If you’re reading this, you’ve probably also told yourself this would be the month you don’t buy more Pokémon cards. Same. And yet here we are, staring down another lineup of Elite Trainer Boxes and tins like they’re life choices we already regret but will definitely make again.
Scarlet & Violet sets keep dropping bangers, both visually and competitively, and unfortunately for our wallets, some of these boxes are actually worth ripping open.
Pokémon TCG: Azure Legends Tin – 5 Packs
This one’s weirdly solid. You get five booster packs from a really good mix of sets — Surging Sparks, Stellar Crown, Temporal Forces, and Obsidian Flames — and one promo featuring either Kyogre, Dialga, or Xerneas. It’s basically Pokémon’s version of a loot box, and yeah, I bought two. Between the chase cards across the included sets (Pikachu ex, Terapagos, Raging Bolt, take your pick), the odds of hitting something fun are actually decent. I don’t even like tins, and I’d still grab another one.
Pokémon TCG: Stacking Tin (Q1 2025) – 3 Packs, Stickers (Random Design)
I wasn’t expecting much. I bought it for the sticker sheets and the vague promise of a Surging Sparks pack. And it delivered. Three packs, one of which might cough up something like Pikachu ex or Latias ex, and a tin I now use to hold exactly nothing. I can’t even be mad. There’s a tiny chance you’ll pull a Milotic ex or Ceruledge ex if you get lucky with the packs, and if you don’t? Well, you paid twenty bucks to roll the dice and got some vaguely useful storage in return. That’s more than I can say about half the cereal I’ve bought this year.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet: Paradox Rift: Elite Trainer Box – Roaring Moon
I got this one for the sleeves and stayed because Roaring Moon ex is basically what happens when a Pokémon decides it’s done playing fair. If your goal is to end games in one violent swing and look great doing it, this is your guy. Paradox Rift doesn’t have as many chase cards, but the ones it does have— like Iron Valiant ex and Groudon— feel like they were drawn by someone who knows we’ll all stare at these like cave paintings in 30 years.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet: Temporal Forces: Elite Trainer Box: Walking Wake
The Walking Wake Elite Trainer Box comes with a full-art Flutter Mane and nine more Temporal Forces packs to roll the dice again on the best art of the Scarlet & Violet era. This version leans into the ancient side of things, and I picked it up mostly to increase my odds of pulling Walking Wake ex. Is it playable? Debatable. But it looks like it wandered out of a dream I had after eating too much sushi. With vibrant blues and prehistoric drama, the vibe alone was worth the price. Also, the sleeves are clean, and I pretend I care about those.
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet: Temporal Forces: Elite Trainer Box: Iron Leaves
Iron Leaves ex pulls off the rare combo of being both playable and beautifully drawn. It looks like it’s mid-leap out of a sci-fi anime, which is exactly the kind of energy I want from my pulls. The other heavy hitters — like Iron Crown ex and Gouging Fire ex — either hit like a truck or look like they’re about to. Raging Bolt ex steals the show, though. It’s loud, dramatic, and perfectly balanced between “meta staple” and “thunder god cosplayer.”
Pokémon TCG: Scarlet and Violet Shrouded Fable Elite Trainer Box
Shrouded Fable can quietly slip in cards like Houndoom (the kind of illustration that makes you lower your voice in reverence) and Persian, which looks like it’s plotting something appropriately cinematic. The promos and sleeves are nice, but I really wanted this box for the Illustration Rares that don’t just look cool — they tell a story. Fezandipiti ex, for example, is the Swiss Army knife of support attackers, and Cassiopeia is straight-up character drama in a foil rectangle. The art direction in this set is borderline pretentious, and I mean that as a compliment.
Christian Wait is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything collectable and deals. Christian has over 7 years of experience in the Gaming and Tech industry with bylines at Mashable and Pocket-Tactics. Christian also makes hand-painted collectibles for Saber Miniatures. Christian is also the author of “Pokemon Ultimate Unofficial Gaming Guide by GamesWarrior”. Find Christian on X @ChrisReggieWait.
A little pigeon, huh? And she’s your pal! Well, isn’t that great. Tenstack are a tiny Swedish studio on a mission to make “digestible games so people won’t choke playing them”. They’re currently making a new small game every 3 months, the latest of which is Little Wings Deliveries. It’s under a fiver, under an hour, and is maybe the third or fourth game at this point to have a skateboarding pigeon in. I do not mind. I have a headache. The soothing coos and soothing faceplants of a skateboarding pigeon are just what I need right now.
Ubisoft are giving their Sengoku throat-slicing sim Assassin’s Creed Shadows an update today that’ll let players activate auto-pathing on their horse, essentially turning it into a self-driving car with hooves. This feature was present in previous games of the series, not to mention other similar open world games, and lets you press a button to make the horse auto-trot to your next objective. For some players (those with accessibility concerns, for example) this is a helpful update that will lighten some of the burden of control. But if you’re one of the people who simply likes to use this feature for the sake of efficiency or speed, I’d like you to ask yourself: why do I play these games?
It’s all kicking off in the world of Hollow Knight: Silksong, isn’t it? After scoring a 2025 release window in last week’s Direct and the clarification that it’ll launch on Switch alongside Switch 2, you’d think we’ve heard enough official news from Team Cherry, but no! There’s a fresh batch of screenshots out there.
As noted on Twitter by Hollow Knight YouTuber and game dev @mossbag69, the Japanese Nintendo website has been treated to a handful of new screenshots, showing Hornet in action. Admittedly, the snaps themselves don’t reveal much that we haven’t seen before (the locales all appeared in the game’s 2019 reveal trailer), but they are a nice indication of how the game has progressed in the years since.
Arrowhead Games Studio CEO Shams Jorjani has criticised other games industry executives for letting rank-and-file developers take the fall for what he styles “very unsound business decisions” over the past two years.
Update: Nintendo pre-orders live in Europe today (with an invite!).
Update : Pre-orders from My Nintendo Store in the UK and Europe are live today – IF you received an invite in your email inbox!
Also, as announced last week by Nintendo, pre-orders in the US are being postponed from the planned 9th April date, although the US release date of 5th June remains unchanged at the time of writing.
Nintendo is launching a new physical game option for the Switch 2 (known as “game-key cards”) that don’t contain the “full game data” and are instead used as a “key” to download the game onto your system via the internet.
Nintendo’s future is very much focused on the launch of the Switch 2, but as we already know it will also be continuing to support the original system (at least until 2026).
The company has already locked in some new Switch titles for next year and during a chat with The Washington Post, Nintendo of America’s president Doug Bowser acknowledged how not everyone is necessarily ready to make the jump to Switch 2.
Path of Exile 2’s largest update yet, Dawn of the Hunt adds a ton of new content and changes the game in many ways. IGN and Maxroll have teamed up to bring you lots of new, helpful guides and builds to take on the daunting swatch of new stuff that we will do our best to summarize here: Patch 0.2.0 brings more ways to play with the all-new Huntress Class along with 5 Ascendancies, Azmeri Wisps to chase, shiny new Uniques to hunt for, and a revamped endgame experience.
The Huntress
A new class joins Path of Exile 2’s roster of characters, the Huntress. This Azmeri lost everything when she used a Virtue Gem to defend her home. So now she wields new skills in addition to her trusty Spear. The Huntress is a Dexterity class that shares a starting area with the Ranger in the lower-right portion of the Passive Skill Tree. Spears have a mix of close-range melee strikes and long range projectiles with bonuses that incentivize the use of both. Create an elemental surface with Frostbolt, drop a Whirling Slash, and unleash a flurry of Twisters, before leaping back in to do it all again. Another new item class is Bucklers, a special shield with the ability to Parry regular attacks. When you Parry an enemy you put them off balance increasing the attack damage they take. Unlike Souls games, there is no Parry window and you can use the Parry to animation cancel other skills making it quite agile. However, each time you Parry your stun meter increases and when the bar is full you are heavy stunned for 2.5 seconds, which is likely to result in your untimely demise.
In addition to the new Huntress class, Dawn of the Hunt adds 5 new Ascendancies to Path of Exile 2. After completing a Trial of Ascension, your Ascendancy further specializes your class by unlocking new synergies and catering to unique playstyles. The Huntress has 2 Ascendancies to choose from, Ritualist and Amazon, and the Warrior, Witch, and Mercenary each get one new option.
Ritualist
The Ritualist learned in the depths of the Wildwoods, that power is achieved through sacrifice. You can steal bonuses from Rare monsters, or sacrifice a portion of your own health for a random bonus. With Corrupted Life Force, you gain a skill causing nearby enemies to grow Volatile Blood Boils, slay them to infect surrounding foes with Corrupted Blood a powerful degenerative effect that deals Physical Damage. The Unfurled Finger Notable grants a third ring slot, this is especially potent when paired with Mystic Attunement and a high-end ring. Lastly, the Ritualist has a variety of charming bonuses making it easier to combat dangerous elemental effects.
Amazon
An Amazon strikes swiftly. Elemental Infusion consumes charges to add elemental damage to your Attacks, and Infused Avatar gives a chance for your projectiles to benefit from the infusion without consuming it. Critical Strike and Penetrate further scale damage, based on accuracy rating, which is particularly notable because Dexterity classes have easy access to accuracy. Defensively, Mystic Harvest opens up access to leech, a recovery layer usually limited to Physical damage, and Azmeri Brew makes Flasks far more versatile. Lastly, her Predatory Instinct and In for the Kill Notables grant massive bonuses against Wraeclast’s most dangerous foes.
Smith of Kitava
The Smith of Kitava wields the Devourer’s power to his own ends. This ascendancy is harder to nail down, as many of the bonuses like Temper Weapon, Maifest Weapon, and Fire Spell on Hit are the sort of thing you need to play with to truly understand. However, Coal Stoker and Forged in Flame provide some of the most powerful defenses in the game. With Coal Stoaker, you need to dedicate less of your suffixes to resistances, meaning there’s more of them to use for damage. Maximum resistance is incredibly potent, with even as little as +5% Maximum Resistance mitigating around 20% of the elemental damage you take. Lastly, there’s Smith’s Masterwork, the ability to forge yourself a custom chest piece at the cost of some Ascendancy points. How useful this is depends on where Living Weapon, Against the Anvil, and Heat of the Forge fall as you only get 8 Ascendancy points to distribute amongst all the passives. With that said many of the passives including, Dedication to Kitava, Support Straps, Flowing Metal, Molten Symbol, and Kitavan Engraving all have potential.
Lich
A Lich wields forbidden power, even at the cost of her soul. First, there are some fan-favorite nodes from the original Path of Exile in Rupture the Soul and Dominion Over Flesh. Being able to curse enemies to make them explode into piles of loot is always a good time. Soulless Form provides a unique way to solve mana by increasing your maximum life. It also splits damage between your life and energy shield which is useful when you have easy ways to recover both. Eternal Life further enhances this effect, because your life cannot change while you have energy shield any damage split to your life is ignored so long as you have energy shield active. Atziri’s Distain splits damage to your life allowing you to ignore even more damage. Then there’s Necromantic Conduit and Blackened Heart, a way to provide a significant damage buff to yourself or allies, and what better allies exist than the mindless dead bound to your command? Lastly, Crystalline Phylactery, Price of Power, and Eldrich Empowerment offer solid bonuses to a variety of builds.
Note: there is a slight error in the graphic, Blackened Heart should be the node after Necromantic Conduit and Dominion Over Flesh should be the node after Rupture the Soul.
Tactician
The Tactician never works alone. This is a support-focused Ascendancy for the Mercenary class. It provides a variety of bonuses focused on Auras and buffs. A Solid Plan is particularly noteworthy as it’s normally difficult to scale your Spirit without using Sceptres. With Suppressing Fire and Right Where We Want Them, you can Pin foes to prevent them from acting, adding another crowd control effect to your party’s toolkit. Unleash Hell! Is a unique skill that gives you personal artillery, summon them to unleash a barrage of withering fire onto the battlefield.
Azmeri Wisps
With each new league, comes a new league mechanic, and for Dawn of the Hunt it’s Azmeri Wisps. Follow the lights and slay any monsters they empower. Each Wisp enhances the rewards of any monsters it empowers while giving them a variety of lethal bonuses. For example, a Cat Wisp gives empowered monsters Critical Hit Chance, whereas a Sacred Wisp upgrades the monster’s tier, turning Rares into Unique Bosses! Each time you encounter a Wisp it seeks out a Rare or Unique monster to infuse, greatly increasing the creature’s strength and its rewards.
Rogue Exiles
You can encounter Rogue Exiles, NPC invaders who fight like players and even wield powerful items. If you’re able to slay them, you get all the items they’re wearing, but be warned, if they slay you they escape and take their riches with them. Rogue Exiles provide a different kind of challenge since their builds work like a player’s, with a wide variety of skill combinations on offer. These foes tend to be more agile than most bosses, but aren’t as tanky. Keep an eye on their Unique items as these can be extremely valuable, and may make the encounter much more difficult!
Endgame Revamp
Dawn of the Hunt brings sweeping changes to Path of Exile 2’s endgame experience. The goal is to make mapping more exciting by providing players with more random encounters while reducing tedious busy work. You can now use up to 3 tablets in each Tower, this reduces the amount of busy work needed to enhance the nearby maps and maximize your loot. To balance this, fewer Towers spawn and they have been revamped to be more rewarding. Mechanics can spawn in Towers and they are guarded by a Unique Boss.
The Corruption mechanic has also been changed, you now choose between clearing each corrupted map, or rushing to the center to purify the cluster, changing the rewards, and unlocking the new purified map type. You can choose to farm the corrupted zones, slaying additional enemies in hopes of gaining currency and rare items. Alternatively, you could rush to the nexus to purify the zone in hopes of obtaining more Fraturing Orbs. This is a crafting currency that locks an affix on an item with 4 modifiers, making it unmodifiable by any means.
There’s a wealth of content to explore. In addition, Unique Maps present special challenges, each is difficult but rewarding. The Fractured Lake (pictured above) rewards you with exclusive base types that have more Prefixes or Suffixes than are normally possible.A Crystalline Cavern presents you with a room full of Essences to claim. Each one you defeat further empowers the boss, making the challenge at the end both more lethal and rewarding. Or you could explore the Feral Megaliths, a 10-round boss gauntlet that drops tons of loot and exclusive Runes.
Beyond just endgame content, crafting also got numerous changes. You can use Corrupted Essences to craft items with special effects. When encountering Rituals to the King in the Mists you’re now guaranteed an Omen, and Omen rewards are more common. If you explore Expedition you can now use your currencies to Recombinate items, merging 2 bases in hopes of keeping desirable affixes.
Patch Notes
It’s almost easier to talk about what didn’t change than it is to list everything that got tweaked, adjusted, or reworked for Dawn of the Hunt. When GGG said to forget everything you already knew about Path of Exile 2, they weren’t kidding. In particular, outlier builds like Archmage Spark Stormweaver and Attribute Stacking Hand of Wisdom and Action Monk saw heavy nerfs.
Path of Exile 2 Beginner’s Guide / Leveling Walkthrough
Whether you’re a veteran looking to improve or a new player trying to get into Path of Exile 2, Maxroll’s Comprehensive League Start Leveling Guide holds your hand with step-by-step instructions throughout the leveling process. This covers an efficient leveling path, how to get good gear, tips to increase your damage and defense, and how to solve common problems.
Maxroll Planner
Maxroll’s PoE2Planner is updated for Dawn of the Hunt and better than ever. You can now import your characters directly into the planner and share your build in just a couple of clicks. The PoE2Planner lets you quickly assemble the passives, items, and skills used in your build. You can also add more details like which bonuses to take from the campaign, outline a skill rotation or link to a custom loot filter on FilterBlade.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for something to play, check out the Maxroll Builds section for planners made by the experts on Maxroll’s Path of Exile 2 team, or browse Community Planners for more builds put together by the community.
Builds
Dawn of the Hunt has brought a huge shakeup to the build meta! The increased difficulty nerfs to meta builds, and buffs to underperformers have resulted in a lot of changes. The Amazon, Lich, and Smith of Kitava have been absolutely dominating the meta during the first few days of the league. Here are a few of the builds being cooked up by the experts at Maxroll.
Amazon
Rake is a travel skill that easily rips through packs of monsters when combined with Stomping Grounds, with this planner from ZiggyD you can unleash carnage across Wraeclast. Rake has great mobility, decent single target damage and satisfying bleed pops thanks to Herald of Blood. As you keep progressing, you can continue scaling your build using Goratha’s endgame Bleed/Rake Amazon.
The Amazon is also adept at using Crossbows, combine Glacial Bolt with Artillery Ballista to clear easily while also doing high single target damage. Because your Ballistae can attack enemies while you’re dodging mechanics this build is easy to use against bosses. Check out this planner from Palsteron on how to build a Crossbow Amazon.
If you’re looking for something different, grab a bow and bring winter to your enemies with Aer0’s Ice Shot Amazon! This build uses Ice Shot to clear and Freezing Salvo to unleash icy devastation on more difficult enemies.
Then there’s the good old explosive Gas Arrow. This was one of the most popular builds for bow leveling at the start of early access and it’s a great way to get your Amazon to maps. Check out Tenkiei’s Explosive Gas Arrow Amazon planner for some inspiration!
Lastly a more endgame build, Crouchung_Tuna’s Lighting Spear Amazon! This build captures the feel of a Diablo 2 Javazon by blasting everything on the screen with lightning. As an endgame build you need to be in maps to start playing it, so use one of the earlier planners through the campaign and then respec to this.
Lich
Chaos DoT, or damage over time skills like Essence Drain and Contagion excel at clearing the screen while providing consistent damage. This makes them the perfect choice to pair with the excellent defenses provided by the Lich Ascendancy. Check out this planner from CaptainLance9 to play your own Chaos DoT Lich.
Why fight alone when you can bring your own personal army to each battle? If that’s your preferred playstyle then HelmBreaker’s Minion Army Lich is the build for you. You get excellent defenses from Eternal Life and new Spectres provide you even more mindlessly loyal dead for your army. If you prefer infernal flame you can play a similar build on Infernalist.
Other Builds
Here are a few more builds on existing ascendancies:
If you’re looking for a hand holdy Mercenary Grenade Leveling Guide. ZiggyD’s planner takes you through the campaign and into early maps.
Stormweaver was one of the most popular builds in 0.1 and if you enjoy freezing your way through the campaign you can do so with this build from ZenM: Frost Bolt Cold Snap Stormweaver Leveling.
Monk is fast and fluid, filling the screen with particle effects while dashing to the next pack to do the same. This build from Milkybk_ helps you find your center as you progress: Invoker Monk Leveling.
The Smith of Kitava is Wraeclast’s ultimate tank, so if you’re looking to play hardcore this is one of your best bets. The Endgame HC Artillery Ballista Smith of Kitava build from Zizaran goes over everything you need to know to play this tanky artillerist.
With that said, Dawn of the Hunt is brand new and there’s still a lot to explore in the buildcrafting space so keep a close eye on Maxroll’s Builds for more ways to play.
On the Hunt
Dawn of the Hunt adds a lot of content and streamlines the mapping experience but the campaign is slower than it was before. The best players are already blasting maps and juicing towers but a lot of people are still making their way through the campaign.
It’s going to take some time for the dust to settle and for the meta to stabilize in Path of Exile 2 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt. If you want to know more about the best builds and most profitable currency strategies keep an eye on Maxroll’s Meta Section. Their Path of Exile 2 team is hard at work writing new Build Guides and sharing their Planners with the community!
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This article was created by IGN Staff with help from the Maxroll Path of Exile 2 Team.
