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.....

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you’ve been following the classic scene, you’ve definitely noticed that private servers are making a big comeback as the major way to play the game and it’s really easy to see why. 

What Are Private Servers?

People love classic fresh and Blizzard’s been way too slow rolling out Season of Mastery 2. But if you’re an official Server Andy Detected, you may not realize what these servers are doing and why they’re so popular. 

I’ve been researching as much as I can and I’ve been talking to friends who love these servers, so I can tell you the five reasons why private servers are the future classic at least unless Blizzard gets their act together. 

Private Servers Are Better At Classic Plus

*First up, private servers are just doing the plus experience better. If you’ve been looking for the Classic Plus experience with new Zones quests and Dungeons. Servers like Turtle WoW are just doing it better and faster than Blizzard.

My personal favorite Classic Plus system might just be the glyph (Glyph of War) system. That system enables distinct challenges, like the hardcore mode where your character actually gets deleted if you die and we might see that we get some small tweaks here and there on classic servers, we’ll never get Classic Plus the level of Turtle WoW.

*Private server developers have so much more freedom to innovate and actually do what people want and that’s one thing private servers are just doing so much better right now - Innovation.

Innovation In WoW Classic

Isn’t it weird that every made major private server aims to improve and innovate to make the classic experience better? Getting a really simple feature like cross realm battlegrounds took nearly four years from Blizzard and while the popular Cataclysm server Whiteman already offers new features like cross-faction gameplay, Solo Arena Queue and even a PVP Spectator Mode.

And Turtle WoW offers new dungeons that perfectly fit into the leveling experience and that’s on top of the new zones, professions, titles and even music. The simple features like dual spec are no-brainers for Turtle WoW while Blizzard might think about adding them in some sex and this complete lack of short-term innovation is really going to hurt Blizzard long term. Think about how much more interesting Classic Cataclysm would be if Blizzard was committed to innovation as much as they were back in 2004.

Players Are Calling The shots

*But that leads to my third point with private servers. Actually, players are making all the decisions. 

If you’re looking to maximize profit, it’s really easy to lose sight of what’s good for the players. Unfortunately, private servers have really exposed how out of balance things have gotten. Things like the massively imbalanced servers leading to the paid faction transfers and, of course, there’s been the massive rising popularity of GDKP.

Even though I do run a few and I personally suspect they left the about wrath racial, just so they could sell a few race transfers. But on the other hand, you can easily find private servers like Maelstrom where GDKP is banned. Racial can be swapped in an NPC and the idea of a Pay to Win cash shop is absolutely laughable.

*Really, just imagine how fun classic could be if you could implement Turtle Wow’s Turtle mode. It all comes down to the fact that these new private servers have developers like Turtle WoW Shang, a long-time fan of Hardcore WoW and a classic WoW addict.

I played hardcore for three months straight in Season of Mastery and all I got was an icon. But since the developers of Turtle WoW love hardcore, they implemented a title, a tablet and a mount for hitting 60. And having long time WoW fans like Shang as your administrators helps a whole lot with the sense of community.

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

*I see somewhere along the way Blizzard forgot how passionate GMs’ excellent support is and events can make the in-game experience so much more special.

If you read the pitches from recent and upcoming private servers, there’re no coincidences community. It’s all about how there are real humans that will assist you with your issues within 24 hours. If you make a mistake getting the wrong item, they’ll help you. If you’re hosting a big server event, GMs will actually help you to spawn mobs and objects in the game and turtle wow even offers custom Guild Housing if your Guild’s been active for at least three months.

Blizzard has left some massive holes where private servers are taking over. The private server community has happily gone ahead with new expansions and even new game modes. And servers like Turtle WoW thriving with the Classic Plus model peaking at over 4,700 players. Within the next few years, if you want to play Classic Plus, you’ll have to play it on a private server and that’s why unless something changes, private servers are the future of Classic WoW. Though the short-term future of Classic WoW is Season of Mastery 2.

I’m playing on the Turtle WoW, a vanilla + private server and having a blast leveling up my Shaman Raid Tank, which is a thing on Turtle WoW and the servers has been crazy now, with a server population hitting hundreds of thousands of players online on weekends.

While leveling, I’ve been thinking a lot about what would the ideal Classic Era timeline would even look like? What and when should Blizzard release - things like official hardcore servers, classic + or vanilla + servers, classic cataclysm? And more importantly, what do we as a community even want to see? Because now’s the time to let Blizzard know what we want from them. So, today I thought we can talk about what the timeline for Classic Era and WoW could end up being in the next few years.

Classic Era has been exploding the last few months, we have Classic Era Hardcore getting super popular, there’s even Hardcore PVE Races now, like real Competitions with actual prize pools, we have Classic Era servers growing month after month, WotLK Classic is well... It’s currently in between major patches, then there’s classic vanilla + servers like Turtle WoW and Duskhaven reaching all-time high populations.

Recently, there’s been rumors that Blizzard is releasing dedicated Hardcore Servers for Classic Era, and we just don’t know what form these servers are going to take, what the rule set is going to be, how integrated the achievements are going to be, is the server rule set going to be more like the original solo hardcore challenge we are all familiar with, or will Blizzard go for a more fun, group oriented hardcore experience like Turtle WoW.

Will there be titles, mounts for any rewards? Will the hardcore experience last past 60? These are all questions that need to be answered and quickly. I think Blizzard needs to release these hardcore servers as soon as possible, as the demand for them is only continuing to grow,

And it’s these hardcore challenges that are probably the main reason why we have seen a revitalization of the classic era servers. It’s not the only reason, of course. Vanilla has always held a special place in my heart just like a lot of people, and I think there will always be a population of players willing to play on classic era servers, but let’s be honest, if Blizzard released FRESH Classic Era Servers, that progressed from vanilla, to TBC to WotLK Classic all over again, 10,000s of people would dive into Classic Era again.

And I could see Blizzard doing just this at the end of WotLK Classic. Which brings us to what Blizzard should do after WotLK Classic ends. For me, it’s a no brainier that Blizzard is going to add classic cataclysm. But, it is a big decision point. I don’t think WotLK is that popular in terms of numbers, there just isn’t that much to do, it’s essentially an ICC waiting room. So, it’s possible Blizzard might just think the hype is over and move into a Classic, TBC, WotLK Classic maintenance mode.

But from a business perspective I think cataclysms success is already baked in, most of the Classic WoW player base is already expecting the classic experience to last until mists of pandaria and will happily sub just to enjoy the PVP alone as the two expansions are largely regarded as some of the best Arena ever, as well as some of the hardest most challenging classic PVE, at least in cata with some of the introductory raids being well… impossible for most guilds.

I know this would split the classic player base, but I think Blizzard should release a classic era fresh, that progresses all the way to WotLK Classic and beyond, and release Classic Cataclysm at the end of WOTLK. It’s unfortunate, but only from the perspective that fewer people might be playing in Cataclysm, so who cares, people will play classic era, they will play cata, they will pay, retail season of mastery, and hardcore, and private servers, let’s be honest, it’s all a bit of a mess for Blizzard right now.

So, just release it all and let the players decide where they want to play. After Cataclysm and a potential Mysts of pandaria, Blizzard needs to seriously consider a classic + server. The success or private servers like Turtle WoW, and Duskhaven has shown that the demand for classic + is very real and it’s doesn’t take a while a lot of effort to add basic things like new quests, items, zones. Duskhaven is being developed by literally ONE person and has dozens of awesome changes. Blizzard just needs to hand over development to a group of passionate creative people, that can make some changes and keep Classic WoW fresh.

Blizzard could even release the initial changes in a Season of Mastery style server to test and see the reaction of the player base. If they don’t release something like Classic +, Classic Era will eventually fade into irreverence and worse, go down in history as being one of the biggest wastes of an excellent opportunity in history.

In short, blizzard should first release a dedicated hardcore server as soon as possible, and with the end of Classic WOTLK, release classic cataclysm while offering FRESH Classic Era Servers, later develop classic +, even if it ends up being in a season of mastery style server.

I fully expect something like this to unfold over the next 4 years. It’s a very exciting time to be a World of WarCraft player, never before has the player base been so divided because there has never been so much different content, but that’s a good thing, Blizzard should embrace this fact, and not be afraid to release even more.

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp on Smart Devices is of course still going strong 5 years on… But something pretty big is affecting the gaming industry right now in Austria, and if the history of Animal Crossing is anything to go by, Pocket Camp could be in trouble, and could potentially be Banned or Removed from the App Stores altogether, at least in parts of Europe…

Now, something pretty significant has just happened in Austria surrounding Sony and FIFA… Don’t worry, this will completely loop back round to Animal Crossing, I promise, just bear with me. In the last couple of weeks, in a case against Sony, regarding FIFA, courts have decided that Loot Boxes, in one form or another, violate the Gambling Laws in Austria.

This is essentially because in certain instances, players are of course paying (such as spending money to get more FUT 23 Coins) for random drops and not necessarily knowing the outcome, or what they’re actually purchasing. Specifically, I believe where certain rewards hold a monetary value, and therefore almost certainly fall under the gambling umbrella.

Anyway, the court ruled in favour of FIFA players, and to cut a long story short, have ordered Sony, the Platform, rather than EA, the publishers of FIFA, to pay out these claims, and pay back Loot Box charges to the Players. It’s a pretty complex issue, so if you want to learn more about that specific case, definitely google it.

Now, despite this specific case affecting FIFA and PlayStation, it’s likely going to have an impact on Loot Boxes and gaming in general, as it’s set a new precedent in Austria, surrounding this type of monetisation.

Anyway, I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but Animal Crossing Pocket Camp, which is still played by millions all around the world, including a Loot Box mechanic very similar to this. If you head to the Market Place in Pocket Camp, you can, of course, spend Leaf Tickets, which is Pocket Camp’s Premium Currency on a Fortune Cookie, that once opened awards a random ACNH Items.

In many instances, players can even spend real-life money to obtain these Fortune Cookies. Now whether or not, new laws come in (because of the Sony Case) to prevent this type of monetisation surrounding Loot Boxes and alleged gambling violations, it’s likely to become a bigger issue in Austria and surrounding regions and create a bit of a grey area for games like Pocket Camp.

And I wouldn’t be surprised if Nintendo are already looking into this further… With this in mind, there’s every possibility that Pocket Camp, or any game that includes Gacha Mechanics or Loot Boxes like Fortune Cookies, could be banned in European Regions. And even if they don’t, Nintendo could decide they don’t want to risk it, and pull the game down anyway and remove it from App Stores…

Now, I know what you’re thinking, this is all speculation, I’m jumping to conclusions, and leaping to the worst-case scenario… Now whilst I am speculating here, we have seen this exact situation occur in the past in Belgium in 2019, again in Europe, when Nintendo literally removed both Animal Crossing Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes from the App Stores in that region.

This happened when Belgium introduced anti-gambling laws, creating a grey area for Loot Boxes in video games, and then led to new laws being passed that banned Loot Boxes altogether in video games. Interestingly enough, Belgium’s governing bodies at the time, also ordered the likes of FIFA to removed Loot Boxes from their games in the Region… which I believe they did, with the understanding that if they didn’t they’d face millions in fines and even prison time.

However, even now, Animal Crossing Pocket Camp cannot be downloaded or played legitimately in Belgium and some neighbouring counties. And rather than removing the Fortune Cookies when this happened in 2019, Nintendo removed the entire game.

So, with new headlines surrounding Loot Boxes in Austria, with all eyes on Loot Boxes in a new region, and the likely hood of new laws coming in, it’s possible it’s only a matter of time until history literally repeats itself 4 years later, in another European country, and Pocket Camp is removed. Of course, this is a worst-case scenario.

There’s every chance Nintendo would simply remove Fortune Cookies this time around, rather than the whole game, especially now the game includes even more Monetisation models, but who knows, maybe this particular issues starts and ends on PlayStation, and Pocket Camp continues to thrive.