While the delay of GTA 6 is frustrating, there's a well-crafted alternative to dive into as you wait: Neverness to Everness. From fishing and playing Tetris to carjacking and pushing the boundaries of the law, there's plenty to do.

As an anime-style open-world game, NTE shares some DNA with GTA series, but its wealth of activities can leave you unsure where to begin. What follows will help you hit the ground running.

Hunter Level

Upon entering the game, you'll find yourself in Hethereau City. You can wander around, but you may quickly realize you can barely do anything. That's because you need to immediately focus on the game's two core progression systems: Hunter Level and Appraisal Level.

If you've played other gacha games, think of Hunter Level as your account level, and Appraisal Level as the world level. Hunter Level determines your overall game progress and what content is unlocked. Without a high enough level, you'll be seriously restricted.

The most direct and enjoyable way to raise your Hunter Level is by progressing through the main story quests and a large number of side quests. When quests are locked behind level requirements, open Exploration Guide and complete its various challenges. This not only provides a hefty amount of Hunter XP, but also rewards you with currency, materials for character growth, and all sorts of useful items.

While working through Exploration Guide, you can also tackle Anomaly Commissions along the way. These are essentially mini-boss encounters scattered across the map. The higher the difficulty, the better the rewards and XP.

Your Appraisal Level is directly tied to your Hunter Level. Every time you reach Hunter Level 10, 20, 30, and 40, your Appraisal Level increases by one. As your Appraisal Level rises, the world becomes more difficult, but once you reach Appraisal Level 3, you can freely switch the world difficulty, letting you effortlessly one-shot those biker gangs that once pushed you around.

Exploration & Movement

What makes exploration in Neverness to Everness unique is that it's a city you can freely drive through. So, once you've earned your first chunk of cash, it's highly recommended that you obtain a car immediately - it dramatically boosts your exploration efficiency.

After you get a vehicle, your top priority should be unlocking all Wertheimer Towers on the map. Much like viewpoints in traditional open-world games, approaching these towers clears the fog of war and reveals more points of interest.

At the same time, make sure you unlock every Phone Booth along the way. They serve as fast travel points, letting you move around the city quickly and efficiently.

City Tycoon

What truly sets NTE apart from other gacha games is its City Tycoon system. This part of the game has its own City Stamina, which is used to experience the game's core casual activities.

You can deliver food, play mahjong, or drive a flashy sports car you stole from some poor soul who just finished paying off their auto loan. Completing these activities earns you Fons, which are mainly used for non-character development purposes.

Cafe Management System lets you own your own café. Your café runs automatically in the background around the clock, generating passive income for you. Those funds can be used to obtain important items later on, or reinvested to upgrade your café and rake in even more profit.

You don't need to rush to stock up for a full 24 hours all at once. Since new menu items unlock quickly, it's a more efficient strategy to only restock materials for 4 hours at a time early on, and come back to adjust things once you've unlocked higher-level dishes.

Additionally, City Tycoon panel allows you to acquire property and cars. Real estate doesn't just fulfill your dream of being a business tycoon; more importantly, you can place furniture in your properties, and some of these furniture provides powerful buffs.

Crime & Punishment

Just like in GTA series, you can do whatever you want in the city - attacking innocent civilians - but you'll also have to face pursuit from the caps. When your wanted level gets too high, you'll be hunted across the city. Ways to clear your wanted level include evading the police for a long time, or using the effect of a special piece of furniture to instantly wipe your record clean. If both methods fail and you get caught, you'll be sent to prison.

Going to prison is actually quite an amusing part of the game. You can choose to serve your sentence, settle the fine, or attempt a jailbreak. The punishment for a failed jailbreak is being forced to watch a 15-minute unskippable boat ride cutscene. But if you successfully break out, the rewards include a magazine, some currency, and a unique prison uniform.

Gacha System (Scarboro Fair)

The game's gacha system is called Scarboro Fair, and its interface is designed like a Monopoly-style board. Each pull is like rolling the dice; your piece moves and you get the item on the space where it lands. It's a rather charming presentation, and you can exchange Neverness to Everness Riftcrystal for dice.

When it comes to pulling, Neverness to Everness's system is more reliable than other gacha games, because once you hit the grand prize, S-rank character or weapon you get is 100% the designated rate-up target - no off-banner surprises.

What's more, the pity progress on the character banner carries over to the next one. Hard pity is at 90 pulls, with soft pity kicking in around 70 pulls. Pity for skins does not carry over to other characters, but it is retained for that character's rerun banner.

Also, Gold Warp Pieces and Silver Lost Pieces you earn from pulling can be exchanged at Mall each month for 5 limited gacha tickets and 20 Arc gacha tickets.

Character Building

As a gacha game, character building is naturally a core part of the experience. Combat uses a four-person squad, with each character having a normal attack, a skill, and an ultimate. The core gameplay revolves around watching for Quick Time Event (QTE) light prompts around character portraits. You can then swap characters and unleash combo attacks.

The next layer of combat complexity comes from elemental attributes and Cycle Reactions (if you've played Genshin Impact, this will be easy to understand). Simply put, you need to build your team around elements that can trigger Cycle Reactions with each other. In the character details page, you can check how each skill interacts with elements.

Character building is divided into the following systems:

Console

Console is the gear system in NTE. You slot various Tetris-shaped modules into it, and by arranging them cleverly, you can activate set bonuses.

Arc

Arc serves as a character's weapon. It comes in rarities like B, A, and S, and is divided into the following attributes:

• Gas
• Liquid
• Plasma
• Solid
• Synthesis

Each character can only equip a weapon that matches their own attribute - you can't just use any weapon you pick up.

Esper Cycle and Awakening

Esper Cycle is used to upgrade a character's combat skills. Awakening system is a major highlight: when you pull a duplicate character, you can freely choose which talent enhancement to unlock, and you can switch between your choices at any time.

NTE launched not too long ago, so if you join now, you're barely missing out on anything. Whether you're a combat-driven meta player or a casual player who loves cruising around a sprawling city and running businesses, you'll find your own slice of fun in this beautiful and crazy city.

Based on live streams and other teaser information, it is now confirmed that Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0 is an incredibly substantial update. It not only delivers the long-awaited endgame and Atlas Tree rework but also introduces a wealth of brand-new content.

Since Patch 0.4.0 introduced the new main class, Druid, PoE 2 has now shifted its focus to Ascendancy Classes.

By adding two new options, the update ensures that players of Monk and Huntress main classes can also enjoy a full selection of three distinct Ascendancy specializations.

With this in mind, this article will focus specifically on introducing Huntress's third Ascendancy: Spirit Walker.

Huntress and related Ascendancy Classes

While the design of some main classes in Path of Exile 2 draws inspiration from the first game, Huntress, who debuted last April in Patch 0.2.0, Dawn of the Hunt, is an entirely original creation. Upon her initial release, she proved to be an exceptionally powerful class.

Although Huntress's player base has naturally shifted somewhat following subsequent balance adjustments and the introduction of new classes, she remains, on the whole, a highly viable and worthwhile main class choice.

At launch, Huntress featured two Ascendancy classes: Amazon and Ritualist. The former specializes in dealing ranged critical damage using spears and projectiles, while the latter focuses on a dark caster playstyle.

Building upon this foundation, Patch 0.5.0 introduces the third Ascendancy for Huntress: Spirit Walker.

Spirit Walker Overview

If you choose to unlock this Ascendancy, you will gain access to the power of Azmerian Animal Spirits, allowing you to harness the unique abilities of three distinct animal spirits: the stag, the owl, and the bear.

Furthermore, Spirit Walker features a suite of unique skills. Based on their thematic effects, these skills are categorized into three types: Primal, Vivid, and Wild. Each corresponding directly to one of the three animal spirits. These skills include:

• Vivid Stampede
• Primal Bounty
• Wild Protector
• The Morrigan's Guidance
• The Mhacha's Gift
• The Catha's Balance
• Sacred Unity
• The Natural Order
• Idolatry

Overall, the primary strength of this Ascendancy lies in its ability to adapt to a wide variety of combat situations by utilizing different types of skills.

However, precisely because this versatility allows for a multitude of complex build combinations, Spirit Walker can be a challenging class to fully master.

Azmerian Animal Spirits in-depth guide

As the core mechanic of Spirit Walker, Azmerian Animal Spirits feature three distinct animal forms, each with its own unique characteristics.

First, the stag form allows you to gain a stack of Vivid Wisp for every 20 meters you move. Upon consuming these stacks, you summon a herd of stags that leap up to four times; furthermore, these stags convert 60% of their physical damage into lightning damage.

In practical terms, this means that if you are wielding a weapon with high physical damage, you can achieve a massive conversion of damage types, thereby unleashing astonishing damage output.

The owl form grants you beneficial effects as feather blessings: not only do these increase the number of projectiles you fire, but they also significantly boost the flight speed of the projectiles from your next skill usage.

The function of the bear form is quite straightforward: it directly summons a massive bear companion to fight alongside you.

Additionally, all three forms are fully compatible with standard skill gem setups, allowing you to build entire character builds centered around these specific mechanics.

While each of the three spirits offers its own advantages, the bear form is generally the recommended choice during the early stages of the game, as it grants your minions an additional 20% damage boost and an extra 20% to their maximum life.

Furthermore, the bear spirit will leap toward enemies to inflict the maim status effect upon them. It simultaneously leeches life while mauling its targets and periodically lets out a roar to intimidate its foes.

The first two effects directly boost your damage output, while Intimidate effectively reduces the damage you take.

It is worth noting that the bear spirit does not count toward your standard minion limit. This means you can still have this great bear by your side even while you have other standard minions summoned.

The detailed breakdown of Idolatry

Among Spirit Walker's nine unique abilities, Idolatry stands out as particularly distinct, as it is heavily tied to Idols you have socketed.

The effect of this ability is that for every Idol socketed in your gear slots, the damage dealt by your animal companions increases by 10%. Additionally, for every Idol socketed, your skill reservation efficiency increases by 2%.

This allows you to summon more companions simultaneously while dealing increased damage. However, for the sake of balance, for every Non-Idol Augment socketed in your gear slots, all of your elemental resistances are reduced by 4%.

In short, this ability is designed to encourage you to socket as many Idols as possible to mitigate the negative effects, while fully capitalizing on the various positive buffs, such as increased companion damage, that they provide.

As for the issue of losing some elemental resistance, this can be easily compensated for using the various new enchantments and crafting systems introduced in Patch 0.5.0.

How to unlock Spirit Walker?

In terms of unlock requirements, there is essentially no difference between the various Ascendancy Classes.

First, you must ensure that your character's main class is Huntress. Then, upon reaching Act 2, complete Trial of the Sekhemas to unlock your chosen Ascendancy Class and receive two initial Ascendancy points.

However, before you can do that, you must first defeat the boss Balbala, the Traitor, to obtain either Djinn Barya or Balbala's Barya coin, which serves as the key to unlock the trial.

Afterward, you can complete additional trials in Act 3 to earn more Ascendancy points. While your choice of Ascendancy Class is permanent and cannot be changed, you can reset your allocation of Ascendancy nodes.

That concludes this preliminary introduction to Spirit Walker, one of the new Ascendancy Classes introduced in Return of the Ancients. We hope it delivers a truly spectacular performance in your actual gameplay!

To enhance your Spirit Walker experience and smoothly craft your desired builds, you can buy PoE 2 currency on IGGM once Patch 0.5.0 goes live!

Because if you have extensive and abundant currency inventory, you can acquire or upgrade your gear at any time, so that boosting the strength of your builds and maximizing your gains as a Spirit Walker player!