UHQBot

I'm going to begin by saying that I very much enjoy camping, in the real-life "back to nature" sense and also in the multiplayer shooter context, in which I wedge myself into a dark corner somewhere and make life miserable for anyone who crosses my line of fire. From a personal perspective, then, the advent of Modern Warfare 2's drill charge isn't great. But for players who hate campers and want nothing more than to see them eradicated—most players, in other words—it's an absolute godsend. The drill charge is basically a high-explosive charge with an attached thermal lance that enables it to burrow into, or through, surfaces before it detonates. It sounds like the sort of thing that would take some time and careful effort to set up, and in real life I'm sure it would. But in Modern Warfare 2 you can just wind up and chuck it like a conventional grenade. It hits, it sticks, it digs, it blows. What this means in practical terms is that if some guy in good cover or a hard-to-reach spot is irritating you to the point of distraction, you can turn the tables by tossing one of these on an adjacent wall, ceiling, or floor. Assuming your aim is true, you'll see one of two results: Either the camper gets blown to smithereens by the blast, or they're quickly flushed out by the threat (the drill charge provides plenty of notice that it's on the way, through both a UI warning and an audio signal). Either way, the camper problem is solved. You can see the drill charge in action in the video below, in which our Modern Warfare Maestro Morgan runs into an opposing player who sprays some fire and then retreats behind a wall. Instead of pursuing, Morgan throws a drill charge at the wall—a second later, the bad man goes boom. Drill charges can also be thrown ridiculously far, and if you attach one to a vehicle it will kill anyone and everyone who doesn't get out before it goes off. Very handy stuff. Morgan's not the only player to find great utility in this high-explosive hole-maker. "Whether it’s 'innovative' or not I can’t say, odds are the idea was borrowed from somewhere—but it’s implementation into MW2 as a direct counter to the community’s biggest complaint about MW2019, its slower and more stationary pace, has been amazing so far," TylerNY315 wrote in an ode to the drill charge on Reddit. "I get multiple kills with it on a camper every game, and it gives me a smile each time. "We’ve seen how incredibly wrong a new piece of equipment can go, like Vanguard’s incendiary grenade, but the drill charge is seriously a game changer imo and very rarely do I foresee myself removing it from my loadout. Good job IW." Others quickly chimed in to agree. "Dude it's amazing when they camp in a small room with one entrance. You just throw on any wall you can find and just kill them," wulv8022 wrote. "On dom[ination] in the embassy B or A flag for example. I just go on the other side of the wall next to them and throw the drill charge. I shoot anyone running out and people that stay there get blown away." "It will also really surprise you how thick of a wall you can throw it on and it still go out the other side, so don't be afraid to play around with it even if you think there's no way it will work," RunTheFrames added. "Drill charge is absolutely the best addition to CoD in a long time." "You can even throw that mf from underneath them bro," _IratePirate_ wrote. "If you know their general area, throw it from the floor below them and just go on about your business as your kill is over night delivered to you." Here's a good example of that particular tactic: Making the drill charge even more useful, it doesn't just stick to walls, floors, and other inanimate objects: It also sticks to people, like a headcrab hand grenade. Here again is our man Morgan making an enemy player look like a Tactical Response Clown: The real magic of the drill charge, though, isn't what it does but how it does it. One of the reasons I find camping so sweet is the rage it engenders in other players: They can't see me, or if they can see me they can't reach me, and in the meantime I'm popping skulls like they're overripe zits. By enabling players to force campers out of their hides from positions of relative safety, the drill charge turns the tables, and non-campers love it. "Bruh, I had a riot shield guy camping with a teammate right behind him, so the shield dude would spot, and then the other guy would step out," BrobaFett242 wrote. "I stuck the shooter with the drill charge, and killed them both. Probably the most satisfying thing ever." View the full article

Marvel Snap's three-lane power struggle is surprisingly complex for how svelte it is, and although I wish it weren't phone-sized on PC, the interface does a good job of communicating who won and why. The one exception is when there's a tie. If each player's power level is the same at one location and they split the other two, the game is resolved with a tiebreaker that results in a victory or loss without explanation. And very rarely, there's no winner at all. What's going on? How tiebreakers work in Marvel Snap The rule for ties in Marvel Snap is simple: When players tie one or more locations, their power level across all locations is totaled. Highest total power level wins. Since each player has the same power level at tied locations, they don't make a difference in determining a winner, so to predict the outcome of a tiebreaker you just have to add up the power levels at the non-tied locations. Whoever's power levels at those locations add up to the biggest number wins. In the image at the top of this article, the middle location is tied. Adding up each player's power levels at the other locations, the top player has 15 (15 and 0) and the bottom player has 18 (12 and 6), so the bottom player wins. (That's me—woo.) In rare instances, players tie one location and split the others, but have the same total power level (eg, 5-5, 5-10, 10-5). If that happens, the game ends in a tie and no one's rank improves. That's only happened to me once. In theory (it's never happened to me), a game can also end with two locations tied, or all three locations tied. In the first instance, the player who won the third location would win, since they'd have the higher total power (eg, 5-5, 5-5, 10-5). In the second instance, there'd be no winner since the players again have identical power levels (eg, 5-5, 5-5, 5-5). Knowing that tiebreakers involve total power level, you can avoid one error: not playing cards you could play because they won't win you a location. Instead, you should dump all the power you can onto the board, because your power level in locations you ultimately lose may turn out to matter in a tiebreak. In short, if you can play a card that increases your total power level, do it. Mainly, it's just nice to know what the heck is happening when there's a draw. It'd be cool if there were some sort of tiebreak animation showing what's going on, although maybe there's an argument for not slowing things down. For the Steam version of Marvel Snap, which currently has the early access label, a much bigger UI change is on the to-do list: Right now, it duplicates the vertical format of the mobile version, but the full PC release will include "a UI experience developed specifically for PC" with "a fullscreen landscape display of the game," according to the devs. View the full article

Gaming is kind of cool now. I say kind of because even some celebrities like Henry Cavill get some flack on talk shows for liking games, but other industries have started to think of it like a fun creative opportunity. Riot Games really excels at bringing in other mediums like music into its work while Minecraft has been going in on fashion this year. But its new Burberry collaboration is just kind of meh. I love it when gaming and fashion intersect. I'm not talking about just t-shirts with a logo on, but I mean genuine collaborations between games and fashion outlets. Incorporating characters into designs, making logos look good or just making clothes, bags, or shoes that thematically show off the ideas behind a gaming IP. This Minecraft x Burberry collection is just more logos on expensive clothes. Here, a white t-shirt with Burberry written in blocks with a Creeper face in the background. Willing to pay £430 for it? I think not. How about this coat with a Creeper face and a BT logo on it? £2090 sound fair? Yeah, I don't really know about that one either. Hmm. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Burberry / Minecraft)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Burberry / Minecraft)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Burberry / Minecraft)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Burberry / Minecraft) There are some neat ideas hidden in this collaboration, my favourite being the Burberry scarf with flower motifs and a funny little square scarf that's just a picture of Minecraft. Those are at least different to anything I think I've seen from this brand before. Otherwise this luxury clothing is just more of the same with massive price tags attached. If it's your sort of thing, then go for it, I assume they're perfectly good clothing items and those joggers do look pretty comfy. But hey I can buy a few years worth of Xbox Game Pass with that same amount of money so I think I'd rather spend that there instead. Lacoste did a collaboration with Minecraft earlier in the year and at least that was a little more colourful and fun. Well at least Burberry's collab isn't as inappropriate as Microsoft's normcore t-shirt. View the full article

Henry Cavill is out as Geralt and no one is happy about it. Across the internet, people are gnashing teeth, rending garments, and generally having a very unpleasant time in response to the news that Netflix's Witcher TV show will be helmed by Liam Hemsworth from season 4 onward, and not the world's most muscular PC gamer (apart from me). A quick glance at the subreddit for The Witcher shows a fanbase alternating feverishly between anger, sadness, and—because this is the internet—armchair psychoanalysis of the people involved, but let's disregard that. The post announcing Cavill's departure has nearly 8,000 comments and the top-rated response, from user cerebralvenom, pretty much sums up the tone of nearly all of them: "Well, there goes the single redeeming factor of the show". Elsewhere, people are asking why Netflix doesn't simply cancel the show entirely after losing such an integral actor (I'm no expert, but I'd wager it has something to do with the show's massive success). Being a fan of The Witcher is like constant law of surprise except it's so so much more worse in every way imaginableOctober 29, 2022 See more Plenty of fans are giving up on the show entirely, or at least claiming to. "It definitely tells me I'm out after it," writes a fan going by the name 2th, "Cavill was a great Geralt. And I've seen Liam Hemsworth act. He's not even remotely as good as Cavill". Pretty harsh on poor old Liam—and there are at least some Hemsworth fans out there that are ambivalent about seeing him step into Geralt's shoes—but a very common sentiment across Witchery social media at the moment. Of course, whether or not people actually stick to these bold declarations remains to be seen. It wouldn't be the first time fans of a series have pledged to boycott it before quietly sneaking back on board. The recent news that not all of the show's writers had much respect for The Witcher's source material, combined with Cavill's pledge last year that he would "absolutely" do seven seasons of the show so long as they "honour [Witcher author Andrzej] Sapkowski's work" have many blaming the news on the writing team. That's a bit of a stretch, to say the least. While it could well be that Cavill was dissatisfied with the show for any number of reasons, it's also true that big, successful actors have to make sacrifices to pursue new opportunities all the time. Still, on the plus side, the news has generated a super-abundance of memes. That's about the closest thing you can find to a positive reaction online right now. Henry Cavill has done what no other could do.Geralt united the Witcher fandom at last. pic.twitter.com/iReEpb5im1October 29, 2022 See more toss_a_prayer_for_the_witcher from r/witcher the_only_henry_replacement_i_would_accept from r/witcher So Liam Hemsworth, whom I confess I had confused with his brother for a solid hour or so, has an uphill battle ahead of him to ever be accepted as Geralt. My advice? Just spend a lot of time chatting about Warhammer and build PCs with your shirt off. That seemed to do the trick for the Geralt of yore. View the full article

On the 25th anniversary of the release of Riven, the sequel to the mega-hit adventure game Myst, developer Cyan has announced that it is being redone in a "ground-up modern remake." "Riven is one of the most highly regarded games in Cyan’s history," the studio said in an FAQ, explaining why it waited 25 years to commit to a Riven remake. "We didn’t want to approach it lightly or frivolously. Cyan is a small indie studio. We wanted to make sure we could take on such a difficult, costly and complicated endeavor—and do it well." (Myst, by way of comparison, has been remade multiple times, including as Myst: Masterpiece Edition, realMyst: Interactive 3D edition, and realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. The most recent remake, simply entitled Myst, came out in 2021 with VR support.) While Cyan waited a quarter-century to bring back Riven, there was a long-running fan project aimed at resurrecting it "in a fully-realized realtime-3D environment" called Starry Expanse. In 2019, the Starry Expanse team said it was "officially working with Cyan Worlds to bring the dream of a real-time Riven into reality." Cyan said in a separate message posted today that members of that team are not working on the official remake, but that "we reached an agreement which allowed us to reference core pieces of their efforts to jump-start our development." The Starry Expanse project itself quietly halted development a couple years ago, after Cyan informed the team that it was preparing to launch an official remake. Truthfully, I didn't like Riven as much as Myst—which, to be clear, I absolutely loved. Myst was revolutionary: an unprecedented gameplay experience wrapped in photorealistic graphics and a lush, exotic soundtrack that demonstrated what seemed like the virtually limitless potential of CD-ROM technology. Riven was more technologically advanced, yes, but like so many sequels it was also more of the same, and coming four years after Myst it just wasn't quite as magical the second time around. Still, I'm happy that Cyan is finally moving forward with the update, and maybe 25 years of separation from the original will give me a different perspective on it. Unfortunately, there are no details at this point about platforms or a possible release date, but Cyan did clarify—because apparently clarification was necessary—that owners of the original Riven will not be upgraded to the remake version for free. View the full article

Electronic Arts has signed a deal with Marvel to make "at least three new action adventure games," each of which will tell its own original story set in the Marvel universe. The first project being developed as part of the deal is the Iron Man game in the works at EA Motive that was announced in September. Headed up by Marvel's Avengers and Guardian of the Galaxy producer Olivier Proulx, the game will be a third-person, singleplayer action-adventure game telling an original story "that taps into the rich history of Iron Man, channeling the complexity, charisma, and creative genius of Tony Stark." The Iron Man game was in pre-production at the time of the announcement, and no release date has been announced. "We have been long-time fans of Marvel and their impressive leadership, so this is a remarkable moment for our developers as well as our players and fans," EA chief operating officer Laura Miele said. "We look forward to welcoming Marvel into the EA family of creators and know this collaboration will produce exceptional experiences for our players. We can’t wait to see players' reactions when they suit up as Iron Man and do the extraordinary things this superhero is known for." Unlike EA's Star Wars license, the Marvel deal is not exclusive: Former Uncharted creative director Amy Hennig is currently working on a Marvel game featuring Captain America and Black Panther at Skydance New Media, for instance. It also suggests that the dissolution of EA's exclusive rights to Star Wars did not come with any lasting hard feelings—Marvel's parent company is Star Wars owner Disney. Electronic Arts is set to share its fiscal year 2023 second quarter results tomorrow, November 1, so we may hear more about the deal—and, hopefully, the other games involved—then. We'll keep you posted. View the full article

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is here. Again. Just 13 short years since the first of its name graced our desktops it's time to don the camo, break out your weird character-combo pseudonyms, and murder each other in the name of Activision. I mean, that's why we all go nuts for CoDs, right? But how to get the game running right? Unfortunately, I can't give you any help when it comes to dealing with the myriad crashing issues the game seems to be suffering under already, nor am I able to solve the problems with network connections. We're not going to pretend that simply verifying your game files, restarting your router, or rolling back to a previous GPU driver will suddenly make your problems go away. But, by all means give it a go, none of those 'solutions' seemed to work for us. I've still been struggling with one of my office PCs steadfastly refusing to connect to Activision's servers, and the reason? Well, the nonsensical "Hueneme Concord" error is what the game trots out, and I've had no joy fixing the issue. Luckily our standard test rig hasn't had any such issue, despite being on the exact same super-fast, low latency network. Sigh. What I can help with, however, is what to do about the thorny issue of in-game graphics settings. And there are myriad ones to choose from, as well as a handful of simple presets that mean you don't have to worry about individually tweaking a setting here or there. And the good news is that really CoD: MW2 is actually pretty straightforward in terms of what you need to do to get great performance. The path to the highest frame rates, as is increasingly becoming the case, is all about the upscaler you use. (Image credit: Activision) But, to start with you can play around with the basic in-game presets. We've tested with a Radeon RX 6700 XT GPU, which is a very capable graphics card in its own right, but nowhere near the top of today's stack. At the 1440p resolution it will deliver over 80 fps in the highest graphical preset, but it will still give us an idea of what settings we can tweak and what will actually have an impact on frame rates without having much of an impact on visual fidelity. Strangely you'll get the same figure for the setting below Extreme, noted as Ultra. I noticed the same thing while testing the RTX 4090 with the new Modern Warfare 2—no difference in performance at all until you hit Balanced. Texture resolution is pushed up for Extreme over Ultra, as is Particle Lighting and the Spot light shadow cache. But none of that makes any difference to the frame rates you'll see. (Image credit: Future) Dropping to Balanced and then Basic at native 1440p will net you a 43% and 56% performance increase over Ultra settings respectively. Considering individually tweaking the discrete settings manually won't deliver much of a performance boost—highlighted by the lack of a frame rate delta between Extreme and Ultra—you might as well play around with these presets instead. (Image credit: Future) What makes more of a difference, to the tune of a 71% frame rate increase at 1440p Ultra settings, is the move from native rendering to using AMD's FSR 1.0. Granted I'm using an AMD card here, but you will also see around the same boost in performance from using the Nvidia Image Scaling feature instead. That's available on AMD cards, too, while the DLSS preset is saved for GeForce GPUs alone. Sadly, we couldn't enable Intel's XeSS feature on MW2 despite its existence in the settings menu. It may currently be stuck only with Intel GPUs for now. (Image credit: Future) But FSR 1.0 and NIS do a grand job of delivering a huge improvement in gaming frame rates, with a minimal impact on image quality. Sure, because we aren't talking about the impressive FSR 2.0 upgrade or actual DLSS, there is some loss of clarity if you zoom in on some still images. Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Activision)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Activision)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Activision)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Activision) But in motion, you'd be hard pressed to tell me which was native, which was AMD, and which was Nvidia's GPU agnostic upscaler. Personally, I'd say I prefer the look of FSR 1.0 over Nvidia Image Scaling—it's just too over sharpened for me—but in a multiplayer shoot out you're looking for frame rates over all such fine fidelity margins. And when you can get a higher frame rates from enabling either FSR or NIS at the top graphics preset than from dropping down to a lower setting, why would you bother? When you can actually get it into a game, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 feels pretty slick as game engines go. And all those little graphics settings knobs aren't really worth twisting on their own because nothing will deliver the jump in frame rates that a good upscaler can. It's just a shame there are still so many actual niggles that are preventing players from actually booting the game they paid for. PC Gamer created this content as part of a paid partnership with iBuyPower. The contents of the article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of PC Gamer. View the full article

The first Nvidia RTX 4080 16GB graphics card has been listed over on retailer Newegg, ahead of the card's launch on November 16. The card, PNY's XLR8 Gaming Verto, is priced at $1,199.99. That's only 99 cents over the MSRP announced by Nvidia. Another model is listed on the site, the PNY XLR8 Verto OC, but no price is listed next to this one. It will likely cost more as an overclocked card, however. The RTX 4080 16GB is built using the same Ada Lovelace architecture as the recently launched RTX 4090, but with a completely different GPU. It's no cut-down version of the top chip, and comes with 9,728 CUDA cores, 16GB of GDDR6X memory, and a TDP of 320W. That's a far bigger difference in terms of core spec between the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 when compared with the GPU spec of the RTX 3090 and RTX 3080. We're talking about a delta of 20% between the core count of the two Ampere GPUs and 68% between the new Ada Lovelace cards. It might impress with its performance, though whether you'll want to spend quite so much on this card or dive deeper into your pockets for an RTX 4090, we'll have to find out when we get our hands on one to test. We're expecting many more cards to appear from Nvidia's partners ahead of the RTX 4080 16GB launch, and we're hoping most of them stick to the MSRP. That said, I'm sure some high-end cards will creep up to the RTX 4090 sticker price of $1,599. Some high-end RTX 4090 GPUs were listed for $2,000. We can expect to see European prices for the RTX 4080 16GB that are even dearer than US pricing on launch day. Preliminary listings over at LaptopsDirect, spotted by Videocardz, suggest prices could reach up to £1,490 (originally reported as £1,590 but the listing has now changed). These aren't necessarily the prices we'll see on launch day, however, as early listings can be, and often are, misrepresentative of the actual sale price. (Image credit: Newegg) Scrolling through the Reddit thread on the Newegg listing, in the Nvidia subreddit, many users are voicing concern over the card's price. "The 4090 at this point makes sense price wise. The 4080 does not," user lilogsd says. One of the top comments, from user Zintoatree, reads: "Isn't this supposed to be a good bit slower than the 4090? If so, they're just trying to upsale you to the 4090." The Reddit thread for the LaptopsDirect listing is similarly filled with concerns from European gamers regarding the price, which isn't helped by how strong the dollar is in comparison to many currencies worldwide. (Image credit: LaptopsDirect) Your next upgrade (Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest If any four-figure price tag is too dear for you, and I don't blame you for being fiscally sensible, you will have to wait a little longer for cheaper next-gen cards. Nvidia cancelled the RTX 4080 12GB, which was intended to launch in November for $899, as the two RTX 4080 models were admitted to be confusing. That then leaves the RTX 4080 as the cheaper option of the two RTX 40-series cards announced, and not by a whole lot. Whether we'll still see a card at that $899 price in the future, we cannot say for sure; Nvidia has not yet confirmed any further RTX 40-series graphics cards for launch anytime soon. AMD will have some new cards to announce soon, however. This week the company intends to host a livestream dedicated to its RDNA 3 graphics cards, likely starting with the enthusiast-grade GPU likely pictured in these leaked images. View the full article

Be the best with these Modern Warfare 2 guides (Image credit: Activision blizzard)Prestige and Ranks explained Modern Warfare 2 missions Safe codes for Alone and El Sin Nombre Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops are a way of getting free in-game stuff for the new first-person shooter and the only thing you need to do is watch some streams. While the Overwatch 2 Twitch Drops may require you to watch a long time in order to earn anything decent, you can get all of the current Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops pretty easily. If you're not really into watching streams, there's also no reason you can't just keep the stream open and muted in another tab while you do something else. In this Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops guide, I'll walk you through how to enable them for yourself, and how long you'll need to watch to earn each of the individual rewards. How to enable Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops In order to earn Twitch Drops for watching streamers play Call of Duty, you're first going to need to link your Twitch account with your Activision one. Here's how to do it: Login to the Activision websiteClick 'Profile' in the top rightScroll down the Account Linking page and click 'Link Account' next to the Twitch symbolClick 'Continue' and login to Twitch If you linked your account before October 10, you'll need to link your account again in order to be eligible for the new Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops. Once linked, you can watch Modern Warfare 2 streams on Twitch in order to progress towards the rewards. You'll know if you're watching an eligible streamer as you'll see a 'Drops Enabled' callout. When you've earned a Twitch Drop, you'll also get a notification. What are the Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops? There are currently just four Modern Warfare 2 Twitch Drops to claim. Here's what they are and how long you need to spend watching streams: Time watchedRewards15 minutes141 weapon charm30 minutesDeath's Angel calling card and emblem45 minutesSomething In My Teeth weapon sticker60 minutesWatchdog 141 weapon blueprint Once you earn them, you'll be able to collect your rewards in-game, though you may need to restart it first for them to appear. View the full article

Now that Scar is roaming the Sunlit Plateau in Disney Dreamlight Valley, you'll be able to upgrade your Royal Shovel and finally smash those wildebeest bones lying around. There are two stages to upgrading your shovel and you'll need to complete various tasks for Scar before they unlock. In this guide, I'll talk you through each quest to get you that all-powerful new shovel. How to upgrade your Royal Shovel The first quest will help you clear the small bones littering the Sunlit Plateau, before moving on to another upgrade that'll help you clear the large bones blocking the bridge. Needless to say, you'll need to have unlocked Scar and the Sunlit Plateau to access this upgrade. How to clear small bones Speak with Scar and he'll ask you to visit Scrooge McDuck, who will give you a mold for the shovel. You'll then need to visit Scar again who'll give you the ingredient list for the shovel upgrade. You'll need to gather: Five dry wood Five iron ingot Five lion's claws You can get iron ore from the Glade of Trust, Sunlit Plateau, Forest of Valor, Forgotten Lands, and Frosted Heights. You'll need 25 iron ore and five coal to craft the ingots, and dry wood can be found around the Sunlit Plateau, Forgotten Lands, and Frosted Heights. The lion's claws will be found near the cliff edges in the first section of the Sunlit Plateau. They can be found in glowing digging spots near the cave, the entrance to Forgotten Lands, and in the elephant graveyard. Just keep digging up bright spots until you gather all five. Once you've collected everything you need, head to a crafting bench and create the shovel upgrade. You can select the upgrade from your regular inventory and apply it to the shovel. Have fun removing all the small bones! Image 1 of 4 (Image credit: Gameloft)Image 2 of 4 (Image credit: Gameloft)Image 3 of 4 (Image credit: Gameloft)Image 4 of 4 (Image credit: Gameloft) How to clear large bones Scar will comment that this upgrade only removes the smaller bones and that he's not very pleased about it. Seriously, Scar? This was your idea! So, it's off to speak with Mother Gothel who'll task you with finding some old bones and ten Purified Night Shards. The bones are easy to find: head into the cave in the Sunlit Plateau, take the first left, the next right, and the following left to find them glowing in a pile. A literal pile of bones, that's all you're looking for. Crafting the Purified Night Shards is going to take a while here. You can find Night Shards by digging up glowing spots all over the valley, removing night thorns, and mining. Once you've got all ten shards, speak to Scar and he'll say that the geyser in his cave can turn the bones to ash, which you conveniently also need for the upgrade. After that, plant the ash and water and tend to them until the Flower of Bones grows, which shouldn't take very long. Collect the flower and, alongside the Purified Night Shards, craft the Roaring Shovel Head. Open your inventory and apply it to your shovel to complete the upgrade and you'll finally be able to access the other side of the Sunlit Plateau if you haven't moved the fast travel well there already. View the full article

It’s time to drink deep from the well of '90s adventure games, where 2D and early 3D art both benefited from the soft phosphor glow of our CRT screens. Where we really cared about hotkeys because the balls in our mice were caked with gunk. Where developers working in the shadow of LucasArts games like Grim Fandango were getting weird. This is by no means an authoritative list of the most overlooked influential games from one of the wackiest periods in game experimentation, when FMV and 3D technology were respectively petering out and heating up. But they stood out then, and stand out even more today, in a new era of adventure games that seek to expand the historical limitations of the adventure genre. 1. The Best Within (1995) Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father is probably the best known of Jane Jensen’s beloved supernatural schattenjager (“shadow hunter”) adventure series. But its sequel, the gorgeous, ambitious The Beast Within—an FMV masterpiece that broke ground with its storytelling and incredibly detailed world—really set the bar for point-and-click adventures aimed squarely at adults. It came out in 1995, the same year as Roberta Williams’ FMV horror game Phantasmagoria, which, while also for older audiences, felt more like a novelty or object of fascination than something that had layers to slowly, patiently ponder and unpeel. Phantasmagoria also offered a much more contained narrative and a smaller, more intimate scope, with a story about a married couple’s isolation and paranoia in an ominous new home. And for that, it was fine. A little camp, a little cliched, set against the sort of memorably weird environments that defined 3D graphics at the time: plenty of over-the-top marble textures and slightly off-kilter architecture. In almost direct opposition to this purposefully claustrophobic intimacy, The Beast Within went big. It covered multiple cities and towns. It tugged at the threads of a fictional Wagner opera that had been lost and cursed to the ages: barely realistic enough to feel plausible until you delve deeper into the supernatural chaos that make up the schattenjager’s bread and butter. Using real life locations also helped. There are scenes set in Munich, tourist spots around Bavaria, and, most dramatically, Neuschwanstein Castle (one ambitious fan even posted an account of his trip to Germany where he visited the game locations). It was the first time that I’d seen a game pull together such a compelling, haunting world drawn from reality; to be fair, when I played this with my dad, I was also a kid and the closest combination of reality and gaming I’d experienced was playing Carmen Sandiego and The Lost Secret of the Rainforest. The Beast Within had such a wonderfully indulgent tone: you can tell Jensen loved working on the character dynamics between Gabriel and Baron von Glower, as well as Grace and Gerde; every single character in the ensemble cast was played to perfection. I will never stop talking about this game, because playing it was like having an incendiary lightbulb go off—no, explode from sheer brightness—in my head, all those years ago. While everyone else was coasting, Jane Jensen was in a league of her own, and if Microsoft gives her the chance to rekindle the Gabriel Knight fire (she’s open to it!), it’ll be the best decision of their lives. 2. The Longest Journey (1999) From a storytelling perspective, 1999’s The Longest Journey treads familiar ground in everyday fantasy magical realism—the idea of otherworldly forces seeping into a “normal” world—but it’s just so damn well made. Teen art student April Ryan, a relatively new arrival in the bustling metropolis of Newport, finds herself plagued by wild dreams about a fantastical place where dragons and magic are real. The story hinges on the idea of dual worlds—Stark devoted to order and science, and Arcadia to magic and chance—and the threat of a forced reunification, with April as a rather stereotypical “chosen one” to realign the all-important Balance. Even over 20 years on, the environmental art is gorgeous evidence that photorealism often isn’t the best route when you’re trying to build out the character of a game world. The relationship between Arcadia and Stark isn’t just cosmetic, and the writing plays on this estranged sibling-type dynamic relationship to create compelling layers of tension and longing. The voice acting is excellent as well, down to April’s corny, self-aware one-liners that exemplify the finest cheese that adventure writing has to offer without going overboard. The supporting characters, too, are all well-played and mostly well-formed. The Rolling Man is a fun specimen: April meets him as an “expat” from Stark who’s been living in Arcadia for the past fifteen years, in a ramshackle house he built into the cliff by the sea. He’s built around the very familiar (at least to me, as my home country Singapore has a large expat population) stereotype of the real-world western expat, who enjoys the distinction of being a stranger in a strange land while keeping an arm’s length from the populace. Cortez, April’s mentor, is an Arcadian expat in Stark, and chooses to maintain the core of his Arcadian principles through the role of being a weird old hippie that everyone finds a little creepy. And her landlords—a down-to-earth lesbian couple who run a boarding house for students and low-income arrivals to the city—evoke the most '90s vibes of all. (Image credit: Funcom) I can’t help but feel a sense of regret that I didn’t play The Longest Journey when it first came out, on a cozy CRT monitor where its thin, spidery cursive text font would have hit the mark (now it’s just borderline illegible). Its sense of scale is amazing. I never got frustrated having to schlep from one scene to the other because I wanted to absorb as much of the atmosphere as possible; I soaked up every last second of April’s small interactions with a weird old Arcadian sailor on the Marcurian pier. I pored through all the barely-intelligible fairytales and folklore and Arcadian history at the Enclave. I even liked taking the Newport subway, for whatever reason—there’s nothing particularly special about it, but by the time I got my subway pass working, I was fully dialed into April’s journey and by god I was going to roleplay the living 'frack' out of it. This isn’t a story that reinvents the wheel: there are certainly some 'frack' bits in there, like April’s edgelord housemate Zack, who doubtless only exists because '90s storytelling felt compelled to remind us that date rapists are real. Even though writer Ragnar Tornquist was influenced by Joss Whedon, he actually made something that stands up better than anything Whedon did (whose success I feel was a testament to the talent and resilience of his crew). The Longest Journey had such a magnificent sense of immersion that still mostly holds up today, and was arguably one of the first “big” 3D games to take established fantasy and sci-fi tropes and make them feel engaging and new. D2 (1999) I’m always going to think of D not as shorthand for the most famous vampire in the world, but for “Dad.” I often think about D and D2 together (I haven’t played the middle child in the series, Enemy Zero) because I feel that what creator Kenji Eno did for the character of Laura was ahead of his time and a glorious finger in the face of an industry that largely banks on uniform continuity in franchises. I’m not going to pretend that the first game, D, isn’t painful to sit through in the year 2022. It’s abysmally slow and the graphics look like crap on modern resolutions/screens, unless you can commit to putting yourself in the shoes of someone in 1995 who had never played an atmospheric horror game before. The awkward camera angles, the slow panning, the stiff, death-mask like faces were tethered to the technology available at the time. But where D really just let its freak flag fly was the way in which Eno forced his vision on the player—you only have two hours to play the game (there’s even a clock in your inventory to remind you of the time), and there is no save function. It was meant to be a meal eaten in one sitting, and you would have to eat all of it, or at least try to. Eno wasn’t a perfect Michelin-starred chef, but his work was strange and engaging and just a little pretentious without being mind-numbingly overbearing, so much so that you’d definitely want to eat from him again. With D2, released only on the Dreamcast, we meet Laura in a drastically different reincarnation but with the same "accessories;" namely the handheld compact that her mother left her, which gives you a limited number of in-game hints. The way that Eno envisioned his blonde, Lynchian protagonist as a “digital actress” was something that nobody else was doing in games, long before we got to the present and very exhausting era of digital humans. There’s a particularly cool blog entry on Laura as a fleeting fashion/cultural icon in Japan, modeling for Yojhi Yamamoto in an issue of HF magazine long before video game characters started showing up in Prada and Louis Vuitton shoots (high fashion brands are now, of course, all the rage in games like Fortnite and the metaverse-adjacent world). (Image credit: Mobygames) Laura’s influence aside, D2 stood out as a freakish experiment all on its own, with Eno going full-bore weirdo with a survival/action situation in the Canadian wilderness, complete with body horror, genetic engineering, cults, and angels. There is, unsurprisingly, a full 15-minute ending cinematic (this is part one) that seems to be, on some level, a partial reach for the epoch-spanning texture of 2001: A Space Odyssey, with some odd on-screen AIDS statistics and causes of death around the world. It’s a lot. But it was also 'frelling' great, because it was like nothing I’d seen before. The little musical choices, especially, were such a great flourish, and inappropriate audio cues like cheery automated flight attendant reminders to buckle your seatbelt while you’re having a full-blown gunfight in a wrecked airplane. Eno had all the room to do what he wanted, and as this blog points out, his vision for D2 seemed more fully-formed than his previous two outings and closer to what he might have achieved in future games if not for his death in 2013. View the full article

Remedy has released its latest business review, in which it discusses a bunch of its upcoming projects, and confirms that the studio's "next major game launch, Alan Wake 2, [is] taking place as planned in 2023." The studio hasn't been making an enormous amount of money in the last year, unsurprising given it hasn't released anything new, though there's still tens of millions flowing through for the development of its various projects. The lion's share went towards Alan Wake 2 and Codename Condor, a Control spinoff that "remains in the proof of concept stage" says CEO Tero Virtala. Codename Condor is going to be a co-op game, writes Virtala, with its core designs "being prototyped and the gameplay already in this early phase feels fun. We are giving the team time to work on a multitude of important game design elements and finalize the key pillars before moving the project to the next development phase." Also in development alongside Codename Condor is Codename Heron, "a bigger-budget Control game" that is in the concept stage and is likely to be a direct sequel. Don't expect it anytime soon though: early development has apparently gone well, and the team is now being expanded but remains moderate. Vanguard is likely to be the licensed property, and also stands out here as not being named after a bird. This is a free-to-play co-op game that's going to be co-published by Tencent, and development is going to take longer than Remedy initially believed. It's staying in proof-of-concept stage though ultimately aims to be "an expansive service-based F2P game with a rich world and selected new elements, making it a game that stands out from other multiplayer games." Alan Wake 2 is in full production and will launch as planned. "There is still a lot of work to be done, but the game is coming together on all fronts," writes Virtala. "User testing continues and the feedback from the user research has been encouraging. After seeing how the elements are coming together, I’m confident we will launch an excellent game." Remedy's expectation is that, from Alan Wake 2 onwards, it will release new games in both 2024 and 2025, all accompanied by either or both free and paid DLC. Notably absent from this briefing was any mention of the Crossfire singleplayer campaign Remedy had been working on, probably because it isn't very good, though it's clear that Epic's interest in Remedy has allowed the studio to significantly expand its project slate. We'll find out whether that results in the excellent Alan Wake 2 everyone's hoping for soon enough. View the full article

The Best Black Friday laptop deals (Image credit: Alienware)Jump straight to the deals you want... 1. Gaming laptop deals 2. Office laptop deals We're crawling closer to a flood of Black Friday gaming laptop deals this year, and it's going to be a doozy. Once the big day rolls around on November 25, you can expect gaming laptops of all power-levels to come tumbling onto our radar. For now, we've sent our price detecting bots off to find some early Black Friday gaming laptop deals, and have scraped the Early Access barrel for left over deals, but we'll be populating the hubs with flashy discounts as they appear. Black Friday gaming laptop deals are going to be everywhere over the 2022 deal season. We should see last year's stock being flushed out ready for portable versions of Nvidia's 40-series graphics cards set to hit us next year. While we wait for Nvidia to figure out how to slim down those monsters, you can bet you'll be able to find RTX 3060-powered gaming laptops on sale, all the way up to RTX 3080 machines if we're lucky. When it comes to AMD gaming laptop deals, they've always been less common. And although we are expecting announcements for RDNA 3 GPUs this month, portable versions won't be around for a while yet. In other words, cheap AMD-powered gaming laptops will be fewer than Nvidia-powered ones. But keep an eye out for the odd all AMD gem. For the best possible gaming laptop deals this Black Friday, we wholeheartedly recommend going for a more recent GPU—something in Nvidia's RTX 30-series or equivalent, ideally. There will be retailers still trying to flog you an RTX 20-series laptop for over $1,000 no doubt, but don't be fooled. You can easily find a low-end 30-series lappys for less than that, so double check before you get your wallet out for an older card. A 12th Gen Intel CPU or equivalent is your best bet to stay as current as possible. And you'll want to watch out for single channel RAM configurations, which can impede performance (1x 8GB especially is a no-no). The best PC gaming deals for Black Friday 2022 Below are all the best gaming laptop deals our automatic price trawling bots have spotted so far in anticipation of Black Friday, along with a few hand picked gaming laptops. We will continue to update right up until Black Friday and beyond, and once the fun's over, we'll then make sure to link you through to any Cyber Monday hubs right here. When is Black Friday 2022?Black Friday 2022 begins on November 25 and we're likely to see gaming laptop deals from heaps of retailers coming in. The deals will run all the way through the weekend over November 26 and 27, and into Cyber Monday on November 28. Once the initial panic is over, you can bet to see leftover discounts spilling into Cyber Week, too. So, buckle up for some great Black Friday gaming laptop deals, as we're expecting a bunch of the best gaming laptops from 2022 to go on sale. Where are the best Black Friday gaming laptop deals?In the US: Amazon - RTX 3050 laptops from Acer and Dell starting at $810 Asus - high-end ROG Zephyrus 14 with Ryzen 9 and RTX 3060 at Best Buy MSI - RTX 3080 gaming laptops up to $200 off at Newegg Gigabyte - up to 25% off Gigabyte gaming laptops at Newegg Walmart - cheap gaming laptops, including a GTX 1650 laptop under $700 B&H Photo - up to $200 off Lenovo, Asus, & MSI gaming laptops Target - refurbished laptops at decent sale prices Staples - Lenovo and HP office laptops over $100 off Lenovo - Chromebook from $310 and mobile workstations from $2,000 Razer - Bonus gift card included with some Razer Blade laptops and Razer chairs Newegg - RTX 3050 gaming laptops under $1,000 Microsoft - up to $350 off last-gen gaming laptops Dell - up to $420 off RTX 3050 gaming laptops and high-end Alienware savings In the UK: Amazon - save on Asus, Razer, and Acer gaming laptops Dell - Alienware and Dell Gaming laptop deals Overclockers - gaming laptop deals and components Ebuyer - more gaming laptops than you can handle Very - save up to £200 on Asus gaming laptops Razer UK - highly-rated Razer Blade gaming laptops Box - deals on gaming laptops(opens in new tab) Lenovo - Lenovo gaming laptops and more Scan - plenty of gaming laptops to choose from Laptops Direct - save up to £400 on MSI gaming laptops What should I look out for in a Black Friday gaming laptop deal?The best Black Friday gaming laptop deals will deliver high-performance hardware for a knockdown price, or at the very least not come with an overly inflated price tag. But it doesn't automatically scan that just because something has a three-figure discount that it will be worth the money. You need to keep an eye on what parts are being used, what else you get for your cash, and whether it's actually right for you. Things are tough for PC gaming hardware, as it stands today. But companies are still aiming to shift stock so expect some discounts on current-gen kit. Don't be fooled into parting with money for anything beyond the last generation of GPUs, however. It's unlikely there'll be a laptop with an Nvidia 10-series graphics card inside it that's worth buying this Black Friday, unless you can find a wonderfully cheap deal. Keep an eye out for storage, and memory size too. That's most true at the low end of the market, where manufacturers may aim to keep prices low by using single sticks of memory and therefore halving the potential memory bandwidth. That might not be a problem in the very cheapest of gaming laptops, however, where the GPU will make the most difference to your experience. Black Friday gaming laptop deals Our magic Black Friday price bots are searching the web, constantly tracking down the best gaming laptop deals. Gigabyte A7 K1 | Nvidia RTX 3060 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | 17.3-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $1,299 $999 at Amazon (save $300) A current-gen GPU with ray tracing capability coupled with a sweet Ryzen CPU on a big 17-inch laptop; not bad for the price, though some more SSD space would've been nice.View Deal Acer Nitro 5 | Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti | Intel Core i7 11800H | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 144Hz | 8GB RAM | 512GB SSD | $929.99 $843.78 at Amazon (save $86.21) The RAM is a little lacking, but this nifty little laptop should see you right at its native 1080p in most games. A 11th Gen Intel CPU and 3050 Ti combo makes this one a very tidy entry level gaming laptop. More storage would be nice.View Deal Razer Blade 14 | Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 | Ryzen 9 5900HX | 15.6-inch | 1440p | 165Hz | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD | $2,799.99 $2,183.98 at Amazon (save $616.01) An absolutely intense machine here with one of the best discounts we've seen. We're in love with the Blade in general, though this isn't our fave config; it's a little noisy and has the potential to throttle under heavy loads, but it's still a super speedy machine for a great price.View Deal Asus ROG Strix Scar 15 | RTX 3080 | AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX | 15.6-inch | 1080p | 300Hz | 16GB RAM | 1TB SSD | $2,399.99 $2,131.99 at Newegg (save $268) An immense component combo here, one that's sure to smash anything you throw at it, especially at its native 1080p resolution. It's not the cheapest we've seen it, but you may even be able to make the most of that speedy 300Hz refresh rate screen with gear like that under the hood.View Deal Back to top ^ Black Friday office laptop deals Our magic price searching bots regularly curate this list multiple times each day. Back to top ^ View the full article

Black Friday gaming chair deals (Image credit: Secretlab)Jump straight to the deals you want... 1. Gaming chairs 2. Office chairs It might seem a little early for Black Friday gaming chair deals—Black Friday isn't until November 25, 2022—but the holiday bonanza kicks off earlier and earlier every year. Even as we begin November, we're already starting to see retailers rushing to drop prices on the latest and greatest products, including some of our favorite gaming chairs. Our top pick for the best gaming chair, the Secretlab Titan Evo 2022, is already at a low price for Black Friday right now. This is a chair we absolutely adore, and recommend to anyone, for its excellent construction and clever magnetic features. Starting at $449 /£384, or $539/£434 for the plush SoftWeave version, this is a gaming chair worth investing in. We here at PC Gamer test a lot of gaming chairs; it's a tough job sitting around all day to get a feel for seat, but someone's got to do it. Seriously, we feel it's an important job. The chair you choose for your desktop setup is so important to keeping you healthy and happy: comfort, durability, and support are the key tenets to making a well-informed purchase. If you're looking for a chair to fulfil both your working and gaming needs, we're on the lookout for both gaming chairs and office chairs this Black Friday. No doubt the closer we get to Thanksgiving and the sales event, the more deals we'll find. However, that doesn't mean there won't be some cheap deals in the meantime. We also have our deals bots on the lookout for savings in the sections below, which will update multiple times during a day. Where are the best Black Friday gaming chair deals?In the US: PC Gamer's favorite gaming chair - Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 from $449 Amazon - heaps of cheap gaming chairs, but watch out for low-quality products Secretlab - save up to $180 off some of the best gaming chairs Walmart - GTRacing chairs from $126 B&H Photo - a selection of gaming chairs and racing cockpits Best Buy - save $90 on Razer gaming chairs and more Target - a good place to look for gaming chairs for kids Staples - Staples own gaming chairs from $130 Newegg - tons of options, but it's easy to get bogged down Dell - Alienware/Vertagear gaming chairs for under $280 In the UK: PC Gamer's favourite gaming chair - Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 from £384 Amazon - tons of gaming chairs but beware any that seem too cheap. They probably are Overclockers - Noblechairs options with free delivery Box - Anda Seat gaming chairs from £190 and more Scan - Corsair chairs as low as £150 What should I look for in a Black Friday gaming chair deal?Durability has to be one of the key tenets of any Black Friday gaming chair purchase, as does support. If your bargain purchase starts to expose its metal frame six weeks into life as your gaming throne, and the padding sags depressingly, then you might as well be perched on top of a beer keg for all the support you're getting. At the very least, you need to make sure that the gaming chair you have your eye on can offer some lumbar support, as well as adjustable arm rests. When you're typing or WASDing at a desk, those elbows need to be raised just so. Neck pillows, or adjustable head rest, are also worthy of your time and money, but you also want to make sure you actually fit too. It's not always easy to get a bead on a chair's size from an online search, so always check the measurements before dropping a dollar on a new seat. There will be maximum height and weight recommendations for most chairs, and that's absolutely worth paying attention to. We recommend only the chairs we feel hit the mark in terms of durability and support. Do I need a gaming chair or office chair?Why not one chair that fulfils both roles? There are two ways to go about this, but both are valid. On the one hand, you look at a pricier office chair, such as the Herman Miller Embody, as both a gaming throne and something for the office. I use this chair at home, and find it offers the comfort for eight hours a day, five days a week, but also allows me to relax into a more comfortable position for gaming in the evenings. The other option is to buy a premium gaming chair and use that in the office. Our top pick for a gaming chair in 2022, the Secretlab Titan Evo, is well-suited to such a task. In fact, I also use this in the office. It's ergonomic, comfortable, and it doesn't look too out of place surrounded by bog-standard chairs. At least not in the usual black finish I have. Maybe some would, but who said an office chair shouldn't have personality? So, yeah, don't feel pigeonholed into one design or the other, so long as whatever you pick is actually ergonomic, well-built, and feels comfy over long sessions. What size gaming chair do I need?If you're buying for yourself it can be a tough job knowing which size of gaming chair to get. If you're buying for someone else, it can be even tougher. Generally, we recommend the standard seat size, as there's nothing worse than a cramped bucket seat. These can become uncomfortable over time, and even wear away the fabric at points. Some brands will offer just a regular and large gaming chair, while others may offer a small as well. These also can correspond to different maximum weights, too, so you might want to consider that. Our one piece of advice is to look out for chairs with flat, or relatively flat, seat cushions. We find these are the most comfortable for most people, but especially those of us that sit in unusual positions. Black Friday gaming chair deals Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 Classic | 4D armrests | $589 $449 at Secretlab (save $140) This is our pick for the best gaming chair, and you'll know why once you sit in it. Or read our review. As for this specific design, it's one of the more understated of the lot. It's not as sensual to the touch as the Softweave fabric choice, but still boasts immaculately upholstered, premium quality Neo Hybrid Leatherette, and of course fantastic ergonomics. The full price can be a bit deceiving on Secretlab chairs, as we rarely ever see it, but this is still a good deal on a great chair.View Deal Secretlab Titan Evo 2022 Plush Pink | 4D armrests | $609 $504 at Secretlab (save $105) Nothing makes a statement to your streaming audience (or live-in partner) like a baby pink gaming chair, but of course there are other colours to chose from. It's a standout choice for the Softweave Plus Fabric design, and is a top tier design, pink or not.View Deal Secretlab Omega Worlds 2020 Edition | 4D armrests | $569 $374 at Secretlab (save $374) Wrapped in Secretlab prime 2.0 PU Leather, this Classic Omega gaming chair is the more reasonably priced choice. It may not come with magnetic headrests but it's highly adjustable, and there are more designs to choose from than with the Titan. View Deal Razer Iskur X | 299 lbs max | 4D armrests | $399.99 $309.99 at Best Buy (save $90) Razer knows what it's doing when it comes to good quality peripherals, and its chairs are no different. With a loud green trim and subtle snakeskin design, the Iskur is a distinctive gaming chair, from a trusted brand.View Deal Razer Iskur X XL | 399 lbs max | 4D armrests | $499.99 $334.99 at Best Buy (save $165) This is a like-for-like scale up of the model above, except it offers a higher weight capacity and a more generous frame.View Deal Our magic price searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day. Black Friday office chair deals Our magic price searching bots are all over the web, tracking down the best prices all the time. That means this list will be regularly curated multiple times each day. View the full article

Open-chip surgery is a thing. And it involves ion beams. This came as news to me as I wandered through Intel's lab in Haifa, Israel, and no sooner had I learned about its existence I came face to face with the impressive machine that performs the surgery. It's surprisingly small, quiet even, and it has one of the coolest names imaginable: Focused Ion Beam, or FIB for short. When it comes to fixing a faulty processor, there's no easy way to do it. I should have known that performing bypass surgery on chips with transistors only nanometers across would require intense effort and precision. Yet it's so easy to disregard what goes into making a chip when you're regularly benchmarking heaps of them like I am. But as I'm standing in the FIB lab, watching an engineer hone in on a microscopic area inside a chip and alter how it functions with extreme accuracy, the intense effort that goes into each stage of the chipmaking process hits me like a ton of bricks. The fact that any of these chips exist, and we get new ones every single year, is mind boggling. The reason I'm here at Intel's Israel Development Center (IDC) is to get a glimpse of what it takes to develop, manufacture, and validate a processor. Intel's IDC is where a lot of the legwork takes place in the creation of its processor architectures, including many of those familiar to PC gamers over the years. Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Ice Lake, Rocket Lake, Alder Lake, and now Raptor Lake chips—these all originate with IDC. So you could say it's a good place to learn about the intricacies of building a processor from scratch. IDC IDC, here we come. (Image credit: Intel) "You have a spare tyre in your car, I have a spare block in my CPU." Our tour begins at the end: the Post Silicon Validation Lab. This is where engineers team up with manufacturers, OEMs, and partners to ensure that Intel's upcoming chips work well in their systems. While most PC builders will work to their own spec, most large-scale system builders are working to Intel's. To one side of me, Microsoft Surface laptops with the latest mobile chips. To the other, two Alienware desktops running Raptor Lake. These systems were in the lab in September, so at least a month in advance of the 13th Gen's launch, if not long before our hoard of journalists were bused in. At the end of the room sits a drawer of goodies, including two early Raptor Lake samples. Though what's more out of the ordinary in this lab is the PCIe 5.0 test card. When Intel adopted Gen 5 for its 12th Gen CPUs for the first time, there were no add-in cards capable of utilising Gen 5 ports. Intel had to make one for itself. It seems so obvious in that testing environment that such a device would be required, but I hadn't thought about how testing new features on your unannounced or high-performance products often means building cutting-edge testing vehicles, too. It's not a sleek looking device, but it's not particularly shoddy either, and I'm told it gets the job done. Intel's PCIe 5.0 test card is a pretty nifty-looking piece of gear. (Image credit: Intel) This validation lab is also where we hear of Alder Lake's first boot on Windows. The 12th Gen chips were the first to use Intel's new hybrid architecture: a slightly less homogenous approach to computing utilising both Performance-cores (P-cores) and Efficient-cores (E-cores) on a single die. This disparate build requires a different approach to OS optimisation, and Intel's engineers made no bones about the hours it took to boot an Alder Lake CPU into Windows for the first time. The first time Intel booted the chip was from the very building I was standing in. But the 12th Gen chip wasn't. The chip was located over 6,000 miles away in the US. A completely remote first boot. Could you send us one of these adjustable chassis please, Intel? (Image credit: Intel) We head out the lab the way we came in, back into a room lined with test benches for aisle after aisle. This is Intel's stress and stability area: where CPUs are put through their paces to see if they're ready to ship or if another stepping is required. Intel has some of the most modular and impressively compact test benches I've ever seen, and I'm only slightly (very) jealous of them. The PC Gamer test benches are a mess by comparison—functional (mostly) but messy. These are gorgeous, modular and compact by comparison. Intel is running what must be hundreds of systems with bespoke hardware, automated programs, and cooling. The liquid cooling loops throughout Intel's labs are actually plumbed into the wall, for goodness' sake, which is the first time I've seen anything of the sort. There are rows and rows of test benches just like this. (Image credit: Intel) As we're walking through the aisles of test benches, there are heaps of recognisable codenames stuck to each and every one: RPL (Raptor Lake) and ADL (Alder Lake) among them. There is more often than not a familiar benchmark running on a constant pre-programmed loop, too. 3DMark is being used to measure the might of these chips, and we're told that engineering samples from different stages have variable standards set for stability in order to get the go-ahead to move to the next stage of the operation. Then we're onto power and thermal performance testing, though it's not so much next in a chip's life as it's just where we're ferried to next. I'm told there's plenty of communication between teams and a constant back and forth on samples, so it's less of the one-way street to validate a chip as you might imagine it to be. Most of the gear in power and thermal testing will be familiar to PC gamers. (Image credit: Intel) This is where a lot of debugging for future chips happens in regards to applications that customers, like you and me, might actually use. Gaming is the benchmark of choice for many of the chips being tested while we're in the lab. Here Intel is pairing its CPUs, namely Raptor Lake at this time, with Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. It has a whole lot of them, and lots of consumer motherboards, lining the workbenches alongside accurate thermal and power monitoring tools. A handful of high-end cards were being tested in Shadow of the Tomb Raider while I was in the room, with intermittent monitors flickering to life with graphs showing voltage curves and temperatures. Intel uses some heavy-duty testing gear mixed in with off-the-shelf parts. (Image credit: Intel) The engineers here are also using standard CPU coolers, to better replicate how these chips will be actually setup out in the wider world. All roads lead to the Class Test Lab. Every engineering sample spotted in a database or sold on eBay over the past few years once made its way through here. We're told it's the most engineering focused lab at Intel, but it's said with a smirk. It has the desired effect of getting a rise out of our Intel tour guides from other departments, at least. Everywhere you look in the class test lab is another rack of chips being tested. (Image credit: Intel) In this lab, which is lined with racks of test machines and containers with multiple generations of samples within, Intel is able to classify blocks independently of each other. "You have a spare tyre in your car, I have a spare block in my CPU," an engineer tells us. Each block in a CPU is a functional component. They range in size from the smallest of buses to a whole core component. Having the ability to classify these on a block by block level offers flexibility in both construction and troubleshooting, so it's an important step in speeding up the design and validation process. Trays and trays of chips awaiting testing. (Image credit: Intel) If it's broken, we'll find it. Electrical validation offers another way to check a processor for errors. This is primarily a job for robots, which work through trays of chips, installing them into a motherboard one by one, and run various scenarios and configurations to check for errors. We're stood by some of Intel's older testing tools, which require some human calibration to prevent a robot arm jabbing its suckered finger into the socket. Though close by is a brand new machine. This fancy number, we're told, removes the need for even more human configuration, allowing for swifter, more comprehensive data gathering. Intel even has a robot that slots RAM sticks into a motherboard. The future is now. (Image credit: Intel) As you might already be noticing, there are many steps to validating a processor before its final design or release. But what happens when one of these steps finds something isn't working as intended? That depends on the error, of course, but when an error is found the chip heads to a department called Component Debug. "If it's broken, we'll find it," an engineer called Arik tells us. If you know what you're looking for, you can spot errors even in these two nondescript images. (Image credit: Intel) In debug they uncover the root cause of an issue. Say a chip isn't hitting the speed expected of it, to give one example of myriad things that could go wrong with billions of transistors in play, someone has to figure out why. Arik explains to us that in this example they'd be looking for a path that's limiting frequency or causing instability. To do that, they can scan the CPU with a laser to find areas where something isn't looking right. The image they get back from the scan sort of looks like red noise to me, but I'm no electrical engineer. It's absolutely some sort of electrical divination, but from these splodges of red and black Arik and his team can spot where something doesn't look right. From there they can attempt to devise a permanent fix. If you look closely here, the ACB signals don't match the ABC signals. To test if this is the cause of a bug, the green path will be added to the CPU in the FIB lab. (Image credit: Intel) Then it goes to the FIB lab. I began this feature talking about the Focused Ion Beam machine and it's because it blows my mind. The FIB tool sits in the centre of the room. It's smaller than I imagined. This is used to mill a CPU and fire ions on it until it works. Sounds so simple, right? To fix a CPU, first it has to be milled, creating a tiny upside down pyramid shape in the silicon. This area is tough to see with the naked eye but these systems have an electron microscope at hand to help with that. With a microscopic worksite created, an ion beam is blasted into it to either deposit materials in order to etch a new pathway into the silicon—a tiny bridge, or connection that wasn't there before—or destroy one. It's marvellous. The FIB SEM machine with a monitor showing the actual view that the technicians use to perform microscopic surgery on a chip. (Image credit: Intel) The issues and their potential fixes from debug end up in a bucket of work for a FIB team to look at, patch up, and send back for retesting. The key thing here is that the blueprints for a processor, known as masks, aren't necessarily being changed before a fix is found and tested to ensure it works. This way, when the debug team find a fault and suggest a fix, the FIB lab can etch the fix into a chip at a nanometre level and then fire it back for retesting, If the issue is resolved, great, that's a change for the next stepping of an engineering sample, along with many other fixes. The end result, would you believe. (Image credit: Intel) The one thing you have to be extremely careful about in the FIB lab is vibration, however. One small movement could send an ion beam on a destructive path across perfectly fine silicon. Even though the FIB machine is on a vibration-proof section of the floor from where I'm standing, I'm constantly checking my feet don't tread over the edge as I watch someone carry out silicon surgery less than a metre away. We leave the FIB lab and head back to wrap up the day. At Intel's IDC Haifa lab we've met the people behind validation, design and development for Intel's processors, but to get an idea of manufacturing we need to head down the road, to Fab 28. Fab 28 Intergalactic, planetary, planetary, intergalactic. (Image credit: Intel) "Every die wants to live." An hour away from Tel Aviv, a few hours from Haifa, just outside a city called Kiryat Gat, is one of Intel's major manufacturing hubs: Fab 28. This is one of few places worldwide with bleeding-edge fabrication capability. It's where I'm given a rare opportunity to not only tour the fab facility, but walk inside the beating heart of a chip fabrication plant, known as the cleanroom. If you have a 12th Gen or 13th Gen processor in your gaming PC, it may well have come from here. Intel likes to split production of any one chip across multiple locations—eggs in baskets and all that—but a great deal of its top gaming processors come from right here. I dare not think of the risk assessment Intel had to carry out to let gaggles of journalists enter its hallowed halls, but, somehow, we were allowed to enter. Above the door, a motto created by the Intel engineering team: "Every die wants to live." The Gown Room staff are very particular about you wearing your bunny suit correctly. (Image credit: Intel) But before I can step foot in the cleanroom itself, I must take the necessary precautions. Intel is serious about no contaminants getting inside the cleanroom, following a few too many issues with dust, crumbs, and pizzas making their way into the fab floor back in the early days. Nowadays Intel has rigorous rules for attire on entry. Hence the bunny suit I'm instructed to don in the gown room before I'm allowed to enter. The bunny suit has undoubtedly become one of the more famous symbols of Intel throughout its history—just behind the Intel bong. That's bong as in the five-note song played at the end of every Intel advert for years, not the other thing. I don't even know what that is. Once upon a time these famous protective suits included ventilators that engineers would have to wear for the duration of their 12-hour shifts. Nowadays, the tools each come with their own controlled environment, so they're no longer required. Instead, engineers have to wear only a fabric face mask, hood, hair net, gloves, more gloves, overalls, and tall boots. All of which is washed, stored, reused, or recycled in the gown room in a cordoned off area at the entrance of the cleanroom. Though the 12-hour shifts remain. In fact, many of those that work in the roles responsible for the day-to-day operations of the fab will work relatively long shifts, including those lining the desks in the control room. The other thing I'm handed for my cleanroom visit is a specially-made cleanroom safe notepad and pen. You wouldn't think much of them to look at—they're fairly standard looking jotting utensils—but it's a good example of the standards that must be kept to ensure a smooth operation. FOUPs fly overhead throughout the major thoroughfares in the fab. (Image credit: Intel) From the preparation area it's a short walk to the cleanroom doors. The first thing I notice as I approach are the lights bathing everything in a yellow glow after them. That's not just for show. Intel uses yellow lights to protect the wafers from harmful rays causing unwanted exposure on the nascent CPUs. This is a factory built to etch wafers with lithography, after all, and that means light is the primary tool with which to go about that. It's all one big fab. My first thought upon entering the fab is how gargantuan it is. It goes on seemingly forever in one direction, and we're a football field or two away from the end in the other. Fab 28 is connected up to Fab 18, and to Intel's engineers "it's all one big fab." Someday soon it'll also be connected to Intel's Fab 38, which is currently in construction next door. Fab 38's floor plan makes Fab 28 look almost small by comparison, but it's largely just steel girders and colossal cranes right now. My second thought upon entering the fab is slight concern at the wafer bots screeching along above my head. These are known adorably as FOUPs (Front Opening Unified Pods), and you can't see it from the cleanroom floor, but above our heads there's an automated superhighway for FOUPs that can travel at even faster speeds to reach the far ends of the fab. These bots are how all wafers go from point A to point B inside the fab, then onto point C, D, E, F, and so on—there are many stages to the chip making process, and I don't pretend to know them all. As a stack of wafers is finished in one machine, a FOUP zooms over, two lines descend from under it, the wafers are secured, and it reels them up into its cold, robotic embrace. Then it figures out the best route to take to the next station and zips off thataway. Potentially slowing or stopping on occasion along the way to allow another bot to give way to traffic on a busy intersection. This system, like most in the fab, is entirely automated, and is a part of Intel's Automated Material Handling System. Not sure how I'd feel about working at my desk with FOUPs flying overhead. (Image credit: Intel) There are also plenty of engineers at work to ensure the fab is functioning properly and efficiently, some of which work in the cleanroom and others that monitor progress from the ROC, or Remote Operation Control—a 24/7 control tower where every two hours the entire staff gets up for some routine stretching to, if my memory serves me, Israeli psychedelic trance duo Infected Mushroom. They say it's really important to them that everyone has a break—they work long 12-hour shifts—but we didn't chance upon this ritual. With a smile, they admit they've been doing it for every group, which works out to roughly six two-hourly stretches in an hour or so. Next door to ROC—close enough you can hear their psy-trance through the door—is DOR, or Defect Operational Review. This team is the first defence against dodgy wafers, scouring data and harnessing statistics to uncover the cause of defects out of the fab floor. Any issue, however big or small, could come from a number of sources: a specific tool, a process, a material. It's a key job and the relatively small team here take care of all of it. Dave, is that you? Oh no, sorry. (Image credit: Intel) But I'm wrapped up in my overalls for a reason and over in the cleanroom a few friendly engineers took the time out to talk us through the tools and processes they're working on each day. I would think it's a strange place to spend a lot of time, mainly for the yellow lights and bunny suit. But also because you can recognise your coworkers while you're there by only their badge and eye colour. An Intel engineer explains a few of the key tools surrounding me as we walk further into the fab. It's all frightfully expensive equipment—from the likes of Cymer, Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL), and ASML—but it's the lithographic tools that I'm told are the priciest. At one point we stand next to an ASML Twinscan immersion system, which will cost $100 to $200 million, and we're facing another pricey tool, a TEL Lithius Pro V. Bear in mind, some of these tools can handle over 200 wafers in an hour, and they're absolutely massive, and there's a seemingly endless amount of them. If you can believe it, these DUV tools are on their way out, and the next-generation will require even more space and cost that much more money. Hence why Fab 38 is springing up next door. The next few nodes from Intel will require masses of EUV machines, for Extreme Ultraviolet, and will allow for the progress to smaller and more efficient process nodes. A long line of FOUPs into the distance, all with places to be and wafers to see. (Image credit: Intel) Fab 28 statsLocation: Kiryat Gat, Israel Opened: 2008 Wafer size: 300mm Primary node: Intel 7 Gaming processors made here: 12th and 13th Gen Core processors Yet one tool used inside the cleanroom might be more familiar to us PC gamers, and that's the Microsoft HoloLens set up nearby. Unlike your VR headset gathering dust in the corner, the Intel team actually uses this kit for training new staff. A routine job is pre-programmed in by a more experienced member of the team and the new staff member has prompts, images, and explanations so they may better learn the process on the job. AR training is a relatively new addition to the cleanroom. Intel introduced it just a few months before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, which by most people's opinion is pretty good timing. And with that our time in the fab comes to a close. A short trip through a very long building, but you could spend all day in there just rooting around the maze of tools. Yet the cleanroom is just one slice of the fab. There's also the roof space, where the cleanroom's controlled environment is maintained; the sub-fab, which houses the important facilities for power management, chemicals, etc.; and then the dirty utilities floor below that, which as you might imagine houses all the less sanitary power and waste facilities. Four floors total. You might be able to spot me. I'm in the back, third from the right. (Image credit: Intel) As we walk out from the yellow light and back to the gown room to get back into our civvies, we take a snap. I'm at the back, on the right of the photograph, feeling pretty content. Life goal achieved. Fab 38 More of Fab 38 had been constructed during my visit than shown in this photograph. There were certainly a lot more cranes. (Image credit: Intel) Fab 38—10 bigger than Fab 28 Fab 28 is big. Fab 38 is massive. When Fab 38 is completed, it will house tools capable of delivering EUV-based process nodes, which won't come a moment too soon for the next generation of processors. EUV technology offers to dramatically reduce the complexity of making a modern processor and continue the descent into smaller and more efficient nodes. Up until now, engineers have been working tirelessly to find new ways to stuff more transistors into a given area of silicon with existing 193nm technologies. That means tricking a 193nm lithographic source into producing a much denser and efficient product. They've generally been quite successful at it, too, using multi-patterning and masks to get the desired results. But it involves more steps, more ways for things to go wrong, and generally will continue to get more expensive as time goes on. That wouldn't be very 'Moore's Law is alive and well', would it? So Intel, and its like-minded competition, has other plans: EUV. EUV uses extreme ultraviolet wavelengths that are roughly equivalent to a 13.5nm source, cutting out a heap of extra steps and improving yields. Basically, saving a whole lot of time and money. It was, once upon a time, considered too difficult to ever really work in practice. However, that's a challenge most boffins couldn't resist, and lo and behold we're now on the precipice of EUV process nodes from all the major chipmakers, including Intel, TSMC, and Samsung. The impossible is becoming reality. That's Fab 28 in the background. (Image credit: Intel) The shift to EUV is still a massive undertaking, however. Not the least bit because these machines are somehow even more pricey than the ones they replace. The other challenge is where do you put these machines: they're bigger than ever, partially due to requiring even more controlled environments to function, and they won't easily fit where older machines exist today. The answer: you have to build a big new fab to house them. And that's exactly what Intel's doing with Fab 38, and its other new fab developments in Germany and the US. But Fab 38 is nowhere near ready to build chips yet. What I'm staring at from across the top of a multi-story car park is primarily the foundations of a very expensive building, wrought from thick girders of metal and up to 42 metres into the Earth. Every square metre matters in a fab. Intel avoids having pillars in the fab for this reason, and instead uses a metal frame circumventing the outer walls of the building. It's not a cheap design decision, nor is it an easy one to carry out. In fact, Intel has hired the world's second largest crane to lift the constituent parts of this metal frame into place. This isn't the supermassive crane, but by comparison this crane would have looked tiny. (Image credit: Intel) I'm told Intel had wanted the world's biggest crane, but that it was busy building a nuclear power plant in the UK. So it had to settle for the second-largest. Our guide tells us that even this crane costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to operate each day. Your next upgrade (Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest The other key ingredient for the fab is concrete. The construction requires so much that Intel has three concrete factories set up dedicated to getting it to the site. To get the concrete from these sites to the fab construction, a large fleet of trucks is required. That causes another issue: congestion. Israel's main highways and roads seem in good enough condition, and on our travels it looks like they're building a lot more of them, but we did get stuck in traffic a handful of times. To try and avoid causing that logistical nightmare, and to not make matters worse for those nearby, Intel's concrete trucks only travel at night. The exact date when the fab will be finished isn't set, but it'll be ready sometime in the middle of the decade. Likely it'll miss out on the first wave of EUV processes out of Intel, with Intel 4. It takes so long to build new capacity, Intel is essentially betting on demand many years in advance of when it'll come. It's a forecasting nightmare: we're just off the back of unprecedented demand for silicon and now we're in a period of a relatively slow market for processors. But if another such wave of demand for chips comes again in the future, Intel says it will be prepared. Fab 38 has more room to grow if needed, it's just a matter of when it can hire an extremely large crane. View the full article

The novelty of Google's doodles doesn't really wear off does it? The doodles have always been a pretty great way to signify dates of historical importance, but when it comes to holidays and festivities Google ups the effort and sometimes brings us a little game to play instead. This year Google has brought back a game from a previous Halloween: Great Ghoul Duel. This 4v4 arena duel is part Snake and part Slither.io. It's all about collecting Spirit Flames across the map and then bringing them back to your base. The team with the most flames by the end of the time wins, simple eh? There is one wrinkle, though: if your chain of Spirit Flames is interrupted by the enemy team, they can steal the flames and you'll be stunned for a second, mourning the loss of your hard earned orbs. It's pretty easy to get a hang of and there are even some achievements you can earn if you're really into the game. It's a nice little Halloween treat, and I always appreciate it when there are thematically spooky games without too many scares involved. (Image credit: Google) When Doodles arrive, Google puts together a little page of information on the project and even sometimes notes about how it was created. The Great Ghoul Duel's page has some credits, early sketches of the game's new characters, and even the names of the ghosts you play when you embark on your battles. My favourite is the little ghost cat with a fish in its mouth. Their name is Olive and I'd do anything for them. And if you're not into the new game and miss 2016's Magic Cat Academy, don't worry, you can still play it in the Doodles archive for your fill of spooky browser game content. View the full article

Overwatch League drops are a big part of the arena shooter's competitive tournament, letting viewers earn special Home & Away skins for every hero by watching official matches, as well as player-designed namecards, and some cosmetic sprays. While the Overwatch 2 Twitch Drops seemed a little stingy, there are a lot more free skins on offer this time around. I say "free", but you're actually going to be paying for them with your time rather than with money, though you can always have the stream open in another tab while you're doing something else. You also don't have to watch consistently to earn the rewards, so you can view a little at a time to reach the necessary amount. In this guide, I'll explain how to set up Overwatch League drops so you can watch on YouTube, and what rewards you can earn based on how long you spend watching. It's worth noting that even if you missed previous matches, there will be replays the following day. How to set up Overwatch League drops (Image credit: Blizzard) If you want to earn tokens and cosmetics by watching league matches, you'll need to link your Battle.net account with your YouTube account. However, this isn't done through the connections page in your Battle.net account. Here's how to link them: Log into your YouTube accountClick the avatar in the top right and head to settingsClick 'Connected Apps' on the left sideClick 'Connect' next to Battle.net Once you're all hooked up, you can watch matches on the official Overwatch League YouTube channel. Alternatively, you can also log into your Blizzard account on the Overwatch League website to watch matches there and earn rewards. The remaining playoffs and the Grand Finals all take place between October 30 - November 4. Here's the schedule for when they take place. Overwatch League skins: How to get them You can earn Overwatch League Home & Away skins for every hero by watching official matches, with three skins rewarded for every three hours you watch along with some additional cosmetics. You'll also receive five League Tokens per hour, which can be redeemed for further skins in the store if you get enough of them. Here's the breakdown of the rewards you get for each viewing bracket: Time watchedSkinsExtra rewards3 hoursBastion, Tracer, GenjiGrand Finals 1 spray6 hoursMei, Hanzo, MercyZhulong player icon9 hoursBrigitte, Ana, ZenyattaLuchador player icon12 hoursD.Va, Ashe, Wrecking BallRoyal Knight player icon15 hoursPharah, Echo, CassidyHappi player icon18 hoursBaptiste, Sigma, RoadhogClockwork player icon21 hoursReinhardt, Soldier: 76, Orisa, SombraOWL Turns 5 player icon24 hoursTorbjorn, Doomfist, SymmetraLucio Dance Party emote27 hoursLucio, Reaper, Junkrat, Moira-30 hoursWidowmaker, Winston, Zarya100 League Tokens There are also specific rewards for the Grand Finals if you just want skins for the new characters, Junker Queen, Kiriko, and Sojourn. You can get these by watching two hours of the Grand Finals. All rewards will need to be redeemed before 31 December, 2022. View the full article

Though it's always good to see someone free themselves from the shackles of social media, today's notable escape attempt is bittersweet. After just recently establishing a Patreon, prolific videogame news hound Nibel has decided to pack it all in. A trip to Nibel's feed used to be part of my daily routine back when I was PC Gamer's news editor, and their constant stream of videogame titbits has been keeping Twitter users informed for years. Twitter is no place for original reporting, but Nibel's sharing of stories, accompanied by headlines and sometimes bullet points, proved to be just as valuable, turning their feed into a repository for the day's biggest stories. You've probably seen plenty of hat tips to Nibel in our own articles, and you'd be hard pressed to find a site that hasn't benefited from their speedy sharing of news. A successful Twitter account doesn't usually translate into real-world success, however, and despite building a following of nearly 500,000, Nibel hasn't found a way to make it sustainable. "Unfortunately, I was not able to create an interesting and sustainable Patreon which is evident in the number of Patrons stagnating during the first weekend and the first (of many) pledges being deleted during the first week," the farewell post on Patreon reads. "I have miscalculated the value of my Twitter activity and realize that it is nothing worth supporting by itself for the vast majority of people. It is not me who is popular, but it is the work that is useful. It is not valuable by itself, but a comfortable timesaver, and I get that now." What Nibel did was no simple thing, as evidenced by the many other Twitter accounts that you've never heard of sharing news. Being consistently on top of all the big stories, and knowing how to frame them and tease out the most important details, is a skill Nibel has that a lot of the people running news sharing accounts don't. But it's hard to get people to pay for something they're already getting for free. Nibel undersells their value in their introspective post, but I agree that the main value of the account was that it was a "comfortable timesaver". Nibel created an extremely convenient resource, particularly for those just wanting the headlines, and signing up for Patreons, joining Discord servers and all these extra things are not convenient. I can empathise, and I suspect anyone working in journalism can. Even the most invaluable reporting is often not seen as worth paying for, and this has only become a bigger issue since the decline of newspapers and magazines. You can get all your news online for free. But while websites can rely on ad revenue, affiliate links and sponsored content, that's not really an option for a Twitter account that shares news. Nibel's final tweet reads: "After some introspection, I've made the decision to focus my time and energy elsewhere and move on from Twitter. This marks the end of my video games coverage and my active participation in this platform. Thanks to everybody for the fun times!" Even though I stopped posting on Twitter back in July, I continue to browse it for work, and it will be weird not seeing Nibel's news gracing my feed anymore. Even though they've posted their last tweet, I can't quite bring myself to unfollow them—the account is basically an institution. View the full article

NASCAR driver Ross Chastain rocketed from 10th to 5th place in the final turn of a 500-lap race yesterday, securing himself a spot in the end-of-season Cup race and in NASCAR history, too. And he did it with a move he learned in a videogame. "Played a lot of NASCAR 2005 on the GameCube."@RossChastain explained his video-game move. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/4jkF6BzAgkOctober 30, 2022 See more Chastain made use of the classic 'wall-riding' manoeuvre: accelerating into the racetrack barrier at full speed and letting it steer him past five competitors. The foolhardy move not only secured Chastain's team—Trackhouse Racing—its first ever appearance in the NASCAR Championship final, but it also set the record for the fastest lap in the history of the Martinsville Speedway, where the race occurred. Growing up, Chastain "played a lot of NASCAR 2005 on the GameCube" he said in a post-race interview, "and I never knew if it would actually work. I mean I did that when I was 8 years old". That didn't dissuade him, though: "I just made the choice. I grabbed fifth gear down the back and full-committed" before he "basically let go of the wheel" and let the gods of stock car racing decide his fate. It clearly worked out, as Chastain's position among the four racers in the Championship this coming Sunday will attest, but not everyone is thrilled about the racer's game-inspired antics. Last year's champion Kyle Larson told reporters that the move was "not a good look for our sport, at all [...] I think it's pretty embarrassing". Of course, Larson himself attempted a similar but unsuccessful move in a race last year, so maybe he's just jealous of Chastain's technique. It's a dramatic example of videogames crossing over into the real world, but it's far from the only overlap between the NASCAR world and ours. More than a few NASCAR drivers keep their skills sharp with iRacing, the rules-heavy racing sim that we quite like ourselves. Personally, I'm hoping Chastain unleashes another game-inspired trick at Sunday's final. Maybe he can cheat the system by just reversing over the finish line right at the start. View the full article

Three weeks after breaking her back at TwitchCon, Adriana Chechik has shared details of her recovery in her first stream since the incident happened. For anyone out of the loop, TwitchCon San Diego happened earlier this month. It featured a foam pit where streamers participated in Gladiator-style battles, attempting to knock each other off foam platforms. It sounds fun, but it turns out it was less of a 'pit' and more of a 'single layer of foam cubes lining a concrete floor' type situation. This was unfortunately discovered by Chechik when she went to celebrate her victory with a cheerleader's toe touch off the platform. She landed on her tailbone, breaking her back in two places. In the weeks since, Chechik has been offering some updates on Twitter. Several surgeries—one of which lasted over five hours—revealed that she had "more fusions than expected, bones completely crushed" and "nerve damage" to her bladder. She returned home a week later, writing on Twitter how "the thing that sucks the most about this is you always just feel pain. Walking is painful, but just laying down is painful, sleeping is painful, legit nothing is without pain." With her first return stream to Twitch after the incident at TwitchCon left her with a broken backAdriana Chechik revealed she found out she was pregnant once visiting the doctor, she could not keep the kid due to the surgery she had to undergo pic.twitter.com/iLEcD2zvt1October 30, 2022 See more Now, Chechik has made her first appearance on Twitch since the foam pit incident. Dressed up as Bride of Chucky, she revealed how she was feeling post-surgeries and almost a month into recovery. "I'm out of breath, if you can't tell I'm already out of breath," she said. "I get out of breath holding my phone, everything." She also showed off her surgery scar, saying the surgeons "did an amazing job," adding: "the stitches are inside because I'm a model." She later posted a picture of it to Twitter, confirming that the scar was around 11 inches. Chechik also revealed that she discovered she was pregnant during the surgeries but was unable to keep the baby due to them. "I don't care, everyone's gonna know but I was pregnant," she said during her stream. "I didn't find out until I was in the hospital, so I also have, like, crazy hormones. I'm not pregnant anymore, because of the surgery I couldn't keep it. But my hormones are just also through the 'frell'in' roof because of that." Understandably, the stream was absent of any mentions of lawsuits against Twitch or Lenovo, who were operating the foam pit at the event. Anything that's currently going on will likely be happening behind closed doors, and there's a chance we'll never hear anything at all if a settlement is reached early on. Twitch has not commented on the incident since it happened, and Lenovo has been quiet since it gave a fairly vague comment to Rolling Stone during the event to say it was "aware of the incidents" and had closed the booth. View the full article

Hello dome, Welcome to UnityHQ Nolfseries Community. Please feel free to browse around and get to know the others. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask. dome joined on the 10/31/2022. View Member

If two new leaked images of AMD's new reference design for an upcoming Radeon RX 7000-series graphics card is to be believed, AMD's RDNA 3 cards will look absolutely gorgeous. The two images purported to show an AMD RX 7000-series graphics card have been posted by leaker 9550pro on Twitter, and they stack the card up against today's top performer from the red team, the Radeon RX 6950 XT. Source: QQ pic.twitter.com/FhYix70RXPOctober 31, 2022 See more The card looks to be a touch longer than the RX 6950 XT, which suggests it's set to be the RX 7900 XT or some similarly beefy GPU. While the new card is also a triple-fan design, it also appears the fans may be a little larger. Looking to the side of the alleged card and you'll find a chunky heatsink with a touch more room to breathe than the RX 6950 XT. Though what's notable is the inclusion of two 8-pin power connectors. AMD's Scott Herkelman confirmed that AMD would not be using the newer 12VHPWR connector found on the RTX 4090 last week. That announcement came after reports of the 12VHPWR connector melting for some unlucky users, which Nvidia has since said it is investigating. These leaked photos would suggest that AMD will stick to just two 8-pin power connectors at the high-end, at least on its own reference cards. From that decision we can infer that AMD is aiming for a similar TDP for its high-end RDNA 3 cards as the current RDNA 2 generation, as greater power consumption would almost certainly require at least another 8-pin connector. The RX 6950 XT has a 335W TDP. Your next upgrade (Image credit: Future)Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD Best gaming motherboard: The right boards Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest That said, we don't know which model this is, if it is indeed a real AMD sample, nor whether a higher-end card exists above it. There's no visible way to stuff another power connector on this cooler design, however, which suggests this might be the top number at launch. It's also a massive cooler, but that doesn't preclude an even bigger GPU as proven by Nvidia's colossal RTX 4090. These images do look to be in some way genuine, notably matching the design teased by AMD earlier in the year, and at the top of this story. Though the red PCB and extra pins on the top (and lack of backplate) suggest this is an engineering sample, not a finished design. There's not long to wait for official confirmation of the AMD RDNA 3 graphics cards. AMD has a livestream event called "together we advance_gaming" set for November 3, so tune in for more later this week. View the full article

Elden Ring's NPC quests (Image credit: FromSoftware)Elden Ring quests guide - Elden Ring: Ranni's quest - Elden Ring: Blaidd's quest - Elden Ring: Millicent's quest - Elden Ring: Nepheli's quest - Elden Ring: Fia's quest - Elden Ring: Hyetta's quest - Elden Ring: Thops' quest The Elden Ring Sellen quest is vital if you want to play the RPG as a master of sorceries and magic, since by following it you can get strong spells such as Comet Azur and some of the best sorcerer robes and glintstone crowns available in the game. That said, the quest itself can be a little confusing since it doesn't actually start when you first meet Sellen in the basement of the Waypoint Ruins in Limgrave. You'll have to progress a bit further into the game first in order to unlock her full quest, get all of the items and spells available, and learn a little lore about the nature of sorcery in the Lands Between. The conclusion of the Sellen quest even ties in with Jerren the Witch Hunter, who you may better know as that guy who sits outside of the Radahn boss arena. In this Elden Ring Sellen quest guide, I'll walk you through the steps you need to take to unlock the full quest, and what rewards you can get for making certain choices. If you still haven't played Elden Ring and are avoiding spoilers, you may want to steer clear, since this guide features some later game story details. Elden Ring Sellen quest summary Here's a quick summary of the steps you need take to complete this quest: Meet Sellen at the cellar in the Waypoint Ruins in Limgrave.Retrieve the Comet Azur sorcery from Primeval Sorcerer Azur in Mt. Gelmir.Talk to Sellen at Waypoint Ruins and get the key for the barrier.Find Lusat in the Sellia Hideaway in Caelid.Return to Waypoint Ruins and talk to Sellen.Defeat Radahn at Redmane Castle and talk to Jerren afterwards.Speak to Sellen, then find her at Witchbane Ruins in Weeping Peninsula.Head to the secret basement at the Three Sisters and transplant the Primal Glintstone.Head back to Witchbane Ruins to find Jerren.Go to Raya Lucaria Grand Library to make your choice. Waypoint Ruins Image 1 of 2 Waypoint Ruins location. (Image credit: From Software)Image 2 of 2 Primeval Sorcerer Azur location is marked in red. (Image credit: From Software) How to start Sellen's quest You first meet Sorcerer Sellen at the Waypoint Ruins in Limgrave. She's located in the cellar there and you can access her room once you've defeated the Mad Pumpkin Head boss inside. Locate the door at the back of the cellar to find Sellen. Sellen will ask if you want to study under her and if you say yes, will sell Elden Ring sorceries and receive sorcery manuscripts. You need to accept this if you want to start her main quest. You need to progress a lot further into the game to trigger the next part of this quest. You should also make sure you've beaten the main boss of the Raya Lucaria Academy, Rennala. You need to head to the Hermit Village in Mt. Gelmir. To get here, head to the west side of the Altus Plateau, past the Wyndham Ruins, and look for the Seethewater River site of grace. Keep heading along the river, past the fort, and past the lava pool with Magma Wyrm boss. In the village you'll find a Demi-Human Queen boss, and just past it, Primeval Sorcerer Azur. Speak to them to get the Comet Azur sorcery. You can now head back to Sellen at Waypoint Ruins. Choose "Let us journey together" when prompted and she'll ask you to find another sorcerer. You also receive the Sellian Sealbreaker item. Sellia Hideaway Image 1 of 2 Sellia Hideaway entrance location. (Image credit: From Software)Image 2 of 2 The illusory wall is in the cliff behind this tombstone. (Image credit: From Software) How to find Lusat in Sellia Hideaway Survive the Lands Between with these Elden Ring guides (Image credit: FromSoftware)Elden Ring guide: Conquer the Lands Between Elden Ring paintings: Solutions and locations Elden Ring map fragments: Reveal the world Elden Ring co-op: How to squad up online Now, head to Caelid. To the north-east of the Church of the Plague site of grace near Sellia, you'll find a graveyard guarded by a battlemage. Find the tallest headstone and hit the wall to reveal the entrance to Sellia Hideaway. Make your way through this dungeon, breaking through a few illusion walls until you reach the big room with the blue crystals and the Royal Revenant below. Make your way across the crystal bridge and drop to the lower one towards the end to take you back to solid ground. Hop across the gap and follow the wall of the cave until you spot another blue crystal bridge below to your right. You'll know if you're at the right place because there's a crystal snail sitting on it. From there, drop down to the area below. It's quite a long drop with a hostile sorcerer at the bottom, so be careful. Once it's been dispatched, use the Sellian Sealbreaker on the blue seal and venture down the tunnel to find Lusat at the end. You'll receive the Stars of Ruin sorcery. Now return to Sellen at Waypoint Ruins and exhaust all of her dialogue options. Witchbane Ruins Witchbane Ruins location. (Image credit: From Software) Find Sellen at the Witchbane Ruins To access the next step of the quest, you'll have to defeat Starscourge Radahn at Redmane Castle. Talk to Sellen and she'll ask you to head to the Witchbane Ruins in the Weeping Peninsula. It's located on the western half, directly south of the Fourth Church of Marika. If you spot the Walking Mausoleum, you are close. Head down to the cellar to find Sellen chained and talk to her to receive the "Sellen's Primal Glintstone" item. Three Sisters Three Sisters location. (Image credit: FromSoftware) Locate the body at the Three Sisters Next, you need to head to the Three Sisters near Caria Manor in West Liurnia. You should have unlocked this location and the site of grace during Ranni's quest, but if not, you'll have to venture through the manor and beat Royal Knight Loretta. Look for some ruins located between Ranni's Rise and Renna's Rise. There is an illusory floor here in between the two rows of archways. Head down the steps and break through the illusory wall at the back of the room. You'll find Sellen's body here so transplant the Primal Glintstone when prompted. Jerren Redmane Castle location. (Image credit: FromSoftware) Speak to Jerren at Redmane Castle If you didn't speak to Jerren after defeating Radahn, do so now. You'll find him outside the door to the chapel where he'll tell you he's heading off to complete some unfinished business. If you already talked to him, return to Witchbane Ruins in the Weeping Peninsula. Head back down into the Witchbane Ruins cellar and find Jerren here. He's killed Sellen's "body". Talk to him to exhaust all his dialogue options once more. Sellen or Jerren choice Raya Lucaria Grand Library Site of Grace location. (Image credit: From Software) Elden Ring Sellen or Jerren choice: Who should you side with? Now head to the Raya Lucaria Grand Library site of grace—where you fought Rennala. Head outside towards the lift, but don't take it. You should see two summon signs by the boss room door—one for Sellen, the other for Jerren. Now you have to choose who you want to help. Whichever one you pick will join you in defeating the other. If you help Sellen to kill Jerren, you get: Eccentric's Armor set Glintstone Kris daggerShard Spiral sorcery (added to shop)Witch's Glintstone Crown If you challenge Sellen and have Jerren help you kill her, you get: Ancient Dragon Smithing StoneRune ArcFurlcalling Finger RemedySelen's Bell BearingWitch's Glintstone Crown And that's it. Head back to the library to get your rewards, and to see what happens to Sellen. View the full article

All your daily Wordle help is right here; from tips, hints, and clues designed to nudge you in the direction of the October 31 (499) word at your own pace, to the answer to today's puzzle in bold capital letters. And if you'd like to learn how to play the internet's favourite word game, you'll find links to our handy guides and archives below too. I had every correct letter staring me in the face today, a neat row of yellows with one helpful green and yet the answer may as well have been a million miles away. I did get there—just—but today's Wordle felt like the longest final guess of my life. Wordle hint A Wordle hint for Monday, October 31 Today's answer is the term used for a neat or appropriate summation of someone's talents or a description that suits or fits a particular place or person well. There's just one vowel to find today so once you've got it, concentrate on those consonants. Wordle help: 3 tips for beating Wordle every day If there's one thing better than playing Wordle, it's playing Wordle well, which is why I'm going to share a few quick tips to help set you on the path to success: A good opener contains a balanced mix of unique vowels and consonants. A tactical second guess helps to narrow down the pool of letters quickly.The solution may contain repeat letters. There's no time pressure beyond making sure it's done by midnight. So there's no reason to not treat the game like a casual newspaper crossword and come back to it later if you're coming up blank. Today's Wordle answer (Image credit: Josh Wardle) What is the Wordle 499 answer? Let's start the week with a win. The answer to the October 31 (499) Wordle is APTLY. Previous answers Wordle archive: Which words have been used The more past Wordle answers you can cram into your memory banks, the better your chances of guessing today's Wordle answer without accidentally picking a solution that's already been used. Past Wordle answers can also give you some excellent ideas for fun starting words that keep your daily puzzle solving fresh. Here are some recent Wordle solutions: October 30: WALTZOctober 29: LIBELOctober 28: SNEAKOctober 27: CARRYOctober 26: FLOUTOctober 25: FOGGYOctober 24: FAULTOctober 23: MUMMYOctober 22: SPIELOctober 21: GROVE Learn more about Wordle Every day Wordle presents you with six rows of five boxes, and it's up to you to work out which secret five-letter word is hiding inside them. You'll want to start with a strong word like ALERT—something containing multiple vowels, common consonants, and no repeat letters. Hit Enter and the boxes will show you which letters you've got right or wrong. If a box turns ️, it means that letter isn't in the secret word at all. means the letter is in the word, but not in that position. means you've got the right letter in the right spot. You'll want your second go to compliment the first, using another "good" word to cover any common letters you missed last time while also trying to avoid any letter you now know for a fact isn't present in today's answer. After that it's just a case of using what you've learned to narrow your guesses down to the right word. You have six tries in total and can only use real words (so no filling the boxes with EEEEE to see if there's an E). Don't forget letters can repeat too (ex: BOOKS). If you need any further advice feel free to check out our Wordle tips, and if you'd like to find out which words have already been used you'll find those below. Originally, Wordle was dreamed up by software engineer Josh Wardle, as a surprise for his partner who loves word games. From there it spread to his family, and finally got released to the public. The word puzzle game has since inspired tons of games like Wordle, refocusing the daily gimmick around music or math or geography. It wasn't long before Wordle became so popular it was sold to the New York Times for seven figures. Surely it's only a matter of time before we all solely communicate in tricolor boxes. View the full article

Mechanical keyboards are a pretty big staple for PC gamers in this day and age. We can't get enough of those sometimes very clicky keys with actuation that just feels so much more certain than non mechanical variants. This is all thanks to the switches that sit under the keys, which come in all different variants and brands. There's not really a bigger name when it comes specifically to key switches than Cherry MX, and the brands just launched a new official switch from a community based design. The Cherry MX Ergo Clear is a quiet switch that came about thanks to DIY efforts from the community, and now it makes its way to the official Cherry line-up. The Ergo Clear first showed up back in March 2011 when a user going by mtl showed off their modification on the Geekhack forums. The mod involved swapping out the springs that came with the MX Clear board at the time, and replacing them with springs from the MX Black switches. You can still go see the post now, which details how they came to this combination. It provides a smoother typing feel, and changes the bottom-out force, making for something a bit like a cross between the MX Clear and MX Brown Cherry switches. More importantly, it was a big hit in the keyboard community. It's almost a surprise to see Cherry take so long to bring these fan-made switches into the official rotation, but it's a lovely special edition touch for enthusiasts. Plus, the modification process is rather fiddly, and this gives less experienced users a much easier way of getting their hands on Ergo Clear keys. Perfect peripherals (Image credit: Colorwave)Best gaming mouse: the top rodents for gaming Best gaming keyboard: your PC's best friend... Best gaming headset: don't ignore in-game audio Of course, these official MX Ergo Clear switches have a few professional tweaks from Cherry MX as the brand is a fan of sneaky upgrades. The original version used a PTFE lubricant coating which has been replaced with a high-performance grease at specific points. It allows Cherry MX to guarantee more than 50 million actuations, and is probably a bit safer for the life of the switch. Furthermore, the Cherry MX Ergo Clear will come in different variations. There's the RGB version for gamers who want their keyboards to shine as brightly as their kill streak. These have a translucent upper portion of the keys which will let LEDs show through. Or you can rock the standard darker switches for a more discrete look. Both kinds will be available in both 3-pin and 5-pin configurations, as well as built into upcoming keyboard models. If the community is anything to go by, these are going to be some lovely, smooth, quiet typing experiences, great for gaming and office use. I can't wait to try out some official Cherry MX Ergo Clears myself, and feel the difference. View the full article