Xur returns to the Solar System in Destiny 2 with a new slate of Exotic weapons and armor this weekend, and as usual, it’s a good idea to drop by and pick up what you’re missing to prepare for Season of the Haunted’s upcoming content. There are still a few days to finish this season’s Iron Banner offering, and we’re about to hit the summertime Solstice event, so you’re going to want to gear up. Here’s where you can find Xur and what Exotics he’s selling this week.

Xur arrives with the daily reset on Friday, so we’ll update this article when he lands.

Xur is present every weekend in Destiny 2, starting with the daily reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET each Friday. His exact location is always a mystery when he first arrives, as he is not listed on the map, and for novice players, he can be easy to miss. However, there are a set number of locations where he takes up residence, including the Tower Hangar area, on Nessus in Watcher’s Grave, and in the Winding Cove area of the EDZ.

Alongside changes in his location, Xur’s inventory also rotates weekly. That means it’s worth visiting him each time to check out his new weapons and rolls on Exotic and Legendary armor. You can visit him any time between his arrival Friday and the weekly reset at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET the following Tuesday when Xur departs the Solar System.

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Selecting a shield for consistent use in Elden Ring can be tough because each bring their own strengths and weaknesses to the table. However, if you’re looking to snag one of the game’s most powerful options, you’ll want the Erdtree Greatshield. This hulking greatshield not only looks cool but packs plenty of protection and an awesome skill. In this guide, we’ll tell you how to find it.

The Erdtree Greatshield explained

The Erdtree Greatshield is a greatshield that requires 30 Strength and 12 Faith to wield. It blocks 100% of physical damage and has fairly good magical defenses to boot. But most importantly, it comes packing the skill Golden Retaliation, which allows you to parry a magical spell (provided your timing is on point) and rapidly retaliate with a burst of holy power for some solid damage, making it an incredible choice for Faith builds.

The Erdtree Greatshield’s item description reads:

Weighty greatshield forged of gold carried by the order of Tree Sentinels, heavily equipped knights. Blessed by an old incantation of protection. The living rampart of the Erdtree, the Tree Sentinels are the standard to which all defenders of the Erdtree aspire.

Where to find the Erdtree Greatshield

The Edtree Greatshield can be found by defeating the Tree Sentinel duo in Altus Plataeu. These two hulking world bosses can be found guarding the two massive doors that lead to the Outer Wall Phantom Grace. If this is your first time through the area, it’s not a terrible idea to rush past them on Torrent and grab the Site of Grace first.

Tree Sentinel duo location

When you do decide to face them down, you’ll find that one of them wields a halberd and the other is sporting a torch. Bring a powerful Spirit Summon with you to help keep these fellows busy, then try to aggressively whittle one of them down before moving on to the next. You can also try cheesing the torch-bearing sentinel with arrows and magic from atop the nearby structures, though their erratic movements can still pose an issue for you.

Luckily, once a Tree Sentinel dies, he won’t respawn, so even if you manage to fell just one of them, your next encounter will be easier. Once they’re both dead, you’ll earn the Erdtree Greatshield and a nice chunk of runes.

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Hot Drop is GameSpot’s weekly Apex Legends column, in which Jordan Ramée takes a closer look at Respawn’s battle royale to provide additional insight into the game’s evolution, as well as dive deeper into its episodic storytelling and characters.

Apex Legends Season 14 is coming, likely kicking off on or around August 9–a week following the conclusion of the Gaiden Event. Already, developer Respawn seems to be hinting at what may be coming with the new season, which may focus on Seer. I think Seer’s home planet is the next stage for Apex Legends’ story, providing the narrative backdrop for the battle royale game’s next playable legend and map.

As tantalizing as the conclusion to Season 13’s Quest has been–Bangalore discovered her brother started a family since they last saw each other, and Wraith learned she experimented on a “Subject 0” prior to subjecting herself to the tests that gave her powers and amnesia–it’s looking like Season 14 may instead build upon the narrative threads of Season 12.

It was nice to see Wraith and Mirage team up again in Season 13’s Quest.

Season 12 saw Lifeline and Octane working together to snoop on Octane’s dad, which ultimately led the duo to learn that Duardo Silva had died years earlier. In actuality, the man posing as Octane’s dad is Octane’s grandfather, Torres Silva, who had been using a special Stim in order to remain youthful.

In the end, Torres successfully took over the Syndicate and used his influence over his grandson to help buy out the Frontier Corps–a publicly funded volunteer program that provides social, medical, and economic aid to all the planets of the Outlands–which he transformed into the Syndicate Corps. Upon first seeing them, Octane remarks that members of the new Syndicate Corps now “look like an army,” a notion that has me thinking Apex Legends may be heading towards war.

And we may be seeing the first step toward that war in Season 14. Recently, Seer was invited onto Outlands TV, where reporter Lisa Stone sandbagged him with questions that implicate him in the continued deterioration of his home planet, Boreas. The planet is dying–ever since a meteor struck Boreas’ moon, Cleo, and destroyed most of it, the planet has suffered repeated bombardment from other meteors as well as pieces of Cleo, massive disturbances in the ocean tides, and extreme fluctuations in temperature at the poles and the equator. All of that is having a drastic effect on the wildlife and ecosystem of the planet, and between the natural disasters and food shortages, it’s estimated that Boreas will be completely unlivable in 50-70 years.

All of this–plus Seer’s lack of attempts to fix any of it–were broadcasted across Syndicate space, thanks to Torres’ decision to sponsor Lisa Stone and make her the official news show to watch. If suddenly Torres wanted the Syndicate Corps to invade Boreas under the guise of providing relief and support after no one was bothering to help, he’d likely have public approval. Heck, he’d probably have Seer’s approval, too, given how Lisa made the legend feel guilty about neglecting his home planet. That’s one more legend who would be pro-Syndicate, expanding the ever-more noticeable divide in their roster that’s giving me major Marvel Civil War vibes. Torres may have found a way to both legally invade a planet and further divide the one group of people capable of stopping him in a single swoop.

Moving the Apex Games to Boreas or inviting another Boreas champion to the games seems like the next logical step in Torres’ plan to really sell the idea that he wants to help the planet and transform it into a destination again. And that’s where I think Season 14’s new legend comes in. Though we don’t know who is going to be added to Apex Legends yet, the giant Apex Legends leak from a few months back only featured two legends with full character models: Newcastle and Vantage.

Seeing as Newcastle was added in Season 13, it stands to reason that Vantage will be added in Season 14. Unlike Newcastle, we know nothing about Vantage’s backstory leading up to her addition to the Apex Games. However, we can make educated guesses as to who she is based on her appearance.

Specifically, Vantage is wearing a heavy white and blue coat that–much like the white and blue outfit Bloodhound wears when their legendary Youngblood skin is equipped–seems specifically designed for living in cold climates. This could mean that Vantage is from Talos like Bloodhound, but there is one other planet in Syndicate space where people are forced to live in cold climates: Boreas. Remember, the partial destruction of the moon caused major environmental fluctuations, one of which is plummeting temperatures around the equator. Sounds to me like the kind of place where you’d need to wear a heavy coat.

Image credit: Reddit user YUSEIRKO

Investing in Boreas would allow Torres to open new battlegrounds for the Apex Games. Apex Legends already has one map set there–an Arenas map called Encore, which is famous for being the battlefield where Seer made a name for himself. So perhaps Season 14 will see the addition of another Arenas map set on the planet or a Control map if Respawn is ready to make Control a permanent game mode after bringing it back over and over again over the course of Seasons 12 and 13.

Establishing a foothold in Boreas, in turn, sets up the addition of a new battle royale map in Season 15. Traditionally, Respawn releases a new battle royale map during the final season for each year (World’s Edge in Season 3, Olympus in Season 7, and Storm Point in Season 11) so the next new battle royale map will likely come out in Season 15. According to that previously mentioned Apex Legends leak, the next battle royale map is called Divided Moon–I bet that it’s set on the partially destroyed moon orbiting Boreas. I think that, narratively, the map will be built over the course of Season 14, before then finally being introduced in Season 15.

It all makes sense. War is coming to Apex Legends, and it seems like Torres is setting the stage for it to silently begin on Boreas, opening up logical avenues for Respawn to add Vantage and Divided Moon to Apex Legends in Seasons 14 and 15 respectively, and for Seer to take a more central role in the story going into the latter half of Year 4. The only thing really holding me back from 100% believing in my own theory is the motive. Why would Torres care about a world that’s less than a century away from being uninhabitable? I assume that’s what we’ll learn over the course of Season 14’s Quest.

It feels like Apex Legends’ story is going to refocus on Loba again in a big way once we finally head to Boreas.

My current theory is that it has something to do with Loba, who, in the book Pathfinder’s Quest, tells Pathfinder, “Hmm. If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep my excursions on Boreas to myself. I have some business deals there that are still tentative. You understand.” She has no problem telling her fellow legend about all her other exploits across the other Syndicate planets. Why is she so cagey about this one, a planet that’s really only known for its production of textiles, its large moth population, and the fact that it’s quickly approaching its end? What’s so important on Boreas that it’s spooked Loba into silence?

It may have something to do with the power that seemingly surrounds Boreas. It’s a planet that appears to be defined by myth and beholden to an almost mystical power. For example, one of the planet’s centuries-old folktales spoke of a future harbinger with cursed eyes who would be born to a woman branded by the moth and doom the world, and Seer–a Black boy with strange, glowing blue eyes–was born to a woman with a moth-looking birthmark literally at the same time that the meteor struck Boreas’ moon and kickstarted the planet’s apocalypse. Is that a simple coincidence, or are there actually supernatural powers at work in Apex Legends’ universe? If they do exist (and given Seer’s existence and Revenant‘s death-defying powers, I’m inclined to believe they do), Boreas happens to be at the center of it all, meaning the doomed planet is actually an incredible well of untapped potential.

Of course, advanced technology could just as easily appear to be supernatural to a culture that doesn’t understand it, which feels like a more realistic expectation as to what’s happening on Boreas. Maybe there’s a place on Boreas where some sort of alien tech allows people to see into the future, a process that was misunderstood by early Boreas’ settlers to be a supernatural vision, eventually evolving into a folktale? Similar technology already exists–in Titanfall 2, the Effect and Cause level saw protagonist Jack Cooper using technology that allowed him to travel in-between the past and present of a place. That technology was based on advancements made by a mysterious alien race that we’ve never seen, but maybe those aliens settled Boreas once upon a time. Boreas could be a far more important planet in the fight for the Outlands’ future than we thought.

Regardless, when Seasons 14 and 15 roll around and ultimately prove me right in regards to Vantage and Divided Moon, I expect one free Apex Pack from each of you and the right to say “I told you so” at the start of every Apex Legends match I join for a whole month.

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Kaedehara Kazuha is one of the best support characters in Genshin Impact. He’s a five-star Anemo sword user who excels at creating elemental reactions while buffing the entire party through the use of both his Elemental Skill and his Elemental Burst. Kazuha is a perfect support piece on any team that contains a main DPS whose specialty is dealing elemental damage. We’ll go through what you need to build him up, including his best artifacts, weapons, and team comps.

Abilities

Elemental Skill – Chihayaburu

Kazuha pulls objects and enemies toward him, dealing Anemo damage and lifting himself up into the air. If another attack is made within 10 seconds of the lift, Kazuha will plunge back down with a move called Midare Ranzan, which creates a wind tunnel that pulls in enemies and items once again. Simply pressing the button/key to activate Chihayaburu will provide less suction, but the cooldown will be shortened. This version can be used in mid-air.Holding the button/key will charge the skill, causing it to create a wider AoE.

Elemental Burst – Kazuha Slash

Kazuha uses a powerful slash to create “Autumn Whirlwind,” which is a vortex that deals AoE Anemo damage. Autumn Whirlwind is incredibly powerful because it can trigger Swirl reactions with Cryo, Pyro, Electro, and Hydro if any of those elements are inside the AoE. This causes the Burst to deal additional damage of that type, making it one of the reasons Kazuha works so well on elemental damage teams.

Passive Talents

Kazuha’s first passive, Soumon Swordsmanship, allows Chihayaburu to absorb an element — Pyro, Cryo, Electro, or Hydro — and deal an extra 200% damage using the plunging Midare Ranzan with that element.His second talent, Poetics of Fuubutsu, grants all party members a damage buff whenever Kazuha causes a Swirl effect. This buff provides a 0.04% damage increase for every point of Elemental Mastery Kazuha has, and it lasts for eight seconds.

Best Artifact Stats

Like many characters, Kazuha can be played in different ways if you have certain preferences. However, using Kazuha as a damage-dealing, reaction-causing support is, without a doubt, the best way to play him.

Elemental Mastery is the most important stat for the character, so you can actually ignore every other main stat when it comes to the artifacts. This is because, as previously mentioned, Kazuha’s party-wide buff scales off of his Elemental Mastery stat whenever he causes a Swirl reaction. Focusing on this stat will not only strengthen the buff, but also allow Kazuha himself to deal more damage from the Swirls.

ArtifactSuggested Main StatsSuggested SubstatsFlowerHPElemental Mastery, Crit Rate, Energy Recharge, Crit DmgFeatherATKElemental Mastery, Crit Rate, Energy Recharge, Crit DmgSandsElemental MasteryCrit Rate, Energy Recharge, Crit Dmg, ATK%GobletElemental MasteryCrit Rate, Energy Recharge, Crit Dmg, ATK%CircletElemental MasteryCrit Rate, Energy Recharge, Crit Dmg, ATK%

These are the main stats and substats that we recommend, but keep in mind that farming artifacts rarely goes as planned. If luck just isn’t on your side when it comes to substats, try to at least aim for around 160% or more total Energy Recharge and 500 or more total Elemental Mastery. Crit Rate and Crit Dmg are a nice bonus on top of those two important elemental stats, so don’t worry if your Crit stats aren’t as high as you’d like them to be. Kazuha is still incredibly strong regardless.

Best Artifact Set

Kazuha’s best artifact set

Viridescent Venerer

Two-Piece Set: Gain a 15% Anemo damage bonus.Four-Piece Set: Increase Swirl damage by 60%, and decreases enemies’ Elemental Resistance to the elements in the Swirl by 40% for 10 seconds.

Since Swirls are a staple in Kazuha’s gameplay, the Viridescent Venerer artifact set is the only real choice here. No other artifact set in the game provides such a powerful buff to Anemo characters who rely on reactions and Swirl-related damage.

Best Weapons

It does feel like Kazuha has to be played in a specific way, but there’s a bit more flexibility when it comes to weapon choice. Here are three options that work for both free-to-play players and those who are willing to spend a bit of money every now and then.

Kazuha holding an Iron Sting

Freedom-Sworn

Main Stat: Elemental MasteryEffect: Increases damage by 10/12.5/15/17.5/20% and stacks up to two Sigils of Rebellion whenever the user causes an elemental reaction. Once two sigils are stacked, they are consumed and buff all party members’ normal, charged, and plunging attack damage by 16/20/24/28/32% for 20 seconds. Stacking two sigils also increases party members’ ATK by 20/25/30/35/40% for the same amount of time.

The Freedom-Sworn is Kazuha’s best weapon, but it’s also a five-star weapon. This means that you’ll either need to be extremely lucky to pull it on a weapon banner, or open up that wallet to guarantee that you get it. While it’s difficult to obtain, the sword provides wild buffs that perfectly compliment the character’s play style.

Iron Sting

Main Stat: Elemental MasteryEffect: Dealing elemental damage increases all damage by 6/7.5/9/10.5/12% for six seconds. This effect can stack twice and can occur once per second.

The Iron Sting is a completely free-to-play four-star weapon that can be forged at any blacksmith station using Crystal Chunks and White Iron Chunks as materials. This sword provides a much smaller buff than the Freedom-Sworn but can get the job done just the same, as Kazuha’s Skill and Burst do the heavy lifting when it comes to his support abilities anyway.

Favonius Sword

Main Stat: Energy RechargeEffect: Crit hits have a 60/70/80/90/100% chance to generate a small number of Elemental Particles, which will regenerate six energy for the character. This can only occur once every 12/10.5/9/7.5/6 seconds.

The Favonius Sword is a good choice if you’re in need of more Energy Recharge, as opposed to Elemental Mastery. The weapon will help Kazuha’s Burst stay ready, even if artifact farming for recharge substats didn’t go too well.

Team Comps

Honestly, Kazuha fits in with any team that relies on elemental damage to win fights. Personally, I often use him in a freeze team with Ayaka as the main DPS, but there are so many other options. Throw him into teams that go for Electro-charged, Vaporize, or Melt reactions and watch the damage numbers rise. The two exceptions may be Superconduct and Overload since the former reduces an enemy’s physical resistance and the latter knocks enemies back too often. They would still work, mind you, but Kazuha can likely be used better elsewhere.

Kazuha in a freeze team

Here are a few examples of team comps that Kazuha should do well in:

Expensive team comps: Kazuha, Ayaka, Diona, MonaKazuha, Ayaka, Kokomi, ShenheKazuha, Hu Tao, Zhongli, YelanKazuha, Raiden Shogun, Yae Miko, KokomiBudget team comps: Kazuha, Bennett, Xiangling, XingqiuKazuha, Xingqiu, Diona, XianglingKazuha, Chongyun, Bennett, XianglingKazuha Rosaria, Kaeya, Bennett

Kazuha is easily one of the best five-star characters in the game, and he’s currently available to pull for in his version 2.8 rerun banner alongside newcomer Heizou. Don’t feel pressured to get him, but just know that if you do, he’ll be an invaluable member of nearly any team.

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