Starfield has a lot of choices. Some of which are a no-brainer. While others are still being debated. And then, there are some choices that are just straight up stupid. Chances are, you probably made some of these stupid decisions during your playthrough without knowing. 

So in this guide, we’re going to be taking a look at the worst decisions you can make in Starfield.

Early on in the main story, you’re going to find yourself in a keyless city hunting down an artifact with Sam Coe, close to its whereabouts lying in the local Galbanks Vaults. 

But there’s one small predicament: in true Western fashion, the bank is being held up by a gang of bandits. What’s worse is that there are hostages inside who are all fearing for their lives. 

Seeing as the gang is unwilling to talk to the rangers, you’ll have the opportunity to act as a mediator and negotiate with the group of deadbeats and try to resolve the situation. However, if you’re incompetent enough, then you’ll have the opportunity to completely ruin the heist. 

If you did find some way to slip into the bank without convincing the bandits to stand down, then you’ll find the crew’s leader waiting for you inside the vault with a hostage in tow. 

By now, any sane player would have killed the thief and enjoyed being brandished as a hero. But you’re not the same player, are you? 

Simply wait for the gang to give up on trying to negotiate with the Galbank employee, and he’ll kill him right in front of you. 

The funniest part of this quest, however, is Marshall Daniels’s reaction, who, despite being mortified by your incompetence, still decides that you’re Freestar Ranger material. 

With characters as stupid as this, it’s no wonder you’re the one getting everything done.

Andreja’s questline is filled with twists and turns, but it climaxes at the end when you must confront Tomisar, a high-ranking official within the House Va’ruun and Andreja’s only link to a home. 

After spending all of two minutes arguing with Tomisar, you have to choose one of 3 options: kill Tomisar, let Andreja kill Tomisar, or, for whatever reason, let him go. 

Option 3 may seem fine enough. However, it’s a choice you’re sure to regret after you make it. From a story perspective, this makes little sense. You just spent the past hour trying to avenge Andreja’s friends. Now, you’ve suddenly grown into a soft spot. 

And despite Andreja’s threat of reporting Tomisar to the High Council, for some reason, I don’t think they really care about what happens to those outside the House of Varun. 

From a gameplay perspective, well, you do miss out on some pretty sweet robes. It’s perfect for anyone trying to roleplay as a Sith Lord. 

Ultimately, the choice of whether to kill or spare Tomisar is yours, and don’t worry about upsetting our new goth mommy, as our standing with you is unchanged regardless of the choice you make.

Fallout 4 really spoiled us with the amount of romance options that were available to us. 

Not only did we have a greater number of potential suitors, but you were also able to flirt, develop relationships, and sleep with all of the potential partners or wanderers, so long as you keep all your lovers out of sight from each other. 

But trying to do the same thing in Starfield is a big mistake. It seems like everyone in Starfield is monogamous. And since all the characters you can woo are members of Constellation, word gets around much faster. 

Although you’re free to flirt with whoever during the early stages of a relationship, the more serious your bond becomes with a potential soulmate, so to do the consequences. 

If you’re caught chatting up other members after you’ve popped the big question, then your partner will lose your trust, and without saying the right things, you may end up in divorce court.

Ever since their inception in Morrowind, followers have become a staple in Bethesda games and only get better with every new game. 

We’re now at the point with Starfield, where followers are pretty much a must, and going through the game as a lone wolf is less of an option and more of a hindrance. Bethesda’s companions have gone from glorified mobile storages to full-fledged characters with desires, needs, and characteristics.

In gameplay terms, your followers can also do a lot more than carry your burdens and fight mud crabs. They comment on their surroundings, engage in conversations, and can even speak on behalf of the player. 

And that’s not to mention the world of romance options, which allow you to gain your companion’s trust and get things spicy in the bedroom for those sweet buffs. 

So, as cool as you may think you are for uncovering the mysteries of the galaxy alone, the best lesson Starfield teaches is that everything’s more fun with friends, even if they aren’t real.

Now, I know that playing Starfield as a lone wolf is a no-go, but let me explain to you why spending Starfield Credits on a crew is not the best idea. 

When you reach New Atlantis, you may be tempted to recruit all the potential crew members you can find. However, if you give the game some time, then you’ll be able to recruit crew members completely for free during the main story. 

And best of all, these crew members have a personality, a trait that’s highly lacking with these random space scoundrels you can find in bars, who don’t even have a name.

What’s worse is that despite them taking up a slot in your ship, these crew members typically only have 1 or 2 skills maximum, which pales in comparison to Constellation crew members that have 4 skills with at least one maxed out. 

Worse yet, is that you can’t even sleep with any of these companions. And that’s where I draw the line and choose to leave these second-rate crew members drowning their sorrows in the bars I found them in.

Starfield has more side content than any other Bethesda game to date. 

Knowing this, it may be enticing to beeline your way through the main story and play through the other side missions and faction quests after you finish the main story. And although this is a perfectly apt way of going about it, it’s not something I’d recommend.

Without going into spoilers, New Game Plus will completely reset your progress except for your skills. But that’s not all that makes your second playthrough different. Many of the quests and events are changed, so you’ll be getting an altered version of the story, and even the side missions will play out differently.

Traits are a new addition to Bethesda’s game design, and they’re simple enough to get the hang of. 

Unlike perks and skills, traits are a one-off effect that gives the player a buff and a debuff. But with a total of 17 traits currently in the game, you’d be correct in thinking that it’s balanced.

While all of the traits offer something to add, most offer a standard boost to health, stamina, or oxygen, with little added in terms of gameplay or story elements. And then, there are traits like Spaced or Introvert, which feel like they’re working against you rather than with you. I mean, what kind of a trait would punish you for having friends?

Thankfully, for every bad trait, there are 2 good ones. Wanted is basically a must for anyone doing a Glass Cannon build as it gives a massive 20% damage bonus while on low health. Taskmaster, as part of your ship, instantly repairs at a fee. And Empath is a trait that virtually has no faults, as it’s really hard to make your companions upset unless you blow up a colony ship or something.

Finally, those of you are more worried about the role-playing side of things, then you really can’t go wrong with Kid Stuff and Dream Home. As the former adds hours of extra content revolving around your parents while the latter gives you a sweet pad that puts anyone’s outpost to shame. 

And if you’re looking to have a human punching bag that can make every waking moment of their lives miserable, then Hero Worshipped is the trait for you.

Your skills in Starfield are one of your character's most defining features. 

Not only will they play a role in dialogue and choices. But more importantly, they'll determine what you're best at and the style of playthrough you're likely to pursue.

Although all skills have their purpose, it's not an equal playing field. Some skills are simply not that great, while others are just plain terrible, specifically skills like Botany, Gastronomy, and Nutrition. These skills sound and play like afterthoughts that were made for no better reason than to fill up the screen.

Meanwhile, skills like Rejuvenation turn Starfield into Call of Duty with regenerating health. And Persuasion lets you avoid conflict altogether to ensure the best possible outcome.

Today we’re talking about some changes that need to happen in Season of Discovery Phase 2. From addressing Hardcore and player complaints to fixing some PVP issues, including the economy we’ve been focusing on. Without further ado, let’s get started.

The first thing I want to talk about is PVP. I think there can be a lot of PVP improvements in Season of Discovery.

Of course, we’ll see more PVP highlights in Phase 2, as we’ll have Arena Grand Master and Tidal Charm. Players will go insane for PVP in these areas.

But I think PVP event could also be greatly improved. For example, in Ashenvale World PVP event, many players constantly run this event to farm reputation. But imagine if instead of this style mode where you have to kill the boss, there would be a designated player.

So, assuming a player is chosen, everyone in Alliance must protect him, while everyone in Horde tries to kill him at the same time. So, in this standard PVE mode, you just have to knock down the mobs, but you can also try to defend and kill someone on the other side.

I think this will be much better for Phase 2. And I think they could do more creative things to make PVP events more interesting.

There’s one other thing about PVP that I really think needs to be looked at, and that’s layering. If something to reduce layering further, it could bring some real benefits to PVP.

I’m just imagining the next phase of Arena Grand Master and Tidal Charm. If there were something like 11 layers in Crusader Strike, it would really take away the prestige and excitement of those items.

I’ve been looking around for my Runes and half of them just come from some random farming or something. I think this might be the “Discovery” part of Season of Discovery.

As a Priest, I absolutely love Metamorphosis Rune questline. But I completely missed this, which is why I upgraded Warlock myself.

I really think every class needs at least one Rune in every phase. I’m not saying every rune has to be an epic questline. But that’s a very exciting part of the mode to me.

Meanwhile, as a Priest, I just travel around the world killing various mobs for drops. But it’s not that exciting. And that also brings me to the issue of farming Waylaid Supplies.

The developers hope to have at least one rune that everyone has, which is a huge grind. And Waylaid Supplies is the kind of grind where you have to grind so many boxes to get one of your runes.

But a big problem is that Rune is actually very related to certain classes. For example, as a Priest, my AOE damage is very poor. In order to get my Mind Sear Rune, I have to do all Waylaid Supplies farming.

I absolutely love the idea of grinding through a difficult and challenging grind to earn one of your runes. But because it is some kind of consistent grind. You’ll get consistent results every time you grind a mob and don’t get anything, or grind a treasure chest, but don’t get anything in the chest. This can be very frustrating.

Hopefully Waylaid Supplies farming will become more consistent with future phase, and I’m sure we’ll do it again for another rune. But it can definitely be improved.

Currently, there isn’t enough to do in this mode, and perhaps the next phase should have a more serious grind to really reward the most serious players.

This is actually another complaint I’ve seen from some of the best players in the game. They enjoyed the mode, but they ran out of things to do after only putting in 80-100 hours.

The problem is that the character identity is a little lost. You can’t really work 300 hours straight in your role and really build this immense advantage. This has a very personal connection to your character.

I’m not saying you have to give them some insane legendary item to invest more time in. But there really should be something that you can spend a long time with and that is visually appealing to other players. Because if they get bored and there’s nothing to do, it actually hurts the mode.

The last and most important change that I think should appear in Phase 2 is Dual Spec.

I mean, we have a lot of different Runes, but we never use them. Because I’m always stuck with the same specs and I don’t want to pay WOW Classic SOD Gold to respec. Therefore, we need Dual Spec for this new Rune system.

And Dual Spec can really stimulate excitement and energy in the player base. Because when you get these Shadow Priest Runes, you’ll never use them because you’re playing Discipline Priest.

I feel like when the developers are hyping up this Melee Hunter build, it’s taking something away from the mode. And no one wants to run it because they have to be completely rested. Therefore, if they provide us with Dual Spec, this may be welcomed by more players. I think this is something that can really be done in the future.

These are just the most basic things I’d like to see changed in Phase 2. The coolest thing is that the developers are clearly listening to us. They want to hear your feedback, and they want to make this mode as great as possible. I’m sure we can have a lot more fun in the next phase!

It’s time to start absolutely pumping in the Blackfathom Deeps in WOW Classic Season of Discovery. Here are some tips to make every single boss easier and to increase your DPS or make it easier if you are struggling at all.

For Baron Aquanis, grab a bubble before engaging the boss. This will increase your movement speed as you jump across the platforms, allowing you to engage with the boss even quicker. If anyone gets the Baron bomb, make sure they jump into the water to avoid knocking everyone else off. Interrupt their cast and make them move.

If you’re a ranged DPS, don’t worry. Just sit in the water the entire time and continue pumping the boss. You’ll have no issues, and there’ll be no downtime.

For Ghamoo’ra, a secret is that Shaman tanks can literally tank this boss the entire time. You don’t even have to worry about their Armor. Just one tank it and keep pumping while the boss has its shield. It only takes magic damage, so use any magic damage abilities you have for extra damage. Casters can pop the little bubbles to get some extra Mana back, but be aware that it damages them and everyone around them. When the boss breaks its main shield, it will do an AOE hitting for 700 damage and knocking back any melee. Take a step back or ensure you have full health to absorb this. Watch out for the threat drop. From there, make sure you start burning the boss.

Lady Sarevess is the easiest boss. She has an add, so have an off-tank this and literally ignores it the entire time. The most important thing is to make sure you’re kicking her freezing arrow. If you do this, no one will ever get frozen, and you won’t need to move. Just pump the boss down and enjoy.

Gelihast has a very low HP bar, but you need to hit him three times. As he’s healing back up, he takes almost no damage. The only thing that can wipe your group here is not dodging the little Murlocs that move around the room. It’s easier to be in the middle of the room or behind one of the little eggs, which spawns the Murlocs. If you’re there, you only have to watch for Murlocs coming from one side. The boss heals up to full and starts taking damage again before the Murlocs are gone. Pay attention if you want to increase your DPS and start pumping the boss again as soon as he’s at 100% HP.

In phase three, I suggest completely ignoring the ads that spawn and burning the boss because his HP is so low after killing Gelihast. Turn into the opening and kill the ads to unlock the Teleportation Stone. An invisible night elf next to it will help you repair if you ever have any wipes.

Lorgus Jett is a Gauntlet boss, so conserve your Mana accordingly. There are three rooms in this fight. In the first one, focus on interrupting the Healer. In the second one, again, make sure you’re interrupting the Healer. Ignore the Murlocs until you’re on the boss and passively cleave them down. The boss will spawn three totems in the exact same order every time. You can completely ignore the molten totem and the Windfury Totem.

However, as soon as he spawns the lightning Shield totem, everyone needs to stop DPS and burn that down. Otherwise, you will kill yourself because all hits to the boss will hit yourself for extra damage. Nuke this down and then burn the boss. Passive Cleave can deal with all the adds, and you can move away from any other totems.

Lord Kelris is the hardest boss in phase one. But once you understand it, it’s extremely easy. The boss will sleep with the two closest players to him and send them to the Shadow Realm. In the shadow realm, you have to nuke down the night elf mobs until they randomly spawn a portal, allowing you to exit. These night elf mobs have incredible spell resistance.

If you don’t have a lot of melees, ensure you always send one Caster with one melee into the shadow realm at a time. Assign one Caster to stand within the boss whenever it’s their turn to be sent down. This makes things easier, and all you have to do as range is ensure you’re dodging the Shadow Crashes. The boss also has a chain of lightning that gets harder for everyone at chains too. Make sure you’re always kicking that cast at 35%.

The boss phases into phase two, and you can no longer kick to interrupt any of his casts. Ensure it spread out enough of the range to avoid getting hit by the chain lightning. The boss does a Mind Blast on the tank, which is actually an AOE. If you’re a melee DPS, you can step far enough away to max melee range to avoid getting hit. Ensure yourself to max melee range, and you’ll never take any damage. Just burn the boss before he takes over the entire room. Ensure your magic dispels the debuff that goes out in Phase 2 because it will kill people.

Aku’mai, the last boss, is relatively easy. Have all your DPS stack up right behind the boss and ensure you dodge the frontal whenever it goes out. Tanks can swap around five stacks, and when the new tank taunts, the old tank needs to drop all their stacks by running to one of the Cleansing Elementals and standing there until their stacks are gone. Soon after the stacks go away, the Elemental will blow up, doing AOE damage, a Knockback, and spawning some little ads, one ad for every single stack that the tank dropped.

Have the off-tank pick these up and stack them on top of the boss. Passive Cleave should be able to take them down. At 50%, the boss phases and takes almost no damage during the phase. This is when you want to be focusing on DPS. If you can, have the second tank drop their stacks right before the phasing happens. If you don’t want to do this, drop stacks during the phase and then pick up the ads with the boss as soon as he becomes active again. The ideal way is to drop stacks right before the phase.

Move the boss on top of one of the Cleansing Elementals. It’ll explode right as he starts taking no damage in phase two. It’s easier not to drop stacks at all. Just have one tank take the boss until they die, then have the second tank pick them up and burn the boss down. If you have any issues with this, have the first tank drop stacks once, maybe around 3 to five stacks, spawning one Elemental that gets stronger for each stack that was put on the cleansing Elemental. Ignore the Void Walker and let the second tank die. Have the main tank pick up the boss again, and you should be able to down the boss. This should make every single boss extremely easy and ensure that you absolutely pump and do the most damage possible.

Genshin Impact 4.3 is expected to be released on Wednesday, December 20th. But during the live broadcast on December 8, 2023, we received a bunch of officials information.

Below we discuss 5 insane new features included in Genshin Impact 4.3 update!

Right now, we know very little about Genshin Impact 4.3’s story quests, but we did get a ton of information about the upcoming events. Among them, the main event called Roses and Muskets is about filming some scenes with a bunch of unique characters from Inazuma and Fontaine.

Now, we can see that the biggest reward for participating will be this limited Claymore called Ultimate Overlord’s Mega Magic Sword.

This event will consist of a series of mini-games.

In the first activity, you need to become a Sniper Elite and destroy enemies.

In the second campaign, you need to fight in this battle arena and use various film effects, such as this old-time grayscale effect.

In the third activity, you need to enter the co-op and drive those blue balls to their target areas.

And the final fourth activity requires you to take a bunch of dynamic photos of the characters.

Moving to smaller events, Itto’s Beetle Battling event is about to return. It doesn’t seem to have any unique rewards, just a bunch of resources. But the developers do promise that there will be some new ways for you to strategize and become the best Beetle Master you can be.

Plus, we get unique rewards in Lost Riches event. That’s right, Mini Seelie is back! I’m excited to see that I can add another Seelie to my collection.

Interestingly, we had the option of a new Brilliance Seelie as a bonus, and it actually traveled with us underwater. So I figured it wouldn’t be a hard choice for me when it came to choosing which new Seelie I wanted to get.

Now, another event called Dance of Resolute Will is a combat-focused event. Here you need to use 1 character in both rounds of battle and the other 3 characters cannot be the same in both rounds. It looks like fun and will have lots of universal rewards.

Also, Liben will appear in Mondstadt again. If you’re not familiar with him, you just trade a bunch of materials in your Genshin Impact Account for a Primogem reward.

Finally, TCG mode welcomes a new intense battle mode, and Forge Realm’s Temper Event. Meanwhile, you can also challenge some Melusines and get a lot of new cards, including 6 new characters and 5 new monsters.

After nearly a year, we finally get a new Geo character, Navia.

Navia is a new 5-Star Geo Claymore character. This is also the third Geo character to use Claymore.

It now appears that she can use her skills to shoot enemies. When anyone in the party picks up Crystalize shards, they grant these Crystal Shrapnel stacks, thus empowering skills. So the more stacks Navia has, the more powerful her skills become.

But her over-the-top gaming style doesn’t end there. Because quite literally, her burst summons a massive cannon that causes a massive explosion and deals with AOE damage while leaving a trail of supportive fire that damages nearby enemies.

What’s also cool is that Navia will also gain additional Crystal Shrapnel stacks when the burst hits an enemy. So this will allow her to improve the performance of her skills faster.

Also, she is the first character that will increase the rewards you receive from Fontaine adventures.

Now another new character in patch 4.3 will be Chevreuse. She is a 4-Star Pyro Polearm Users. Her ability is very interesting. When clicked, she will fire rapidly and then provide continuous healing to the active character.

If you have this skill, she can lock onto the weapon sights. And if anyone in the party triggers Overloaded reaction, she will release this Overcharged Ball, causing better AOE Pyro damage.

As for her explosions, this time she fires a grenade, which will explode first and then leave shells scattered around, which will explode after a while.

I think the most important thing about this new 4-Star character is her unique passive ability. If the team consists strictly of Pyro or Electro characters, it will become proactive. Because of this, when anyone triggers Overloaded reaction, the enemy’s Pyro and Electro Resistance will be reduced.

This passive restriction is very similar to Nilou’s, in that you can only activate her instantly explosive Bloom if the party consists of Hydro or Dendro. But this time, Chevreuse stipulated that the team must be composed of Pyro or Electro. So now I wonder what these new Overloaded teams will be like.

But let’s talk about the upcoming banners. In the first phase, it will feature Navia and Ayaka 5-Star weapons along with Navia’s iconic 5-Star weapon.

And in the second stage, you will pull Raiden Shogun or Yoimiya with Chevreuse.

So as you can see, the developers are doubling down on the whole Overloaded team concept. The line-up is very interesting, but it surprised me to see Albedo not return around Christmas time. Regardless, you can also expect Navia’s story missions to appear in this update as well.

I hope you’re ready for some new Artifacts, because we’re getting two new Artifacts in Patch 4.3 update. Unfortunately, the developers have yet to reveal official information about them. So, we can’t talk about that right now.

Now I don’t know how much you care about Serenitea Pot. Maybe it’s just a glorified place for you to pick up materials with Realm Currency. But in the 4.3 update, you will purchase this new Fontaine-style Realm Layout.

In fact, you can see a whole cool swimming sequence as you travel between islands. I mean, we can finally start building our empire under the sea!

It’s honestly a little insane how many quality-of-life changes Patch 4.3 update brings.

First, we finally have one-click exploration, no more constant clicking to farm the same materials! Now it’s all just a click away. Even better, this fresh change also applies to all forged items like Ores and Process Ingredients.

But the continuous clicking of one button does not end there. When using Artifact Strongbox, you can also add multiple Artifacts in batches with a single click.

In a future release, the developers also plan to add this one-click functionality to furniture when you claim it. So a lot of the tedious stuff we’re used to is finally gone in this new update.

Now, another big change is coming to Artifacts management.

From Artifacts inventory screen, you’ll be able to filter and quickly lock or unlock Artifacts based on the requirements you set.

For example, you can quickly lock down any Artifact that has both Critical Chance and Critical Damage sub-stats. You can then see that Artifacts filter screen in the character’s Artifacts menu changes as well.

But even crazier is that you can now see the most popular selection of Artifacts for that character based on other players’ preferences. You can view the best Artifacts for each character in the game.

Because now you can quickly level up your character with just one click, and it has added much the same functionality to Artifact levels. You can now add up to 15 Artifacts. This saves me a lot of time when I just want to see if it’s worth putting resources into an Artifact.

Nowadays, weapon upgrades are also liked by some people. Now you can add up to 40 materials to upgrade. And you no longer have to refine one by one, you can just dump all copies or materials once to get a quick R5 refinement.

And Artifacts farming is also accelerating. Now, when you claim your rewards, you don’t have to make the tedious run from the domain entrance, but directly generate the domain challenge.

Finally, there will be some minor quality of life changes to enemy navigation when using the manual. Enemies are now laid out in a grid rather than a scrolling list like we’re used to, and you can also untrack more easily. So I’m delighted with this small but crucial change.

Overall, Genshin Impact 4.3 update is about as good as it gets. It seems packed with a lot of content and I’m actually eager to see these fresh changes. Regardless, I hope you found this guide useful. Have a nice day!

It is league start time, and that means that you need a good league start build. Because Path of Exile 3.23 Affliction League has some of the largest changes to the meta game that we have ever seen.

You’ll want to make sure that your first build is real solid so that you can bring it into the Wildwood. Within the Wildwood, you will be collecting Wisps as well as fighting off enemies in the darkness.

And once you’ve collected all these Wisps, they’ll come with you and buff all of the enemies on the map that you came from. These buffed enemies will drop tons of additional loot and get some additional difficulty.

On top of that, every single class has got 3 brand new ascendancies that you can have on top of your original. There are tons of powerful options here and a lot to look forward to.

And 100 + new gems have been added to the game. These are Transfigured Gems. Essentially, they’ve made alternate versions of almost every single main skill gem in the game and just tossed well over a hundred of them at us at this point.

There are tons to do in POE 3.23 Affliction League, so let’s talk about some builds. If you're going to make these builds, be prepared with plenty of POE Currency!

Starting off here, I would say that this is probably the best build for newer players and most likely Righteous Fire refugees.

Righteous Fire did get some pretty heavy changes and nerfs. But it’s not looking great early on for RF. So, why don’t you just get a big giant minion that has its own RF that covers 3/4 of the screen?

On top of that, you can have a bunch of little minions that’ll do single target damage for you. It is super easy, SSF friendly, and extremely tanky build. It does pretty well all the way up through the campaign into early maps and can handle a lot of the early Pinnacle Bosses.

One of the biggest bonuses about this build is the fact that once you get the Sentinel of Radiance, you essentially don’t have to do anything anymore through the entirety of the campaign. This skill will carry you all the way through and you don’t even have to worry about anything except shield charging through zones and picking up loot.

I highly suggest that you give this build a shot.

Next on the list, for anybody who’s interested in playing a melee build, we have the Boneshatter Slayer by Carn.

Now, Boneshatter has gotten a pretty decent amount of changes this league. And whether or not it’s a very slight nerf or potentially a pretty large buff is yet to be seen.

However, what we do know is that the build is still absolutely excellent.

In previous leagues, I had put on a Boneshattered Juggernaut guide. However, the super highend of the Juggernaut might potentially be pretty nerfed and it looks like this layer is a just kind of ending up being the better build.

So, I highly suggest that you follow Carn for this. He is the Boneshatter guy. So much that one of the new alt qualities literally got named after him.

And the Boneshatter Slayer uses a bunch of really super interesting mechanics. Make sure that you go follow Carn, so you can see any updates that he makes to this build as we get information on the new Transfigure Gems and he does some more testing with all that kind of stuff.

If there’s anybody that’s going to figure it out, it’s Carn.

Third on the list, we have Vaal Flameblast Ignite Elementalist from Jungroan.

Now, you might know about Jungroan from all of his like speed running and racing content, where he basically goes through the entirety of the game getting the first 2 Watchstones in as little time as possible.

He’s posted like 8 or 9 of those this league so far in a whole bunch of different builds, but the one that stood out to me was this Flameblast Ignite build.

This uses a pretty interesting mechanic on the tree that allows you to essentially just extend the duration of ignites infinitely, meaning that you can use just a somewhat clunky skill that does a huge amount of damage and then just extend that ignite essentially forever.

This is an extremely well-rounded build. It might be slightly clunky for some people if you’re not very good at timing, because of the way that Vaal Flameblast works and it does use Wave of Conviction early, which some people are not a huge fan of.

But this build is exceptionally strong. And once you do learn how to pilot it, it is very good for bossing, clearing, and all kinds of other good stuff.

Next on the list, we have Caustic Arrow Poison Ballista by Palsteron.

Now, it’s no surprise that Palsteron has made another Ballista/Totem league starter, but this one has gotten a pretty decent update this league with the addition of Tinctures and the ability to have all sources of damage poison.

It is going to be significantly easier to make a bow for this build, meaning that it is going to be way stronger for way less gear.

Ballistas are a super safe play style. You can essentially just drop them down and run away and let them do the damage for you. However, if you are someone who likes doing the damage yourself or likes being upfront in their business, this may not be the play style for you.

That said, this is an extremely powerful build, way easier to gear this league and something that I can highly recommend.

Lastly, we’ve got the Splitting Steel Champion by Ruetoo.

I have played Splitting Steel a lot in the past and Splitting Steel this league has gotten some pretty significant changes. Call of Steel is gone from the normal version of this gem and it works essentially the same exact way it did previously.

You’re still going to be able to overlap all of your projectiles. You’re still going to have excellent clear and excellent damage. And Ruetoo has made a pretty early league friendly build that uses a ton of very easy to get uniques.

So, I do highly recommend this build as well. This version should be perfectly fine and it should get you through pretty much all content in the game.

POE 3.23 Affliction Challenge League will be launched soon. In this guide, I want to go over what we know so far about Affliction’s league mechanics and rewards, potential farming strategies, and the implications of this league mechanic on what builds and Atlas strategies you should be playing. This way you can enter the league armed with everything you need!

First, let’s review everything we know about league mechanics.

Affliction is mechanically similar to Delirium. Near the entrance to each area, you’ll find a Sacred Wisp that will lead you to Wildwood.

This is an area shrouded in darkness. As you explore the darkness, the power of Sacred Wisp will be drained. You need to explore a limited area before running out of energy. Your goal in Wildwood is mainly to collect Wisp while keeping an eye out for Azmeri Wanderers and Bosses.

Wisps are automatically collected by walking through them or killing enemies in Wildwood.

When you leave Wildwood, it released these Wisps into your map to enhance monster abilities. Monsters that are empowered are more powerful - similar to Delirium and Tormented Spirit.

The way empowerment works is that after you leave Wildwood, every monster on the map has a percentage chance of being possessed by each Wisp independently. The more wisps of that type you collect, the higher your chances.

Monsters can have more than one type of Wisps. This makes them more deadly, but also increases the bonuses given by Wisps.

As for these rewards, each Wisp has a different effect. Primal Wisps give monsters an Item Rarity bonus, Wild Wisps give monsters an Item Quantity bonus, and Vivid Wisps are a little different and cause monsters to drop currency items.

It’s very important to note that empowerment doesn’t just affect the monsters on the map when you complete Wildwood. Afterwards, each monster spawned in your map will also gain a rolling percentage of empowerment.

Now let’s move on to Wildwood Ascendancies. Affliction Leaguer adds 3 new Ascendancies that you can unlock through Affliction content. In addition to the regular Ascendancy class, you can also choose one of Ascendancy classes to get.

You can unlock these benefits by finding relevant Azmeri Wanderers in Wildwood. If you choose to occupy their Ascendancy, you will immediately gain the first 2 points and start a quest line to get the remaining 6 points.

Warden of the Maji gives you access to a new item called Tinctures. Warlock of the Mists has Curse and life-related passives. Wildwood Primalist has Sockets that can be inserted into Charms. Wildwood Primalist also has a notable skill that allows your Warcries to open chests and cause corpses to drop additional loot.

Each of these Ascendancies has small nodes that add some type of Wisps collected in Wildwood.

Next, let’s talk about Tinctures, Charms, and Corpses. Likewise, Azmeri Wanderers NPC lets you ascend double as a vendor, allowing you to trade Wisps you collect in Wildwood for Tinctures, Charms, and Corpses. These are unmodifiable but can be traded.

Tinctures go into the flask slot, but not the flask. They provide passive bonuses to your equipped weapons, and you can activate one Tincture at a time.

Charms have 1-2 affixes and are miniature versions of the existing class Ascendance passives. I predict that certain combinations of affixes on Charms will be powerful, sought after by many players, and valuable.

Finally, Corpses are consumable items that spawn specific Corpses on the ground. We can use these Corpses with minion skills like Raise Specter, or with Warlock’s Ravenous skill.

Unfortunately, these Specters will not spawn additional Corpses once revived with Desecrate. So if your Specter dies, you will need to spend POE Currency to purchase additional Corpses to re-summon them. This sounds bad, but if they were powerful enough, I’m sure some players would use them, despite their clunky nature.

Now that we’ve had a quick look at how everything works in Affliction, I want to start discussing Affliction League strategy.

The first choice you have to make is what Ascendancy is to choose. I recommend that players first choose their first Ascendancy based on which force is most powerful at the start of the league. They can then transition to another Ascendancy later if they wish.

I think Warden is the right Ascendancy to choose first for almost every build. This is for two reasons.

First, Warden passive, Oath of the Maji, can provide many valuable rewards early in the league. Most notably, if you don’t have any gems embedded in your boots, you move 30% faster. This is a price you’ll be happy to pay in leveling up and ancient maps.

Another reason is that each vantage has small nodes that increase the specific type of Wisps collected. A type related to Warden is Vivid Wisp, which allows monsters to drop large amounts of POE currency.

If this turns out not to be the enormous boost to the currency that I was expecting, it would be cheap and easy to move to something else. The risk is tiny and the rewards are extremely high.

The next thing I want to talk about is the potential for Raw Currency farming with Vivid Wisps.

While many players have been focusing on Ascendancy, I believe the currency drops of these Vivid Wisps will become the focus of farming strategies.

There are two different paths you can take when farming currency is this way. The first is to fill your map with as many monsters as possible. The second is to gain triple-empowerment on powerful and unique monsters. Because these monsters inherently have top item counts and rarity bonuses.

The key thing to note about the first method is that monetary rewards from Vivid Wisps actually double-dip with pack size. This is because the monsters in Wildwood that drop Wisps scale according to the pack size, and there will be more monsters on your map for Wisps to empower.

So there are more monsters, and the probability of each monster dropping currency is also higher. If you go this route, you can target many league mechanics that will spawn large numbers of enemies.

On the other hand, the monsters that guarantee currency drops during the league are not the ones that cause huge currency explosions. This is a unique monster that has a tremendous bonus to item quantity and item rarity.

So, how do you extend these bonuses further? Mainly through Delirium, Tormented Spirit and Expedition. Tormented Spirit and Delirium can increase the rarity and quantity of items, and Expedition can add modifiers to farmed monsters, increasing the quantity and rarity of items even further.

Finally, there is something that absolutely everyone can relate to. Some Charms from Azmeri Wanderers Vendors will be highly sought after. This means they will be profitable if sold.

Therefore, you’ll want to focus on the prices of various accessories on Charms so you don’t miss out on items at the vendor that could be worth a lot of Divine Orbs.

For my last topic, I want to briefly talk about Affliction’s build options.

Unfortunately, it’s unclear which building is best for Affliction, as it can interact with many league mechanics, and we don’t yet know what the winning strategy will be.

If energetic bosses are going to end up dropping the best rewards, then you’re going to want a build with a strong single target. If the number of monsters is high, you’ll want a build with a high clearing speed.

Personally, I’m focusing on Explosive Arrow Ballista build. It takes advantage of Tinctures I can get through Warden Ascendancy, can take down the most active bosses in the game, and has a pretty good clearing speed if needed.

That’s all for this guide. What are your plans for how to use Affliction mechanism? Do you think it would be better to fill the map with as many monsters as possible? Or focus on creating the most exciting rare items and bosses? Hope to see you in Affliction League!