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The next World of Warcraft expansion, The War Within, entered its fourth week of testing on May 9. This week’s build introduced plenty of new content to test out, including buffs to one almost-obsolete feature. According to Wowhead, movement speed from flight paths in The War Within could be increased after you get the Khaz Algar Flight Master achievement. The movement speed will increase by 25 percent and apply to all Warband characters. This, unfortunately, will only work on the Khaz Algar continent. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Patch 14.9 in League of Legends is slowly coming to an end. But it brought some substantial changes to the meta. Among many things, it boosted one jungler’s win rate quite heavily since now it’s reigning supreme in the standings. At the time of writing, Amumu is the best jungler in all ranks with a stellar 52.74 percent win rate, according to League stats site [Hidden Content]. Only Rammus, who’s trailing in the second place, has surpassed the 52 percent threshold. View the full article

More than 25 years since the release of Half-Life, and I feel like I know the ****** Mesa lab better than my own hometown. The anomalous materials sector, the blast pit, that horrendous underground railway - between Gordon Freeman, G-Man, and myself we could comfortably sit down and hand draw the entire facility. It begs a question: during the resonance cascade, where would be the best place to hide out and try to survive? A huge hit on Steam, one new survival game lets you test your subsistence skills in a parody of gaming's most famous scientific facility, and it's just gotten even better thanks to a vital new update. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Abiotic Factor will helpfully put your corpse in the cafeteria New Half-Life inspired survival game gets off to great start on Steam Chaotic Half-Life co-op survival sim slips into early access View the full article

Rogue Voltage takes the idea of roguelikes and deck-builders and spins it into something incredible clever with a little engineering involving lots of wires. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

As I have now casually mentioned in about 400 news posts, I'm moving flat soon. During the quest for a new flat - a quest I would slot somewhere between return to Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 and the Shalebridge Cradle in Thief: Deadly Shadows in terms of overall hopefulness and unpleasant surprises - I toyed briefly with the idea of living in a mobile home. You can find all kinds of weirdo moving property on Gumtree - houseboats, caravans, yurts, large coats, coffins - but they all share the disadvantage of being cramped and more expensive than described and inadequate to the power and internet needs of a Maxed-Out Videogame Journalist. If I'd seen a house with chicken legs, though? It'd have been worth the sacrifice. Just think, whenever James Archer gives me grief about my performance in Lethal Company I could send my house to step on him. Read more View the full article

Fans of dense strategy games are in luck because Crusader Kings 3, one of the most impressive medieval simulation games of all time is free to play for a short ******* of time. Released back in 2020, the third installment in Paradox's beloved franchise is praised for delivering one of the most comprehensive and in-depth strategy experiences available to players on both PC and console. Yet those who may not have taken the plunge on Crusader Kings 3 now have an opportunity to check it spending a cent on the experience. View the full article

Take the Valheim style of forest exploration and home building and mix it with that atmospheric Slavic folklore of games like The Witcher 3, and you get promising new indie sandbox game Reka. The upcoming adventure sees you apprenticed to legendary witch of the woods Baba Jaga, and building your own house atop a pair of walking chicken legs. If you've been as eager as I have to see more, a free Steam demo has arrived to slake your thirst. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Gorgeous new dark fantasy sandbox game is holding a Steam playtest Valheim style dark fantasy sandbox game unveils customization tools Valheim meets The Witcher in this gorgeous dark fantasy sandbox game View the full article

Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Say goodbye to Lorcana online, as Disney squashes Pixelborn Full Disney Lorcana tournament slate and prizes shared at last Here's why Disney Lorcana is ditching best-of-three tournaments View the full article

Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: After the OGL debacle, competition is keeping DnD honest DnD races and species guide DnD flanking 5e rules guide View the full article

Fallout games took three of the top 10 places on the *** sales chart in April. That’s according to GSD data published by [Hidden Content], which tracks all physical sales and digital sales from most major publishers. Fallout 4 was “comfortably” the No.1 game ahead of EA Sports FC 24, which was a non-mover at No.2, and Helldivers 2, which had topped the *** chart in February and March. Read More... View the full article

The **** of War Ragnarok PC port announcement is imminent, a reliable leaker has said. Their information indicates that **** of War Ragnarok could mark an unprecedentedly short gap between the release of a first-party Sony game and its PC port. View the full article

Image: Supergiant Games Now that the Hades II early access ******* has started, opening up a more complete but still early build of the game, I’ve been fighting against the urge to gorge myself on it — and losing. To be fair, I have a weak spirit since I loved the first Hades, which introduced me to the concept of roguelikes, a genre I avoided out of disdain for repetition. Also, and this is the biggest factor in my spiritual war against the game: I have a Steam Deck, which makes not playing the game all but impossible. Slight spoilers for Hades II follow. Hades II is Steam Deck-verified with a comfortable control scheme that reminds me of playing on the Switch. I did fiddle with the button mapping a little bit, swapping the buttons for dash and *******. (It’s... Continue reading… View the full article

Hades 2 introduces a new cast of heroes, gods, and other characters from classical mythology that you can interact with to unlock special Keepsakes to use on your next run. Keepsakes are gifts given by different allies that provide passive bonuses that could mean a run's success or ********. The characters you favor the most will be the ones likely to gift you with items representing their trust and admiration. View the full article

Solo Leveling: ARISE brings the incredibly popular series to the world of mobile gaming. Sung Jinwoo's journey as a Hunter with the Korean Hunter Association becomes more immersive than ever. As the only Hunter with the ability to level up, thanks to the System, it's up to Jinwoo to deal with the most dangerous enemies and build his strength, as well as gather other Hunters as allies on his team. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

A Stardew Valley fan recently shared an impressive 3D-printed recreation of Jojamart with the community. This creation caught the attention of fellow Stardew Valley fans, who praised its attention to detail and creativity. View the full article

If you're craving that next turn-based RPG hit after Baldur's Gate 3, the newly released King Arthur: Legion 9 might be just what you're looking for. A standalone sequel building on the excellent King Arthur: Knight's Tale, Legion 9 follows the fallen commander of the eponymous troop as he sets out on a conquest to found a new empire. Out now on Steam, this new RPG blends tactical combat, base building, and decision making with far-reaching consequences. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Top XCOM and Baldur's Gate 3 style tactical RPG is getting a sequel View the full article

We're looking to hire a new ***-based hardware writer at PCGamesN to write news, reviews, guides and op-eds about all the latest PC gaming tech. This role is ideal for a PC gamer who loves tweaking their machine to get the best frame rates, and who's eager to dissect the inner workings of the latest GPUs and CPUs. You'll need a good technical grounding in the tech that powers the latest PC gaming components, and you'll be enthusiastic about finding out more. You'll also need the ability to write quickly, coherently, and accurately, producing informative and interesting copy that will engage our readers. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Best Meta Quest 3 games 2024 Make your white PC gaming setup dazzle with this new Razer gear Thrustmaster T128 review - an ideal entry level setup View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

It's easy for budget racing wheels to get lost in the crowd, as coverage is often focused on full sim racing and the setups required to fully immerse yourself in your favorite games, but not everyone can afford these systems. The Thrustmaster T128 instead offers a pathway to improving your immersion without needing a copious amount of free space or cash. Easily one of the best PC steering wheels available if you're on a budget, the Thrustmaster T128 isn't without its faults, but for a force feedback wheel and pedal system, you can do far worse at this price. Above all else, you have the reliability of a big name like Thrustmaster that has a great pedigree in the market. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Best Meta Quest 3 games 2024 Make your white PC gaming setup dazzle with this new Razer gear We're hiring! PCGamesN is on the lookout for a new hardware writer View the full article

***** has been on an absolute tear as of late, and the legendary publisher could be about to put the output of its biggest IPs into overdrive. According to insider information from 'Midori,' fresh content from "main pillar brands" Like a Dragon, Persona, and Sonic will become more consistent, annual releases on PS5 and Xbox. It's easy to think that a boost in quantity will see a drop in quality, but it's not as big a step up as it seems. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth release date window, story Alan Wake 2 and Like A Dragon headline upcoming Xbox Partner Preview Like A Dragon 8 will include a big first for the Yakuza series View the full article

Each League of Legends update brings changes, but Patch 14.9 introduced the Lee Sin art and sustainability update. This refreshed the champion’s animations, voice lines, and skins, leading to an influx of players playing him, and contributing to his win rate plummeting. [Hidden Content], Lee Sin is the second most-picked champion in League Patch 14.9, right behind Jinx. To make matters worse, Lee Sin’s win rate is only 48.40 percent across all ranks. Coming into Patch 14.9, his win rate has dropped slightly, but his pick rate has increased by five percent. View the full article

In Little Kitty, Big City, you’ll soon meet a Chameleon who will challenge you to find him with your weird eyes. With a big city to cover, you’ll be in for a hard task.Thankfully, the Chameleon gives you clues to his general location, to make your task just that little bit easier.Chameleon first hiding spot in Little Kitty, Big CityThe first hiding spot of the Chameleon is in a construction site, thanks to the glaring poetry he gives you before he first disappears.There is a construction site not far from where you first meet the Chameleon. To get there, continue to walk along the platform and jump out to the street. If you look to one end, you should see the signs and hallmarks of a construction zone.Screenshot: PC InvasionThe Chameleon is in the construction zone itself, however, but access is blocked off by a large body of water. To get past, you’ll need a little help from Tanuki.You’ll find Tanuki stuck in a pipe under the bridge ...View the full article

VCMI, the cross-platform open source game engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III has another fresh release out and they've been working on hooking up gamepad support. Read the full article here: [Hidden Content] View the full article

One of the biggest unanswered questions for Microsoft is whether Call of Duty will launch on Xbox Game Pass in the future. We don't just mean beloved classics like World at War or Modern Warfare 2, but newer entries like Treyarch's all-but-confirmed ****** Ops sequel. Now, following reports that Microsoft was debating whether to put new Call of Duty titles on the service on day one, COD's leap to Game Pass appears to be on the cards again, as Xbox president Sarah Bond promises that "amazing things" are in the works. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Xbox's turmoil could now endanger Call of Duty on Game Pass Call of Duty ****** Ops 6 rumored for May reveal ahead of Xbox event Please, can Call of Duty leave awful Netflix-style menus behind View the full article

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim is a sprawling role-playing game that usually requires hundreds of hours of gameplay before players can reach Level 80 and ****** the infamous Ebony Warrior, but one player has condensed all that down to less than 10 minutes. Speedrunner and YouTuber nucular uploaded his record-breaking Skyrim Ebony Warrior speedrun (which can also be viewed below) where he defeated the foe, which only appears at Level 80, in just nine minutes and 55 seconds. How the heck? Well, it's complicated. Speaking to IGN, nucular broke down his extensive strategies and reason for doing so, explaining the run was conceptualised by legendary Skyrim speedrunner Waz, who held the previous world record of 14 minutes and 27 seconds. But the methods used by Waz could be improved upon, nucular said, as they used an outdated version of something called the Restoration Loop, Skyrim's best-known method of gaining a bunch of levels really fast. Restoration Loopy The Restoration Loop works by drinking several Fortify Restoration potions in order from weakest to strongest, which multiplies their effectiveness exponentially. Items with a Fortify enchantment then get a serious buff due to Fortify being classed as a Restoration effect. "By crafting and drinking a Fortify Restoration potion, re-equipping your Fortify Alchemy gear, and repeating, your Alchemy and Restoration effect multipliers will buff each other in a positive feedback loop until you can make extremely powerful potions," nucular explained. "This will give you an extreme amount of XP; enough to instantly raise your Alchemy from 15 to 100, so you can then reset it to 15, allowing it to be raised again." Myriad items and gold are required to make these potions, of course, but a couple of simple vendor glitches allow these to be acquired easily. Levelling in Skyrim is based on these skill increases, and once maxed out skills can be reset to gain experience from them again. Level 80 can therefore easily be attained using this method of gaining and resetting levels, but moving through the myriad animations required to do so can slow things down considerably (in the context of speedruns). "Since the run had no major mistakes, I needed to get creative if I wanted to beat it. It's this element that nucular focused on when he set out to beat Waz's time. "All of the techniques in Waz’s run are essentially standard practice in Skyrim speedruns," he said. "Since the run had no major mistakes, I needed to get creative if I wanted to beat it." But nucular detected two shortcomings in the strategy. "First, his Fortify Restoration loop could’ve been made faster simply by making more than one potion each time he used the alchemy lab," he said. "It’s not entirely necessary to re-equip the Fortify Alchemy gear every time you craft a potion, and doing so would require duplicating the ingredients only one or two more times while greatly reducing the number of times Waz needed to go through the slow animation of entering and exiting the alchemy lab. "Second, as soon as he was able to make extremely strong potions there were faster ways he could use that to power level some skill other than Alchemy. Some others pointed out that he could make a batch of extremely valuable potions at once and sell them individually to repeatedly increase the Speech skill to 100." Superstacking The 14-minute run still required a lot of time, effort, and practice, of course, so no-one attempted to beat it themselves. But nucular's attention was grabbed when YouTuber Sickliff outlined a technique dubbed "Superstacking", which was claimed to be "an easier Restoration loop." Superstacking has players repeatedly click an enchanted item in their inventory to stack its enchantment effects, meaning if, for example, a Fortify Health +40 Ring was clicked 100 times, the player would gain 4,000 health. "This sounds extremely useful, and can potentially be used to significantly speed up the Fortify Restoration loop by reducing the number of alchemy cycles, but it has some hefty requirements," nucular said. Three of the four items, the Bone Hawk Amulet, Falmer Gauntlets, and the Worn Shrouded Cowl, are relatively hard to get in the context of speedruns, but the fourth is a simple Gold Ring, which can be crafted with just a Gold Ingot. Gold Rings don't have valid meshes specifically with Khajit Vampires, and this obscure bug would lay the foundation for nucular's first unconventional speedrunning decision. Standard practice sees players choose the High Elf race because they have the highest movement speed of all Skyrim characters at 1.08. Male Khajits have a movement speed of 1.0 while female Khajits have a speed of 0.95, meaning nucular's choice of race already put them at a disadvantage on paper. So it Begins Skyrim speedruns begin when players gain control of their character's movement, "which is just a rule the whole community agreed on a long time ago for convenience, so we don’t have to sit through the whole carriage ride at the beginning of every speedrun," nucular said. His unconventional decisions didn't stop with choosing a Khajit, however, as choosing to become a vampire also set them on a different route. Skyrim speedrunning typically sees the player literally jump out of the starting town of Helgen via a ***** the dragon Alduin makes in a tower, instead of having to follow the typical route of moving through the sewers to emerge in a ***** near Riverwood. The usual speedrun route sees players escape to a nearby ***** and use a technique called Load Warping to essentially trick Skyrim into thinking their bound hands from the start of the game have been untied by replicating an old save. The player can therefore continue as normal, running for a horse in anticipation of the next step. The new technique changes things up though, as nucular instead heads straight for Haemar's Shame to perform the Load Warp, as this is where he can become a vampire. While this is a lot farther than the usual spot, it's right next to a horse "so it's actually only a few seconds slower", nucular said. Horses aren't needed for their natural speed increase, however, as by this point nucular has already performed a sprint glitch by pressing sprint, quick saving, releasing sprint, and quickloading in succession. This allows jumping while sprinting and stops stamina being consumed too. Horses are instead required for a movement glitch dubbed Horse Tilting, which lets the player move at supersonic speed across the map as long as there's a body of water at the end for safe landing. Now nucular had to decide on a destination, but as Gold Ingots or Gold Rings aren't sold by any blacksmiths or jewellers or even equipped by any of Skyrim's non-player characters, he had to think outside of the box again. Thankfully, an island to the north east of Windhelm has a random pile of Gold Ingots sitting on it. Unprecedented Levels The route to this island came with the added benefit of passing over Windhelm, meaning nucular unlocked the city's fast travel point while ********* over it on a sound barrier-breaking horse. He therefore could travel back to Windhelm immediately after obtaining the Gold Ingots and carry out the rest of the speedrun there. Now it was time for nucular's own version of power levelling. It started the same as standard speedruns do, by brewing some potions, but instead of using the Restoration Loop, nucular used the exploit to make one super powered Fortify Smithing potion and one super powered Fortify Health potion, raising his Alchemy skill to Level 100 in the process. He then used the smithing potion to craft an incredibly powerful ******* (taking his Smithing to Level 100 too), gave it to a hired follower, provoked them, and survived the incredible hits with the Fortify Health potion. "I could level my Block and Heavy Armor skills to 100 in a single hit," nucular said. "This reduced the number of times I needed to open the Level Up menu from 18 to eight, since I’d already levelled Alchemy and Smithing to 100, so I just needed to level Block and Heavy Armor eight times each. "I could quickly reset them both too in the same menu, because they’re conveniently right next to each other in the skill tree. I already made my super weapons, so once I hit Level 80 I can just walk outside and one shot the Ebony Warrior." This is an infamous, incredibly strong ****** in Skyrim who only appears once players hit Level 80, challenging them to a duel to the ******. But instead of accepting his invite to meet later for the battle, nucular's single ******* brings the Ebony Warrior down before he even gets a chance to speak. Using this unconventional strategy, nucular achieved a time of 14:27 and thus achieved a new world record for the Ebony Warrior speedrun, but unsatisfied with that alone, he then dropped it to 13:50, 11:47, and 11:25 in just a few days. But crossing the 10 minute mark required a bit more tweaking. Just Riften After experimenting with Horse Tilting further, nucular discovered a route which would take him right over Shor's Stone, unlocking its fast travel point, on the way to the Gold Ingot island. Riften guards patrol this area, so doing something ******** would have nucular quickly taken to the city's jail. There was some risks with going to Riften though. Only one vendor sells enchanted gear, and just one at a time, meaning if nucular couldn't get the Fortify Alchemy equipment on the first attempt he'd lose time resetting it. Additionally, the only follower in Riften is the magic-wielding Marcurio, meaning nucular would instead have to reverse pickpocket a regular NPC and provoke them into attacking, which could take some time. Some of these concerns were soon mitigated, however, as the blacksmith in Shor's Stone actually had a much better chance of stocking the required gear than the one in Riften. The city also has easily accessible ingredients for the Fortify Health and Fortify Smithing potions. Reverse pickpocketing an NPC, meaning placing an item on them instead of taking one away, was still a challenge though. "It was surprisingly difficult to find a suitable NPC for this," nucular said. "You want them to have a maximum Confidence value so they don’t flee from fighting you, but they can’t be already holding a ******* that they prefer it over the ******* you give them. "I settled on the blacksmith in Shor’s Stone since he was right next to a grindstone where I could make the super smithed weapons, but since he doesn’t have a maximum Confidence value, I had to buy the Courage spell and cast it on him so he kept attacking me." But despite these additional complexities, nucular's strategy worked, and he was able to drop the time to 10:17 before finally reaching his goal of getting under 10 minutes with the 9:55 final time. This is without loading times, a common mitigation in speedrunning communities so PC performance doesn't affect results, but with loading times it came to 10:52. "Getting under nine minutes without loads (and under 10 minutes including loads) is possible with my current route, and I do have a few ideas for how a time under eight minutes could happen eventually, but I’m taking a break from Ebony Warrior for now," nucular said. "If someone beats my time, I’ll come back." In the meantime, nucular has his sights set on more of Waz's records. "I'm going to beat as many of Waz's times as I can," he said. "A lot of his speedruns that are still world records actually used outdated techniques." But beyond that, nucular wants to plant his flag in the first serious take on an all Achievement run of Skyrim. This "is a category that no one has really taken seriously before," he said. "No one has taken the time to plan out such a long category before. At least no experienced Skyrim speedrunner has done so, so I'll be the first." An all Achievement run, as the name suggests, means unlocking all 75 Steam achievements for Skyrim, a feat which takes 80 to 100 hours of dedicated regular gameplay. It's unclear how long nucular will bring it down to, but it will certainly be a lot shorter than that, and you can keep up with his progress (and other speedruns) on his YouTube page here. Speedruns are one of the many ways players are still entertaining themselves with the 12 year old game. But as The Elder Scrolls 6 is still several years away, Skyrim will have to last a little longer. New technology is one way to keep things interesting, with one player creating a mod which lets their Twitch chat voice NPCs and another adding haptic feedback suits to an already $15,000 set up, letting them feel real pain when hurt in game. The most sentimental of fans recently booted up their old Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s to "retire" their original characters too, showing how much Skyrim has remained in player consciousness in its more than a decade on the market. In our 9/10 review of the beloved RPG, IGN said: "Skyrim is a rare kind of intensely personal, deeply rewarding experience, and one of the best role-playing games yet produced." Image and Video Credit: nucular on YouTube Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day. View the full article For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Microsoft’s decision to release some of its Xbox games on rival console the PlayStation 5 appears to be paying off, with Rare’s pirate adventure Sea of Thieves topping Sony's sales chart. In a post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony revealed that Sea of Thieves was April’s most-downloaded PS5 game from the PlayStation Store in the EU, ahead of the likes of GTA 5 and Helldivers 2, and the third most-downloaded game in the U.S. Given Sony’s download chart does not include free-to-play games such as Fortnite, we can say Sea of Thieves was the best-selling PS5 game on the PlayStation Store in April, and right up there in the U.S. There’s more good news for Microsoft’s controversial multi-platform push. Obsidian’s Grounded also features highly in both the EU and the U.S. Elsewhere, Bethesda’s Fallout 4 tops the PlayStation 4 chart for April in both the EU and the U.S. Fallout 4 also makes the EU top 10 PS5 list off the back of its recently released next-gen update. Fallout 4’s newfound success is of course fueled by the breakout hit Fallout TV show, but steep discounts will have helped, too. And let’s not forget Activision’s Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is also an Xbox game, now Microsoft owns Activision Blizzard. Overall, four of the top 10 games in Europe are Xbox games: Sea of Thieves, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Grounded and Fallout 4. The success of Sea of Thieves on PS5 in particular may vindicate Microsoft’s decision to bring some of its games to rival consoles, a decision that sparked much debate within the Xbox core fanbase. It seems likely Microsoft will release more of its Xbox games on PS5 and, potentially, the Nintendo Switch and its successor console. The question now is, which games are next? Microsoft has so-far used games released over a year ago for its multi-platform push, as opposed to brand new games. With that in mind, perhaps one of the Forza games will speed onto PS5. Microsoft is heavily rumored to be ready to announce the next mainline Gears of War game, as well as a Gears collection. Could Gears Roadie Run onto PS5, too? The most dramatic move would be to bring Halo to PlayStation. But would Microsoft actually go through with it? As former Xbox boss Peter Moore recently told IGN, Microsoft will be debating whether to bring Halo to PlayStation as we speak. Perhaps we’ll find out during Microsoft’s Xbox showcase event in June. All this comes amid devastating cuts across Microsoft’s gaming business, and after the shock closure of Hi-Fi Rush studio Tango Gameworks and Redfall studio Arkane Austin. In a recent interview, Xbox president Sarah Bond insisted the closures were about ensuring the Xbox business ******** healthy for the long-term during what she called “this moment of transition.” Wesley is the *** News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at *****@*****.tld. View the full article