In this guide, we’re going to be going over thrown utility in Dark and Darker and what exactly can affect their damage since I often find people don’t really loot or use these Dark and Darker Items as often as they should when they give such a massive advantage in fights.

Explosive Bottles And Oil Lanterns

Let’s start with the Explosive Bottles and Oil Lanterns, also commonly referenced as Mollies.

Explosive Bottles: Throw an explosive bottle at a target location that will cause a bottle that creates a fiery explosion upon impact, scorching the surrounding area and inflicting area-of-effect (AOE) damage to all within its blast radius. It is lootable. The damage it deals depends on its tier. The higher the tier, the higher the damage it deals.

Oil Lanterns: When in someone’s hand, emits light that illuminates the surrounding area. Additionally, it can be thrown in a similar fashion to an explosive bottle, leaving fire that deals 3 magical damage per second. They can be found in loot chests.

These throwable utility items will deal no impact damage and instead spawn a ground AOE that deals 3 magic damage per second, no matter the Rarity.

Right now, I’m actually not sure what rarity does for Explosive Bottles. It seems like it only affects the sell price to the vendor. The duration and base damage are the same across the board. Anyway, if you want these bottles, be prepared with plenty of Dark and Darker Gold.

Since Explosive Bottles and Oil Lanterns are magic damage. Their damage will increase with Magic Power Bonus, + Additional Magic Damage and + True Magic Damage, all at 50% scaling.

The burn effect or tick damage can stack up to 3 times and randomly appear in the AOE. This is why Explosive Bottles may sometimes seem ineffective and other times very powerful.

Here’s just five ticks at plus 4 magic damage on my Fighter. Of course, the duration is a bit exaggerated here for demonstrational purposes since usually won’t cook for more than 2 or 3 ticks if you just run through them. Still, it’s a decent amount of damage.

Francisca Axes And Throwing Knives

Now, let us look to the Francisca Axes and Throwing Knives, which do a single instance of on-hit physical damage.

Here is a rule: just follow basic weapon damage for most time. So, + Additional Physicial Damage, + True Physical Damage, and any form of physical power will increase the damage from these two utility items at 100% scaling. This is where perk and spell bonuses make things a little crazy.

As not only do they benefit from weapon perks, like the Barbarian’s Axe Specialization, and Executioner for Francisca Axes, they will also benefit from any kind of Applied Damage Buffs, like the Cleric’s Divine Strike and the Wizard’s Ignite.

At full buff, this can cause some absurdly high damage numbers, even with absolutely no gear. For example, I can hit in the high 60s with the Starter Kit Franciscas Axes, which deals only 18 damage at base.

Note, that’s over three times the base damage.

All we need are our two strength skills, our applicable Barbarian perks, and a base gear Cleric to give us Divine Strike and Bless.

You can even throw Ignite on for more damage as it still applies to utility items even though the VFX doesn’t appear.

Another key feature of thrown physical utility is that it has a fairly strong on hit slow, actually very strong on hit slow, as they currently sit at 25% and 20%. These stats are both higher than the long sword and it sounds kind of crazy.

Now, Ironmace has addressed the effectiveness of these two utility items in the past by adding both damage and velocity falloff, making them slightly less effective at longer ranges.

However, an in-game mechanic that people often don’t know about is that you could hold down or charge up your throw over a couple of seconds to bring it up to maximum speed. And it honestly makes a pretty big difference.

One last note on these two thrown utility items is that it will trigger any on hit skills or perks, like the Barbarian’s Achilles Strike and Reckless Attack, the Fighter’s Victory Strike or the Rogue’s Rupture, Weakpoint and Poison Weapon.

Even though it doesn’t show up on the training dummy and yes, they’re not damaging utility items. But throwing torches and lanterns also can be used to apply Achilles Strike and Rupture.

Conclusion

Now, I know this isn’t exactly game-changing knowledge for those who have been playing Dark and Darker for some time, especially those who’ve been around since the early play test and witness firsthand the Francisca Axe is at their peak power.

But the bottom line here is that these items still scale up to be incredibly strong and they’ll give you huge advantages in PVP. They’re definitely worth looting and buying for cheap price since chances are your class is already optimized to deal with high damage with them.

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

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

1. Precision Shooting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2. Finesse Shot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

3. Outside Foot Shot

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

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

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

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

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

4. Power Shot

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

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

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

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

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

5. Chip Shot

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

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

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

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

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

6. Timed Finishing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7. Near Post Shot

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

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

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

The newest Genshin Impact update contains a lot of new and insane content and these are the top 5 new features coming with the 4.2 version.

1st Feature: New Zones

So, with this new update, comes many zones.

There’s a lot of peculiar landscapes we saw during the livestream. And from what I understand, these zones will be on the east side of Fontaine and you’ll get to visit places like this foggy forest with a strange tree.

One of the main things about this zone in particular is that it has these contaminated bacterial zones that you’ll find all over the place and you’ll need to cleanse them by utilizing a new aberrant ability, which are those temporary skills you obtain while underwater. But we’ll learn all about this more from a new world quest that will explain what’s the deal with those contaminations.

Still, we’re not done yet. There’s another cool place called the Fathomless Tower that we’ll get to explore and it will be a critical point in the storyline that explains some of the things about the Primordial Sea, so I am personally interested to learn more about it. And besides, who doesn’t love a good old mysterious tower exploration?

And when it comes to questing, it’s been officially confirmed that Act V of the Hydro Archon quest will be included with the 4.2 update and on top of this, Furina’s personal story quest is also going to be available.

2nd Feature: New Events

As always, we’re getting a bunch of new events.

Now the main one is going to be focused around this cute mechanical penguin that you’ll need to fix and improve together with Freminet.

The event is made up of 3 stages:

In the first one, you’ll need to play a small mini-game where you guide the penguin to its objective on this grid, while in the 2nd stage will require you to go underwater and look for parts to use on the Penguin.

Finally, the third stage will be a combat mini-event, and here you actually get to fight alongside your mechanical penguin friend. He will apply different effects for the battle and to me. This looks like the coolest part of this main event.

Now, if you put in the effort and finish this quest, then the biggest reward is going to be a free copy of Freminet, which is pretty cool. But you know what’s even cooler?

Bongohead is making a return. That’s right, the pokemon-esque Fungi event is making a return, and it seems like the developers made optimizations for this event, so I am interested to try it out.

Another event called Graph Adversarial Technology Experiment Log or, as I like to call it, just exchange stuff with your friends event. So basically, submit photos, use patterns or exchange them with your friends and obtain this new unique gadget called Zoom Lens that allows to zoom in before taking a photo.

Finally, Misty Dungeon is also making a return. This combat event is known for being a pretty cool place to test various characters you don’t have since you can use their trial versions.

And as always, Leyline overflow event will also be available sometime during the new update.

3rd Feature: New Characters

So, with the 4.2 update, we’re finally going to be able to pull for the legendary archon Furina, who is a 5-star Hydro Sword user. If you want to quickly experience this 5-star character in the new version, buying Genshin Impact Accounts directly will be a good choice!

And from what it looks like, she can switch between Ousia or Pneuma by using her charged attacks. And this will matter because her skill will summon Hydro companions to the battlefield and they will differ depending if she was aligned with Pneuma or Ousia.

I am a huge sucker when it comes to cute little critters, but Furina goes over the top by summoning more than 1 of them!

However, I think the biggest thing about her is her burst. To put it simply, it will deal some Hydro DMG and then put the whole team into this special state and whenever someone loses or gains HP, their damage and healing will be boosted.

It’s clear that Furina will be a unique hybrid that boosts the team but also applies Hydro with her skill, which will be an important factor to consider.

But on a lighter side, one of Furina’s passives decreases the CD of aberrant abilities you use underwater and get this. When one of her summons from the skill are on the field, she can walk on water. Talk about powercreeping Kokomi.

Moving over, Charlotte, a 4-star Cryo Catalyst, will also be available to summon for. I think it’s funny that Hoyoverse decided to release 2 Cryo Catalysts back-to-back, which was one of the element & weapon combos that we’ve never had prior to 4.1.

But I think it’s a good that they have done this because playing a Cryo Catalyst is pretty funny with all things considered. So, it really shouldn’t be locked behind a 5-star.

Also Read: Genshin Impact 4.2: Details About Furina Buffs & Changes

But, what does Charlotte do? Her skill shares some similarities to Nahida’s skill, so she can tap it and deal some damage or hold it down and take a snapshot with her camera of several enemies.

Now, I am not sure what kind of potential this skill has, but you gotta admire her Normal and Charged attacks. They look so satisfying. It makes wanna build her as a damage dealer no matter how unfit this may be.

And there is a reason why I mention this. Her burst will create this field and deal damage to enemies inside. But at the same time, it will also heal your characters. So, I think this burst kinda gives away the fact that Charlotte is going to be a healer. But no matter what, I will still try to build her as a damage dealer because those Normal Attacks look too good.

And remember those Zoom Lens I’ve mentioned. Charlotte has a unique ability that allows her skill to take pictures mid combat when using this gadget. So, it’s interesting to see that while you can use this gadget with any character, she has a special use case for it.

But, let’s quickly talk about the banners now. In the first phase, Furina as well as Baizhu will have their own featured banners. But what’s interesting is that it will be possible to pull for Charlotte during this phase as well. So, both new characters are available during the first phase while in the second phase, Ayato and Cyno will be the featured characters.

So, if you have saved up a lot of Primogems and your plan is to pull for Furina, chances are you might also obtain Charlotte, so two Steambirds with one stone.

Obviously, in the first phase, you’ll also be able to pull for Furina’s signature weapon, so keep that in mind.

4th Feature: New Enemies

This time around, the new weekly boss is going to be a massive whale. And I know what you’re thinking – how fast a whale player will beat this whale, right?

Anyway, this is actually a pretty interesting fight because during the first phase, this big beefy boy will unleash tons of AoE attacks. So, you’ll need to run around like crazy and dodge them.

But what’s interesting is that you’ll notice he has this thingy below his health bar. From what I understand, there will be special ways to build it up because you’ll need to defeat the Whale this way.

However, what’s really cool about this fight is that the whale will literally suck you into his belly and then a new foe, a really cool foe shows up and you need to duel him to death. So, this fight seems to be pretty complex but interesting and hopefully it won’t get tiresome after repeating it over and over for materials.

And speaking of repetition, a new world boss called Hydro Tulpa will be waiting for you, so you can slaughter him and take its materials to level up your characters.

He looks pretty cool. I like his design, but like with every other world boss, they’re just there to get demolished within a minute.

5th Quality Of Life

When it comes to Quality of Life changes with 4.2 update, there’s actually quite plenty of them.

First of all, the weekly boss fights for new players had to be a bane to deal with, especially when you pull that sweet new character. And you realize that you can’t level their talents if you haven’t unlocked a specific region and completed its Archon quest.

This changes with 4.2 update and now, you can just quick challenge any of the weekly bosses even if you haven’t unlocked their fights through the story.

The next one on the list is a feature that I wanted to see for a long time and that’s giving more control over your quests. Up until now, if you used one of those keys to unlock a hangout or a story quest with a character, often you would end up causing some conflicts for other quests, like when it says a character is busy in another quest. So annoying.

But, now you can choose to just unlock a quest and then later you can decide to accept it, which means fewer characters being busy when you need to complete other quests. You will even get to see a window with pre-requisite conditions for a quest, so you’ll know what to expect.

Now, when it comes to the next quality of life feature, it’s pretty small but still matters and it will increase the amount of pins you can have on your map from 150 to 200. There will also be a batch delete function for pins, so you don’t have to go around and keep selecting and deleting one pin at a time.

But then, there’s probably the most important change, at least for me, and that’s Genius Invokation TCG getting sped up. Basically, there will be an option to enable where every single animation gets accelerated. And from the previews I saw, it actually looks like the game doesn’t feel sluggish anymore and I’ll be real.

Part of the reason why I didn’t really get into this game mode was literally because of how slow it felt and I kid you not. This might actually convince me to go and play this mode again, because I still haven’t unlocked everything.

And what’s even better, you’ll also be able to share decks with each other, thanks to the Sharing Code feature. So, now, I can just copy top meta decks and enjoy my life as a slacker.

Finally, Stellar Reunion has been optimized. This event for players who return after taking a break from the game will offer more relevant rewards, and you can even get story keys if you haven’t collected them.

Different Path of Exile players may have different preferences. For example, some people like to create unique characters, others are looking for extra challenges, and some just crave the thrill of intense battles. Therefore, GGG will hold three events in November based on the preferences of different players:

1. Krangled Passives (November 3 - November 10)
2. Blast From The Past (November 10 - November 17)
3. Shifting Stones (November 17- November 24)

Today, we’re diving into the intricate world of one of the special events, the Krangled Passives.

About Krangled Passives Event

Krangled Passives is the first event.

In this event, the passive skill tree and all ascendancy trees are jumbled. Minor passive skills, notable keystones, minor ascendancy skills, and major ascendancy skills have been internally scrambled within those categories. This means that a notable passive skill remains a notable passive skill, but it’s now randomly assigned.

Additionally, all players will be working with identical skill trees, but the Scion character class is not accessible in this event. The GGG team has introduced a range of additional POE Items for players based on their level achievements.

The rewards become increasingly valuable as your character’s level rises. The top three players overall will receive a full microtransaction bundle.

Tier S -Totem Build

Totems will be the first build that comes to mind. This is because Totem life bonuses are somewhat dispersed throughout the standard passive tree.

Ancestor Totem attack builds may function effectively with a Krangled skill tree. But I believe that native spell totems, such as Holy Flame Totem and Spell Totem Support builds heavily rely on the Ancestral Bond keystone.

Consequently, these Spell Totem setups may not perform as well in this special event compared to the base game. Nonetheless, we believe that investigating totem builds is a worthwhile endeavor during this event.

Here are some builds you can follow: Shockwave Totem and EA Ballista.

Tier A - DOT Build

In the regular game, damage over time is typically balanced in comparison to instant damage, which is often reliant on Critical Strike.

This balance remains consistent in this special event, although critical strike is hard to get here. So, we’ll need to locate the various damage multiplier nodes spread across the skill tree.

Notably, elemental damage has captured our attention, as it appears to hold the most promise in this event. This is because elemental damage can be amplified by various statistics and it’s already in a favorable position in the base game.

Here are some builds you can follow: Toxic Rain Ballista and Cold DOT.

Tier B - Trap (Elementalist Build)

In the case of Traps and Mines, it is important to note that the majority of Trap and Mine builds heavily depend on Critical Strikes.

However, it is worth mentioning that there are Trap and Mine builds designed around elemental damage. And we anticipate that the Trap and Mine builds will be one of the most popular and effective choices in this event.

Here are some builds you can follow: Righteous Fire + Fire Trap and Hexblast Mines.

Also Read: POE 3.22 November Events 2023 Is Coming Soon! - Everything You Need To Know

Tier C - Minion Build

Next up are Minion builds.

The critical components of the passive tree that enhance minion abilities are widely dispersed, which may pose challenges.

However, it is essential to stay vigilant as a particular ascendancy class might offer a concentrated pool of powerful minion related bonuses.

If such an ascendancy exists, there is a chance building around minions still works. But for now, we have to wait and see.

Here are some builds you can follow: Absolution and Poison SRS.

Tier D - Build Around Crit

We think Critical Strikes are going to be the hardest or near impossible to pull off in general.

In the normal game without the Krangled tray modifier, there’s a synergy involving a base tree. Critical clusters grant you both Critical Strike multiplier and Critical Strike chance together in the same cluster.

This is important because you need to have both stats for either of them to become good.

Here are some builds you can follow: Lightning Arrow and Spark.

Last Notice

There is one last to notice: when it comes to builds you want to, have a look and see or any of the base classes are ahead just due to having more options or better patterns. Of course, no matter what your options are, you’ll need to have plenty of POE Currency to craft these builds.

And one of the things you’ll notice if you look into this is that some of the ascendancies have more notables than others. The Witch starting area is stacked with more notables than the rest of the tray is. And that means there’s more chance for those notables to be good now.

This doesn’t guarantee that these ascendancies or that the witch class are going to be better than other options. It just means that they have more chance to be good.

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

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

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

Before You Farm

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

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

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

Farming Grigoire

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farm Living Steel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farming Varshan

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

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

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

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

Farm Body Parts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Farming Duriel

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

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

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

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

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

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

Uber Duriel Guide

Here’s a fast guide for fighting Duriel.

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

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

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

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

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

Here, I want to introduce you what pros in New World do - five tips that will help you to be the best. I will go over how to best earn gold and level up your skill at the same time, what is the best time to buy legendary tools, tips for buying houses and trophies and why do you need a legendary bag.

Tip 1: Gather, Refine & Sell

When you’re wandering around the lands doing quests or just exploring the world of Aeternum, you can come across different materials such as Iron Veins, different mote flowers, fibers, or rarer variants of wood.

I always recommend that you pick them up and store them for later in one of the many storages you have available. You might be tempted to sell them as soon as you gather them.

However, I would recommend that you refine them first and then sell them. This will net you fewer New World Coins, but it will give you a valuable refining experience that you could not gain if you had sold them.

So, in a nutshell shell, I recommend that you gather everything you see, then either refine them now and sell them or restock them up, refine them later, and sell them in a bulk. In the long run, you will end up with a lot of skills, experience, and gold.

Tip 2: Legendary Tools - A Worthy Investment

When you reach your max level or unlock the ability to equip the best gathering tools, the rarest form of this equipment is legendary represented by its orange color.

They give you a fifth perk that gives you a chance to get a mote when you gather something. You have two options: cheaper Orichalcum or more expensive Mythril tools. Now, your argument against it might be that both are too expensive.

However, they are 100% worth it. Let me elaborate on why. From a pure gold return investment, they are worth it.

Let’s say that you buy a logging axe for 3K gold, it has an Earth mote perk. You go on your logging session and you get 100 motes from it. Now, 100 motes are a bit less than 100 gold. However, you can store these motes and later turn them into higher tier versions and you again get just pure added gold from it or arcane experience.

There is also another example of why they can be useful. Let’s say you are good at weaponsmithing and you can make tier five Honing Stones. They are used by many in-game players. You can make them from Death & Fire Quintessence.

So, while you are gathering to make something else, you can in the meantime farm motes as well to make these stones at the same time. You can do this for other trade skills as well. So, in this sense, you can now think about what trade skill you are going for and then from that you should know what items you can make and look for tools that have motes that can help you in making such items that you can sell or use for yourself.

Also Read: New World: How To Farm Rawhide In Rise Of Angry Earth? - Best Locations & Tips

Tip 3: Choosing The Right House

You have been nicely collecting gold, get your trade skills up, and you have your eyes set on one of many professions, like armoring, jewel crafting, engineering, and so on. You know you will need to get a house and later on trophies as well, but you might feel a bit lost about what to buy is because there are a lot of options.

In a nutshell, houses come in four tiers. The fourth is the most expensive at 20K gold and the first is the cheapest at 5K gold. They’ll give you a place you can teleport to, just like an inn.

Tier 4 has a 2-hour cooldown and Tier 1 is 5 hours.

Next is the space for storage chests. When placed in your house, they give you bigger settlement storage. Tier 1 house has 1 slot and Tier 4 has 4 slots. The best chest is a Golden Steel Storage Chest with 1,000 space. So, a Tier 4 house with four chests gives you 4K more space. That is quite a lot of space, if you ask me.

All house tiers do have five slots of trophies and here comes an argument: if it’s worth buying the best house? Tier 4 or the cheapest at Tier 1?

For a long time, I have been debating what advice to give. When it comes to buying houses, it all comes down to your preference and play style, how much New World Gold you have, and so on. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Buy one of the Tier 4 houses in your settlement of choice.
2. Fill them with the best storage chests so you get this 4K space. This will be your main crafting hub. You will be able to refine, craft, and sell your goods.
3. Then, buy 2 Tier 1 houses as you just need them for trophies that will be needed.
4. The rest of the storage space can be separated from all the other settlements as the transfer of materials between them is free.
5. In the end, you end up with a simple one main town and plenty of space for the beginning of your journey.
6. If you think you need more storage space and you have too much gold, then you can always sell it and buy the biggest mansions in Aeternum.

Tip 4: Trophies - Enhancing Your Abilities

Trophies give you a global buff depending on what trophy you pick.

In general, you have gathering trophies that give you Gathering Luck, crafting trophies that give you a bonus to gear score to crafted items, combat trophies give you more damage to certain types of enemies, and the loot luck trophies.

So, what trophy to pick is totally up to you and what you are doing. In general, each trophy stacks up to three times and you can have five of them at the same time in your house.

As a note, at the endgame, you can combine your trophies into one ultimate trophy so you can have all combat, crafting, and gathering trophies at your home. The components can be bought from your faction vendor and you can craft them with your furnishing skill.

The main question I ask myself is if minor or basic trophies are worth it? I would say that minor, so the lowest tier is better or more worthwhile than basic or medium tier ones.

My reason is that they are very cheap compared to others and they give a significant amount of a buff that they are worth your money even in the short or long term. Then, when I would have all of them, I would slowly upgrade them to the best tier.

Little steps make all the difference.

Tip 5: Legendary Bags - Lasting Benefits

One of the questions you might have asked yourself is: Are Legendary Bags worthy?

Let’s take a look. They give a fifth perk called Lasting Consumption that makes your consumables last longer, such as your food buff, Honing Stones, Proficiency Boosters and so on.

When you play at the game at in-game level and when you want to maximize your damage output or just make your gathering run more efficient, you want to have this perk on your bags.

In the long run, they will pay off by you not needing to buy more consumables. Therefore, you spend less money and that alone is the reason why I have been using them for quite some time and I have to tell you they are 100% worth it.

Getting all of these elements of the game all at once might be a daunting task and too much. But remember New World is an MMO and MMO is not a sprint but a marathon. So, take your time and enjoy the game. With time, you will get enough gold to buy all these items. It’s part of the journey of your adventurer.

I am pretty surprised at how good Chain Lightning is in Diablo 4 Season 2. I take down bosses almost 30 levels higher in only 8s. I soloed all Uber Bosses pretty easily, including Duriel that I slayed it without even knowing its mechanics.

With further optimized gear and fully upgraded Vampiric Powers, I chilly beat nightmare dungeon Tier 100 fast at only level 86 multiple times, with no elixir and sometimes no death.

The build has the damage to nuke everything plus the survivability to facetank everything. Be prepared with plenty of Diablo 4 Gold if you want to make such a powerful build.

Key Synergy & Aspects

We use two DPS skills in this build, Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning.

We use Chain Lightning directly on the skill bar to take down both melee and ranged monsters fast for speed farming.

We also use Ball Lightning indirectly for insanely high AOE damage from two sources:

One from the Enchantment Slot where all Critical Hit trigger a static Ball Lightning on the ground at a decent chance, unleashing massive AOE damage. Make sure to get high Crit Chance from gloves and two rings to feel like a Thor.

Another source is from the Ultimate, that every Chain Lightning we cast during the Ultimate will randomly cast Ball Lightnings and melt everything around.

I made the build that it has almost 0 Cooldown Ultimate. We use the Anticipation Vampiric Power to get 20% Ultimate Cooldown Reduction. We use Overflowing Energy that translates Crackling Energy to Cooldown Reduction plus two Crackling Energy generators, one from Destructive Chain Lightning and one from Wizard's Ball Lightning for further Cooldown Reduction.

And I recommend getting one extra Cooldown Reduction Stat on Helmet or Amulet so that it feels like we have 0 Cooldown Ultimate and just use it whenever we want.

But why do we want two indirect sources for Ball Lightning in the build?

This is because Ball Lightning does absolutely insane damage in Season 2. It gets 200% benefit from bonus attack speed and we get tons of bonus attack speed in this build.

We run the Accelerating Aspect on a two-handed weapon for 50% attack speed. The Ultimate adds another 25% attack speed as we have close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate.

Plus, we get another 48% from the Ravenous Vampiric Power. If we have Esu’s Heirloom, we get another 75% movement speed for 3s after using evade. This goes back to another 30% attack speed buff from Ravenous.

And we get another 14% attack speed from gloves. This is already 167% bonus attack speed in total that we more than quadruple the damage of Ball Lightning.

On top of that, we run the Gravitational Aspect to keep the Ball Lightning around us to not waste any Ball Lightning DPS and further improve its damage by another 25% multiplicatively.

As a result, we melt monsters, elites and bosses that are even 70 levels higher than us.

Infinite Mana

We will need infinite mana first to run the build smoothly.

To achieve infinite mana, we will use the Recharging Aspect that we get mana from each Chain Lightning bounce and Invigorating Conduit to recover 12 mana per crackling energy pick up.

Build Tankiness Effectively

Survivability becomes much more important post level 70.

We use Ice Armor in this build to get unlimited barrier for 6s. Plus, the 0 Cooldown Ultimate we basically get infinite barrier because we have the Protection passive that All Cooldown Skill cast grants a Barrier equal to 30% of our Maximum Life. Plus, the random Lightning Spear casted from the Ultimate.

We run the Snowveiled Aspect so that we have both Teleport and Ice Armor as Unstoppable Skill to stay safe if we are getting Crowd Controlled. And we get tons of extra Armor as the Armor bonus is buffed from 10% to 30% in 1.2.0.

In this build, Chain Lightning applies 100% Uptime for Vulnerable to all monsters with the benefit from the legendary node in the Static Surge Board. This is also why we don’t need the passive on Frost Nova.

So, we also take the Ice Armor passive to get further barrier to be really tanky. I can facetank butchers easily with Ice Armor on and even facetank T100 sometimes at only level 86.

We also run the Everliving Aspect for another constant 25% damage reduction as all monsters are Vulnerable. And make sure to get 70% All Resistance in World Tier 4 by combining the Resistance Stats on these 4 positions. We can also tweak the Paragon Board Nodes and use Gems if necessary.

Last, get at least 2% Total Armor Stats on these 4 positions. With the Aspect of Disobedience, we are super tanky and facetank everything. I will fast scan my full gear that passed T100 at level 86. I carefully selected all stats on each piece and I used Maximum Life stats on Rings to improve my survivability to just challenge T100.

Also Read: Diablo 4 Ball Lightning Sorcerer Build: Season 2 Best Tank Endgame Build Guide

Skill Tree

For the Skill Tree, we use Firebolt in Enchantment for burning synergy.

This is combined with Devouring Blaze for further crit damage. If our base crit chance is below 25%, replace Devouring Blaze with Elemental Dominance and replace Firebolt with Chain Lightning in the Enchantment for better performance.

If we got a Recharging Aspect that is above 2.5, we can remove all points from Invigorating Conduit and put them to Conjuration Mastery + Precision Magic for further damage.

Paragon Board

As mentioned earlier, the most important node in the Paragon Board is the Static Surge legendary node that enables our Chain Lightning to apply Vulnerable states to all monsters plus some mana regeneration. We will unlock it the first thing after we are on the second board.

Vampiric Powers

For Vampiric Powers, I recommend using:

• Resilience. It is the best Vampiric Power to help us survive in high tiers.
• Ravenous. It gives us 40-75% extra attack speed for great synergy in the build Anticipation. It helps us get, close to 0 Cooldown Ultimate for much more damage and survivability.
• Accursed Touch. It does great AOE damage to further speed up farming.
• Prey on the Weak. It helps us get another 16% multiplicative damage boost as we apply 100% Vulnerable Uptime to all monsters.

Without Gravitational Aspect

Unfortunately, the Gravitational Aspect is only dropped randomly and cannot be target farmed.

If you haven’t got one, I recommend using the Unbroken Tether Aspect for greater Chain Lightning Synergy or the Control Aspect that can be codex imprinted if you don’t have the Unbroken Tether either.

Skill Rotation

There is no specific skill rotation in this build Skill Rotation.

We are pretty flexible to fight enemies both in close range or at a distance. As the Ultimate is free, just cast Ultimate, keep pressing Chain Lightning and witness everything melt in seconds.

Ending

I really like this Chain Lightning build because it has extremely high attack speed, insane damage, superb survivability and free to cast Ultimate to greatly boost damage whenever I want.

I am not only having a blast but also having lots of fun running it.

Here, we’ll talk about the Witches Festival 2023 for the Elder Scrolls Online.

Witches Festival

The Witches Festival got introduced 2016 and usually returns each year mid or end of October.

The Festival is part of the Base Game and you don’t need any DLCs or ESO + to earn unique rewards or event tickets.

How To Start The Witchmother’s Festival?

If you never participated in the past years in the Witches Festival, you have to complete the quest ‘The Witchmother’s Bargain’ first.

Open the Crown Store and use the free quest starter Crow Caller to summon the Witchmother and start the quest. She will request you to obtain a pumpkin, a sample of guts, and an Essence of Death.

The quickest way to obtain pumpkin and guts is to look at the guild traders and buy them with ESO Gold.

If you don’t want to spend gold, you can find guts by looting small animals and fleshy undeads. And pumpkins can be found in containers or on the ground throughout Tamriel or you can purchase them from the NPC Grocers for 150 gold.

To obtain the Essence of Death, you must kill a boss of any delve. Delves in Cyrodiil are not working to earn Essence of Death.

Once you have all three ingredients (Guts, Pumpkins & Essences of Death), you will be directed to the Witchmother’s Brewery in Auridon, Glenumbra or Stonefalls. You may use any of these three locations, regardless of your alliance. Even so, the quest will still direct you to your alliances zone.

After you deliverd the requested ESO Items to the Witchmother, she will start to prepare her brew. Complete the quest ‘The Witchmother’s Bargain’ to receive the Witchmother’s Whistle Memento.

Double XP - Witchmother’s Whistle Memento

Use the Witchmother’s Whistle memento to summon the Witchmother’s Cauldron. This will grant you and your party a two hour 100% XP buff that stacks with all other xp bonuses.

You can’t use the Memento in Cyrodiil, but you can activate the buff before you enter Cyrodiil to use the double xp buff there.

You don’t have to drink from the Witchmother’s Cauldron in order to gain the xp buff. But if you decide to taste the Witchmother’s Brew, you will transform into a skeleton for a limited time.

If you completed the quest in previous events, you don’t need to acquire the Crow Caller or complete the quest again. You can just open your memento collection, go to tools, and there you can use the Witchmother’s Whistle Memento.

Witches Festival Rewards & Plunder Skulls

During the event, all bosses and monsters will drop unique Plunder Skulls and Dremora Plunders Skulls, which will contain amazing Witches Festival themed loot.

Plunder Skull has a chance to contain the following spooky items:

• Witches Festival Furnishing Recipes
• Witches Festival Furnishings
• Witches Festival Recipes
• Witches Festival Provisioning Recipes
• Various Creepy Crawlies
• Various Crafting Materials
• Dremora Plunder Skulls

You can acquire Dremora Plunder Skulls in addition to the regular Plunder Skulls. These will be the first Plunder Skull drop you receive for each type of boss each day.

A Dremora Plunder Skull contains all the same items found in a regular Plunder Skull, but it also includes a Dremora Motif page based on the type of boss you defeated.

• The Final Boss of the Dragonstar Arena, Maelstrom Arena, Blackrose Prison Arena or Vateshran Arena drop Dremora Motif pages for Bows and Legs.
• Dark Anchor, Geyser Bosses, Dragons and Harrowstorms drop Dremora Motif pages for Daggers and Gloves.
• Delve Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Staves and Belts.
• The final boss of a Group Dungeon drop Dremora Motif pages for Helmets and Maces.
• Public Dungeon and Quest Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Shields and Boots.
• Final Trial Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Swords and Chests.
• World Bosses drop Dremora Motif pages for Shoulders and Axes.

Dremora Plunder Skulls may also contain the following additional rewards:

• Grave Dancer Style Pages
• Witches Festival Writs
• Glenmoril Treasure Maps
• Runeboxes with more collectibles

Witches Festival Writs

The Witches Festival Writs work much like Master Writs. They can be traded, mailed, and sold.

Once you accept the contract, however, they are bound to you.

If you complete 13 Witches Festival Writs, you will earn the Witch’s Infernal Hat and for completing 28 Witches Festival Writs will earn the title “Witch”.

By completing Witches Festival Writs, you also have a chance to find Hollowjack Style pages.

Tome Of Forbidden Appetites Memento

There can be found also new items inside Dremora Plunder Skulls.

You can collect a new Memento, the Tome of Forbidden Appetites Memento. And you can also find a new Outfit Style, the Crowborne Hunter armor Style.

Ghost Netch Pet

Furthermore, you have this year a chance to obtain the new adorable Ghost Netch pet.

Collect and Combine ten possessed shreds to unlock the Ghost Netch pet.

Witches Festival Dailies - Plucking The Crow Quest

In 2021, ESO added a daily reaptable Witches Festival Quest.

You can start the Plucking the Crow Quest at the Impresario’s tents or inside of Olyve’s Brewery.

For this quest, you have to gather 50 cursed feathers. Cursed feathers can be collected by opening any Plunder Skull.

After you have collected 50 cursed feathers, return to Olyve’s Brewery and follow the instructions.

Then, use the portal to fight & defeat the Crowborne Horror.

Completing this daily repeatable quest will reward you with three Plunder Skulls.

Also Read: Elder Scrolls Online 2024: Whitestrake’s Mayhem Event Is Back! - A Comprehensive Guide

Witches Festival House - Exorcised Coven Cottage

During the Witches Festival, you have also the opportunity to purchase a unique house.

The Exorcised Coven Cottage will be purchasable via the Crown Store or for 250,000 gold during the Witches Festival if you have the Witches Festival Achievement ‘An Unsparing Harvest’ unlocked.

This spooky and cozy little cottage is located in Glenumbra and is only available during the Witches Festival.

If you complete all achievements related to the Witches Festival, you can unlock the ‘Sun’s Dusk Reaper’ title.

Witches Festival Event Tickets

You can also earn Event Tickets during the Witches Festival.

You will earn 2 Event Tickets per day per account by defeating any boss monster in the Elder Scrolls Online. That can be, for example, a boss from a quest, in a delve, dolmen, world boss, trials, etc.

Don’t forget to loot the boss to get your Event Tickets.

Impresario Event Merchant

Of course, the Impresario Event Merchant is also opening her store during the Witches Festival.

This year, she is offering:

• Passion Dancer Blossom fragments,
• The first fragment for the Hoardhunter Ursauk mount,
• Witches Festival themed furnishings
• Hoardhunter Ursauk Mount
• Witches Grab Bags
• Crowborne Hunter Style pages
• Crowborne Hunter Style
• A Tome of Forbidden Appetites Memento
• Ghost Netch pet & more

Witches Grab Bags

Several rewards from previous Witches Fesitvals can no longer be found in Plunder Skulls.

These rewards are now inlcuded in the Witches Grab Bags, which you can purchase for 2 event tickets from the Impresario Event Merchant.

Inside the Witches Grab Bags you can find:

• Skeletal Marionette Memento Fragments for the Throwing Bones Memento
• Apple Bobbing Cauldron Memento
• Skeletal Marionette Memento
• Hollowjack Spectre Mask
• Pumpkin Spectre Mask
• Scarecrow Spectre Mask
• Thicketman Spectre Mask
• Marshmallow Toasty Treat Emote
• Witch’s Bonfire Dust Memento
• Bonedust Pigments for the Witch-Tames Bear Dog
• Witchmother’s Servant Style the Ghastly Visitation Memento
• Bound style pages for the Witchmother’s Servant Style

Indrik Vendor

The Indrik Vendor will also open her shop during the Event.

She offers during the fourth quarter of 2023:

• Nascent Indrik feathers
• Pure Snow Indrik berries & Crimson Indrik berries
• Frost-Light Indrik Pet & Rosethorn Indrik Pet

Philius Dormier

Philius Dormier, the Impresario’s Assistant, will also open his shop during the Witches Festival.

He offers during the fourth quarter of 2023:

• Unstable morpholith pet fragments
• Dagonic Quasigriff Mount fragments

Forza Motorsport has been around for 18 years and has made some great strides with every release. While some have been better than others, it has remained near the forefront of simulation racing games.

Turn 10 Studios’ latest game in the series claims to be a new era for not only the Forza franchise but racing games in general. In a lot of areas, it backs those claims, but it falls short in a few too many spots that keep it from being an all-time great racing game.

Pros

First, let’s talk about accessibility. Forza Motorsport has some of the deepest accessibility options I’ve seen in a racing game. Whether you are a longtime racer completely new or need help for a variety of reasons, you can tailor the game to what you need. It’s basically Turn 10’s way of ensuring all are welcome to play.

There are over 500 Forza Motorsport Cars to choose from at the game’s launch, which is quite a bit less than the 700 the past games have offered. Still, the offerings are strong, with a mix of modern and classic cars of all different classes.

For the most part, each car feels unique, with some offering tighter turning while others just zip through the course with no remorse. Getting comfortable behind each car you choose is arguably the best gameplay aspect Forza Motorsport has to offer.

All 20 courses in the game at launch are beautifully recreated. Every inch on the track looks spoton to what you would see in real life, if not better. Even the sound design is a second to none experience that helps immerse you into each race.

The game features a day and night cycle that is incredible when running long races. I suffer from an astigmatism, one of the symptoms aside from general blurry vision, causes bright lights to display differently to my eyes in the dark. When racing at night, the lights cause the same vision issues. I would suffer driving at night in real life without my glasses or the wrong pair. Personally, that’s one of the aspects I absolutely love.

Cons

But with everything Forza Motorsport does right, there’s quite a bit it does wrong. Race settings are limited to one of the three rule sets. Rather than be able to do races where you have full damage or rewinds on, you have to choose between one or the other. It’s an unnecessary limitation, especially if I’m playing free play races by myself.

Speaking of damage, that’s one area where the game really disappoints. Even with full damage enabled, you can drive full speed into a wall or a car and your vehicle will only show various scratches on the surface. Sure, there will be damage within your car like your suspensions or whatnot, but that takes away from a bit of the realism Turn 10 was likely aiming for.

Your car looks the same, whether it’s cosmetic or full damage after taking a major hit. For a game with as much attention to detail in areas, like rain, track surface, and dirt, the damage omissions are a real head scratcher .

Then, there are little things that bother me like not being able to cycle through cars when looking to buy them. By that, I mean once you get to the end of the list instead of going back to the beginning, you have to manually go backwards through everything.

Another one is searching for liveries for your car. It often takes a long time for them to load up, which leads me to just backing out and doing something else in the game.

Again, these are small things, but it’s enough to annoy me when playing. Career Mode is where you spend most of your time outside of the game’s Multiplayers. And to be completely honest, it’s a big letdown. It follows a basic formula of practice, race, upgrade your cards if you can and repeat. There’s no real feeling of investment in the mode aside from trying to earn Forza Motorsport Credits (in-game currency) to buy or upgrade more cars.

It would be nice if there was more of an atmosphere surrounding the events in your career. Multiplayer allows you to race with friends in private lobbies or online with others around the world. There are featured races to take part in after you complete qualifier races as well as other events like Rivals, which essentially are time trials.

Conclusion

Overall, Forza Motorsport is a fun racing game. Each car feels enjoyable once you learn its nuances and the tracks all look incredible. It’s just a disappointment. It comes with a run-of-the-mill career mode that doesn’t keep you wanting to play for enjoyment, but more a feeling of requirement.

With content updates during its life cycle, Forza Motorsport can become a great game in its own right. For now, however, it remains just a solid game with a little too much empty space off the track.

Lords of the Fallen has nine classes, each with a different melee weapon, ranged weapon, and item.

Introduction

While it shows you the stats of the character, those might not make sense if you're not familiar with souls-like games.

And even if you are you don't get stats on the weapons, it doesn't show how much stamina each attack cost and you don't know how long things like windup animations take for each weapon.

After playing the opening with every class, there are three which stood out as the best, though two of them require getting a particular Lords of the Fallen Item while you're still in the tutorial.

A quick note: two factors that didn't come into play for determining which class is best were Armor and Starting Health.

At the first boss and beyond, most things do so much damage. It doesn't matter which class you pick. Getting hit was almost always a reason to panic, so one class taking slightly less damage didn't matter nearly as much to survival as their damage output.

Orian Preacher

If you want to focus on dealing damage, pick the Orian Preacher.

Despite some middling initial stats, the Orian Preacher Hammer and its two-handed combo attack easily makes them one of the best starting classes. But that's not the only thing making them great.

On basic light and charge heavy attacks, the hammer deals decent damage doing both physical and holy damage, which is a separate type of damage, like fire damage.

While even light attacks carve a chunk out of your stamina, it deals more damage than most other starting weapons and is even faster than several of the weaker ones. So, just using normal attacks, the Orian Preacher is still among the best.

But what makes it arguably the best starting class is the Orian Preacher Hammer's two-handed combo attack. In Lords of the Fallen, using L1 + R2 does a unique multi-hit attack, which changes whether you have one weapon in an empty hand, a weapon in each hand, or two-handing a single weapon.

While it costs all of the Preachers' stamina until you start leveling it and has a lengthy animation, it delivers three consecutive attacks that devastate enemies. The first two deal about as much damage as your normal two-handed attacks, but the third does around double that amount.

If you can time it correctly, you can one shot many of the enemies at the opening. You will also get a lot of Lords of the Fallen Vigor from this.

That said it does have drawbacks. You're vulnerable during the combo. So, if you don't stun an enemy, they may power through your attacks and hit you before you can finish. You're also exposed after the attack since it takes up so much stamina.

Thankfully, the hammer is still an incredible weapon. So, a cautious approach single hit dodge roll repeat strategy works well against strong and sturdy enemies as long as you're patient.

And finally, it short range means if you want that hit, you'll need to get close. But the Orian Preacher also has a great ranged attack thanks to Magic. The starting spell deals at least as much damage as the mid-powerered range attacks from the other classes.

But the real kicker being able to shoot the spell 17 times, which is far more than the number of times. You can use the ranged attacks on non-magic classes.

Also Read: Lords Of The Fallen: How To Get Fast OP +9 Weapons Early? - Best Deralium / Upgrade Material Farm

Udirangr Warwolf & Blackfeather Ranger (For More Mobility)

But if you want more mobility at the cost of less damage, try the Udirangr Warwolf or the Blackfeather Ranger.

Keep in mind, they'll only get close to the Orian Preacher's damage output after you find the Wooden Cross.

During the tutorial, when you get the prompt about how to use ranged weapons, look for a body hanging above a nearby enemy. If you hit that body with a ranged attack, it will drop the Wooden Cross weapon.

While the the item description for the Wooden Cross says "not designed as a weapon", that's a lie. It is more powerful than several starting weapons. And the L1 + R2 combo attack when using both the Wooden Cross and the starting weapon of the Warwolf or the Blackfeather Ranger in each hand makes for a powerful pairing.

While less damaging than the two-handed hammer combo, those two classes have more starting stamina than the Orian Preacher. So, you'll still have stamina after that big combo attack finishes, allowing for a follow-up attack or dodge roll.

Whether you want the strength of the Warwolf, the fashion of the Blackfeather Ranger or the raw power and magical abilities of the Orian Preacher, you're likely to have an easier time starting Lords of the Fallen with one of them.