In Elden Ring, you can have the most optimized build in the world, but without a well-upgraded weapon, you won’t see significant results. So, in this guide, we’ll share the best routes to collect Somber Smithing Stones 1 to 10 in preparation for the upcoming Elden Ring Shadow of The Erdtree DLC.

It’s worth noting that I did this without upgrading or using any weird skips or shortcuts at all. This means that whether you’re just starting your journey in the new expansion or are already on your way, you can use the information in this guide to maximize your damage potential early and easily.

I’m sure there have been many similar guides in the past to help you collect Somber Smithing Stones 1-9, but this was usually done when using the shortcut to Crumbling Farum Azula.

This is another reason why I created this guide, as a lot of people are reluctant to enter late game areas like this within the first few hours of playing the game. Additionally, executing shortcuts is cumbersome for players on some consoles. However, with this guide, you don’t have to worry about any of these issues.

Somber Smithing Stone 1

Here, I’ll start this route with Bandit Starting Class and Golden Seed Keepsake, but you can get the same results with any Starting Class.

Unlock Church of Elleh Site of Grace, then head to Gatefront Ruins to get Torrent, Map Fragment and Whetstone Knife. Teleport back to Church of Elleh and get the summoning bell and wolf summoning spell from Witch Renna.

I usually use the vent behind First Step Sites of Grace to drop down to the beach and collect a Gold-Pickled Fowl Foot to teleport back to Gatefront and go east, talk to Boc and he will reward you with 10 Mushrooms.

Continue east, cross the bridge, then go right and pick up a Somber Smithing Stone 1 from the man sitting on the chair. After that, we will get Fevor’s Cookbook, which will allow us to use Mushrooms and Trina’s Lily to make Sleep Pots to easily defeat a certain boss later.

After getting Fevor’s Cookbook, go to Third Church of Marika to get Flask of Wondrous Physick. Then head south to Minor Erdtree and pick up Greenspill Crystal Tear. Don’t forget to collect 5 Trina’s Lilies from the nearby Mistwood Ruins.

Somber Smithing Stone 2

Next, we’re going to head to Fort Haight and climb up the ladder to get the left half of Dectus Medallion. We also need to defeat Godrick Knight here to get Ash of War Bloody Slash. You can use Wolf Summoning spell to distract him and use the opportunity to perform a few backstabs.

Afterwards, we will cross Bridge of Sacrifice to reach Weeping Peninsula and look for a Stonesword Key.

All the way south you can find Somber Smithing Stone 2 on a beach guarded by 4 aggressive Jellyfish enemies.

Somber Smithing Stone 8 & 9

Return to Gatefront Site of Grace and apply Ash of War Bloody Slash to your knife. Then head to Agheel Lake and follow that path to Murkwater Cave, where you will be invaded by Bloody Finger Nerijus. However, you can easily kill him with Bloody Slash, or you can wait for Yura to help you.

After defeating him, you will receive Reduvia. This is a powerful Arcane weapon and we will be using it until the end of this game.

Then go to Third Church of Marika and use the portal behind to teleport to Caelid. Ride all the way to Lenne’s Rise and use the vent. You can loot the nearby Elden Ring Runes, then head to Minor Erdtree, and use the vent in the back to reach Fort Faroth.

Head west to Divine Tower of Caelid. You can get Somber Smithing Stone 9 from the person sitting in the chair. Attack Teardrop Scarab and push off the ledge to get Somber Smithing Stone 8.

Somber Smithing Stone 4 & 5

Then go to Isolated Merchants and buy Beast-Repellent Torch. This is a brilliant light source to ensure that certain beasts, like rats, don’t attack you.

Return to Fort Faroth and climb the ladder to obtain the other half of Dectus Medallion. We’ll also get Radagon’s Soreseal Talisman. This is not mandatory. I just use it to get the extra +5 stamina.

Afterwards, we’ll head to Inner Aeonia Site of Grace and head south through Heart of Aeonia, where we’ll fight Commander O’Neil to get Somber Smithing Stone 4. Next go back to Inner Aeonia, but this time head north through the canyon to get a piece of Somber 5.

Buy Somber Smithing Stone 1-4

We then need to go back to Gatefront and head to Stormhill Shack to get a Stonesword Key. Use the knife with Bloody Slash to defeat the knight here and get Ash of War Golden Vow.

We bypass Stormveil Castle to reach Lake-Facing Cliffs Site of Grace. Then go to Laskyar Ruins and use the portal there to teleport to South Raya Lucaria Gate.

However, you may want to grab Dexterity-knot Crystal Tear near Scenic Isle before using the portal, but you can also grab it later.

Jump down from South Raya Lucaria Gate and head west to Temple Quarter Site of Grace, then ride north to get Academy Glintstone Key behind the dragon.

The next step is optional. From South Raya Lucaria Gate, walk northeast. You can use the portal here to teleport to Kingsrealm Ruins. This is a very convenient portal, as it has Map Fragment nearby and is close to Smithing Master Iji. Iji has Somber Smithing Stone 1-4 available for sale.

Also Read: Elden Ring: A Brief Guide To Farm This Grossmesser Sword - Farming Locations & Tips

Somber Smithing Stone 6

Use the portal from South Raya Lucaria Gate to Main Academy Gate. Unlock Site of Grace and use another portal to teleport to East Raya Lucaria Gate. Take Grand Lift of Dectus and use it to reach Altus Plateau.

Then go to Forest-Spanning Greatbridge from Altus Plateau Site of Grace and use the portal there to teleport to the other side of the bridge. Once there, go down under the bridge and unlock Site of Grace.

Follow the path west and cross the bridge to Mt Gelmir. Continue heading west until you encounter several Iron Maidens. Use the ladder to go all the way up and unlock Site of Grace to get a Somber Smithing Stone 6.

Somber Smithing Stone 3

Teleport back to Academy Main Gate and take the elevator up. After opening the academy door, you can pick up a Somber Smithing Stone 3 at the end of the room.

Somber Smithing Stone 5 & 6

Continue through the cemetery and use the waterwheel to unlock Classroom Site of Grace. We’re ready to go to Volcano Manor to get Somber 7, but we still need to make Sleep Pot.

We need to go to Church of Elleh to buy three Cracked Pots and a Crafting Kit. I also purchased an additional Cracked Pot from Nomadic Merchants near Castle Morne Rampart Site of Grace on Weeping Peninsula. If you’ve followed the guide so far, you should have enough materials to make 5 Sleep Pots.

Then teleport back to Classroom Site of Grace and use the waterwheel to go all the way down and to Volcano Manor, where you can find Somber 6 and 5.

Somber Smithing Stone 7

Next, we have to prepare ourselves to face Godskin Noble. Only after defeating it can you go outside and build the bridge.

Go back into the room and use the elevator to reach the top floor. Jump off the balcony and follow this route to unlock the shortcut back to Godskin Noble room. When you take the express elevator upstairs, you can jump off before reaching the top floor to get a Stonesword Key.

You need two Stonesword Keys to unlock the path to Somber 7. But if you’ve followed the guide so far, you should have exactly two handfuls. After getting Somber 7 Guarded by Iron Maidens, you should be able to upgrade the weapon to +9.

Somber Smithing Stone 10

Now, to get Somber 10, we need to complete White Mask Varre questline. In order to do this, we need to defeat shardbearers such as Godrick, Rennala, or Radahn. This isn’t too difficult since we’re using +9 Reduvia.

Then head to Rose Church where you’ll find White Mask Varre. He will give you 5 Festering Bloody Finger to invade other players. I believe you need to hack at least three players to advance his quest.

After completing the mission, return to Rose Church and Varre will give you Lord of Blood’s Favor and Pureblood Knight’s Medal. Use Medal to teleport to Mohgwyn Palace.

There are a lot of useful items to pick up here, such as Lord’s Rune, which is worth 50,000 runes. What we’re looking for, however, is Somber Ancient Dragon Smithing Stone, which is located inside a chest guarded by these enemies.

There is a Site of Grace nearby, so if you accidentally die while trying to grab an item, you can simply respawn and try again.

This is the last item we need to upgrade Somber weapon to +10, and we do it without taking any shortcuts. So you can do this in your own game without having to worry about your game glitching or performing any skips.

Anyway, I hope you found this guide helpful. If you have any ideas for optimizing this route, don’t forget to share them. Have a beautiful day.

What’s your current progress on Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 1? Are you still looking for a way to reach 100% quickly? No need to bother anymore. In this guide, we will provide both offline and online methods to help you complete Team Affinity quickly.

Offline Method

First, let’s start with the offline method.

Repeatable Single Player Missions

The first thing you should determine is what single player missions you wish to accomplish. Or, if you want to complete multiple divisions at once, see what repeatable single player missions you can complete. Note that repeatability is the key here.

We can see that in AL East, the total requirement is 20 bases, but they don’t have a pitcher. But if you go to AL Central division, you’ll find that their single player missions are both hitters hitting a total of 20 bases and pitchers pitching a total of 9 innings. Then, if we go all the way to AL West, you’ll find a total of 3 innings pitched and 20 bases here.

So the repeatable missions for all divisions appear to be 20 total bases for hitters, and then for pitchers, it’s either 3 or 9 innings.

Play vs CPU

So now how do we do this most effectively? MLB The Show 24 has a game mode called Play vs CPU that may help.

It’s worth noting the stats for this game mode. Once you exit, the stats will count towards your progress on any mission you want to complete. You read that right, if you only hit with the first hitter, then all you need to do is get 4 bases with the first hitter. If you hit a home run, you’re out and done with the mission.

In this mode, you will see the difficulty of playing against CPU rookies at the start of the match, and all you have to do is choose a way to play against them. I recommend that you race them with the easiest difficulty possible.

Note that the first place you place is your fifth-best starting pitcher. Why did you do this? Because generally speaking, they’ll also field their fifth-best starting pitcher, which is their worst starting pitcher, and that gives you an advantage.

Considering you’re hitting with diamonds now, you’re going to have different lineups, depending on what you’re using. Of course, if you have more budget for MLB The Show 24 Stubs, choosing Legends must be the best.

Assuming I’m only playing in AL East, since it doesn’t have pitches, I select two hitters, Trea Turner and Mike Trout. When I unlock the third hitter, Ken Griffey Jr, I’ll make them 1, 2, and 3.

At this point, it doesn’t matter if all of them are out, because when the fourth hitter walks up to hit after the third hit, I’m going to quit right away. I could keep rinsing and repeating this process until I had 20 bases. This would be the most ideal approach if you focus exclusively on hitters.

Mini Seasons

Assuming you want to train hitters from distinct divisions, and also want to train some pitchers, then I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Play vs CPU game mode, since it’s a complete game. We’ve got a faster way for you to continue innings pitching while also benefiting from hitting the batsman at your preferred pitch.

A great way to do this is within Mini Seasons. You can enter any of Mini Seasons, but I highly recommend choosing Classic Mode since you can hit two targets at the same time.

You can then restart your Mini Seasons each time by holding X until you get to a new Mini Season, then edit the roster and make sure you have at least six consecutive home runs.

You can choose a high-elevation park, or you download a high-elevation custom baseball diamond so your hitters can hit non-stop home runs.

Team Affinity’s mission is to hit 20 home runs in a season and total 50 home runs on Veteran difficulty.

Also Read: How To Maximize Stubs In MLB The Show 24? - 10 Ways

Unfortunately, if you’re going Mini Seasons route, you’ll be racing on Veteran difficulty, but you’ll likely still be way ahead because you don’t need to win those races at all. So you don’t even have to worry about that, just worry about 3 innings pitched and hitting the tank with hitters.

Another unfortunate thing about Mini Seasons is that, unlike Conquest, since your pitcher will be sharing energy throughout the game, it doesn’t reset. So if you use Pitcher A, then most likely the next game you’re going to have to use Pitcher B, and then most likely the next game you’re going to have to use Pitcher C.

You can work around this, but you’ll have to start Mini Seasons of every time you complete these missions. Therefore, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to complete both repeatable missions for each season in one go.

Conquest

Let’s say you don’t want to do this and you want to play on the easiest difficulty and use the same image every time. For example, let’s say you’re in an AL West game and you want to pitch three innings each with Raisel Iglesias or Jose Altuve. Conquest would be great for that.

Because the beauty of Conquest is that once you have a certain number of territories next to stronghold, you can always play on novice difficulty.

Another tip I would like to add is that if you are going to use Play vs CPU mode to gain innings, I highly recommend playing this way at home unless you are facing Rockies Team.

If you’re facing a Rockies Team, it doesn’t matter if you’re playing at home or away. But if you’re playing at home with the pitcher you pitch to, then you’ll be able to choose your custom ballpark. This will be your priority in order to gain base totals while completing innings pitched.

Online Method

For online mode, I would say you can participate in events.

Events currently allow you to use Team Affinity Season 1 cards to build a team. Next up just like the offline game mode, let’s actually see how Team Affinity’s online rewards stack up in terms of repeatable missions.

You will see that online you need to complete a total of 10 bases in each division before pitching, which is much less than offline. And we’ll see, for AL Central, it’s two pitchers pitching three innings in center field, but the total number of hits is always 10. And then if we look at AL West, you’ll see there’s a total of two innings pitched here, and those are repeatable.

So how do we do this in events? We will continue to build event teams using Team Affinity card that we will eventually need. Therefore, within the lineup, you will prioritize which Team Affinity card you need to get the total bases.

If you don’t have any pitchers at the moment, this means you need to hit first. No matter how many hitters you have, as long as your last hitter hits, you are executing a Team Affinity mission.

If you’re still batting in the first inning and don’t want to finish the entire match right after you finish batting, you can just quit and go to the next game. This doesn’t matter as the event will not be reflected in your personal record, it will only reflect the current ranking of the event. So you might as well take advantage of three hitters hitting a home run on the road.

Unfortunately, once you hit a ball with hitters, you won’t quit even if you’re not there. Instead, you’ll pitch an entire three-inning game using the number of innings pitched you need to count.

But like many seasons, the event shared energy throughout the tournament. So if you use Pitcher A in Game 1, you most likely won’t be able to use him again in Game 2 unless you want someone with no energy.

So what you can do is, if you prioritize pitching missions and hitting missions, then after every game, you use up all those pitchers.

Or, let’s say you only have two pitchers, so you pitch Pitcher A for three innings in the first game and Pitcher B for three innings in the second game. In this way, it is likely that by the third game, Pitcher A will not have enough energy to continue pitching the third game.

So every time you complete your second race, all you have to do is simply forfeit your entry. While giving up your eligibility will cause you to start over, your tournament starts with zero wins and a brand new pairing rating, or you can use Pitcher A.

Rinse and repeat the process and you’ll get two innings of pitching each time. You don’t have to win these events, all you need to do is get the stats.

Anyway, that’s the complete guide to complete Team Affinity Season 1 Chapter 1 in both offline and online modes. Don’t hesitate, try it now!

Hello adventurers! Today, we will talk about a quest chain in WOW Classic SOD Phase 2 that has attracted the attention of many players, Dark Rider.

As we all know, among the series of new content introduced in Phase 2, the most popular ones are runes. Dark Rider quest chain will reward a new rune for each class, so most players will want to complete it, eventually. So, without further ado, let’s get started!

Require

This mission involves killing level 41 elites, but technically, there is no level requirement. However, you need to travel to multiple locations, so I would recommend starting the mission at level 40 and using a mount to make it easier to succeed.

In addition, don’t forget to prepare some WoW SoD Gold before you start. It will make your exploration journey smoother!

Start Quest

To start this quest chain, first head to Deadwind Pass. Most players will need to travel through Duskwood to get there.

For Horde, that likely means starting in Stranglethorn Vale. If you’ve already chosen a flight path in Swamp of Sorrows, you can start there.

Follow the road to find the camp in the northeast corner of the area and talk to Dalaran Agent there to pick up Ariden’s Sigil. Note that you or someone in your party will need to have this trinket equipped in order to proceed to the next steps.

Also Read: WOW Classic SOD: A Complete Leveling Guide To Arcane Mage Healer In Phase 2

All Dark Rider Locations

Next, you’ll need to travel to seven other locations around the world to find Dark Rider. In each location, you need to run around with Ariden’s Sigil until you find a place where you can get Dark Presence buff.

When you get this buff, you can quickly tell if there are Dark Riders around because a pair of eyes will appear above your character when you enter the area. Just be aware that you won’t be able to find Dark Presence buff if you’re already mounted.

When you are in an area with a Dark Presence aura, use your Ariden’s Sigil trinket to summon Dark Rider. This is a level 41 elite.

Please note that if multiple people in your party use this trinket at the same time, you can summon multiple Dark Riders, but you only need one. Everyone on your team can loot their Dalaran Relic. You’ll need 7 pieces of Dalaran Relic in total, each of which can only be looted from a specific location. These seven positions are:

Deadwind Pass

The first location is very close to your starting location on Deadwind Pass. Follow the road a short distance towards Duskwood and then north to the end of the river. Remember, you must be walking and running here and have a trinket equipped.

Swamp Of Sorrows

Next, head east into Swamp of Sorrows and run northeast. Dark Presence buff here is located slightly southeast of Fallow Sanctuary.

Duskwood

Retrace your steps west through Deadwind Pass to Duskwood and then to Raven Hill Cemetery. You’ll find Dark Presence on the east side of the cemetery.

Arathi Highlands

Now you need to head to Arathi Highlands. Alliance can get here via Wetlands, while Horde can get here via Hillsbrad Foothills. Dark Presence buff here can be found in the northeast between Hammerfall and Dabyrie’s Farmstead.

Badlands

The next location is Badlands, which are probably the hardest of these areas to reach, especially for Horde players. You need to head south through Wetlands and Loch Modan to get here. Dark Presence is located near the center of the area, in an open valley between large hills.

Barrens

The last two locations are on another continent. Head to Barrens first and follow the road south of the intersection to find Dark Presence.

Desolace

You will find the last Dark Rider in Desolace. Alliance has a flight path close to this area, but if you haven’t chosen it yet or if you’re a Horde player, you might choose Stonetalon Mountains to get here. Dark Presence here is located in the northern part of the area between Thunderaxe Fortress and Sargeron.

Turn In Dalaran Relics

It doesn’t matter in which order you defeat Dark Riders. But once you have all Dalaran Relics, go back to Dalaran Agent in Deadwind Pass and you’ll get a small amount of WOW Classic SOD Gold and XP for each Relic you turn in.

When all seven Dalaran Relics are turned in, you will complete the ultimate mission and receive the corresponding runes for your class. The runes you get are:

• Druid: Rune of the Jungle King
• Hunter: Rune of Close Combat
• Mage: Missile Barrage Rune
• Paladin: Rune of Infusions
• Priest: Luminous Epiphany
• Rogue: Rune of the Assailant
• Shaman: Rune of Two-Handed Mastery
• Warlock: Rune of Forbidden Knowledge
• Warrior: Rune of Ruthless Precision

Outro

That’s the complete guide to Dark Rider quest chain in WOW Classic SOD. With this, you’re ready to get another rune!

Before entering, I recommend that you plan your travel route according to your actual situation so that you can maximize the efficiency of farming all Dalaran Relics. Anyway, hope this guide is helpful.