Here, I want to talk about the first hint of POE 3.23 that we were given by GGG two days ago, make some wild and unfounded predictions, and then try to use those predictions to figure out a plan for the rest of the season.

GGG’s 3.23 Timeline

If you haven’t heard, on October 9th, GGG released their initial timeline for the next 3.23 content expansion. They said they were initially going to have the next league start in November, but moved that to quote early December.

Apparently, there are some big changes coming. Maybe some new POE Items will also appear. I assume they mean that the mechanic is big and needs some time to be fleshed out and coated.

But, it’s possible they mean something bigger to the game itself, something like big changes to the passive tree or atlas tree or maybe even something that modifies and hopefully shortens the campaign. That would probably be a pipe dream. But I’m sure we’ll hear about it soon.

TOTA Events?

One real prediction I have relates to these end of season events: they’re going to have three, each lasting about a week. My first thought was some kind of race. But I’m pretty sure these events will 100% have to do with the Trial of the Ancestors. However, no matter what kind of event it is, it is very necessary to prepare sufficient POE Currency to improve yourself.

The use of the word tournament always felt a little awkward to me with TOA, but it would be very easy to create a kind of sub season event using Trial of the Ancestors.

Imagine a week-long contest where the most powerful minions turtle were removed from the warrior pool or where all the Chieftain damage was reduced by 100% or where the only minions available are those little dinky ones that you start with.

My prediction is that the final 3 weeks of the season will be three themed events for Trial of the Ancestors, featuring significant modifications to the gameplay of that mechanic and it sounds like it could actually be a lot of fun.

So, I definitely want to make time for it, maybe even figure out a Ruthless TOA build. But when exactly?

Predicting 3.23 Release Date

We know that they said the next league will start in early December. I don’t know if they’ve officially committed to this, but Crucible, Sanctum Lake of Kalandra and Sentinel all started on a Friday. That leaves us five possible days.

I doubt they would intend on starting on the 22nd or 29th of December, otherwise why say in early December?

Also Read: Best Strategies To Farm Divine Orbs In POE 3.22 TOTA League - 3 Ways

At least December 1st, 8th, and 15th, take note Exiles, that means that those three-week-long events could start as early as November 10th, just over 4 weeks from now.

But let’s see if we can narrow it down between those three dates even further. Looking at what other games are being released, there’s pretty much nothing. I’m seeing a re-release of some Arkham stuff. There’s a dragon quest game, something with Warhammer. I don’t even know what that is.

Honestly, this looks pretty barren, so there are no restrictions for when they could release something. And since Diablo 4 Season 2 starts a new season on October 17th, that looks like it’s not going to have an impact on the Path of Exile season either way, but more distance would be better particularly for those week-long events.

Because of that, I doubt that GGG is targeting a December 1st league start that leaves us the 8th and the 15th. This sounds obvious, but why say we’re targeting early December if you mean the literal middle of the month? I mean, in that case, the word ‘early’ just doesn’t need to be there. So, based on that, I’m now calling it we get the next league start for the new Path of Exile league on December 8th, 2023.

My Plan

Now, let’s just assume that I’m correct. And we’re going to use that to try to come up with a plan for the rest of the season.

If the next league starts on December 8th, then we will get those three-week long events starting on November 17th. That means we have about five weeks and just a couple of days more left in the normal part of Ancestor league.

And I want to push more of that late end game. I was trying to figure out all the classes and the atlas. I really wanted to have one Ruthless guide per starting class. And lucky for me, I only have one left and Cold DoT Witch is a darn nice endgame class.

I also haven’t forgotten about the Blight. What I decided is that I wanted to make a Ruthless specific Blight guide. So, I’m leveling that Cold DoT Witch back in my SSF, where my atlas tree is already prepped and ready for it. That means that over the next 3 to 5 weeks, you all can expect a lot of watching me take a shot at all of those endgame bosses and when I get frustrated with Ruthless bossing, then I’ll just be Ruthless blighting so you can expect a whole lot of Ruthless specific Blight content as well.

I’m really looking forward to POE 3.23!

Icecrown Citadel is the last major raid in Wrath of the Lich King. With that, every class is getting some of the most insane gear and crazy DPS upgrades that they possibly can throughout this entire phase to end off feeling like god.

But you might be a little confused on how exactly you’re gonna get all of your gear, how do you get your tier gear, what are the fastest ways to gear up your character, and what are some of the catch-up mechanics.

So, here, I’m going to try to break that all down for you.

ICC Raid Intro

Before getting into the raid itself, the patch will launch two days early on NA and one day early on EU. This will give you some time to catch up your character with any of the gear you don’t have yet from the last few phases that could be some of your business items.

How To Get All Of Your Gear?

Specifically, I’m talking about trinkets mostly, like Comet’s Trail, Death’s Choice, Flare or Rain. You can actually get these just from running the new Titan Rune Gamma dungeons. These are the heroic plus pluses.

The easiest way to do this is to just queue up for your random dungeon finder because this should ignore any lockouts. This means that by just doing this method, you can spam these all day and get an infinite amount of these as well as you can also buy some Primordial Saronite from this and probably make a ton of WOTLK Classic Gold on day one through the first probably two weeks. This will catch you up very quickly.

How To Get Tier Gear?

We probably won’t have the Vault of Archavon bosses released yet. You don’t want to do VOA on the patch day. Wait until the raid launch because you probably will lock yourself without being able to actually defeat the boss.

But the new boss will drop some tier pieces as it always does and these tier pieces will be from the 25 Man difficulty. This will save you a ton of emblems because emblems are the only way we’re actually going to be able to get our tier gear and even upgrade our tear gear. So, there’s a major change in the way we actually get our Tier 10.

In the heroic Trial of the Grand Crusader, as long as we got a Vanquisher token or whatever token for our respective class to drop, then we could instantly turn it in for the max level of tier gear. This is no longer the case. We actually have to upgrade our gear in order to get the highest rank, which is going to start out at item level 251 (lower than the gear we have currently). Move up to item level 264 and then into item level 277 for the best gear in the game.

To get each piece, it’ll either cost you 95 emblems or 60 emblems if you’re just grabbing these shoulders or gloves. This means that if you do get the gloves as well as the legs to drop in Vault of Archavon, this will save you 155 emblems that you needed to get to get this tier gear as well as this will be upgraded tier.

Or, if you actually just get the normal version, this is really useful for you, too. Because if you do it from 10 Man, you can just upgrade it initially. But, you need to turn in your old gear to upgrade it into the next level and then one more time to get that heroic loot.

In total, if you don’t get lucky and get any drops from Vault of Archavon, then you need to have 405 emblems to get your entire set of Tier 10. And if you farm every single emblem you can each week, then you can get up to 104. This means it’ll take you at least four weeks to get all of your tier gear.

And then, you also need to get the marks to even be able to upgrade them, so the mark drops are as follows.

Also Read: WOTLK Classic Phase 4: Changes Coming To Fall Of The Lich King - Raid, Dungeons, Collection Content & More

How To Get Marks?

Any of the endgame bosses in 10 Man heroic or 25 Man normal versions will drop the 264 marks. The endgame bosses are Deathbringer Saurfang, Blood-Queen Lana’thel, Professor Putricide, Sindragosa and the Lich King. That’s five opportunities from normal mode 25 and again heroic 10 Man to get some of your marks to be able to upgrade your tier gear.

If you’re in heroic mode though, you will actually get two of those normal marks to drop and one heroic mark to drop, so you can upgrade it again. It’s going to take you at least a couple of weeks to get all of your tier gear and then to start upgrading it.

How To Get More Emblems Of Frost?

But you can also use emblems for other items. Within ICC itself, there’s an Emblem of Frost vendor that you can go to and he has a ton of things for you, such as trinkets, relics, off hands, cloaks, belts, chess pieces, and your PVP gear. You might actually still get some of your best in slot items from this vendor.

Since you might need even more Emblems of Frost, here’s a quick breakdown of how you can get as many that you can each week.

First of all, there’s a new heroic daily and you can get five of these each day. That means you can get 35 per week just from doing the heroic dailies. Then, there is a new weekly raid quest that will give you 10 each week. From doing the bosses in Vault of Archavon on 10 and 25 and difficulty, you’ll get two emblems each and each boss you kill in ICC will give you two of these.

So, in 10 and 25 Man, clearing all of the bosses will give you 48 per week because there’s 12 bosses. Within the raid itself, there’s a weekly quest you can do on 10 and 25 Man for five each. That’s 10 per week.

An Item level jump from phase 3 to phase 4 is massive with the correct gear:

• If you’re just going into normal 10 Man, you will get 251 item level loot and then the Lich King will give you two 258 item level gear.
• If you do heroic 10 Man, then you will get 271 gear from the Lich King and 264 item level loot from normal bosses. This is also the same item level you would get from normal bosses in 25 Man (the 264 gear).
• But if you just do those bosses on heroic, you will instantly start getting 277 item level gear.

The Fastest Way To Gear Up Your Character

Now, the heroic Lich King is ridiculously hard. Even though he does drop 284 item level weapons, it is really going to be a struggle for most guilds. For quite a while, some people think it’s mathematically impossible to do it on day one without doing 10 Man splits. And we’ll find out on the stream when it happens in race to world first on the 12th where we either see people do 10 Mans to be able to defeat it or not.

But most groups will be opting to kill Lich King on normal for quite a while and he drops 271 item level weapons for you. These are going to be huge upgrades out of the gate, no matter what. Not necessarily as good as the best in slot in the entire game, but they are very strong, just a little weaker than your normal heroic items that are 277.

So, if you want your absolute best weapons, you’re definitely going to want to try to kill a heroic Lich King. But again, I would actually focus on gearing up your characters way more before you really go into this. Because he is a very hard encounter that we have still only heard of one group on all three PTRs ever being able to down it just yet.

Now, I wouldn’t doubt at all that other raid groups haven’t taken them out by this point, but this is how you’re going to completely gear up your characters in the next phase to be ready to move on towards.

I wanted to have an open discussion with the Diablo IV community to see what players are thinking about for the new content. We’re seeing a lot of changes coming to Diablo 4 Season 2, and when there’s a massive amount of changes it can be difficult to navigate what the new best practices are.

Whether the balance and content updates are good or bad, only time is going to tell. But one thing I know is, right when Season 2 launches and I create a new seasonal character, I just have no idea what content I’m going to tackle first.

Gold Farming Dilemma

The first topic I want to talk about is how exactly are we going to farm Diablo 4 Gold in Season 2?

We know from the live stream that “whispers are going to have a substantially increased amount of gold”. But beyond this, I mean Greed Shrines are probably still going to be a meme. But this still leaves me thinking, did they nerf gold farming?

Other than picking up ambient gold dropped from enemies, normally we would just farm gold from picking up trash rare Diablo 4 Items and sell them at a vendor, hence the saying Salvage Oranges and Sell Yellows. But with the new update, these junk yellows are now just going to drop as crafting materials instead.

So, I’m not really sure what the new best method is going to be. The best ways to farm gold might just be climbing high tier Nightmare Dungeons. Hopefully from the update, whispers are in a much more competitive position in endgame that people actually have a reason to do them besides just leveling 1 to 50.

And it’s also important to mention it was revealed in the live stream that we have a new content type downstream from whispers in the form of an endgame boss, but the relevance of this content will largely depend on its loot table for unique items.

I think that Nightmare Dungeons still have a competitive advantage anyway, considering they’re still the only way to level glyphs for the Paragon Board.

It was also mentioned during the live stream that glyph leveling got buffed, meaning they’ll give more glyph experience. So, maybe this will give us more time away from nightmare dungeons to pursue new content without worrying about glyph leveling as much.

Vampiric Powers & Theory Crafting

It’ll be interesting to see what we come up with as a community moving forward for the best practices in farming gold in endgame. So, let’s talk about Vampiric Powers.

We’re looking at a total of 21 new Vampiric Powers, 14 of which require 1 to 3 pacts, and the remainder requiring 6 pacts. We know the sanguine circle has 5 total slots, armor I believe can have a total of 5 pacts at once. So, technically, we should be able to equip 5 of the strongest vampiric abilities, right?

The question I think is how hard are pacts going to be to line up properly. It would be miserable if you got a god roll armor drop in terms of affixes, just to realize you’re missing all the pacts you need to finish your build.

They said in the live stream that there will be a way to inject or remove pacts from armor. I just hope there are no restrictions that only allow us to do this a limited number of times. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want this system to be easy, but I also don’t want it to be impossible.

It’s going to be interesting to see how these affect our build options and to also see if there’s any Vampiric Powers that are basically going to be so overpowered that it’d be dumb not to pick it.

Here’s a full list of the Vampiric Powers coming to Diablo 4 in Season 2:

• Anticipation (1 Divinity)
• Coven’s Fangs (2 Divinity)
• Domination (1 Ferocity)
• Feed the Coven (1 Eternity)
• Hectic (3 Divinity)
• Hemomancy (3 Eternity)
• Infection (1 Ferocity)
• Jagged Spikes (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity)
• Prey on the Weak (2 Ferocity)
• Rampart (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Ravenous (3 Ferocity)
• Resilience (2 Eternity)
• Sanguine Brace (1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Terror (1 Ferocity, 1 Divinity, 1 Eternity)
• Undying (1 Eternity)
• Major Vampiric Powers (6 Pacts Required)
• Accursed Touch (6 Divinity)
• Bathe in Blood (3 Divinity, 3 Eternity)
• Blood Boil (6 Eternity)
• Call Familiar (3 Ferocity, 3 Divinity)
• Flowing Veins (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
• Metamorphosis (2 Ferocity, 2 Divinity, 2 Eternity)
• Moonrise (6 Ferocity)

From a quick observation, it’s obvious that some of the lower pact requirement ones are going to be weaker and probably switched out later.

Accursed Touch kind of reminds me of a marked for death type ability that spreads out like Rabies on Druid.

Bathe in Blood is the channeling Vampiric Power that we saw in the developer live stream. Personally, I don’t see this being used much. I mean incinerate Sorcerer isn’t really in a good spot and I can’t think of many channeled abilities off the top of my head.

Call Familiar, the Vampiric Power that spawns the bat seems like it might be another meme ability. But I mean, this could potentially be great on Death Blow Barbarian or on a Firewall Sorcerer.

Also Read: Changes In Season 2 QOL In The Latest Diablo 4 Developer Live Stream! - Multiplicative EXP & Uber Unique Farm

I could totally see a Pulverize Druid or Blood Lance Necro using the Vampiric Power called Blood Boil. It just seems like it’d synergize easier with existing builds that are centered around overpower.

Flowing Veins sounds like it’d be great on any damage over time classes like Poison Rogue or Blighted Necro. And maybe we’ll actually see a Poison Druid build for season 2.

Metamorphosis sounds like it’d be absolutely hilarious on a Sorcerer using Oculus. The unique item that makes you bounce around randomly from using Evade.

It also looks like we might see some interesting basic attack builds come out finally using the Vampiric Power Moonrise. I know that I’ve been reading comments on Reddit from people who want to use basic attacks in a build that’s more competitive. And this might be the way to do it.

Looking at some of the lower pact Vampiric Powers, it looks like Undying might be great on any class that spams abilities like Corpse Explosion.

Unless Vulnerable gets nerfed to death from the Damage Rework, Prey on the Weak might be an absolute must have on most classes. It says that any mob affected by Vampiric Curse is automatically made vulnerable, which provides a new route for any build that needs an extra source of damage.

I’m seeing some good attack speed opportunities like on Moonrise and Ravenous. Even if you don’t go a basic attack build, this could be an answer for any classes that are resource hungry.

Endgame Exploration

The other thing I wanna talk about is how do you guys plan on spending your time in endgame?

Personally, for me, I’m definitely going to rush endgame to check out the new bosses. I’m actually curious to see how difficult these new bosses are going to be. Are they more like dungeon bosses? Or are they challenging to fight and it’s going to take time to learn the fight?

I think if they’re like dungeon bosses, I’m going to be pretty disappointed, because right now dungeon bosses even with the added health, are just really meant for casual players. I think Duriel King of Maggots is most likely going to be like the Uber Lilith fight, which I’m kinda crossing my fingers. They have news on an Uber Lilith rework in the campfire chat on October 10th.

I’m hoping with the new endgame flow that I’ll find it worth it to switch between running Helltides, doing some Whispers, grinding some high tier Nightmare Dungeons, and after all of that actually getting some decent loot from The Ice Beast, the Galvanic Saint, Lord Zeer, and Varshan.

So, Item Power is going to more closely follow enemy level in Season 2.

Multiplicative Experience Points

I’ve been thinking, do I prioritize gear or prioritize experience points?

The way I’ll first tackle it is I’ll see how fast the new leveling experience is in Diablo 4. And if it’s fast enough, I might actually just continuously raise the tiers of the nightmare dungeons I’m doing. At least until I find some really good affixes on gloves, weapons, boots and amulets.

After that, I’ll probably consider the odds of finding anything better will be so slim that I might as well just level more efficiently instead.

By the way, if you didn’t catch it in the live stream, experience point bonuses in Diablo 4 are now going to be multiplicative, not additive. This is huge considering once you’re in World Tier 4, you’re getting 400% more experience points, which means your 15% bonus on top of the 400% bonus isn’t like a 6% increase in experience points anymore. You’ll get the full 15% of whatever the 400% value is after it’s calculated.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how all of these changes sound. I’m excited to see the live stream on October 10th with information on the balance changes to damage, gear and classes. We’ll ultimately have to be the judge on whether or not it’s executed properly on October 17th.

If I wanted to look through every single squad, every team, and every league on FIFA, it would take me hours. Sure, it can be tempting to do this when you’re trying to pick your next career mode save. But what if I told you there was an easy way to always get the best team with just four simple steps?

Here, I’ll be showing you my step-by-step guide to help you choose the ideal Career Mode save every single time. Of course, if you want to dominate FC 24’s Career Mode, you still need to prepare a large amount of FUT 24 Coins to upgrade your players.

Just like everyone else, I used to start dozens of saves. I would play one preseason game, then get bored with playing Career Mode. Since I started thinking a little more about what I actually wanted to do in my save rather than just picking the first one, I thought of my saves are now averaging closer to a full season.

Step 1: Choose Your Playing Location

The first thing you need to find out is the general area of the world you want to play in.

If you’re totally unsure, this could be a continent. But if you’re a bit more confident, then it could be a specific nation. Each continent on FIFA has different strengths and weaknesses.

Europe offers a fully licensed Cup Competitions with the Champions League, the Europa League, and the Conference League as well as having the biggest selection of leagues to choose from. The sheer amount of teams and leagues here means there’s always going to be multiple options that meet the criteria you’re setting.

North America only features one league, but the MLS is a totally unique experience. Annoyingly, they don’t actually have any Cup Competitions here and this can make the journey a little less fun.

South America also only has one licensed league, but you can play in Brazil if you don’t mind the fake players. You do get to play in a license continental Cup Competitions with teams from leagues that aren’t actually playable in Career Mode and it does provide a chance to explore football in a totally different culture.

Finally, we have Asia, which is probably the most underrated Career Mode continent. Asia includes an unlicensed continental competition and features a surprising amount of leagues, including the Saudi, Indian, and Korean leagues, which I barely ever see anyone doing saves in.

Hopefully, at least one of these regions sounds like exactly what you want in your next save. When you’ve decided on a continent, drill down and have a look at some of the nations inside it. Each nation has a different feel. They’ll play in different ways and they have different atmospheres. This can make neighboring countries feel unique on the pitch.

Belgium, Holland, and Germany are totally different in Career Mode, despite having very similar cultures as nations. Throughout this guide, I’ll give you some examples of the system working.

So, let’s say that I wanted a fairly long save. I think Europe has the deepest league structures on the game, so that’s the ideal location for this first step of our example.

Also Read: EA FC 24: 3 Most Promising And Exciting New Dribbling Techniques!

Step 2: Define Your Desired Save

The second and probably most crucial step in selecting the perfect Career Mode save is to decide on the type of save your most interested in doing.

You can generally categorize teams into one of these four main groups.

On FIFA, I’d say every single league has at least two teams who are capable of winning the championship who call these the Championship Contenders. These teams are instantly competing for league titles in cups in Season 1. They typically feature the best players and are considered the top teams in that nation. Bayern München, Ulsan Hyandai, and Inter Miami are examples of this kind of team.

The majority of leagues also have a selection of Historic Teams. These are the teams that might have experienced success in the past, but are not currently at their peak. They often have large fan bases, maybe even impressive stadiums. But they also usually have a squad of very average and very overpaid players. I would say that D.C. United, Everton, and Rosario Central are all Historic Fallen Giants.

The majority of the rest of the teams that aren’t Championship Contenders or Historic, I would call Middle Of the Road Teams. These teams are maybe a few strategic signings here and there from becoming title contenders. While they may have a couple of top players in their team, usually up front to be honest, they usually lack the overall quality usually in defense to compete for the title. Think of Crystal Palace, Al shabab, and Orlando City. That’s three good examples of teams that are fairly average, but are very close to being very good.

Finally, the most common type of team to use on FIFA is the Road To Glory Teams. This option usually is a longer term challenge where you have to rebuild an entire squad. Typically, Road to Glory saves involve a newly promoted team or someone who’s looking to establish themselves in a higher division. This generally includes the two or three worst teams in every single league.

If you like the sound of one of these four categories, then that’s great because now you’ve got a location and you’ve got a career path.

Let’s go back to our Europe save example. I said I want it to be long, so surely a Road To Glory Team would be ideal for us here. We’ll be taking over one of the worst teams in the nation that we pick.

Step 3: Determine Your Team’s Level

For step three of our system, we also need to determine what kind of team rank we want to be using.

If you’re someone that doesn’t enjoy using 50 rated players in the lowest leagues of island, you might be looking for a 3-star team here. If you want to be trophy hunting, you also want to be in a really bad league. You might be interested in trying to find a 1-star title contender.

Have a think about how good you’d like your starting point to be because this will easily narrow down the amount of teams and the amount of leagues you can use from the continent you’ve picked.

You’ll never ever get a 5-star Polish team in Career Mode or a 0.5-star French team, so this is the step that will filter out most of the teams in this system.

I could easily pick a 4-star team for my European Road to Glory save. There are loads of teams around that rating in Germany, Spain, England, and Italy. If I wanted a long Road To Glory though, I’m going to pick a one and a half star team, which means we’re going to have a team from League 2.

Step 4: Utilize SoFIFA for Team Search

Now, let’s round off our system. If you’re struggling to find the team with the in-game tools, you can have a quick search on SoFIFA.

You can easily search for teams with certain overall ratings and you can also check things out like the squad’s average age or the amount of potential that every single team has if that’s important to the kind of career mode you’re looking to do.

Back to our example. It looks like AFC Wimbledon could be the ideal save for me. It’s in Europe. They’re at the lowest level in the country and they’re the right star rating to match with everything that I’m looking for. They definitely seem like the perfect save for me to start.

So, let’s quickly run through two other examples of using this system just so that you understand exactly how it works.

I said Asia is fun, so let’s try and find a cool team from there. I fancy playing with a Historic Fallen Giant save, so that’s a team that’s around two and a half stars in Asia. Last year, we could have picked Guangzhou Evergrande who actually spent £1.7 billion on a new 100,000 seated stadium that they never finished. But they’ve actually been relegated on FIFA 24.

Suwon Bluewings is the team we probably go for then: four Korean titles, two Asian Champions Leagues between 1997 and 2008, but nothing since. They have a decent squad. Some of our players are in the 70s, but the majority are in the 60s, so they are actually going to be able to be fun inside Career Mode.

Let’s do one last example. How about a 3-star Middle Of The Road Team in South America? I want to use licensed clubs with real players, so we only have Argentina to choose from. This makes it super easy to see that we actually have several options here. I guess I’d have to just pick on the history kits and stadium I like the most.

We actually have some pretty big teams for a save in this kind of area. We have Newell’s Old Boys, Rosario Central, Banfield, Unión de Santa Fe...... There’s so many choices. So again, one of these is likely to be the perfect Career Mode save for me on my next go.

Hopefully, you can now understand how the system works that I use for every single save I do.

Here’s a build guide for my Minion Life Stacking SRS Guardian. This is not a zoom build, but can clear all contents comfortably.

Our main map clearing skill is the Summon Sentinel of Radiance, the RF 2.0 minion. Though it lacks in mobility, its fire aura is nothing to scoff at.

For single target, we use our Summon Raging Spirits with Minion Instability to boost our DPS.

Ascendancies

For the ascendancies, allocating Radiant Crusade is a priority as it is a very powerful skill when clearing the campaign.

The Sentinel combined with Convocation and the increased cooldown of Convocation can carry you to early yellow maps with little to no investment. It’s so powerful that I recommend getting this, even if you’re playing other Templar ascendancies and just change to your needed ascendency afterwards.

It takes 20% of the hit damage you get. Only downside is that it’s very slow moving and it has a 20s-base duration, so you need to keep resummoning it once in a while.

Next one we get is Bastion of Hope as it can greatly help us in maxing out our attack and spell block. We trigger the attack block using Shield Charge and the spell block using any of our spells.

Allocating Radiant Faith next gives us a lot of Armour and Energy Shield.

Last, take Time of Need to help us with Curses and Elemental Ailments and regenerate one 100% of our life every 4 seconds.

Also Read: How To Climb The Ranks In POE 3.22 TOTA? - 8 Tips

Passives

For the passives, focus on pathing to the minion damage and minion life nodes on the left side of the tree.

When you get the Sentinel, allocate Convocation Cooldown Recovery Rate in the Minion Defense Mastery and the Minion AoE in the Minion Offense Mastery.

Next, we get the Reservation Efficiency nodes so that we can fit our defensive auras and path to Eldrich Battery to help with our Mana costs, all the while allocating Life, Minion Life and Minion Damage nodes along the way.

After that, we focus on maxing out our block chance by allocating shield nodes and using a Rumi’s Concoction Granite Flask. For the low-budget version, we can take Death Attunement. If you still can’t reach level 25, take Raise Spectre and Whispers of Doom for the double cures.

The next big upgrade would be getting an Elegant Hubris Timeless Jewel with two minion notable (Axiom Warden), either for minion life or minion damage.

Amanamu’s Gaze is a big boost to our DPS, but it is quite expensive.

Equipment

For our equipment, Tavukai is a required unique that damages our SRS to trigger Minion Instability.

Remember to get one with a negative Chaos Resistance to speed up the death of our SRS.

You can also use Noxious Catalysts to further speed up the process if you’re using an uncorrupted amulet. We use a Replica Siegebreaker so that any minion that dies leaves a burning ground for 20% of their life.

You can resummon the Sentinel to trigger this effect and since it’s our minion with the highest life, this would be a big boost to our damage.

Weapons

For our wand, we use the Rapture Edge Convoking Wand with plus one to all minion skill gems and a free suffix to craft our trigger mod.

For our shield, we use a shaper influenced shield (Havoc Sanctuary Archon Kite Shield) with the recovery percent life when you block. This is one of the most important mod for our defense because of our max block. You can push getting a Fossilised Spirit Shield with plus one to all minion skill gems and other minion modifiers if you have the POE Currency to spare.

The helm (Carrion Veil Hubris Circlet), gloves (Rune Grip Crusader Gloves), boots (Ambush Hoof Crusader Boots), and body armor (Gale Suit Saintly Chainmail), are pretty standard rares with the reservation and block chance mods, only required for the high budget version.

Rings

For our rings, we use bone rings (Mind Eye) and prioritize getting minion life and damage mods. Don’t forget to max out your resistances, reach your attribute requirements, and try to get as much chaos resistance as you can fit in.

Flasks

For our flasks, Progenesis is a great addition to our defenses but is not required. You can replace it with a Rumi’s Concoction for the low-budget version and an Amethyst Flask or a Bottled Faith for the high-budget flasks version.

A quartz flask (e.g. Masochist’s Quartz Flask of the Lynx) is a must, since we’re always diving in the center of packs. Try to get immunity to bleeding and corrupted blood in your life flask (Chemist’s Divine Life Flask of Assuaging). For the last two flasks, we use a basalt flask (Transgressor’s Basalt Flask of the Tortoise) and a quicksilver flask (Masochist’s Quicksilver Flask of the Bear).

For the animated Guardians equipment, we use Dying Breath to increase our minions DPS, Legacy of Fury to scorch nearby enemies, Eye of Malice to further decrease the enemy’s resistances.

Try to get a helmet with a life region corrupted mod: Gravebind in combination with a Crusader armor (Saintly Chainmail) with explode mod to further improve our clear speed.

The specters we use are Pale Seraphim for its increased damage taken to buff, Xoph’s Loyal to cover enemies in ash, and Tukohama’s Vanguard for the 25% fire exposure.

Gem Links

For our gem links, we use SRS, Awakened Burning Damage, Unleash, Minion Life, Predator, and Empower.

We put Flammability and Elemental Weakness in our trigger wand (Rapture Edge Convoking Wand).

Remember to put your Animate Guardian linked with minion life in the shield so we can easily swap it out when our AG is in danger.

We link our specters in Stone Golem with Feeding Frenzy and Combustion.

For our auras, we use Malevolence, Summon Skitterbots, Tempest Shield, Determination, and Defiance Banner. We use Flame Dash and Shield Charge for our movement skills. We use Molten Shell to boost our defenses and Convocation to recall our Sentinel. We have an extra slot in our trigger weapon, which you can use with a minion or spell of your choice.

For the low-budget version, you can swap out Burning Damage and Empower with a concentrated effect in Hypothermia and link Malevolence with Divine Blessing.

Conclusion

This build’s standard gameplay is popping our flasks, then summoning the Sentinel. Use Shield Charge to place yourself in the center of a pack and Convocation to recall your Sentinel and watch everything around you die use your SRS and Signal Prey for tanky rares and bosses.

Remember to resummon your Sentinel every 20 seconds or you could end up dying when you dive in a pack and your Sentinel is not up. Also remember to Shield Charge once every 4 seconds to keep your block chance maxed.

Do you want to get that Level 40 mount by the time you actually hit level 40 or get that Epic Mount at level 60? If you do, you must have enough WOW Classic Hardcore Gold. Here is a guide to help you obtain raw gold, specifically while leveling.

Intro

I’m doing this mostly from a Solo Self Found perspective. Because I believe that even if trading is allowed, some players will play on a Solo Self Found basis. And for raw gold, most of it comes from vendoring items anyway, so you can do it completely without having to rely on other people to buy whatever you are selling.

Having access to raw gold early will also be incredibly valuable as the purchasing power of each individual gold is at its absolute peak early in a server’s lifespan. And the purchasing power will go down every single day as more and more people get access to raw gold.

What I mean by purchasing power is that 100 gold will get you more stuff in Week 1 than 100 gold will in Week 2, due to how inflation works. This is important because of, for example, investments or if you just want to stack up on some materials, you might want later and get them while they’re cheap.

Get Skinning

Advice number one is to grab Skinning.

Skinning is an insane profession to have while leveling. Because it simply benefits everyone in terms of increasing the amount of gold you get while leveling up.

Skinning also allows you to skin beasts for additional materials. And although they do not give the most amount of additional to begin with, this scales incredibly well with your level.

By level 10, you might have gained a couple extra silvers. But, by level 40, you will most likely have obtained anywhere between 10 and 40 extra gold, depending on how you level.

Some of the locations where you can farm for the most raw gold per hour, you actually end up killing beasts. In that case, having Skinning will further increase your gold per hour from those locations, pushing you closer to that 40 gold extra by level 40, which is basically half of your level 40 mount.

And especially on Hardcore Servers, many people will choose professions that benefit their profession in terms of survival. Two big professions here are Alchemy & Engineering.

Alchemy is mainly supported by Herbalism, and Engineering is mainly supported by Mining. This means the most popular professions on these servers will be Alchemy, Engineering, Herbalism and Mining.

This is important. Because that means while everyone is leveling up, there will be a lot of skinnable mobs just laying on the ground giving you free skill-ups & free Hardcore Gold. And there are many locations you will find during your Hardcore Journey where you can just sit in one location and skin other people’s mobs, like, for example, the Yeti Cave in Dun’Morogh.

So seriously, if raw gold is something you’re looking for, I always recommend Skinning. Even if you want to have Herbalism & Mining eventually, I would use Skinning while leveling up to 60, then swap professions & farm herbs and mining veins with that level 60 mount. This is also because Herbalism & Mining nodes will be incredibly competitive at launch and will slow down your leveling process, while Skinning you can pretty much always keep up with your level.

Now, when farming raw gold, there are mainly 2 different farms you want to think about: Humanoid Farms & Beast Farms.

Humanoid Farms will give you raw gold by itself through looted silver values, and it will give you Cloth, which you can either sell for vendor loot, or turn into Bandages for even more gold before selling it.

The bonus of Humanoid Farms is that they also have a bigger drop rate on Grey, White & Green items, specifically grey items like Weapons, which can vendor for about a gold per piece (plus / minus). This means in some cases, Humanoid Farms can be better in terms of gold per hour, but they also rely more on RNG because a lot of gold comes from those Grey weapon drops.

From Beast Farms, you will get a very steady amount of gold per hour due to your gold value being derived from what the mob actually drops on a regular basis. Whiskers from Cats, Mane’s from Wolves, Crocodile Pelt and so on, even Gorillas drop a lot of good vendor value items.

For Beast Farms, you can also obviously increase that gold amount by having Skinning, like we just talked about earlier.

Also Read: WOW Classic Hardcore: How To Make Gold From Level 30-40?

Raw Gold Farming Locations

So with this being said, let me show you some of my favourite locations for where to farm for raw gold in Classic WoW.

First off, let’s cover 4 different farming locations I personally use in order to farm enough gold for my level 40 mount, all of which are beast farms and you want to have Skinning.

You have the Tigers in Swamp of Sorrows. Now, I say Tigers here because they will usually give you the most valuable items, but the tigers are also found throughout the entire zone, where you will also find crocodiles & spiders, which are definitely worth killing.

You also have the Gorillas in Stranglethorn Vale. And here, I will show you 2 different farms that are pretty close to each other, giving you 2 different places to farm.

These Gorillas have a pretty lucrative loot-table and will give you the best raw gold you can get at this level, especially if combined with Skinning.

And the farm I personally do the most: Tigers in Badlands.

This one is incredibly slept on and I don’t see many people farming here, which is why I personally really like it here. Because there’s almost never any competition, and they can drop really good vendor-value items, like Long Soft Tails, Bristly Whiskers, and Wicked Claw.

You also have some farms past level 40. For example, my personal favourite is this one killing Steeljaw Snappers in Tanaris.

This one is very known from farming Turtle Meat and as a pretty decent experience farm. But these turtles also drop pretty good vendor loot, even better if combined with Skinning.

How To Maximize Your Raw Gold?

With farming covered, there are a couple more steps you can take to maximize how much raw gold you make and how to make sure you can afford your level 40 mount and get closer to that level 60 mount.

First off, you can save a lot of gold by not training all of your class abilities. Let’s be real, in Classic WoW you get way more abilities than you actually need, at least while leveling. And many of your abilities are only useful in very niché situations, in which case I rather not learn them until I have to and save my gold instead.

Exactly what you should and should not train depends on each individual class. But personally, I only train spells I use on a regular basis, plus any class-buffs I get access to and any defensive abilities I get.

As a Warlock, for example, I can opt not to train Soulstone, I can also choose one or two demons and therefore only train abilities for the demons I actually use. I can also save gold by not training every single curse I get access to. Because personally, I don’t use all of them until very high levels, anyway.

Plus, some classes get a free level 40 mount, like Warlocks & Paladins. But, pick and choose which spells to actually train and upgrade, and you can save a lot of gold while leveling.

When questing, if the quest doesn’t offer an upgrade, pick the item with the highest vendor value. This sounds obvious. But some leveling addons have auto-complete enabled where they automatically pick items in slot 1 or slot 2 or anything your class can use, or maybe you personally also always choose whatever Cloth Item you get from the quest if you play a Cloth Class. Then, check if it’s an upgrade atferwards.

So my advice here is, check if the quest offers an upgrade before accepting a quest reward. And if there are no upgrades, choose whatever has the highest vendor value.

Of course, if you want to involve trading and using the Auction House, you can also make a lot more gold.

In this leveling guide, we’ll be exploring the most effective strategies for leveling up in Diablo 4. We’ll dive into various methods to rapidly advance your character during the early stages, and how to optimize your late-game progression with different activities. I’ll even share tips on how to quickly level your alts.

Additionally, we’ll take a look at bonuses that can further enhance your experience points. Stay tuned as we go over the path to getting to level 100.

Intro

Leveling up from 1 to 50 can be a breeze, especially for your first character, as you’ll naturally progress through the story. However, if you’re looking to power-level an alternate character, I’ve got some practical strategies to share.

First, consider selecting the ‘Skip Campaign’ option when creating your alt. Once you’re in the game, focus on completing Whispers. Instead of rushing through objectives, take the time to clear out groups of mobs you encounter along the way.

Here’s the key: prioritize Whispers that lead to dungeons. Why? Because not only will you earn experience points from the dungeon mobs, but you’ll also receive a substantial bonus upon completing it.

Don’t forget to turn in your completed Whispers at the Tree of Whispers for even more experience points.

If you’re playing during Season 1, your best bet is Dindai Hollow. It offers straightforward objectives and plenty of elite enemies. After finishing the dungeon, simply exit, open your map, and select ‘Reset Dungeons.’ Repeat this process until you reach levels 20 to 30. These practical tips will have your alternate character leveling up efficiently in no time.

Also Read: Diablo 4: Top 7 PvP Tips Everyone Should Know

Level 20-30

If you find yourself in the level range of 20 to 30 and are eager to optimize your leveling experience, turning your attention towards strongholds is the way to go.

Among the top recommendations, I’d suggest exploring Kor Dragan northwest of Kyovashad, Onyx Watchtower southeast of Ked Bardu, and the Temple of Rot directly south of Ked Bardu.

In Kor Dragan, our primary focus will be on these specific circular objectives. As you venture into these areas, be on the lookout for tumors that need to be destroyed. Each tumor is surrounded by elite enemies, and upon destroying a tumor, another elite will emerge. To sweeten the deal, as you reach the end of Kor Dragan, a challenging boss encounter awaits, promising you a substantial boost in experience points.

To maximize Stronghold grinding, it’s crucial to understand how to reset a Stronghold. Instead of wrapping up with the final objective after defeating the boss, simply access your menu and select ‘Leave Game.’ Upon logging back in, you’ll find yourself right at the entrance, with the Stronghold reset to its initial state.

Level 50

Once you’ve reached level 50, it’s time to do a capstone dungeon. To gain access to the Cathedral of Light, you’ll need to transition to World Tier 2. You’ll find this cathedral in the church in Kyovashad. The initial phase of this dungeon follows a standard pattern: gather animus and confront a boss at the end.

However, unlike most dungeons, there’s one more section to conquer. In this new stage, you’ll have to eliminate all enemies and conclude the dungeon with a final boss. While it’s possible to attempt the Cathedral of Light before hitting level 50, exercise caution as it poses a considerable challenge compared to earlier dungeons.

The smoothest way to do a capstone dungeon is to get the assistance of a high-level friend to guide you through it.

Level 50-70

Leveling 50 to 70 is all about Nightmare Dungeons.

To enter a Nightmare Dungeon, you first need a Nightmare Sigil, which would be located in your consumables tab.

To get your first Nightmare Sigil, I recommend doing whispers until you get a nightmare sigil from opening a whispers cache.

Here’s how to read nightmare sigils. At the top, we have the name of the dungeon. In Season 1, the fastest nightmare dungeons for leveling are: Uldur’s cave, Sarat’s Lair, Mariner’s Refuge, Hoarfrost Demise, Immortal Emanation, and Domhainne Tunnels.

The level of the mobs is determined by the sigil tier plus 53 in World Tier 3 and plus 54 in World Tier 4. Nightmare Dungeons contain random benefits and detriments known as dungeon affixes.

The best benefits are reduced cooldown on kill, magic find, Diablo 4 Gold find, battle hardened, quick killer, and increased critical strike. The worst detriments are Drifting Shade, Lightning Storm, Stormbanes Wrath.

If you get bad Nightmare Sigils, salvage them at the occultist. Then, use the sigil powder to craft new Nightmare Sigils.

In a recent patch that increased the mob density, Nightmare Dungeons are by far the fastest way to level.

The key to efficiently leveling in Nightmare Dungeons is finding the sigil tier that you can complete the fastest. Get your clear times somewhere between 3 and 5 minutes. If you find yourself dying or taking longer than 5 minutes to clear a Nightmare Dungeon, try doing a sigil with a lower tier level.

Gearing yourself appropriately, choosing the right build, efficiently using paragon points, and getting better legendary aspects are all ways to boost your clear speeds. Faster clears equals more experience points.

To break away from the grind, do some Hell Tides. Hell Tides offer plenty of elites just like Nightmare Dungeons, the drawbacks not being able to choose the levels of the mobs you fight.

Leveling with Hell Tides isn’t as efficient as leveling with Nightmare Dungeons, but you do get some awesome Diablo 4 Items and equipment opportunities with Hell Tide chests. Running too many Nightmare Dungeons in a row can lead to fatigue and burnout.

World Tier 4

To get into World Tier 4, you’ll need to clear the last capstone dungeon. Set your world tier to World Tier 3, and head east of Kyovashad to the Fallen Temple. The recommended level to take on this challenge is level 70. You’ll either need to be well geared or have a high level friend to carry you through this capstone.

The last boss is Elias, and this is definitely one of the hardest bosses I’ve encountered in Diablo IV. Unfortunately, the best way to level in World Tier 4 is still Nightmare Dungeons. It is currently the fastest way to gear, level up, and the only way to level glyphs.

Eventually, Diablo 4 will have a World Tier 5, which hopefully comes with new content to grind with.

Level 70 - 100

Leveling from 70 to 100 is going to take substantially longer than anything we’ve done so far.

Lastly, to boost your experience points even higher, be sure to use potions during dungeons, this offers a 5% bonus, party up with someone for an extra 10% bonus, and don’t forget to use your seasonal blessings for a 20% bonus.

New World is a MMORPG that’s had an interesting lifespan so far. During the beta phase, the red flags were obvious. The game released on September 2021 and was insanely fun until level 30 or so. Then, it fell off a cliff with many people discovering game breaking bugs turning the game into a meme goldmine overnight.

The devs didn’t give up. They went away and started addressing issues one by one, leading to the game having a major resurgence in player numbers for its first major update: Brimstone Sands in October 2022.

Since then, New World has been rather quiet. Over the course of the past year, it’s been losing players again month on month, which is mainly due to no new big content, other MMO releases, and players just running out of stuff to do.

Recently, New World has announced its first real expansion “Rise Of The Angry Earth”, which will bring massive fundamental changes to the game, increase the level and gearscore cap as well as finally add mounts to the game.

Here, I’m going to discuss everything you need to know about the new New World expansion as well as jump into the game now in its current state to prepare my character for the new content. Also, I will also show you what other cool changes have been added to the game over the past year.

Some Surprises About Returning To New World

The last time I played New World was during the PTR of the Brimstone Sands expansion. I didn’t actually play the game when the expansion fully launched because my main server was dead due to everyone playing fresh start and I really didn’t want to start again. I log into the game and I immediately see people spamming X EGG in chat, so I did the same thing and got invited to a 20 player raid group.

If you played more than a year ago, you’d know that you couldn’t make raid groups in New World previously. The max group size was 5 players, so straight away I was surprised and happy with this change. We basically went around the map in this group and did some seasonal daily event called the Siege of Sulfur where you protect eggs from waves of mobs and get good rewards.

Pretty cool and I’m a fan of any kinda content that brings players together in an MMO. Basically, within minutes of logging in, I was in a massive group of players doing massively multiplayer things.

Next, I wanted to finish getting all weapon masteries to level 20 to prepare for the new expansion. I only needed to level the Greatsword and Blunderbuss, so I looked online for the best strat. And the current best method is to go do a repeatable Thorpe event at the area in Great Cleave.

It was here where I stumbled upon another new addition to New World, Augments, which are basically boosters that you can buy off the cash shop. The most significant ones in my opinion are the Weapon XP and Gathering XP boosters, which basically double your XP. You’ve also got Season XP and Territory standing boosters, which do a similar thing and a proficiency booster, which increases your gathering yield by 10%.

If these boosters were in the game at launch, everyone would be complaining that they are pay to win and rightly so, I guess the games been out long enough at this point that most people have capped gathering and weapon masteries, anyway. So it’s not a big deal. Either way, I popped the weapon XP booster and got both weapons to 20 mastery super fast at the Thorpe spot.

Another nice change, if you hold control + C and left click, you can spam click to very quickly salvage all your crap. You’ll be doing this a lot during your time playing New World.

The next amazing change made to the game since the last time I played is the addition of multiple gear set loadouts. This was one of the most requested features to be added since launch and I’m happy to say it actually works very well except for one caveat.

The thing I love about New World’s gear set system is storing gear in these templates actually removes it from your inventory, which is nice because if you’ve got 3-4 different gear sets your bags would be an absolute mess otherwise. The caveat here is that if you want more than 2 gear set storage, you need to buy it off the cash shop for roughly $5.

I started working my way through the Brimstone Sands MSQ and realized I was earning Season XP, basically a Battle Pass you can work through, which gives various rewards such as furniture, skins, gypsum, currency and so on. Your typical battle pass, love it or hate it, it is what it is, at least it gives players at end game something to work through when they’ve completed everything else.

As I was questing through Brimstone Sands, there was a few things going through my mind:

1. The Greatsword feels way more fun and better designed than every other weapon in the game.
2. Visually, this game is still one of the best looking MMOs out and the sound effects are best in genre.
3. The general movement in New World feels so fucking scuffed at times that the game feels like it’s in alpha in some places.

Like you still can’t swim in New World, your attacks will very frequently just not register when hitting mobs. Relentless Rush with the Greatsword is a great example of this. It’s a double hit ability where 50% of the time only one hit will register.

Any form of slightly elevated terrain in a combat area will make your character desync and the actual running animation in this game feels so scuffed to me. The run animation looks faster than the speed you actually run, idk what it is, but it just looks off. Also, when you log into the game after playing other third person RPGs, you just feel like New World should have a sprint but it doesn’t. I kinda wish it did have a sprint, to be honest.

Right now, my biggest issue with the game is definitely movement, inconsistent combat, desync and certain animations. I continued questing through the Brimstone Sands, eventually fully completing every quest in the zone, including the side quests.

And I have to say that when it comes to questing, New World has come a very long way. This was notoriously dogshit for questing back at the game’s launch. Every quest was “Go to this POI, Loot Crates, Get Item, Run Half Way Across The Map and Repeat”.

But now, it’s much more varied. There’s some actual story and narrative interwoven into it. There are puzzles, climbing quests and more varied enemies. Quest rewards are actually decent now. The difference is night and day from launch and I actually consider New World’s questing to be pretty good nowadays.

Next, I did the Ennead dungeon and was quickly reminded that I do actually enjoy Dungeons in New World and think that in terms of visuals they’re some of the most epic looking dungeons in the MMO genre. I spent some time sorting through my storage and selling some stuff to free up space for the new expansion. If you haven’t played since launch storage in New World is all connected now rather than local to each town and city, which means storage management is much less of a pain in the ass nowadays.

Bags and tools now go up to legendary 600 GS and will probably go higher for the new expansion. So, I replaced my old blues with legendries, got a full set of instruments, made a gear set for healer, strength, dex and mage, then checked out another highly requested feature that’s finally been added to New World…...

A full transmog system comparable to games like Guild Wars 2 and World Of Warcraft, where you unlock the appearance of all dropped gear. Basically, to actually transmog gear, you need transmog tokens, which can be bought off the cash shop, 5 Tokens costs like $10. So, if you’re constantly changing your outfit, it’s not cheap. Just to clarify once you’ve unlocked something. Once you don’t need to spend more to reapply it again, it is permanently unlocked for you to use as a skin at any time. But for additional skins, you’ll need more tokens.

Something that instantly pissed me off with this system is that the preview window to actually view your appearance is dogshit and depending on the time of day like night time, for example. You can’t actually see the colors properly, which is annoying because you definitely want to get a good look at how your character will look before committing to spending New World Coins. AGS please improve the transmog character preview window.

After that, I solo queued some 3v3 PVP arena and despite never doing it before it was surprisingly less try hard and more fun than I expected. I’m glad I was able to solo queue this rather than manually find other players. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have bothered. It was enjoyable and rewarding enough that I’d definitely play it again. I spend a bit of time levelling up my music skill, which seems to have had the experience required per level reduced heavily since the last time I played the game.

And finally, I took on a seasonal 10 player boss, which wasn’t overly difficult. But it was fun because the rewards were good. The boss had a few mechanics, and it was easy to join a group for by Xing up in recruitment chat. It seems like New World is actually making a bit of a push to more traditional MMO style raid content.

As aside from the 10 player seasonal raid boss, there’s also a 20 player instanced Sand Worm raid boss that is the hardest boss in the game. Unfortunately, I haven’t had the chance to do it yet as I can’t find a group. But it looks super cool, regardless.

New Upcoming Expansion - Rise Of The Angry Earth

Next, let’s discuss all the info you need to know about New World’s new upcoming expansion “Rise Of The Angry Earth”.

First of all, this expansion will release on October 3rd alongside Season 3 and will be a paid expansion costing $29.99. New players will be able to buy the base game + the expansion in a bundle for $69.99

This new expansion comes with a new zone. Remember “First Light?”, the zone south of windsward? Yeah, that zone no longer exists. It’s fallen to the angry earth and will be transformed to the Elysian Wilds, completely unrecognizable from the place it was before.

Mounts are finally being added to New World and come with a new trade skill called riding, which you’ll be able to level up for upgrades to speed, buffs and higher tier mount consumables. Mounts will come in the form of horses, dire wolves and lions initially, with more likely to be added over time. You’ll be able to name your mount and also deck it out in with customizable equipment, which will probably be sold on the cash shop.

A new weapon will be added to the game in the form of the Flail, which can be used either one had or with a shield. The flail will scale with strength and focus and had abilities that debuff and absorb ally damage, making it a solid choice as a secondary for both tanks and healers, from the sounds of it.

Progression in New World will also be changed quite a bit. You’ll be able to level up your character to 65. Gear score will now go up to item level 700, trade skills up to 250 and the devs are completely removing the expertise system, which means that there’s no tedious barrier to entry grind that new players will need to go through to get decent loot. The new zone will straight up drop gear that’s 625 or higher and the hardest content will drop the best gear, as it should.

There’s also going to be a new tier of faction gear, new faction questline and a new rarity of gear called “Artifacts”, which will need to be awakened via a questline up unlock up to 6 perks with one of them apparently being playstyle defining, which is quite interesting.

There’s also going to be a few revamps to the game. The most impactful one long-lasting one will be the removal of Ward, Bane and resilience stats on gear, which just wasn’t fun and I think this is an amazing change. And the main storylines of both Edengrove and Great Cleave will also be revamped.

Aside from that, the expansion brings with it a new level 62+ expedition, a new heart rune ability, a new season with events, such as nightveil hallow and the turkey terror and a bunch of other stuff.

Overall, after revisiting New World for a bit to prepare for the new expansion as well as looking into all the positive changes that will come with the expansion, I really think New World is heading firmly in the right direction and I’ve actually had a decent time so far returning to the game.

My main issue with New World is still that the movement and animation feels off sometimes as well as the inconsistency with attacks registering and the game still not having swimming.

But almost every other issue I’ve had with the game over the years has been resolved. And now, with the addition of mounts, improvements to progression, large-scale groups and transmog, the game seems better than ever. So, I do think it’s worth jumping back in for the New Expansion because even if you don’t stick around long term, you’ll likely get a few weeks of fun out of it at the very least.

Starfield’s massive open world has a lot going on with vast numbers of systems and mechanics constantly working together in the background, which in typical Bethesda Game Studios’ fashion, allows for an excellent sandbox playground that emphasizes freedom above all else.

From exploring uncharted planets and surveying alien flora and fauna to building outposts and more, there are numerous sandbox activities to dive into that let you have fun of your own making and at your own pace beyond the Frameworks of the game’s plethora of handcrafted content.

Space Piracy Intro

But out of all of those activities, the one that’s probably the most enjoyable is space piracy.

Being a pirate tends to be a blast in games more often than not, obviously. And stormfield puts very little restrictions on you if you aspire to be a ruthless pirate in space, leaving chaos in your wake as you fly out of a system with your cargo bay full of valuable Starfield Items that you’ve just acquired through less than legal means.

There are, of course, plenty of ways to be a rogue in the settled systems. But if a space pirate is specifically what you want to be, there are several things the game lets you do to that end.

Different Ways to be a Space Piracy

*The most obvious one and one that you’re likely going to end up doing anyway if you intend to do the faction quest lines is to join the Crimson Fleet, which is literally a faction of space pirates.

You do have to jump through some hoops before you’re formally inducted into the fleet. But once you do become a member and gain access to the full facilities on offer in the key, the Crimson Fleet’s headquarters, a lot of avenues open up for your space piracy goals.

Like smuggling Contraband for instance, that’s something that you’re going to want to do a lot of because of how profitable it tends to be. You can, as an example, head to Neon and buy large quantities of Aurora, a substance that’s illegal to possess in every place throughout the settled systems, except Neon itself. It can, however, also be sold for hefty amounts of Starfield Credits, especially if you sell in large quantities.

You always run the risk of getting caught by the authorities, of course, but the risk is often worth the reward. And if you do plan on hauling large amounts of illegal cargo to sell for large payouts, you should also be investing in the payload skill in the tech skill tree to increase your ship’s cargo capacity.

And this is where having access to the key comes in handy, because it allows you to evade the law much better. Anytime you enter a star system that’s in United Colonies or Freestar Collective territory, your ship will be scanned for Contraband and you can’t land your ship on a planet until you’ve cleared that scan.

Those scans are, of course, mighty effective and scarily efficient, which means you need to equip your vessel with certain shady equipment to help you evade those scans.

Installing a Shielded Cargo hold, for instance, will automatically boost your chances of evading scans. Meanwhile, you can also install Scan Blockers. Each of which gives you a further 10 boost. Both Shielded Cargo and Scan Blockers can be purchased and installed only at the key.

Also Read: Starfield: How to Quickly Obtain Razorleaf & Mantis Armor Set Early in the Game?

*Something else that you’ll want to invest in for your ship if you’re committed to a life of crime of piracy is a good grab drive.

If you’re hopping from system to system, even if you don’t intend to land on a planet in a system that’s just a stopover, you’re still going to be scanned as soon as you enter, which means that you’re going to need to initiate your next grab jump as quickly as you can.

Before you have a chance to fail the scan and turn the authority’s attention, a better grab drive that you can pump more power into lets you initiate a jump much quicker. So, definitely make sure you install one of those.

*And if you’re looking for opportunities to engage in some good old space piracy fun, there’s plenty of that to be found in Starfield.

For starters, you can pick missions from the Mission Board in the key, all of which are procedurally generated quests that task you with less than legal objectives, whether that’s destroying United Colony ships or stealing from civilian vessels.

Beyond that, you can just do that stuff yourself. Anytime you encounter a ship while flying out in space, you can inhale it to initiate a conversation, after which you get the option to demand them to empty their cargo hold. How things go from that point will depend entirely on how you handle the conversation that follows.

Though, by investing in the deception skill in the social tree, we'll make enemies much more pliable to your piracy demands. Additionally, this skill also makes Contraband scans less effective. So, it's definitely worth spending skill points on for all would-be space pirates.

Of course, it also goes without saying that as a space pirate, you'll be engaging in your fair share of dogfights from time to time. And beyond the obvious stuff, like installing better Shields or more Firepower, you can also invest in plenty of skills to give yourself the edge in ship combat, all of which are found in the tech tree.

There is the Targeting Control System for instance, which unlocks the ability to target and lock on enemy ships, making your missiles deadlier and more effective, while the Shield System skill increases your ship's shield capacity and at the highest rank occasionally also lets you resist 100 of all damage taken from an attack.

The Ballistic Weapon Systems and Energy Weapon System skills are also useful skills that you can unlock early on, while on the steeper end by which point you'll probably be much deeper into the game. You can also upgrade your Automated Weapon Systems, Electromagnetic Weapon Systems, and Missile Weapon Systems.

*If you're just looking to engage in some light space piracy, then you're going to be able to get by without spending skill points in most of these. But if a life of crime is something that you intend to dive headfirst into, you're probably going to be locking horns with plenty of beefy heavily armed vessels, in which case these upgrades are going to be massively useful.

Ultimately, one thing that cannot be stressed enough is that Starfield works overtime to let you live out your space fantasy. And if your space fantasy is to be a ruthless thieving law violating pirate, there are plenty of tools at your disposal here to do just that.

Recently, I have made guides for Path of Exile 3.22’s Ruthless mode. And here, I want to teach you how to create a different version of the Hinekora Righteous Fire build.

When I was mapping on my Hinakora Righteous Fire building, I came to realize that I had invested so much POE Currency into making Righteous Firework that it was unnecessary.

The build felt like it was an actual caster build and that Righteous Fire was just a meme that I’d added on top of it. So, instead, I designed and created this Hinakora Shaman.

Hinekora Shaman

This build is so solid that you can even play it as either cold or lightning. I wanted to push it as far as I could, so I experimented by leveling it up using Wintertide Brand. And even then, the leveling experience was a breeze.

However, due to the resistance ignoring power of the Ramako Ascendancy in the end, it’s far better to keep the build this fire, so that’s what I’m showing you today.

It will work if you want to do something else. But your ability to progress deep in maps will be limited unless you can find relevant support gems that will penetrate for whatever your Elemental Damage type is.

You also can play the build with just Fireball and Flame Wall. But you’ll likely find that your AOE clear speed will be lacking. I would recommend using your first Uncarved Gemstone to pick up either Firestorm, Incinerate, or Flame Blast as a complement to both Fireball and Flame Wall to make your AOE clear speed as fast as possible.

How to Acquire Skill Gems?

If you want to create a Hinekora Shaman, your first task is to make a farm Witch and take her as far as finishing the ‘Breaking Some Eggs’ quest in the mud flats.

This will give you Fireball, Flame Wall, and your choice of either Raise Zombie or Freezing Pulse is temporary filler spells. You also get the extra POE flasks I see a lot of players forgetting.

Please remember that you can sell three small life flasks for one medium life flask and start using it as soon as level 3.

Once you’ve transferred everything to your stash, go ahead and create your Hinekora Shaman Marauder.

Intelligence

You may remember that there was some real nasty pathing that you had to do in order to get your Marauder enough intelligence to use his skill gems.

While it is still slightly beneficial to transfer a Lapis Amulet, in this build, it’s unnecessary. You’ll eventually need to find about 40 intelligence from your gear, but that’s not until the endgame.

And if you want, you can instead spend three passive points to, take the notable skills: Deep Wisdom and Deep Thoughts. This will help your Mana, but it will more importantly solve your intelligence problem entirely for just the cost of three additional passive points and that can all be done after you complete the campaign.

In this build, your intelligence problem completely goes away.

Related: My Ruthless Starter Build for Path of Exile 3.22 - Slam Duelist

Passive Tree

Leveling with the Hinekora Shaman, you take a different approach to solving the intelligence problem as you level.

Early on, you’re simply gonna head straight to Templar college and then keep going to which grad school. With this method, you’ll have far more than enough intelligence to use and level up your skills.

The only annoyance is that you can’t equip Flame Wall until about level 10. That’s it.

This build is a full league starter build that works great as your first character if you want to try out Ruthless mode in POE 3.22.

Eventually, around level 60 or so, you will need to fix your early pathing. When you first level up and you path up to the Templar area, you’re going to use the path on the left. But in the final build, you want to be using the path on the right instead.

All this means is that starting around level 55 or so, you’ll want to double up your pathing on the left, connecting the Devotion cluster to the Barbarism cluster.

Once you are connected on both the left and the right, you’re going to use the passive refund points earned through the campaign to refund the leveling pathing that you used and then you’re done with your pathing.

Ascendancies

For your ascendancies, you’re going to be using Hinekora, Tesalio, and Ramaco.

I tried taking Hinekora first and while it did help, I ran into resistance problems in Acts 6 and 7. I would recommend taking to Tesalio first, then Hinekora with your second ascendancy and then Ramaco before you hit the endgame.

If and when you can finish the Eternal Labyrinth, you would take Valako, Storm’s Embrace.

Endgame Progression

As you progress into the endgame on your Hinekora Shaman, you have three choices.

Choice number 1 is to use this cluster jewel socket that would be best, but of course requires that you have a cluster jewel.

Choice number 2 would be to focus on your offense, developing upward into the Templar area so that you can take Holy Fire and Purity of Flesh.

And choice number 3 instead is to focus on your defense and your life where instead of developing up you’re going to develop downward into the Marauder area so that you can take Bloodless and Soul of Steel.

Conclusion

If you wish to unleash the power of Hinekora, you can play this Hinekora Shaman and become the erupting volcano. You will engulf rayclast in flames and purify everything in the names of your ancestors. And when you hit the endgame, you won’t just work on the atlas, you’ll burn through it.