the upcoming Memory Turbulance changes, since they warp the team building in a significant way. The first one that’s coming in June 12th will reduce enemies’ damage by 4% up to 5 times when they get debuffed.

Basically with Silver Wolf, you will be able to maintain at least on one target all 5 stacks, which is 20% reduced damage and if it’s 2 bosses or elite enemies. The other one will probably have around 3-5 stacks as well. This is a huge change for teams like Mono Fire or Mono Ice where you don’t have a healer and want to sustain the damage with shielding.

*Now the next Turbulence after this, will shred the enemy’s DEF by 6% for each debuff up to 5 times for a total of 30% reduction. For teams without Pela, this is straight up an amazing damage boost for damage dealers when you combine this with Silver Wolf’s DEF shred from her bug and ultimate.

*And finally, the last turbulence is not really important because it mostly has to do with Luocha. From June 12th to July 10th Nihility but mainly Silver Wolf is going to be dominating the Memory of Chaos in an almost unfair way.

Now even if we take out these Memory Turbulence changes out of the equation, the other major buff Nihility or for the most part any debuffer has received has is that every enemies’ Resistance to Effects have been nerfed. This change alone has easily made it possible to build Silver Wolf as a sub-dps instead of just pure support, which I’ll talk about in the next segment.

But the most important thing here to understand is that you no longer need to aim for 120% Effect Hit Resistance with her. And instead, roughly 96% is enough to achieve a guarantee you will land her skill debuff, while the Talent which allows her to implant bugs will have around 85 to 99% success rate depending if the enemy has 40 or 30% Effect Resistance and not many have 40% thanks to these changes, like Cocolia or Svarog.

Honestly, to me this last-minute change HoYoverse did to enemies feels eerily similar back when Kazuha first got released. Back in 1.6, Transformative Reactions received a massive damage boost right when Kazuha’s banner became available. So, I guess it’s pretty clear HoYoverse saw that Silver Wolf needed this in order to allow players to have more freedom with her builds.

All in all, with these additions in mind, Silver Wolf lands herself easily in a top tier spot in tier lists. Because she simply brings so much value from enabling new meta teams or remixing older ones, to providing an insane amount of debuffs her team can work with and utilize.

Right now, if you care about her pull value and Memory of Chaos, she is absolutely worth getting for the simple fact alone. She can manipulate the weakness type, even if it can be random at times, which I’ll admit. This can feel punishing if you put her into the 2nd side of Memory of Chaos. Because you might have to waste time and restart the run if she doesn’t apply the weakness you need, especially since finishing in a limited amount of cycles is really crucial right now to get all 3 stars.

Related: Honkai Star Rail: Everything You Should Know About Silver Wolf - Skills, Talent, Ultimates & More

Build Considerations

Now, one more thing I want to talk about are her build considerations. I won’t delve deep here. And instead, maybe you saw how much Effect Hit Rate she needs and became discouraged for pulling for her or you’re in the process of gearing her up. Either way, here’s what you need to think about.

Because of the Effect Resistance nerf that was made to enemies, the golden sweet spot for Silver Wolf, assuming her traces are maxed out, is 96% or about 105% if you have level 7 skill.

For ultimate and talent the numbers will differ, you will need a lot less for the ultimate and a lot more for the talent because of its low base chance. However, what matters the most is the skill.

Now, getting 96% can basically be achieved with Effect Hit Rate body, the new F2P event light cone and then 18% you get from her traces.

But here’s the thing. Effect Hit Rate body massively reduces Silver Wolf’s potential as a sub-damage dealer and instead she kind of acts like a support with some damage.

So, what’s really going to happen with her and what I am also working towards right now, is to actually use Critical Rate body and to obtain the remainder of 38% Effect Hit Rate from the subtats and if needed, the Pan-Galactic planar ornament set.

With the planar set, you only need 28% Effect Hit Rate or if you just go with the substats, you will need to roll on average 9 times on Effect Hit Rate substat to achieve this 96% threshold. This might sound like a lot. But think of it like you would normally chase Critical Rate or Critical Damage substats. It’s definitely achievable in the long run and it is something I highly recommend working towards, instead of just relying on the Effect Hit Rate Body, which is a massive DPS loss for Silver Wolf. That can otherwise be achievable with the Critical Rate Body instead.

Of course, I understand you could be using a light cone that’s not from the current event, which means you’ll need more of Effect Hit Rate it, unless you max out the 5-star options shown here. But for the most part, building her as a hybrid sub-damage dealer and debuffer is going to be your long-term goal.

Broken Eidolons

The 1st one allows her to essentially regain 35 energy after using her Ultimate, which is fine and dandy. Because now you can get rid of the need to have Energy Regeneration Rope and this allows you to increase her damage by even more with ATK or Break Effect rope instead.

However, where things get absolutely bonkers is her second eidolon. You might look at this and think “wow, that’s such a boring upgrade. All enemies have their Effect RES reduced by 20%. It is a big deal”.

Yes, it is actually a big deal. To the point that I think, this eidolon even surpasses Raiden’s 2nd constellation, which is well known in Genshin community as the most powerful upgrade in the game you can get for a character.

And here’s the thing. With this upgrade, you now only need 47% Effect Hit Rate for Silver Wolf to have a guarantee she can apply her skill debuff on all enemies in the game. And it’s going to be 85% chance to apply her bugs. Not only that, all enemies have their Effect Resistance reduced. That means anyone who can apply in the team with Silver Wolf debuffs benefits from this. For example, Gepard’s skill to Freeze becomes easily guaranteed with some Effect Hit Rate built up and so are others will massively benefit from this.

I am honestly shocked how good this Eidolon is and compared to her signature weapon, I would basically just save up my Warps until her Rerun if you want to have her absolutely cracked. Because this 2nd Eidolon is just a gamechanger overall.

And what’s even crazier is her E4 and her E6, which basically turns her into a mini-Seele. There’s already footage showing her E6 potential, and it’s crazy how strong she becomes of a damage dealer.

Initial Thoughts

All in all, its pretty clear Silver Wolf absolutely changes the meta, and she’s easily one of the strongest characters in the game right now. from manipulating the elemental weaknesses to unleashing tons of debuffs, including a massive DEF shred she can apply. She’s just too good right now. But obviously, this only applies if you care about the meta.

Otherwise, she’s a strong and fun character to use in Simulated Universe, I know I’ve had my own fair share of fun by using her in a few of the runs already. And I can only imagine she’s going to be even deadlier and versatile once those Turbulence buffs arrive.

Still, it is a bit of a greedy move by HoYoverse with the way they tempt you with that sexy 2nd eidolon. But I can assure you, she’s busted even at E0. So, don’t go spending your money unless you’re financially secure.

Since Silver Wolf is a new character, it won’t be easy for you to get her. However, if you directly purchase a Honkai Star Rail Account that includes Silver Wolf, you can easily experience her.

We’ll be going over the various things that Honkai Star Rail does better than Genshin Impact. I’m not trying to figure out which game is better or make comparisons. Both games have their pros and cons and this article is supposed to be fun and educational.

Many of the things I point out can be implemented Genshin. So, this can also be a way to encourage HoYoverse to make positive changes. A lot of these differences range from small quality of life changes to substantial overhauls in certain mechanical aspects of the game.

To start things off, one of the most convenient changes in Honkai Star Rail is the streamlining of the many different daily activities players have to complete. Daily missions in Honkai Star Rail are much easier to complete as they consist of various tasks that you could do while farming for relics or materials.

Honkai Star Rail still has quests like commissions. But these quests are usually much easier and most only require you to talk to NPCs. My favorite change personally is that I don’t have to walk to Catherine every single time I finish my dailies to collect my rewards.

Assignments, which are equivalent to Genshin Expeditions, also can be pulled out via the menu instead of talking to Catherine. Another way they also made the daily logins much more bearable was by allowing you to teleport directly to farming locations. This saves you so much time compared to teleporting to a nearby waypoint and then walking over to the location, which could sometimes take a minute or more.

On top of that, you save even more time and energy with the Auto Battle and two times speed in Honkai Star Rail. Farming your Honkai Star Rail dailies is mindless. Because you could just click the Auto Battle and literally do anything else: eat food, watch anime, talk to your friends to make the process even faster. You can farm Calyxes in multiple ways instead of doing them one at a time. This extra convenience is great. And you’ll suffer less burnout as opposed to playing Genshin Impact.

Not only that, the Relic farming process specifically is also shortered by a significant amount. In Genshin Impact, you have to walk to the center of the stage and activate the domain. Once you’re done killing the monsters, you have to walk all the way up the stairs, and then talk to the tree for your artifacts. However, in Honkai Star Rail, all of those things are cut out. All you do is start the fight, kill the enemies, and rewards pop up on your screen. No more pointless walking is required for your daily equipment grinding in Honkai Star Rail. How wonderful is that!

In addition, you don’t have to teleport to a certain statue to change your main character’s element. All you have to do is pull up the menu and click the Switch button. For those of us with terrible luck, HonKai Star Rail lets us pick any standard band character we want after 300 pulls. So, even if you pull to your heart content and still didn’t get that Bronya you wanted, you could forcibly bring her home with the guaranteed select.

Even if we’re free to play, this edition is very beneficial. You might think 300 summons is a lot. But I think you could achieve this easily after half a year or so. The game has only been out for a couple of weeks and now I already have 92 pulls and 68 of them were given to me completely for free.

Continuing on with the gacha system, the weapon banner for Honkai Star Rail is significantly improved. First of all, the exclusive light cone for the current character only features one light cone instead of two weapons, like in Genshin Impact. This greatly increases the odds of getting your ideal light cone and encourages more player to roll on the light cone banner.

Spenders also require less currency if they are pulling for an S6 light cone. Overall, this change was well needed, considering how frustrating Genshin’s weapon banner was. Additionally, Honkai Star Rail is way more generous with the amount of light cones you can get.

Unlike Genshin Impact, you can unlock 5-star light cones from the Starglight Exchange. The Genshin’s equivalent to this is the Starglitter Exchange, which only sells 4-star weapons. This change is amazing for free to play players who rarely spend on weapons and often never get the ones they want for their main characters.

The weekly bosses in HonKai Star Rail also drop entire 4-star light cones compared to Genshin bosses only dropping Prototypes for craftable weapons. Herta’s Store also has three 5-star light cones that you can farm and they even have currency for you to superimpose the light cones to level 5.

Switching between various quests is also much easier in HonKai Star Rail because characters aren’t locked to quests like they were in Genshin. Usually, Genshin quests would keep certain NPCs locked into that quest until you finish them. This prevents you from completing another quest that uses the same NPC. Because they can’t be in two places at the same time. In Honkai Star Rail, they made it so that NPC’s moved to whichever quest you have currently active, which allows you to complete quests in any order you want.

Loading times in HonKai Star Rail are also significantly better. This is because of how each area is separated into several maps as opposed to Genshin loading in entire worlds. Device performance has also improved because of this. And Honkai Star Rail is also a much smaller download compared to when Genshin first came out.

Trailblaze Power is capped out at 180 and regenerates every 6 minutes compared to Genshin’s Resin capping at 160 and regenerating every 8 minutes. Therefore, it will take you only 18 hours to fully regenerate your energy in Honkai Star Rail compared to 21 hours and 20 minutes for Genshin.

Lastly, my favorite change is the increased importance of a character’s element in Honkai Star Rail. In Genshin Impact, elements were only necessary for breaking Shields from mobs, such as the Abyss Mage. Other than that, elements do not matter and you can run the same team for pretty much any boss. In Honkai Star Rail, enemies have Weaknesses in certain elements and attacking an enemy with their Weakness would reduce their Toughness. Without breaking their Toughness, you would deal very low damage.

This makes the character’s element much more important in gameplay. Because of the importance of elemental coverage on teams, this encourages players to use more diverse team comps and makes use of the giant character roster in Honkai Star Rail. As a result, collecting characters becomes much more rewarding and fun for the player base.

Whether you like Honkai Star Rail or Genshin Impact, you will always encounter 5-star characters or weapons that are very difficult to pull. If you want to save time and effort, you can directly purchase a Honkai Star Rail Account or a Genshin Impact Account with the character or weapon you want.

Diablo 4 is almost here and I’ve been non-stop absorbing every piece of content imaginable. With so much info to learn, I decided to put together five of my best tips for launch to ensure you’re not making some of the most costly mistakes and ultimately have the smoothest launch experience.

1. Must Do Content

For tip number one, don’t sleep on world content.

The world content available in the game is very important and all offer their own unique value for completion. Some of the most important World Content that you’re going to want to make sure is doing aside from main quests include Altars of Lilith, dungeons, events, and side quests.

The 160 Altars of Lilith provide you with XP, meaningful stat increases, and count for zone completion. Zone completion is required to level up your Renown for each zone and gain some of the most important benefits, which include two Skill Points, one potion charge, 80 max Obols and four Paragon Points for each of the five zones you complete.

When you finish leveling your Renown in each of the five zones, you’ll end with 10 extra Skill Points, 5 additional potion charges, 400 extra max Obols and 20 Paragon Points, which are going to be incredibly important.

As you can also see on this screenshot of the Renown page, dungeons, side quests, waypoints, area exploration, and strongholds, all additionally go towards completing your Renown in each zone.

Events, on the other hand, are important for their own reason. Not only are they a great source of consistent experience as you’re doing other content, but they also give you Obols, which are used for legendary gambling. This world content is going to be essential to ensure your character is strong enough to compete in some of the hardest endgame content, including World Tier 4 and World Tier 5 Capstone Dungeons and fighting the hardest difficulties of Nightmare Dungeons.

So, in my opinion, it’ll be best to make sure you get these things knocked out early. Because when you’re finally at the endgame in Diablo 4, you won’t want to have to circle back and do some of the more mundane and simple content.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Cold Assassin Rogue Build: A Level 50 Guide

2. Most Common Noobtrap

For tip number two, I want to touch briefly on World Tier difficulty.

World Tier difficulty has been a conversation point for almost everybody in the Diablo 4 Community. Generally, the consensus is that you should start on World Tier 1 to clear through their main story quickly.

The main difference between World Tier 1 and World Tier 2 is the fact that World Tier 2 makes enemies more difficult to kill, but only provides 15% more Diablo 4 Gold, which in the early game is really insignificant and 20% more XP for my monster kills.

On paper, that might sound good. But considering that World Tier 1 and World Tier 2 are only for levels 1 to 50 where we’re going to get World Tier 3, you should get through 1 to 50 as quickly as possible. So, considering that World Tier 2 makes content significantly more difficult but doesn’t provide additional XP for anything outside of monster kills is not worth doing if you’re looking for the fastest way to endgame.

But again, I do want to mention here not everyone is playing Diablo 4 to blast through the game and get to the endgame. So, feel free to play the game at your own pace. Everyone is different, and this game is magnificent no matter how you experience it. And while admittingly I’m not a huge lore or story guy, even I have to admit the cinematics in Diablo 4 are Immaculate and the raw production value of this game is very impressive.

3. Aspect Imprinting Tips

With that out of the way, let’s move into tip 3, talking about aspects.

As you’re navigating your way through content, you should be getting the aspects that are required for your build. Honestly, in my opinion, you should be getting any for your class or any classes you’ll be playing. Because the builds are strong on launch will not be the end-all beal.

So, preparing yourself for the inevitable balance patches is a wise idea. Anyway, with that mention out of the way, the most important thing pertaining to aspects in relation to Diablo 4’s launch is to know you shouldn’t be worried about having all the aspects for your build as you’re leveling. Let me explain that a little.

Let’s say you’re playing a Barbarian at level 15 and you find a nice sword. For the sake of keeping numbers simple, let’s say that sword has a raw DPS of a hundred. You hurry over to town and imprint your aspect on the sword. Now, from level 15 to maybe 18 or 19, you’re owning. But, at level 20, you find an even better sword that has a raw DPS of 200. Now, you have to imprint your legendary aspect again and each time you’re imprinting, that’s going to cost you gold and additional reagents to upgrade it. Now your weapon is going to be the biggest deal while you’re leveling. Because the damage increases from level to level will be substantial to your overall ability to clear content. And from my memory, it also costs more to imprint weapons as well.

But anyway, let me sum up my two cents about aspects. First, don’t worry about imprinting aspects on your weapon every time you get a new upgrade. You’ll waste a ton of materials and ultimately, it’s just going to cost you in the long run. You can imprint on armor, rings, and amulets. But again, don’t worry about imprinting on every upgrade you’re getting from 1 to 50.

Gear power rise is quite steady from 1 to 50, so you’ll only want to start worrying about imprints as you less frequently replacing your gear later on. And if you’re following the strategy that I’m going to be following on launch, you’re not going to need best in slot gear to clear content on World Tier 1, anyway.

4. Leveling Approach

For tip number four, plan out your build.

As you’re going through the campaign for your first time, you don’t want to worry about respecting and re-gearing. Because you’re constantly flip-flopping builds.

In my opinion, you should stick with one or two builds for launch and go with them until you’re facing more difficult content in my case. When it comes to choosing a build, I recommend bookmarking d4gold.com. On this site, you can not only find various build guides but also buy large quantities of Diablo 4 Gold directly here.

For my Rogue class, I’m going to play a Flurry build for the early game and swap to TB (Twisting Blade) around level 25. Now, this isn’t at all for optimized clear speed. It’s actually because I really just enjoy the Flurry build. But I do know from number testing that the Twisting Blade build is going to be more consistent DPS. So, by having these two builds to run on launch, I’m going to set myself up with a very clear path to progress through the story and only reset my build page one time.

In my opinion, you don’t need to play the most meta build at all. With Diablo 4 still a few days away, you can just theory craft your own builds. Because you can use this time to think about what type of build you want to make, list what you need to get done, and figure out how to fill in what you’re currently missing.

But to wrap up this tip and keep it really simple, you should have a plan coming into launch, stick to it, and don’t worry too much about having a hundred percent optimal builds while you’re leveling. As long as you have somewhat of a decent build and some decent gear, you’re not going to struggle to clear content up until World Tier 3.

5. Maximize Your Enjoyment

And tip number five is having fun.

I want to stress this point for Diablo 4’s server launch. Because ultimately, with the launch of Diablo 4, you should be looking to have fun and learn as much as possible.

The launch of the game is going to be at least for myself a big testing period before Season 1. If you’ve played Diablo 3, this game is going to operate similar in relation to seasons. In each season, your non-seasonal characters won’t transfer their level and power into the season. So, don’t feel too bad if you’re not able to grind the game or stay up to date with the best gear outside of season time.

The launch is going to allow us to learn what Diablo 4 has to offer and find the best ways to level fast, gear optimally, and most importantly, allow us to get good at our classes. The only things you need to have done by the time season releases here is make sure you’ve completed the main story, understand your class, experience the Paragon Boards, and most importantly, max out your Renown for each zone.

After playing the Diablo 4 betas, I was pretty surprised by how it all felt. And the more I played it, the more I enjoyed it. But I kept noticing features that seemed very familiar from other games, primarily MMOs.

The long travel times between side quests, the huge open world that you can freely explore, even seeing other players walking around helping me do random events.

It felt a bit odd because it felt like I was playing an MMO within an ARPG. The combat feels great, the esthetic is dark and gritty again and we were blessed with a new antagonist that everybody seems to love - Lilith.

But as much as I love the idea of these new MMO like systems, such as World Bosses, Diablo 4 is taking a huge risk here and at the end of the day, put simply, Diablo 4 may not be for you.

Feel More Like An MMO Than ARPG

This is all from my time from the Diablo 4 betas. So, take this all with a grain of salt. But the reason why I say Diablo 4 may not be for you is because Diablo 4 feels more like an MMO than it does an ARPG.

In other games like Path of Exile or Diablo 2, you have one town that acts as a Quest hub, and from that one point you go on to different areas, usually on a linear path, killing monsters and hunting for that sweet loot.

In Diablo 4, however, you are left to your own devices. The main focus will always be the story line. But aside from the main quests, you can level how you want. If you want to farm dungeons all day, you can do that. Or, if you’d rather hop from quest hub to quest hub, doing side quests or exploring the world, you can do that.

There’s this weird sense of freedom that is present when playing Diablo 4, which is a refreshing feeling but alien at the same time.

Also Read: Diablo 4: 5 Things You Need To Know! - Status Effects, Save Gold, World Tiers, Paragon Boards and Level Up

Getting Stronger Feels Punishing

There are a few problems with this because with the freedom to play how you want, there are also additional systems now that you may not enjoy. For example, as you level throughout the world, monsters and areas will scale along with your level, which means getting stronger may feel a bit punishing.

There will be power spikes along the way whenever you get a key legendary or rare item. But that quickly diminishes once you start to out level your gear and scaling starts to catch up with you again.

One of the positives of a scaling level system is that you can just hop into a friends’ world and just play with them. There’s no big power difference between characters like in Diablo 3, because everything is scaled down to your individual levels.

My only concern with this system is that the process of slowly seeing my character become stronger and stronger is one of the reasons I love playing ARPGs. And the silver lining here is once you hit max level, scaling doesn’t matter anymore.

New Timed World Events

A big concern of mine is world bosses, simply because of how the world boss system is being implemented. Personally, I enjoyed the world bosses and I think they are a great overall addition to the game. But the bosses themselves are on set timers.

They will only spawn at certain times of the day and you will only have 15 minutes to kill the world boss. If you fail to kill the world boss within these 15 minutes, they just walk away. Literally, just that’s it. Leaving you with nothing and just wasting 15 minutes of your time.

There may be situations where halfway through the fight, people just start to leave. This is another system taken from MMOs like World of WarCraft, where you’re now being forced to do an activity you may not want to do.

My concern is that world bosses might just be the beginning. Seasonal content, such as the Seasonal Journey, which was teased earlier in the development cycle, might include daily or weekly tasks later down the road. I want to log in and play Diablo 4 when I want to, not when I feel like I have to.

Concerns About Hardcore

One thing that I think deserves a mention here is how these systems may affect hardcore players. Because it seems like they’re getting the short end of the stick.

Since Diablo 4 is now going into this MMO like direction, hardcore players are forced to try and kill a world boss that can potentially one-shot people. This could easily be a one-way ticket back to the main menu. Another option would be just to ignore the world bosses altogether, but where’s the fun in that?

There’s also a high probability that hardcore players can be lured into a death they can’t avoid, since there are now other players walking around in an open world environment and there’s no grace period for loading screens or dungeons. It would be pretty easy for players to accidentally or even on purpose kill other hardcore players by luring monsters over by a dungeon entrance, especially now that monsters and areas scale with players levels.

Final Thoughts and Concerns

Overall, I feel like Diablo 4 has a bright future. But at its core, it may not appeal to some past Diablo fans with its time gated content and open world MMO like features.

If you enjoy MMO games in general, I feel like you’ll enjoy Diablo 4 as much as I have. And now you can start preparing for Diablo 4 Gold. After all, Diablo 4 will be officially released in a few days.

However, if you’re looking for a spiritual successor to Diablo 2, I would probably suggest playing Last Epoch or maybe giving Path of Exile 2 a chance.

This all might change post-launch, but it seems like Diablo 4 is walking down a slightly different path compared to previous Diablo games.

After the recent livestream, Hoyoverse has finally revealed 5 new exciting features that are coming to the latest Honkai Star Rail 1.1 Update.

1. New Stories

When it comes to new content, we are getting 4 new Story Quests. We will learn more about Silver Wolf, Yanqing, Bailu and Luocha. Nothing has been revealed in this stream about the main story, so maybe we’ll learn more about this when the game goes live, otherwise, these 4 new quests will be featured in 1.1.

2. New Events

As for the events, there’s lots of them with amazing rewards. The main event featuring Silver Wolf is going to have an interesting activity where you go around and look for grafittis, take photos of them and then use special currency to redeem rewards, including a free 4-Star Nihility Light Cone, which is pretty awesome.

Another event based on the Belobog Museum will have an activity where you manage it and work with artifacts, not the artifacts as in from Genshin but like museum specimens. And the biggest thing about this event is that we will be able to get Self-Modelling Resin for free as a reward. This is a super rare resource and you can use to create a relic with any kind of main stat you want.

Also, a quick look at some other rewards reveals where gonna get a ton of Credits, which I am really looking forward to. I am constantly running out of them. Then, there’s going to be a special combat event, which is similar to the Forgotten Hall. Except here, you can also use trial characters and there will be some special combat bonuses and rules you’ll need to work around. And as you can see from the rewards, we will get materials to craft relics, which are always nice.

Next, similar to Genshin, there will be double Calyx drop rewards and I believe it will be Golden and Crimson Calyx that will have an improved drop rate. There’s also an event focusing around Herta’s Space Station, where we will need to go and help out with various problems that have arisen there and it seems like a new recipe among few other things will be rewarded to you for doing this.

3. New Characters

The next one I’m going to cover is probably the most exciting part of the update. We’re getting 3 new characters in 1.1.

*Let’s start with Silver Wolf. She’s a 5-Star Quantum Nihility character that we got to play for a few moments during a tutorial. We now got an official look at her kit and it seems like she’s going to be a debuffer for the team.

So, her skill deals single target damage and then it applies 1 Weakness of an on-field allies type to an enemy. Not only that, but she will also reduce the Elemental Resistance of that element.

As an example, if you have a Fire ally in your team and no enemies have Fire Weakness, Silver Wolf will make it so that these enemies are weak to Fire element, which sounds amazing.

Now, the ultimate deals with single target damage and then reduce’s enemies DEF, which again, helps everyone deal more damage to that enemy. But what’s really interesting is her talent. Each time Silver Wolf attacks, she will implant one of three bugs, which will either reduce ATK, DEF, or SPD.

Basically, Silver Wolf is going to be an insane debuffer, but of course, until we can actually see her performance on the field, we don’t know how strong she is going to be.

*Another 5-Star that’s coming in 1.1 is Luocha. He is a 5-Star Imaginary Abundance healer and his skill will restore health to an ally which seems pretty boring, but this skill is also like a reactive ability, so when anyone in the team drops down below 50% health, he will immediately heal them.

Now, his ultimate deals damage to everyone and removes 1 buff from each enemy, which is pretty amazing because only Pela was able to do that before, so now we’ve got another buff remover.

Finally, his Talent will deploy a field when he reaches 2 stacks of Abyss Flower. This field heals allies when they attack enemies and you can obtain 1 Abyss Flower by using his skill and ultimate.

Honestly, while Luocha doesn’t seem to have an AoE Heal, the fact that he can keep healing in several ways is pretty interesting and also, since he can remove buffs, I think he will be a strong healer in the game.

*Finally, there’s also a new 4-Star Imaginary Harmony character. Yukong seems pretty similar to Tingyun and not just because they both have a tail.

So, her skill boosts everyone’s ATK while her ultimate increases everyone’s Critical Rate and Damage, which seems pretty insane. Not only that, but the ultimate also deals damage to a single enemy, so there’s a great way to reduce some toughness as well.

In fact, her talent improves her Basic ATKs damage and Toughness-Reducing. So, she’s going to be excellent against enemies with Imaginary Weakness.

Finally, her Technique is pretty noteworthy since it boosts movement speed when used in exploration and when you enter combat, she will immediately boost ATK of everyone.

By the way, if you want to get the two 5-Star characters mentioned above directly, then buying Honkai Star Rail Accounts directly will be a good choice!

Now is the most important part of this feature, the banners.

In the first phase, Silver Wolf, along with Asta, Dan Heng and Serval, will be on a featured banner while in the 2nd phase, Luocha, along with Pela Qingque and Yukong will be available to summon. Also, Luocha and Silver Wolf will be getting their own signature Light Cones that you can pull for.

First of all, I am really surprised they revealed all the 4-Stars here. That’s not something we see when we play Genshin, so it’s good to know we can plan around this. I think both of these banners have their pros and cons.

One thing I also want to mention is that during the Chinese livestream, I am not sure if I understood this correctly but Yukong will be given away for free in 1.2 update, not 1.1 but please make sure to double check this once the global livestream goes live. Either way, that sounds pretty good if it’s correct.

Also Read: Honkai Star Rail: Everything You Should Know About 7 Main Paths

4. New QoL

There’s a couple of great Quality of Life changes coming in this new update.

First of all, the materials that drop from roaming enemies in the world required us to run around the map and locate them but with this new change, you can immediately teleport to the enemy by just clicking on the material in the menu, which is really nice.

Obviously, there’s still a daily limit of enemies for before the server reset but this makes farming this stuff a lot more convenient.

Now this next one, I am not super sure if I got this correctly, but we will be able to encounter Warp Trotters on the map. I don’t think they are the same kind as the ones you would find when trying to complete the whole map, as in, they would drop 60 jades when defeated. I believe these ones will spawn randomly and drop more materials than the usual roaming enemy, which seems nice.

Finally, we’re also getting chat function in the game, so anyone who is on your friend list, you can now send messages to each other.

5. Free X10 Summons

The fifth feature is probably the most awesome thing. That’s coming with 1.1 and requires the least effort. A 7-day login reward will be available for everyone by just logging in and claiming the summons.

I am honestly amazed this is happening so soon after the global launch. But to quickly summarize, we’re getting 4 new story quests in 1.1 update featuring these characters.

As for the events, there’s a lot of them, but the main rewards to look out for would be a free 4-Star Nihility Light Cone, Self-Modelling Resin and tons of credits from the museum event. The main event featuring Silver Wolf will explore her story and introduce us to some new things about her.

And as for the banners, in the 1st phase Silver Wolf along with Asta, Dan Heng and Serval will be on a featured banner while in the 2nd phase, Luocha along with Pela Qingque and Yukong will be available to summon. Also, Luocha and Silver Wolf will be getting their own signature Light Cones that you can pull for.

Finally, we’re getting a couple of great quality of life changes, including an instant teleportation to roaming enemies on the map by clicking on the material you want to farm for, as well as a chat function you can use with your friends.

Today, we’re breaking down all the changes and new additions we can expect to see throughout the month of June. We’ll be looking at Events, Limited-time items, Seasonal Changes, Weather Phenomena and everything in between.

1. Wedding Event

Now, June is a super busy month, primarily because June also marks the start of the Wedding Season in Animal Crossing New Horizons, honouring Reese and Cyrus’s Wedding Anniversary.

Beginning June 1st, and running through to the end of the month, the Wedding Season Event takes place on Harv’s Island and players are given the task of decorating the Venue each day. This is probably the largest event in the game, offering up the most rewards and furniture items for taking part.

The objective is to decorate the venue with the chosen theme that day to unlock items. The more you take part, the more ACNH Items you unlock and the more Heart Crystals you earn. These are used to purchase Wedding Furniture to keep for yourself.

Alongside the Wedding Season Event, the Able Sisters also stocks several special wedding-themed clothing items. And additional wedding-themed seasonal items are also available from the Nook Stop and are not to be missed.

2. Seasonal Items

Speaking of Seasonal Items, June is packed full of limited-time items that are only available throughout the month of June in honour of real-world events.

These include the Dragon Boat Festival and the Dano Festival, International Children’s Day, Father’s Day, the Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice, depending on which Hemisphere you’re in, and of course, the Wedding Season we already mentioned.

The Dragon Boat Festival and the Dano Festival are typically celebrated in China and South Korea respectively and introduce the Festival Zongzi and Surichwi Tteok items, which are now both edible food items.

International Children’s Day is a celebration honouring good health towards children, and introduces the Handmade Cape and Handmade Crown. Both are really cool items. These are only available for two weeks, unlike at launch.

Father’s Day returns to honour parents and, like the Wedding Season, runs for the entire month. This Seasonal Event introduces the Thank-You Dad Mug and Thank-You Dad Apron.

The Summer Solstice and Winter Solstice take place at the same time, depending on your hemisphere. Players in the Northern Hemisphere can obtain the Sunflower Crown, the Sunflower Rug, the Sunflower Glasses and the Maypole. And Players in the Southern Hemisphere can obtain the Midwinter Sweater, the Aurora Wall, the Bathtub with Yuzu and the Tangyuan.

All of these items mentioned here are available from the Nook Stop on the dates shown, and depending on when you started New Horizons, or if you went back to the game after a break, some of these items may be brand new.

3. Seasonal Materials

Moving on, whilst we’re talking about Seasonal Topics, it’s worth remembering both Hemispheres are approaching new seasons, which means new Crafting Materials are available throughout June.

The Northern Hemisphere will say goodbye to the Young-Spring Bamboo materials and instead begin to find Summer Shells washed ashore. These new materials will be available from June 1st through to August 31st. And of course if you’re playing through this season for the first time, you’ll now unlock the Summer Shell Boat Tour, too.

Anyway, Summer Shell recipes will also become available from Balloons and Bottles, and include recipes for items, such as the Water Flooring, the Tropical Vista and the Summer Shell Rug, amongst others.

The Southern Hemisphere will continue to encounter Acorns and Pine Cones for a couple of weeks, however as Winter begins, small and large Snowflakes can be obtained from June 11th through to August 24th.

4. Nooks Cranny

Now, given we are approaching new seasons, Nooks Cranny sees some pretty cool changes to both. It’s aesthetics and stock.

In the Summer and Winter months, depending on which Hemisphere you’re in, you’ll notice Nooks Cranny sees subtle changes to its decoration and window displays.

But, more importantly, Nooks Cranny also sells seasonal items. During the Summer, Nooks Cranny sells the Surfboard and Retro Fans. And during the Winter, Nooks Cranny sells the Round Space Heater and Celebratory Candles.

All of these items are actually locked to a specific colour, based on your island. However, now that Cyrus resides on Harv’s Island, it is possible to customise them with him for bells, even during the Wedding Season, which is super useful.

5. Weather Phenomena

Now, one of my favourite changes we see on the New Horizons Island is, of course, to the different types of weather.

The Northern Hemisphere is much the same at the start of Summer, though. However, Thin Clouds will disappear at the end of May, so it will be some time before you see these again.

In the Southern Hemisphere on the other hand, Cirrus and Cirrocumulus Clouds disappear, with Billow clouds taking their place. Players in the Southern Hemisphere will also begin encountering Aurora’s on clear nights once the snow starts to fall from June 11th.

You can only encounter these from 6 pm through to 4 am, although can be tricky to spot, as they often only appear for an hour or so. But if you’ve never seen one, definitely worth looking out for.

6. Bug-Off

Next up, we have another cool Summer activity, which is, of course, the Bug-off Season.

Starting on the 4th Saturday of June, which this year is the 24th, Flick will stop by the Plaza to host the first Bug-off of the year. For anyone new to New Horizons in the last 10 months or so, the Bug-off is a time-trial challenge that sees players catch as many bugs as possible before the timer ends.

Flick rewards players for catching bugs, so the more you catch, the more prizes you can earn. Some of the items available include the Bug Cage Bag, the Toy Cockroach and the Termite Mound, amongst others.

You also earn Trophies for taking part, so even if you took part last year, it’s a great opportunity to earn different items or a different type of Trophy.

The Bug-off is a Summer Event, so currently unavailable in the Southern Hemisphere, but you could always time travel or visit a friend’s island, if you wanted to.

Also Read: ACNH: How Could Splatoon 3 Affect The Next Animal Crossing Game?

7. Island Aesthetics

Another detail and change I like to see on the New Horizons Island is of course to the Bushes that go in and out of season as we change months and seasons.

Anyway, pink and white Azalea Bushes stop flowering at the end of May in the Northern Hemisphere, with blue and pink Hydrangeas blooming in their place. These will continue to be available through to July.

As we continue to transition into Summer, the weeds found around the island become less vibrant too, but tend to have more flowers, which personally I like.

In the Southern Hemisphere, Holly Bushes continue to flower until mid-June. However, red and pink Camellia Bushes bloom in their place from June 16th, all the way through to September.

As for the Weeds, they lose their feathery Autumn look, and become frosted and icy as the snow begins, which is to be expected.

8. Critters

As you’d expect, as we enter the Summer months here in the Northern Hemisphere, we see a huge shift in Bugs, Fish and Deep-Sea Creatures.

In total, players can expect to encounter 25 new Critters, including the Goliath Beetle, the Great White Shark and the Abalone, to name just a few. Naturally, as players enter the Winter months in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s much the same.

However, in total, players can expect to encounter only 9 new Critters, which are pretty much inline with what you’d expect from the Winter months. These include the Dung Beetle, the Stringfish and the Lobster, to name a few.

So, what are you looking forward to the most from the month of June?

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!