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.

FC 24 Team of the Season Promo Event has officially kicked off, and every FC player will push their limits and strive for a higher ranking. So it’s time for you to become the best player you can be!

In order to achieve this goal, you must finally get rid of your bad habits and correct your mistakes. With today’s guide, we introduce you to 4 serious mistakes you often make and how to easily correct them. Now, let’s get started!

Not Paying Attention To The Defender

Let’s start with the attack. One of the most common mistakes is that you don’t pay attention to the defender you choose. If you don’t watch and understand their defensive intentions, you will easily lose possession of the ball.

You have to keep an eye on them and not force anything toward their defense. Even if you think they’re covering one side, you can’t lose focus because they can change intentions in half a second. If you don’t pay attention and take action, they will win the challenge with every encounter.

You need to focus on the player with that icon above their head and think about what their next move might be if he runs to a particular side. Your goal is to take the ball away from there and take advantage of opportunities in front of you to pass the ball at any time.

Here is an example. When I’m about to pass the ball, I see my opponent pick a defender in front of me. So I’m going to keep an eye on her as the ball travels. I see the defender continuing to defend with her instead of switching. Therefore, don’t push the ball forward or you will get a defensive challenge.

I get the ball back, avoid it and create a path in front of me to push the ball forward. Then, I saw that my opponent had changed to a new defender and was approaching me step by step. Then I just had to pull the ball back again and see him make a failed tackle and score an easy goal.

All in all, if you know what you’re doing, it’s actually quite easy to outperform your opponent’s expectations. But don’t forget that it is also important to prepare FC 24 Coins to improve your own player stats.

Wrong Finishing Setup

The next common mistake is with Finishing setup. Sometimes it’s not that you don’t know how to shoot, it’s that you forget to shoot. That means either you’re not facing the goal when you take the shot, there’s a defender standing in front of you blocking the shot, or the goalkeeper comes out and you panic.

This is a typical situation where you get in behind the defensive line and have an advantage over the defenders, and the only thing the opponent can do is take the goalkeeper out. When the goalkeeper comes out, he will risk closing the goal at an angle, which reduces your likelihood of scoring a goal.

If you don’t turn this risk to your advantage and set up the best shot opportunity, you will give up free goals from similar positions.

To create the best chance, you need to create a new shooting angle by rolling the ball away from the goalkeeper. But you also have to accept the fact that your shot didn’t go through the defender.

If someone blocks your shooting path, the shot will be easily blocked. So you have to analyze the defender’s current position or expected movement and take the ball away from there again to clear your path before you can score a nice goal.

Note that the direction of your control on your first touch may also create a tight angle to the goal, but don’t panic, additional touches into the open space can create a better scoring angle.

Also Read: EA FC 24: How To Make Full Use Of The L1 Button To Trigger Runs?

Reckless Push Away From Defender

Next, the most crucial mistake on defense pulls the defender out of his position. Do you see open spaces that the wingers can explore? When you push out your full-backs recklessly, you have to really realize that you may have been defending the ball carrier with a midfield break, and such a defensive shake will never help.

You can counter the opponent by keeping your defender close to the attacker and safely in front of him, but if he is the last line of defence, you will never allow a risky forward move like this. Because if you do that, a simple pass can penetrate the center of your defence, and you’ll concede goals easily.

To avoid this, I first take the following route. I look at the environment and decide if I have a midfielder defending instead of using my back four at the back.

If this is the case, I would switch to the midfielder and defend with him. But this way I don’t have any midfielders nearby and if I accidentally push out and go out to challenge, the opponent can easily take advantage of the midfield.

Then I see the opponent is about to pass the ball to his teammate, and if I push the ball out, it could also be a simple pass. But I also realize that potential receivers are running behind the defensive line. So, instead of pushing out, I follow the runner and cover the pass safely.

Meanwhile, the opponent made a mistake and lost possession of the ball. In a dangerous position defended safely on the other side, my opponent accidentally pushed up, which gave me a tremendous advantage.

In the most critical moments, instead of covering the runner from behind without breaking the defensive formation, he wildly slides, which makes everything easier for me because he pushes away the defender. In these circumstances, I scored without a doubt.

Therefore, you should not risk pushing the defender out of position, you must analyze where the position is going and move your defender safely back to the potential threat without disrupting the defensive shape.

Don’t Understand The Direction Of The game

Let’s come to the last point, not reading the direction of the play, but understanding the opponent’s offensive intentions defensively. This is one of the best traits we can learn instead of throwing your defender into random spots.

For example, here I found space behind the defensive line and as I was about to get into the box, the opponent covered the passing lane to the striker and controlled the running lane. But he also has to be mindful of our third option, which is passing the ball back.

He might have switched to another centre-back and taken a step to the side, but instead of doing so, he completely ignored it and pushed the defense with two passes with the selected defender. So I have a chance to score again.

If you defend an area well, the opponent will deliberately change direction after passing the ball on that side. You have to understand that the direction is to move to the other side, not to run towards the area with your currently selected player. You have to spot the next pass and switch to whichever defender is there. If you can’t see what’s coming and take action, you’ll be late and concede to the ball.

What I’m trying to do here is use player switching early and effectively after the ball has traveled. I look for potential targets and control the approaching defender for that position.

Once I see the pattern of the wing switching to the left, I pull my winger through the middle and rush out wide instead of covering the player in the middle. Because I had a substitute to defend, the opponent had to go back to the center again. My winger moved laterally, creating an advantage for me which ultimately allowed me to get the ball back.

So watch your opponent’s body language, take advantage of early player switches, and try to cover potential targets without ruining your shape.

These are 4 potential issues you can make improvements on. Following this guide’s targeted suggestions and correcting them will get your FC players ranked higher in TOTS event!

With Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC coming soon, I’m here to give you the 3 best Strength Builds. Not only are these builds devastating, they’re also early game compatible, ensuring you can start your journey to greatness right from the get-go.

Before you begin, don’t forget to prepare some Elden Ring Runes to dominate the unforgiving land of Elden Ring with unparalleled ferocity and power!

Raging Wolf

Number one is Raging Wolf. The best starter class for this build is Hero class.

In this build we are using the most famous weapon in Elden Ring, the well known Guts Sword. Despite its name, this is actually a Greatsword. Greatsword has slow, large sweeps that can hit multiple enemies and cause them to recoil.

It also has a powerful Guard Boost that’s better than many shields in the game. You should definitely take advantage of this and increase your Guard Boost further with items like Greatshield Talisman.

Most Strength weapons are easy to obtain from early in the game, but Greatsword is probably the easiest. It can be found behind a carriage west of Caelid.

Ash of War we’re using here is Braggart’s Roar. This is a weapon buff that increases your stamina recovery and physical damage and damage negation. It also changes your two-handed heavy attack and charged attack into stronger attacks.

Braggart’s Roar also gives us the opportunity to increase the damage of our charged attacks with powerful items like Roar Medallion and Highland Axe.

It is worth mentioning that although Braggart’s Roar will increase all your physical damage by 10%, Roar Medallion and Highland Axe can only enhance your two-handed heavy attacks and charged heavy attacks after using Braggart’s Roar.

For Weapon Affinity, you can use Heavy Affinity to further improve Greatsword scaling with strength.

However, I really recommend you give Blood or Cold Affinities a try. The first reason is that Braggart’s Roar allows you to easily trigger these status effects with one of Greatsword’s charged heavy attacks.

The second reason is that weapon buffs in Elden Ring only apply to weapons with Physical Affinities, such as Keen, Quality, or Heavy. However, Braggart’s Roar is the only weapon buff type that works on weapons with Blood or Cold Affinities.

To obtain Braggart’s Roar, you can defeat Blackguard or complete his quest chain and loot Iron Ball, which has Ash of War on it.

Also Read: Elden Ring: The Best One-Shot Build To Enter Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC! - Dragonborn Blood Mage

Iron Pumpkin

The second build is definitely a Stance Breaking mechanic, Iron Pumpkin.

In this one, we use Iron Ball weapon and Ash of War Cragblade. The best thing about Claw and Fist weapons is that when you use them with both hands, it puts a duplicate weapon in your off-hand, so there’s no need to use another weapon to provide a power-stance to two of them.

This is a powerful feature because when you apply a weapon buff like Bloodflame Blade, you end up with two weapons in each hand with the same buff. And they’re also lightweight, which gives you more room to wear heavier armor for better protection.

The charged heavy attack of this weapon is an absolute beast. It’s relatively fast, causing you to attack with both hands while dealing with the damage of each weapon. This is probably the strongest attack you should focus on when fighting a boss.

Since you attack quickly with this weapon, you can utilize items like Rotten Winged Sword Insignia and Thorny Cracked Tear to increase the attack power of each consecutive attack.

To further enhance the power of this weapon, we use Ash of War Cragblade with Heavy Affinity. This is a weapon buff that increases your physical damage by 15% and your stance damage by 10% for one minute.

This will enhance Iron Ball’s physical and poise damage easily breaking enemies’ stance and making them vulnerable to more damage. With this combo, you’ll absolutely destroy every boss in the game.

But the only drawback is that Iron Ball’s range is too short. If you’re not standing very close to your target, you can easily miss the attack. So keep this in mind.

Gods Crusher

Last but not least is Gods Crusher, a build that uses one of the most iconic strength weapons in Elden Ring, Giant-Crusher.

Giant-Crusher has a unique R2 that spins your character forward, then slams down the hammer to crush your enemies. This looks very similar to Ash of War Lion’s Claw. You can slam attack Giant-Crusher, dealing approximately 27% additional damage.

So, you should focus most of your heavy attacks, which will not only deal extra damage but also activate important items like Axe Talisman and Spiked Cracked Tear, which will increase your charged attacks by an additional 26%.

Many guides will recommend that you inject Heavy Affinity into Giant-Crusher. However, if you want to change it from a Giant-Crusher to a Gods Crusher, you have to use Occult Affinity, not Heavy Affinity.

Giant-Crusher with Occult Affinity delivers the highest non-split AR damage in the entire game.

While it has the potential to be the highest AR weapon in the game, it is also the heaviest weapon in the game. This means you’ll need to invest well in stamina and take advantage of items like Great-Jar’s Arsenal to lower your equipment load in order to use this weapon effectively.

Additionally, it requires 60 Strength to use, but obviously, at least early in the game, you don’t need that much Strength. In fact, two-handing any weapon will multiply your strength score by 1.5. This means you only need 40 Strength to start using Giant-Crusher.

Ash of War we’re using in this build is Royal Knight’s Resolve. Activating it will increase the damage of your next attack by 80%. The buff disappears after 10 seconds or after you hit it once.

We can do massive physical damage in one attack by using Royal Knight’s Resolve and then charging Giant-Crusher heavy attack.

You can also take advantage of it to enhance your jumping attack by applying Royal Knight’s Resolve buff to both of your weapons. While you’ll need to get Ash of War again to achieve this, the damage potential is even greater than charging the heavy attack on a single Giant-Crusher.

If you want to use Dual Hammer in your first pull-through, but can’t get the second Royal Knight’s Resolve, you can use Ash of War Determination instead. It behaves exactly like Royal Knight’s Resolve, but does slightly less damage.

These are the 3 best Strength Builds I would like to introduce. They will redefine your gaming experience. What is your favorite Strength Build in Elden Ring? I hope you try these builds on your next play through. Have a great day.

Since its launch, Last Epoch has been welcomed by many players. The large number of wonderful content and mechanisms in the game have brought us a lot of fun. However, like any game, Last Epoch is not without its faults.

So here we are going to talk about five things that definitely need improvement in Last Epoch. Developers can further enhance our gaming experience by improving or removing these elements. I hope it becomes more successful and a better game over time.

Remove Damage From Off-Screen

First, I have to say that damage from the other side of the map needs to be eliminated. I think most of you will agree with me that off-screen damage is not a rewarding mechanic in ARPGs. This is annoying and feels unfair at times, especially finding it extremely irritating to be hit by powerful AOE attacks from enemies far away from our position.

While I’m currently happy with some of the damage inflicted by mobs from off-screen in the game, getting one-shotted by a mob on the other side of Monolith map is super annoying.

This is a critical issue with the sheer amount of visual effects we have on screen, especially with the more flashy builds like Runemaster’s special effects spam with invocations-based. So I’d love to see this mechanic disappear in Last Epoch.

On-screen damage doesn’t add any depth to gameplay. It doesn’t make me a better ARPG player, nor is it something I can specify to use in-game tools. Off-screen damage will also punish us, possibly just because we stopped to check for loot or possibly organize our inventory. Overall, this is not a cool feature at all and it has to be removed.

Performance Needs To Be Optimized

Next, we want to talk about Last Epoch performance. I have a nice rig with a Ryzen 7 5800x, NVIDIA 3070, and 32 GB RAM. When not much is happening on the screen, I get a good steady FPS of around 140+. At times, I could maintain a stable FPS of 80-90 even though there was a lot going on the screen.

However, with certain maps and character builds, my FPS would drop to very annoying lows. For example, we only got 30 or 40 FPS when spamming Runemaster’s Frost Claw, Elemental Novas were popping up everywhere, and it was really no fun.

In fact, lowering my settings did improve their performance. And I’ve seen a lot of players complaining about game performance or setting changes having no impact on the game’s FPS. So this is naturally related to the optimization of the game.

Therefore, I hope the developers will look into improving optimizations for the game. To be fair, they’ve come a long way over the years. In the past, the game had poor FPS performance on certain maps or when using certain character abilities. But in order for players to fully enjoy the game, further upgrades are definitely needed.

Also Read: Last Epoch: How To Successfully Clear All 3 Dungeons? - Lightless Arbor, Soulfire Bastion & Temporal Sanctum

Improve Arena Mechanism

Next, we want to talk about Arena. Currently, Arena is the least rewarding activity in Last Epoch endgame. Aside from leaderboards, unique loot drops, and a change of pace, there’s no real reason to run an arena now.

The amount of loot you get from Arena is inefficient considering the time it takes to acquire it. Sure, XP you can earn in Arena is substantial, but you can get similar XP, if not more, when running Monolith.

Plus, you can get more Last Epoch Gold there, so why should you bother with Arena?

So what’s wrong with Arena? I believe this is the flow and structure of this game mode. Some enemies crawl at a snail’s pace. This is especially problematic because of the design of some arena maps. Most of them are too big, causing you to stop frequently and look around for the last mob.

Therefore, I want all Arena maps to be as simple and compact as Arena of Champions map. Developers, please zoom out and get rid of or speed up slow enemies. Also, improve the loot and maybe add some unique rewards, just like you would in a dungeon. These improvements could make Arena a more viable option as an endgame activity in Last Epoch.

Bad UI Issues

Let’s say that UI of Last Epoch has always been a problem. Unfortunately, it hasn’t really improved over time. I’m having a lot of issues with the game’s UI.

First, often when crafting and selecting affixes, the tooltips will start going crazy. They continuously display the item’s description, or a window with affixes information. Other times, the item description doesn’t pop up after launching the game until I change the loot filter for some reason.

Also, do you sometimes get FPS drops from quickly checking many item descriptions for dropped items? I’m not sure if this is a recent issue or if I just didn’t pay attention because I didn’t get that much loot in the past.

Besides, some options don’t tick correctly on the menu, or don’t work at all. No matter what I do, I can’t turn on “show life above the character” in the game.

As a result, UI is a very annoying part of Last Epoch experience. It should be a useful tool, but it often became an obstacle I had to overcome in the game, which is a sign of poor UI performance. Instead of enhancing my experience and allowing me to better understand the game, UI often drove me crazy.

Improve The Display Of Stats

Finally, let’s talk about the way stats are displayed in Last Epoch, which needs some improvement.

At first glance, the stats visible in Last Epoch are very large, detailed, and easy to understand. But as you play more, you realize it’s not all that great.

First off, figuring out your DPS isn’t as simple as you might think. This is because some skill tooltips don’t show DPS at all.

Take Runemaster, for example. When it was built to cast random spells, we had no idea what its DPS would be. But in other cases, it shouldn’t be difficult for developers to provide us with estimates, such as Chaos Bolts, which are currently not shown at all.

Then we have some stats that don’t show up in our character stats sheets at all. For example, we have no way of knowing statistics about “Chance to apply Frailty” related to damage types penetrations or channeling skills.

I’d also love to see a breakdown of stats on the tooltip, like my Necro-based Warlock has 888% Necro damage. The source of this damage boost is shown in the table, which contains two item passive idols. This way I can understand which parts of my build are causing this damage. This will also make it easier for you to judge what to replace or what to focus on improving.

You might think that last point is a little nitpicky, but remember, items and stats are a core and integral part of ARPG gameplay. We should always be looking for ways to make our decisions around loot and character building easier.

Of course, some gaming communities resort to mods or external apps to fix inefficiencies that exist in their games. But I wish the developers of Last Epoch would put effort into UI and stats to make sure we don’t have to rely solely on fans of the game to fix problems caused by the developers.

So here are five things I hope will be improved in Last Epoch. How is your gaming experience? What aspects of Last Epoch bother you? What systems or inefficiencies would you like to see improved? I want to know what you think! See you next time!

Recently, the developers announced a slew of new content coming to WOW Classic SOD Phase 3. So in this guide, I’ll briefly summarize some of the key changes and cover anything you might have missed, including new runes, class changes, the new Sunken Temple Raid, and more.

New Sunken Temple Raid

The next step in players’ Season of Discovery journey will begin on April 4, 2024, when Phase 3 program launches. The level cap will be raised to level 50, and its final dungeon will be Sunken Temple, an iconic dungeon in World of WarCraft history.

While Sunken Temple has been streamlined with Cataclysm dungeon revamp, players will regain the full experience in Season of Discovery.

Also, just like Gnomeregan and Blackfathom Deeps, Sunken Temple will have its own world buff that will increase all stats by 8%, spell damage by 65, and critical strike chance by 5%, according to data-mining.

Also Read: What Are The Most Recommended Consumables For WOW Season Of Discovery Phase 3?

Depending on the faction chosen, players can easily enter Sunken Temple by taking a flight point to Stonard in Swamp of Sorrows or Nethergarde Keep in Blasted Lands.

As usual, the new Sunken Temple is a 20-player raid and will feature 8 bosses for players to challenge. It will lock loot weekly and will launch on April 4, 2024 with the remainder of Season of Discovery Phase 3.

New PVE Event

While Sunken Temple may be the endgame focus of Phase 3, Season of Discovery will also introduce a new PVE open world event, Nightmare Incursions. Interacting with this event will teleport you to a new corrupted zone and allow you to defeat enemies for top-notch loot.

If you want to farm WOW Classic SOD Gold in Phase 3, Nightmare Incursions seems like it would be an excellent way to do it.

This PVE event will take place in Feralas, Ashenvale, Duskwood, and Hinterlands areas. Players will fight against forces of corruption. There are many options for this world event. You can participate alone or with a group. This is also Phase 3’s second major event after Blood Moon.

Confirmed New Runes

In addition, for the new runes in Phase 3, here we will focus on the ones that have been confirmed by the developers first, rather than the runes that have been datamined but have not yet been confirmed.

Druid

• Gore: Hitting a target with Lacerate, Swipe, or Maul has a 15% chance to reset Mangle’s cooldown. Attacking a target with Mangle (Cat) or Shred has a 5% chance to reset Tiger’s Fury’s cooldown.
• Improved Barkskin: You can now cast Barkskin on allies without affecting melee combat speed or cast time.

Hunter

• Focus Fire: Consumes all Frenzy on your pet and increases your ranged attack speed by 3% and provides your pet with 4 Focus each time Frenzy is consumed. Every time your pet uses a normal attack, it will gain Frenzy, which increases melee attack speed by 6%.
• Lock and Load: Each time one of your traps is triggered, your next shot within 20 seconds costs no mana and has no cooldown.

Mage

• Deep Freeze: Stuns frozen targets for 5 seconds, causing damage to targets that are permanently immune to stun.
• Balefire Bolt: Each time you cast it, the damage of the next Balefire Bolt within 30 seconds is increased by 10% and 10% reduced your Spirit, stacking up to 10 times.

Paladin

• Improved Sanctuary: It will increase the damage blocked by your Blessing of Sanctuary by 100% and increase your shield block value by 30%.
• Wrath: Your Consecration damage now deals critical strikes, and damage dealt by your Exorcism, Holy Shock, Holy Wrath, and Consecration spells gain an additional critical strike chance equal to your melee critical strike chance.

Priest

• Surge of Light: Casting a critical hit causes your next Smite, Flash Heal, or Binding Heal to be cast immediately within 15 seconds.
• Pain and Suffering: Mind Flay will refresh the duration of Shadow Word: Pain on the target to the maximum duration.

Rogue

• Honor Among Thieves: When any player on your team lands a critical hit with a spell, you gain a combo point. This effect can only occur once per second.
• Cut to the Chase: Your Eviscerate and Envenom will refresh the duration of your Slice and Dice or Blade Dance skills to a maximum of 5 combo points. But if both abilities are active, it only refreshes the one with the shortest remaining duration.

Shaman

• Riptide: The next Chain Heal you cast on the primary target within 15 seconds consumes the healing over time effect and increases Chain Heal by 25%.
• Mental Dexterity: Damage dealt with melee weapons increases your attack power by 100% of your intelligence and increases your spell damage and healing by 30% of your total attack power for 1 minute.

Warlock

• Summon Felguard: Summons a Felguard under Warlock’s command. These Felguards are affected by the talents and effects of all your other Demon minions.
• Pandemic: The periodic damage from your Corruption, Unstable Affliction, Curse of Agony, Immolate, Curse of Doom, and Siphon Life abilities can now critically hit.

Warrior

• Taste for Blood: As your Rend skill deals damage, your Overpower skill becomes active for 9 seconds or 1 attack. This effect occurs no more than once every 6 seconds.
• Sword and Board: When your Devastate and Revenge skills deal damage, there is a 30% chance to refresh the cooldown of your Shield Slam skill and reduce its rage cost by 100% for 5 seconds.
• Gladiator Stance: While you’re wearing a shield, damage is increased by 10% and block chance is increased by 10%. However, the armor is reduced by 30% and 10% reduced the threat generated.

Profession Changes

In Phase 3 of Season of Discovery, the professions have finally reached their ultimate form. The profession skill cap will be unlocked, allowing players to reach level 300, and Specializations will finally be available. However, there are still some new secrets to be discovered.

In addition, the developers also stated that they have also made some changes to gold sinks related to the profession. In terms of raw gold, the cost of the new recipes added in Phase 3 will be essentially free. Besides this, the cost of Gnomeregan recipes will also be reduced, which is undoubtedly a surprise for players who want to obtain these recipes.

The above are some of the key points of Phase 3 that have been confirmed so far. When Phase 3 launches, players will probably be in for a difficult but rewarding journey. Therefore, before the new phase arrives, please prepare and upgrade your skills, and be ready to explore the secrets of Azeroth.

With POE 3.24 just around the corner, I wanted to share my league starter build to help you get off to a good start when entering Necropolis, which is Ground Slam of Earthshaking Berserker. I believe that all Softcore melee players must be very interested in this build. So, without further ado, let’s get started!

Overview

This build is a pure physical build that combines Impale, Intimidating Cry, Vulnerability Curse, and 5 offensive Auras for high damage. But I prefer Transfigured version because it has a higher base damage and attack range.

Although it has a low base attack speed, it makes up for it with Berserker. Berserker is an offense-oriented Ascendancy class that allows us to gain rage during combat, thus significantly increasing attack speed and damage.

This build is very tanky, with at least 86% Elemental Resistances, Fortify Effect, 5 Endurance Charges and lots of Armor. Honestly, this isn’t a quick build, but if you like non-meta, tanky, but slow melee builds, then this is definitely for you. I had one of the smoothest leveling experiences ever with this build.

Gear Selection

For gear, just use Two Hand Maces with the highest physical damage you can find, get your Leap Slam, and you’ll be able to advance quickly through the campaign.

I stacked as much armor as possible from my gear, using only pure armor gear. I don’t need any blue sockets since all my gems are Strength or Dexterity gems.

I use Tidebreaker Two Hand Mace as my primary weapon. This weapon is best in slot, because I can’t crit.

In Yellow Map, 4-link is fine, but when you get to Red Maps, you will need a 5-link. It provides a lot of physical damage, free Endurance Charge on Melee Stun support and some Intelligence.

Another unique item is Perseverance Vanguard Belt. Since it's hard to get decent attack speed at the beginning of the league, but Onslaught will help as long as you have Fortify. Additionally, its armor and life stats are also good.

For other gear, look for the following mods: Life, Resistances, Attributes, and Attack Speed. I recommend you prioritize armor gear as this build does not use Determination.

Lion’s Roar is a cheap, unique flask that provides a huge damage boost. You should be able to buy one at the start of the league for around 2 Chaos Orbs.

PoB

Now, let’s get into PoB of this build. I’ll show you gear for the early, mid, and late game so you know what to upgrade next.

First, equip Tidebreaker as soon as possible. It should take you to the endgame. Brass Dome is the best in slot body armor because it has large chunks of armor and maximum resistance. I have a 100% chance of avoiding being shocked by Abyss Jewels and Eldritch Implicit on the boots.

Then equip Stormshroud to get a chance to avoid all other Elemental Ailments. As for Cluster Jewels, besides its passive skills, Smite the Weak and Heavy Hitter are also good choices.

Skill Tree

As for the skill tree, I have different levels of the skill tree, so you know which nodes to grab first. Of course, you don’t have to follow it exactly, but this is how I leveled up, so I put it here for your reference.

The order of my Ascendancy nodes is this: first Crave the Slaughter, then Aspect of Carnage, Rite of Ruin, and finally War-Bringer.

Besides, Uniques can be upgraded if needed. Some are so generic that you don’t need them. But if you can get them, why not?

Gem Settings

As for the gems, they are pretty self-explanatory. I just want to talk about two things specifically.

First, in order to make our Warcries instant, what we usually do is take Call to Arms keystone passive. Intimidating Cry is automatically triggered when Call to Arms is activated. Call to Arms will be replaced and made into a support gem.

Another thing I want to talk about only applies to the late game. When you get to the late game, you will need to purchase Vulnerability on Hit Ring.

Currently, I don’t know how much POE Currency it will cost when the league starts, but if you can’t afford it, you can link Vulnerability Curse with Blasphemy Support to make it Aura. Of course, it reserves mana, so you can only use 2 or 3 other Auras.

One thing to note is that this build doesn’t have a lot of intelligence, so make sure not to boost your Blasphemy Support too much.

Because of Reservation Mastery here, I linked Vitality with Arrogance Support to retain some life. If I keep life and mana, all my maximum elemental resistances will be +1.

However, please note that you only need to keep it at level 1. You know you’re over leveled if you find that you have much less life than you should.

After getting Watcher’s Eye, you can replace Vitality with Precision. Same thing, just keep Precision at level 1.

Also Read: This POE 3.24 League Starter Build Will Destroy Pinnacle Bosses With Ease! - Fire Trap Ignite Elementalist

How To Get Fortify?

As I mentioned before, this build uses Fortify, but you can get it from different sources. All I did was buy a corrupted Tidebreaker with Fortify Implicit.

Another method I also recommend is to use Overlord passive skill and then get it from Cluster Jewels. However, in the early days, when you don’t have more POE Currency, you can just use Fortify Support or get it from Fortify Mastery.

Unwavering Stance

I got stun immunity from Unwavering Stance early on, but I didn’t notice it until I got this Ascendancy node, Rite of Ruin. I feel like I will die more easily after assigning Unwavering Stance. Of course, you can still assign Unwavering Stance if you wish.

Mana Leech

There really aren't any mana issues with this build since we're carrying a Mana Flask. Then when I switched to corrupted Tidebreaker, I got some mana leech from my Cluster Jewel, Fuel the Fight passive skill.

But in fact we can easily obtain mana leech from ordinary jewelry. You can also obtain it from the skill tree, but the efficiency is relatively low.

How To Keep Owning Onslaught?

The cheapest way to continuously own an onslaught is to use Perseverance Belt. If you have a lot of maps, Silver Flask is also a good choice.

Alternatively, if you frequently summon Ancestor Totems, you can gain Onslaught effect via Sleepless Sentries passive skill on Cluster Jewel.

Farming Tips

Finally, this build is great for farming Breach, Abyss, Harbinger, Harvest and Ritual if that’s your thing. The farming strategy I would avoid in this build is Legion and Blight. Because Legion needs to be built quickly, but this build is not. As for Blight, I just don’t think a slow melee build would do it any good.

Well, that’s it for today’s Ground Slam of Earthshaking Berserker build guide. I hope you enjoyed it and see you next time!