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. 

We’re going to be looking at three awesome places to grind out rabbit kills so you can get your Easter event rewards as fast as possible before we get into that

Rabbit’s Revenge Event - Release Time & Rewards

The new Easter Event Rabbit’s Revenge starting on April 12th and going until April 26th. There are a couple of really cool rewards to look forward to. All the rabbits in New World during this period will be transforming into these bigger corrupted versions and have a chance of exploding when they die. This will be very similar to the event they did for Easter last year, but with a couple of new rewards and added lore.

The main two items you want to look out for from these new rabbits are the Defiled Storage Chest of the Hare, which is the same from last year and a pretty cool new mask skin called a Corrupted Rabbit Mask.

Last year, the chest was a big cause of pain for many users since some people killed thousands of rabbits without it. But thankfully this year, you’re guaranteed this chest after 400 kills if you have not gotten it already. You can hold 1050 weight in this chest, so it’s pretty great, and it looks awesome as well.

How To Get These Rewards?

The mask is purely cosmetic and is guaranteed after 200 kills if it hasn’t dropped for you yet, but I can see some very interesting transmog options with this mask. Along with these two items, you’ll be getting your daily gypsum from rabbits up to a total of six per day and up to five Defiled Rabbit’s Feet, which can be consumed for increased luck. So, even if you already got your two drops, it’s worth getting a few rabbit kills per day for these items.

It’s worth noting when going after these items, luck gear will have no effect on your drops. But if you want to kill two birds with one stone, you might as well throw on some Skinning Luck gear while killing the rabbits for better odds at rare rabbit meets.

Also, since these rabbits are so easy to kill, ranged weapons are best to be most efficient, especially the Musket due to its long range. And, if you’re having issues find any rabbits in certain areas, don’t forget to use your compass at the top of your screen to locate them. Sometimes, they are hidden in a bush right beside you.

Three Spots To Grind Rabbits

Next, let’s go over the three spots I like to use to grind out my rabbit kills.

*The first location we’re going to be looking at is over in Brightwood. You can teleport into the main city and then head north along the path up to the Tempest Valley Shrine and then further along to the Imperial Shrine. There're tons of rabbits spawning along this path, so be able to get tons of kills up here.

*Next up is Everfall. You want to be teleporting into the main city and slowly making your way down to the Excavated Shrine, weaving side to side, keeping an eye on their spawn location map and trying to stay in the areas most populated. Because this is such a low level zone, though, I could see a lot of people using this area and bots as well, just because any roaming monsters won’t be of much thread.

*The third and final spot is over in Ebonscale Reach. If you're a high level player, this will be a perfect spot for you since the higher level mobs will scare away the newer players. Simply teleport into the main city and follow the path on the screen just outside the city, killing all the rabbits in your path. Then, head back to the city when you have killed enough.

New World Map

If you tried all these locations and there are too many people taking all the rabbit spawns, then you can check out a really cool resource called New World Map. But if you hide all the things on the map and only show rabbits, it'll show you all the places they spawn on the map and simply go to any area very populated by rabbit spawns and grind until your heart is content.

Related: New World: What’s New For Season 1?

More Tips

Now, let's go over a couple more tips and tricks to maximize this event for you. For starters, when hunting for rabbits in an area, I like to move my camera from side to side, keeping an eye on my radar as I'm running the routes, so I don't miss any of the rabbits. Because sometimes they're hidden by the vegetation.

Also, when it comes to event items like the Defiled Rabbit's Foot, if you're not interested in the love benefits from this item, still hold on to them for a few months because after the event has finished, the prices will just go up and up as time passes. That means you have to spend more New World Coins later.

The same applies for any rabbit related food like the Sumptuous Rabbit meat because so many people will be hunting these rabbits. Prices will drop like crazy. So, for any of these items you gain during this period, hold on to them for a while until prices go back up. If you want, you can even purchase tons of them while prices are at all time lows and eventually sell them on for crazy profits.

This is my opinion. Here’s my subjective take on the best and worst parts of Diablo 2, Diablo 3 and Diablo 4.

Best Part Of Diablo 2

Starting with the best thing about Diablo 2, I just love the itemization in this game. Unique Items can be really powerful and so can rare items. Even certain magic or blue items have the ability to be best in the slot, the wide range of low to high-level set.

Items have bonuses that in niche cases can be really strong or I might craft myself a pair of orange gloves to get a crushing blow and then you even have gray items with open sockets.

It’s even worth picking up wide items as I can potentially turn them gray for a Runeworld base and a Helm. It’s not just a Helm. There’s like a hundred different Helm types that have different requirements and potential bonuses.

My point is pretty much all items have the potential to be useful in Diablo 2 and don’t get me started on Runewords. And D2R items can roll with plus skills on them from other classes, so my Assassin can all of a sudden use the Sorceress teleport because I found his staff with plus teleport charges.

Or I can use the Druid’s Spirits summoned via this ring, so my Paladin gets more life. I mean that’s just really outstanding in my opinion and makes building and designing your character really satisfying both through the skill tree and stats that you carefully choose, but especially through the itemization.

Best Part Of Diablo 3

On to the best thing about Diablo 3, I love how fun clicking buttons and killing Demons is in Diablo 3 like there’s a casual, like Arcadey feel to this game, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The satisfying spells along with the simplicity and accessibility make this an amazing couch Co-op like console experience, perhaps with your kids or your girlfriend who’s new to gaming or even on PC with your online friends pushing the limits of the game.

I also love how Diablo 3 has come so far since its release pretty messy with a lot of systems that didn’t work at all back then. But I feel like they’ve really cleaned it up and really doubled down on its strengths.

Now, it’s got this fun farming simulator vibe to it where I can just jump in and feel like I’m an overpowered God and at certain times of the month, I enjoy that.

Best Part Of Diablo 4

What I think is the best thing about Diablo 4 after playing the beta is the freshness, a new Diablo game, a new story, new end game, the community hype. It’s intriguing and really sparks my curiosity and hunger to play the game.

Building up my character in Diablo 4 is like a new problem to solve and you’re not to crack, so to speak. Therefore, in the early game, you need to prepare enough Diablo 4 Gold to improve your character.

Read More: What You Need To Know About Diablo IV End Game Modes?

The foundation of the gameplay feels incredible to me, like just killing the first wolf at level one. I already had fun and I love that feeling of exploring a new game that I’m passionate about.

Now, I’ve only played the beta, so I’m expecting to have a lot more thoughts on this once the game is out.

Worst Part Of Diablo 2

Onto the worst things about these games, Diablo 2 absolutely lacks of in-game content. Like after playing this game for thousands of hours, there’s not much left to do. Besides, doing it all over again and it can get a little repetitive.

Even now with Diablo II: Resurrected, I’m a little disappointed with how minor changes they’re making to this game, like adding a few new boring items per season just isn’t enough to make me want to play it. I’d really love to see them be more brave and make more bold changes to really shake this game out.

Other than that, the depth and the complexity of this game isn’t that obvious and can be hard for new players to appreciate. I’ve found that my friends who tried for the first time often find the gameplay slow and unengaging coming from other more fast-paced modern titles, which is understandable since the game is 23 years old (release time of Diablo 2: June 28, 2000).

To me, it’s only once you know a lot of the ins and outs of Diablo 2 that it becomes the awesome and fun game that it is and even when you think about everything, there’s still more to discover. But a lot of people never get there. So, I’d say it’s almost too complicated and non-user friendly.

Worst Part About Diablo 3

The worst part of Diablo 3 I’d have to say is just the scaling of everything. I mean, what are these numbers? What’s going on on my screen? And sometimes it just makes me sick.

I’d much more appreciate and savor the whole experience if it was stripped down a bit. The minor change I want is like Diablo 2, where your items rather than give you ten thousand percent extra damage, you get a slight increase to your cash rate and your teleporting feels much better.

I personally prefer that system of slightly tweaking and fine-tuning different aspects of my character.

Worst Part Of Diablo 4

Finally, the worst thing about Diablo 4 I have to mention is the exact same thing as Diablo 3.

The scaling, especially the item affixes just stacking percentage bonus damage: 10% to crowd controlled mobs and 12% overpower damage.

Just this one aspect of the game feels a little chaotic to me and doesn’t feel as satisfying as a system like Diablo 2 where my Sorcerer steals two and a half thousand damage just from being the level she is. And with full gear, the damage doubles.

In summary, I have a love hate relationship with all three of these games for different reasons. Do you agree with my pros and cons of each Diablo game?

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

Why Do This Event?

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

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

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

Where To Go First?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Achievement 1: I Found One

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

Achievement 2: Chocoholic

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

Achievement 3: Blushing Bride

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

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

Achievement 4: Desert Rose

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

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

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

Achievement 5: Shake Your Bunny-Maker

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

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

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

Achievement 6: Noblegarden

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

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

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

Achievement 7: Spring Fling

Moving into number seven, we have Spring Fling.

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

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

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

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

Achievement 8: Hard Boiled

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

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

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

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

The Diablo Community is not happy with the video that Blizzard released yesterday, which is titled “Diablo 4 Into The Endgame”. The video is about the endgame in Diablo 4, especially the Paragon system.

D4 Endgame Summary

I've summarized the information about the Diablo 4 endgame gameplay. You basically play through the campaign, then you get given a Capstone Dungeon to complete, which unlocks the next difficulty.

In this video, they said that dungeons have a chance to drop an aspect that you can pick up. So, unlike the beta where dungeons would have a fixed reward like you either got an Aspect (Aspect of Piercing Cold) or you didn't, it seems like some dungeons or maybe all of them will have a drop chance of an aspect instead.

I'd much prefer this randomized bonus instead of a guaranteed bonus and in the endgame, there's a Nightmare Dungeon, which lets you replay any old dungeon as long as you have found a Nightmare Sigil. This makes the dungeon more difficult, have more objectives and is similar to Elite Monsters. The dungeon itself will roll on affix and have an effect, like spawning a bunch of portals that spawn monsters. Imagine fighting the butcher next to three portals spawning demons. What I mean is that it could get chaotic in there.

They also mentioned the Tree of Whispers, which is basically a tree that gives you Bounty quests. You do the Bounty and you get a cash reward of your choice. It does seem like they've taken Diablo 3's town and just spread it across the map. I guess doing it this way forces us to use our mounts to run across the world. But they've also added two new ways to play the endgame.

On top of that, you've got Helltied. It's like a PVE event where extra powerful monsters are attacking a specific area and they drop special shards that you can use to get gear at designated stations within the Helltied area itself.

Then, there's the Fields of Hatred. It's basically Helltied, but for the PVP lovers, there are monsters, but you can also kill other players. All whilst, you try to collect shards that need to be purified before they're usable for gambling cosmetics and gear back in town. It honestly sounds pretty interesting and I can't even imagine how intense this must be on Hardcore.

Things I Missed

There were some things in the video that I missed, so you might have as well.

First, there's a Lilith looking boss, but it looks very much like the Diablo 2 version of Uber Lilith. In the beginning of the game, we can only have five potions, but it seems like in the endgame we maybe can have more up to nine.

During this new world boss, there's this invisible Rogue, who dodges the tornadoes perfectly, only to walk straight into the most obvious death ever confirming for us all that you don't want to stand inside the big scary circles. There's this floating snowflake following this Rogue player around. I'm not sure what it is. Does anyone know? Is it a skill? An item? A cosmetic? Or, is it just like a UI thing that you can enable on the menu?

Paragon System

On to the most controversial topics of the Diablo 4 endgame so far, the skill and Paragon system. I mean, we can see that we get 53 skill points and refunding one point costs over a hundred thousand Diablo 4 Gold, which seems pretty expensive. And I think that's good. You get four Paragon points per level past 50.

So, at level 100, you'll have 200 Paragon points and there are many variations of boards and each board can be spun to your preference. I'd assume you want the quickest route to the next legendary aspect, which they said is similar to Legendary Aspects in your gear.

And from analyzing the board, it seems to be about 40 steps between each legendary node, so you'll realistically be able to get like five legendary nodes in one character. So, that's like wearing an additional five items. It's not bad.

A lot of people are very disappointed to just get plus five stats for most of the nodes. But via the Glyphs, you can actually strategically boost these regular nodes, depending on what you're looking for.

Only The Beginning

So, in my opinion, all of this as a baseline system at launch of Diablo 4 actually looks to create some really fun endgame builds and customization.

And they even emphasize this in the video: the launch of this game is only the beginning. If the foundation of this game is fun, that's all that matters to me.

I'm sure they will add more advanced systems in future seasons to keep things interesting. I'm curious that are you excited about the Diablo 4 endgame or are you disappointed?

Season of Mastery 2 is something that has been pretty much confirmed considering Blizzard said when launching Season of Mastery that there would be multiple seasons. 

Season Of Mastery 2 Concept Examples

Considering Blizzard closed the Season of Mastery servers over a month ago, I would say Season of Mastery 2 is right around the corner and will probably be announced any day now, and beta testing or PTR testing should be underway shortly. 

Considering the name Season of Mastery, that “of Mastery” part kind of hints towards every season focusing on something different, and the next season will most likely have a different name than Season of Mastery, and here are a couple of examples: 

Season Of Hardcore

This would be an entire season focused on the current Hardcore Challenge on Classic Era, aka one-life servers. 

Season Of Victory

This is a season focused on PvP with improved PvP Systems, maybe even improved PvP Rewards that would get better with every content phase based on your rankings, and a PvP System that gives you gear & rank based on your skill rather than time spent doing battlegrounds. 

This season would also include Rated Battlegrounds & Arenas, keeping in that PVP Season Theme. 

Season Of Mastery 2 Wishlist

With that in mind, I want to take some time and talk about what I would personally want to see in Season of Mastery 2. 

Increased Raid Difficulty

*More difficult raids. Season of Mastery was great, and the new mechanics they put into raids were actually pretty cool. However, many of them were pretty easy to work around, and especially in Molten Core. They didn’t actually make that big of an impact, except for Baron Geddon, which took down a couple of pugs for sure. 

Personally, I really enjoy when raids provide an actual challenge rather than just being loot-pinatas, so the more difficult they can make the raids, the more fun I think it would be. 

More Loot From Raids

*With increased raid difficulty, I would also like to see an improved amount of loot dropping from each boss. The reward should be worth the effort, so if you’re making raids more difficult, there should also be more loot involved. 

This is also very much due to the fact that these seasonal servers are exactly that, they are seasonal, and Season of Mastery 1 lasted just around a year, a little longer, but let’s use 1 year as the benchmark here: If every season is supposed to last roughly a year, instead of Classic WoW’s, almost 2 year life-span, we obviously need to obtain loot quicker in order to get the items we want. 

Now, you could use the argument that if we obtain less gear, future raids will by default be more difficult because we have less gear, but I would much rather like to see increased raid difficulties plus increased loot drops, because if we need to feel weaker just to make the raids feel more difficult, that is usually not the correct way to go as people enjoy striving to obtain their best-in-slot items and being as prepared as possible. 

When you’re doing a raid, you obviously want the best items you can get in order to parse as high as possible, so having the opportunity to get the best raid items possible is a must. 

Rated Battlegrounds & Arenas

*This is something I personally want to see in the next Season regardless of whether or not the season is actually focused on PVP. 

The simple fact is: Rated Battlegrounds & Arenas would add a lot of content to these Seasonal Servers, making them more enjoyable overall, and it gives you a way for your team to measure your skill against other teams of equal skill-ratings. 

New PVP System PLs

*While we are on the topic of PvP: Remove the old PvP System. In seasonal servers, nobody has time to quit their jobs & divorce their wives & abandon their families just to grind Alterac Valley 16 hours a day for weeks on end. Also, remove or time-gate the acquisition of Grand Marshal or High Warlord items. 

Timegated PVP Rewards

*Speaking from experience on the first run of Season of Mastery, the people that were actually trying hard and wanted to clear the first few raids quickly, had to grind Alterac Valley and get that gear as soon as possible because you could start getting it right out of the gate, and that Rank 14 gear is stupidly overpowered to have during Molten Core Progression. 

Increased Leveling Speed

*This is something Season of Mastery did actually do quite well in my opinion: it gave you a pretty significant & noticeable increase in experience, while also making sure it still felt like Vanilla WoW. 

The way it worked in Season of Mastery was you got an additional 40% experience from quests, and even more from Dungeon Quests, and honestly this is exactly what I was looking for, as it enforces questing & doing each dungeon at least once with quests, which I personally think is fantastic. 

This way you see people out in the open world actually doing quests rather than just mindlessly grinding mobs or AOE farming or doing dungeon cleaves. However, even with this 40% buff to quests, in many cases, grinding mobs were still faster, especially if you were a Mage or a Paladin, and even in certain level brackets it was faster to do Dungeon Cleaving in order to level up. 

Personally, I would like to see the experience from quests increased even further, once again improving the amount of experience you get from quests and further emphasizing that people should be questing rather than dungeon farming or AOE farming. 

And this is not to force people to quest, it’s more-so the other way around, because with the current minimax mentality a lot of people have, we take the path of least resistance & whichever path will get us to our goal faster. 

So, if questing is fun but grinding is faster, a lot of people tend to go for grinding because again it is faster. This has in the past led to people feeling forced to grind mobs or dungeons when they actually would much rather just do quests, and this time around I would like to see the actual speed leveling meta change to where questing is number 1. By the way, if you want to quickly complete your quests, using WoW Classic Gold will help you a lot.

Here’s what I would like to see: +50% experience from quests, and add another +10% every week starting after 4 weeks of the Season. This gives everyone 4 weeks of “even grounds” when it comes to leveling, but it also gives newcomers a catch-up mechanic so people that want to join the season later on. Don’t have this massive barrier-to-entry. 

The simple fact is: Leveling is more fun when there’s other people to level with, and the later we get into the season, the fewer people will be leveling, so we need to give new players some incentive to actually join, otherwise these Seasonal Servers will always be going downhill in population. 

Related: WoW: What Blizzard Should Do To Make Season of Mastery 2 A Successful Launch?

Additional Information

*Now one more thing I want to talk about is class changes: I’m going to keep this very simple and to the point: I want to see class changes from either TBC or Wrath, put into this Season. 

The simple fact is, even in Season of Mastery where people were raiding without World Buffs, Warriors & rogues were topping those damage meters, and this led to an enforced meta for the endgame. 

Even if you maybe did not want to play a Warrior or a Rogue, if you wanted a melee DPS raid spot, you had to. Giving us some Class Changes that we are already familiar with in the Classic WoW Universe, AKA either the Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King, I think would really help spice things up, and to top it all of: Give us the current Wrath of the Lich King Talent System & Talents, but scaled down to level 60 obviously. 

*One more thing worth talking about here: these Season of Mastery Servers could even run into the Burning Crusade, considering we don’t have any TBC Classic or TBC Era Servers at the moment, and there is a pretty solid player base that enjoys TBC, so it might be worth exploring the option of these Seasonal Servers actually progressing into TBC and becoming TBC Era Servers, eventually. 

As we all know, when we are exploring in Elden Ring or fighting the boss, if there are not enough Elden Ring Items as a supplement, it will be difficult to start a persistent battle with it and it will be difficult to harvest rare materials or weapons in the end.

And what I want to talk about today is Rune Arcs, which is valued by many people but has not been able to find the correct way to use it. If you can tap into the potential of this item, it's likely to work wonders in battle, and you can even Farm Rune Arcs when you're offline.

What do Elden Ring Rune Arcs do?

According to the background of the game, we can know that Rune Arcs is a piece of debris that fell from the shattered Elden Ring. It can add various buffs to our class as a consumable, such as increasing the maximum life value. Each player can carry up to 99 Rune Arcs, and no more. If you happen to collect more than this number of Rune Arcs, you can store them in your own warehouse for later use. It’s just that it’s useless to own that much, because you only need to spend 200 Elden Ring Runes to get 600 Rune Arcs.

So what are the specific uses of Rune Arcs? We all know that Great Runes, another famous item in the game, is one of the loot we usually collect after killing monsters in Divine Tower, and its function is to help us go beyond the limit, but we must need many Rune Arcs to activate Great Runes. When your class dies, repeat the above process to start the battle again.

Where To Find Elden Ring Rune Arcs?

All Maps, Chests, Around You and more.

Elden Ring Rune Arcs Easy Farming Method

• Kill the boss in multiplayer mode;
• Kill Giant Rats.

There may be more ways to get Elden Ring Rune Arcs yet to be discovered, but if you want to learn about related guides, you can also visit the famous Elden Ring free guides provider IGGM to learn more. There, you can also buy the related Elden Ring in-game currency items with code “CSCCA” (5% off), just try it, may be it will be helpful for you.

Here are some huge World of Warcaft private server news. It’s not often we get a high quality, fresh TBC server. I’m going to be checking out and playing in Netherwing. This is a brand new server by Stromforge and a fresh server that just launched only one day ago.

Intro

I’ll be talking about the servers’ massive and successful launch, and a bit about the servers’ unique features. I’m talking about increased exp rates and going over the incentives the developers are offering players in the hopes of creating healthy faction balance.

If you plan on rolling Alliance this time around in the Burning Crusade, then you’re going to love some of these new changes.

Start

The private server scene had been popping off the last few months, we have a few vanilla plus servers pulling huge player numbers, like Turtle WoW or Duskhaven, and then there are what I would consider more molded versions of WoW, like Ascension: Classless WoW. Now, we have a server that is, a little more old school and a little more like what we in the private server community are used to.

Stormfordge’s new fresh TBC Server Netherwing launched with a massive 4700 players online. That is pretty good for private servers in 2023.

Now, TBC isn’t my favorite expansion, but a lot of people really enjoy it. I will admit that the Burning Crusade is absolutely stacked with PVE content. You have Karazhan, Gruul’s Lair, SSC, Tempest Keep, Black Temple and Sunwell. Not to mention, this was the first expansion that arena was introduced, and although I don’t think it was the best in terms of balance, there are of people that like the fast-paced TBC PVP meta.

TBC isn’t without its flaws, however, private servers have been plagued with awful faction balance, because with arena, the Horde racials like Will of the Forsaken and ORCs stun resist are OP to say at least. Players generally don’t like playing sub optimally, so it’s not really the players’ fault for not choosing Horde over Alliance.

Racial Swap

But this is where Netherwing had been some really nice changes. You now have the ability to racial swap, any race can not learn any other races’ racial abilities.

You can be a Gnome with Will of the Forsaken, or a Dwarf with the Troll berserkers’ ability. Thus goes a long way in balancing the server out, but the devs didn’t stop there.

Server Features

They added unique incentives to alliance players. For example, you get your lv 60 ground mount for free and dual spec (free for alliance).

• Battle-tested Core: Netherwing will once again be powered by AtlantissCoreTBC with two successful realms and years of development put into it!
• Proven Developers: Stormforge Team is composed of Atlantiss and Tauri members with years of experience under our belts!
• Helpful Support: Our support team is here to assist you with any issue you might have!
• Faction Balance: Additional balancing measures to ensure the game isn’t one-sided.
• Racial Swap: Play the race you want, pick the racial abilities you want.
• Dual Talent Specialization: Extra talent tree for those willing to take multiple roles or experiment!
• Dynamic Quest Item Drops: Each time a quest item fails to drop, your chance of getting it from the next enemy mob increases until your bad streak is over!
• Shared Quest Items: Majority of quest items will drop for the entire group, making leveling with friends and all these changes seems to have worked, so far.

The faction balance, as of now, is roughly 50/50. The server is also 3x leveling speed, which has its advantages and disadvantages. It can be difficult to get the required WoW 10.0 Gold for mounts and talents while leveling, but leveling up quickly through the old classic content is nice. There were a lot of people looking for group, and it seems like 5 man dungeon grinding is the fastest way to level up. There are at least a few people who have already reached level 70, which is impressive.

The server has been remarkably stable for a fresh launch, there really haven’t been any crashes or roll backs so far. Which has been great!

Server Issues

My only real complaint or issue I’ve had while playing is that I had to disable my second monitor to adjust the screen resolution to 1920x1080 or get it to switch to windowed mode. So, that’s a quick tip if you’re having the same issue.

My other complaint is that the general chats, like trade, world of general have not been very active, I’m not sure if thus is because it’s a more international community, but there isn’t a lot of talking going on, for 4700 people online, this just seems odd for me. Or maybe I’m just spoiled, as I’ve been playing on Turtle WoW recently and have really been enjoying newcomers chat.

I think Vanilla Plus and Hardcore have ruined playing on regular Classic Era servers for me, at least for a while. But playing on Darkhaven or Turtle WoW, with all their changes, and quality of life improvement has made much of the Classic Era servers feel a bit stale.

Conclusion

Now, if you want a stable, fresh TBC server, run by a professional and competent veteran development team, then Netherwing is for you.

There aren’t many complaints I have, it is what it is, I’ll be checking it out in the future, to see how it’s doing, but I don’t have any plans on leveling to 70.

I think it’s moving towards classic or Vanilla Plus. Netherwing has made some significant changes, but there isn’t any new content that I’ve heard of and it’s just not enough for me to give up my time on other more interesting and new servers.

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

Ray Tracing Update

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

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

General Gameplay Adjustments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Reduced the attack recovery time for Whip weapons.

*Increase the damage of Claw weapons.

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

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

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

*Increased the effectiveness of the Twinblade Talisman.

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

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

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

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

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

Ashes Of War Adjustments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bug Fixes

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

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

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

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

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

PVP Exclusive Adjustments

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

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

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

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