The Land of Shu is full of dangers, and Wuchang: Fallen Feathers doesn’t always explain its mechanics. We’ve teamed up with the experts at Maxroll to bring you a beginner’s guide, builds to crush the game’s hardest bosses, additional resources and mechanical overviews, and much more.

Beginner's Guide

Get started with Maxroll’s Beginner's Guide. Combat in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is different from a lot of other Soulslikes, as your main resource Skyborn Might revolves around getting “perfect dodges” called Shimmers (think Sekiro but with hitting B instead of LB). You can then spend Skyborn Might to empower your weapon skills, or instantly execute a charged heavy attack. This is particularly useful because you can use charged heavy attacks to stagger foes, opening them up to a powerful Obliterate attack. Maxroll’s Beginner’s Guide also covers topics like leveling up using the Impetus Repository system, how the game’s unique Madness system works, and the various character progression systems including Temperance, Benedictions, Disciplines and more. Then, learn how to traverse the land of Shu, find hidden secrets and interact with Wuchang's riddle doors.

Progression Systems

During Chapter 1 - Worship’s Rise, you’re introduced to several progression systems. Each system makes Wuchang a little stronger and by combining them you’re able to make some truly powerful builds that cut through the game’s hardest bosses with ease.

Weapons are the core of any build, the game offers five different weapon classes; Longsword, Spear, One-Handed Sword, Dual Blades, and Axe. Each weapon has a unique move set and a pool of customizable Disciplines. In addition, each weapon within a class has its own unique weapon skill.

• Check out Maxroll’s Weapon guide to learn more about your options, or browse all of the available Weapons.
• Weapons have unique skills, some of which can trivialize bosses. These Weapon Skills are powerful and can be further enhanced by expending Skyborn Might.
• Each weapon offers several Disciplines, custom moves that can be used with L2/LT. Learn the best with Maxroll’s Discipline guide or browse all of them in the database.
• Benedictions are gem-like enhancements socketed into your weapon. You can use one Oath type Benediction, one Wisdom and one Memory. Learn the best with Maxroll’s Benediction and Benediction Sets guide or browse the database to see all Benedictions and Benediction Sets.
• Weapons are enhanced through the Impetus Repository, the unique level-up system in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. Learn more with Maxroll’s Impetus Repository guide, or browse all of the Impetus Repository skills in the database.
• Temperance provides a powerful in-combat buff to Wuchang. She can insert various needles into her acupoints to change the element of the buff, or add unique effects. Learn more with Maxroll’s Temperance and Needle guide or browse the list of Bone and Stone needles.

Weapons aren’t the only item(s) you can equip in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. In addition, you have access to a variety of Armor Sets each of which has a unique appearance and provides slightly different stats. You can also use Jade Pendants that provide small bonuses, use consumable items (some of which are refilled when you rest at a Shrine), and equip powerful spells capable of unleashing devastation on bosses.

• Learn more about Armor and Pendants with Maxroll’s dedicated guide, or browse the database to peruse all of the Armor and Jade Pendant options available.
• Spend Skyborn Might to cast powerful spells, learn the best with Maxroll’s Magic and Spellcasting guide. Or simply browse through all of the Magic, Feathering and Utility spells.

Burning Questions

In addition to explaining the game’s mechanics and progression systems, here’s a short list of guides from Maxroll that answer some burning questions like “how do I beat Commander Honglan” or where to find the most powerful defensive spell in the game!

• How to Farm Red Mercury
• How to beat Commander - Honglan (with a full build)
• How to get Ethereal Form

Plus, check out these early-game guides from IGN. Blocking and "parrying" aren't automatically built into Wuchang's moveset:

• How to Block
• How to Parry

Builds

Each of the game’s five weapons has a unique playstyle. The Longsword is a balanced weapon that acts as a middle ground. Spears have great reach and excellent Disciplines, but have a weaker charged heavy attack animation. One-Handed Swords have long animations and low damage but provide Spell Damage, enabling a dedicated caster archetype. The Dual Blades reward all out aggression as you clash through enemy attacks and heal yourself. Axes hit hard, staggering foes and stopping them in their tracks, but they also tend to be slower and have higher stamina costs.

• Dual Blades Blademaster
• Spellcaster Build
• Axe Rampage Build

Database

Use Maxroll’s Wuchang: Fallen Feathers database to learn more about all of the items in the game. This includes Weapon scaling at different upgrade levels, defensive stats on armor and spell scaling. You can also learn about the materials you need to upgrade your Weapons, Manna Flask and more. You can use the search feature to find exactly what you want or browse different categories to learn about your options. If you want more details, click through to an item's page.

More to Come

That’s it for now, Maxroll is hard at work adding a Spear build, along with more resources. Check out their Wuchang: Fallen Feathers page for more.

By: IGN staff with help from Maxroll

Some days the deals just feel like kismet. I’ve been running my 15-year-old son through Red Dead Redemption for his first time, and while watching I’ve fallen head-over-spurs for it all over again. Serendipitously, I now see it’s also gone on sale today for you! Pro tip, though: when that Mexico section opens up, stay on your bloody horse. Trust me. Don’t do what my boy did and go pick flowers. You’ll ruin one of gaming’s most magical moments. *Sigh*

This Day in Gaming 🎂

In retro news, In retro news, I’m using a Critical Finish from Nightmare’s soul-devouring blade to ignite a 16-candle cake baked for SoulCalibur IV. As a series fan since ye olde SoulBlade days, I was always going to love this, and it's a sin that it's no longer available to buy.

Back at launch, it felt like a final-form moment for the franchise. The visuals were blisteringly sharp, the online play was a game changer, and the Create-A-Soul feature became a dangerously deep time sink. That said it was the collision of Force powers and medieval steel that made jaws drop. Nobody expected Yoda (X360 version), Darth Vader (PS3) or Starkiller (both) to cross swords with Mitsurugi and Ivy. Yet here we were, mashing combos and dodging Force Chokes. It was absurd, brilliant and unforgettable.

If you're in need a USB car charger for your car but don't want to deal with a rat's nest of pesky cables in your glovebox, one solution is a retractable cable. Amazon is currently offering a Lisen 57W Car Charger with retractable 30W USB Type-C cable for just $9.99 after you apply coupon code "Q7O2ANYT" during checkout. This little car charger plugs into a standard 12V vehicle socket and can charge any fast charge an iPhone 16 or Nintendo Switch at their fastest rate.

Lisen 30W Retractable Car Charger for $10

It’s not hard to imagine laptops as the de-facto computer for students. After all, why not use a computer that you can haul around to all of your classes, right? Well, if you do most of your work at a desk, whether it’s in a dorm or at home, prebuilt PCs offer better performance, and are great for creating a productive environment for you to focus on your schoolwork. Pop a good graphics cards in there, and you can start playing the best PC games the minute you’re done with your homework.

TL;DR – These Are the Best Prebuilt PCs for Students:

For a lot of people, having a computer you can haul around to all of your classes is super important, and could even be required depending on your courseload. But students aren't a monolith, and with the rise of online coursework, you could be doing a lot of assignments at home. If portability isn't a concern, a desktop offers huge advantages to performance. Because system manufacturers don't need to factor in battery life, you get the full performance your components are capable of (at least most of the time).

• Why you may want to consider a gaming laptop for school

It's definitely a trade-off, but it could be worth it, especially if you're serious about playing games in your downtime and don't want to settle for the weaker performance that laptops offer.

1. Dell Tower Plus Desktop

Best Prebuilt PC for Students

2. Apple iMac 24 (2024, M4)

Best All-in-One PC for Students

3. HP Victus 15L

Best Budget Prebuilt PC for Students

4. Lenovo Legion Tower 5i

Best Prebuilt Gaming PC for Students

How to Choose a Prebuilt PC for Students

If you’re in school, it’s unlikely that you have thousands of dollars to spend on meaningless fluff, so when setting out to buy a prebuilt PC, you need to make sure you get what you pay for. A lot of features like RGB lighting and liquid cooling, while nice to have, don’t really make the computer any better at actually getting work done. You need to have a budget set ahead of time, but what’s perhaps most important is knowing where that money is going to go.

For most people an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 (or the AMD Ryzen equivalent) is going to be more than enough. Some folks in STEM fields might be able to use the extra power you can squeeze out of a Ryzen 9 or Core i9 chip, but even then, the Core i7 is going to save you hundreds of dollars, which may be more important.

Picking the right amount of RAM is crucial, though. Because of how heavy Windows 11 has grown in recent years, 16GB of memory is the minimum you should aim for. That way, your computer won’t lock up when you open 50 Chrome tabs in a mad studying session. Again, if you’re a STEM student, or you’re doing something involving a lot of video editing, 32GB of RAM should be your target.

In 2025, you need an SSD, period. The days of spinning drives as system drives are over. As for the capacity, though, it really depends on how you use your computer. If you’re saving most of your work in the cloud, you can probably get away with a 512GB system drive and be fine. However, if you need to store most of your data locally, a 1TB drive isn’t going to break the bank.

As for your graphics card, it’s a luxury when you’re in school. Unless you’re working with large data models or working in video production, you can probably get away with integrated graphics or a low-end discrete GPU. Though, if you want to use your computer to play PC games in your downtime – you are reading IGN, after all – figure out what resolution you want to play games at and then go from there. If you’re using a 1080p monitor an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT or Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 will be more than enough.

Jackie Thomas is the Hardware and Buying Guides Editor at IGN and the PC components queen. She's been writing about gaming PCs for almost a decade and has been building them even longer. You can follow her @Jackiecobra.

Xbox Game Pass revenue reached a new record for Xbox over the last year, achieving "nearly $5 billion" in revenue for the first time.

This comes from the company's Q4 and full-year earnings results, covering the last twelve months ending June 30, 2025. While CEO Satya Nadella announced the milestone on the call, he did not provide specific revenue numbers for Game Pass.

Nadella also did not share subscriber numbers. That said, Game Pass subscribers are confirmed to have reached 34 million back in February 2024, and a Microsoft employee's profile suggested just two months ago that this number had reached 35 million, though this is unverified.

Some of that growth likely comes from price hikes on the service that kicked off in July of last year. But it hasn't hurt that Xbox dropped a number of new first-party games on Game Pass especially in the last quarter of the fiscal year, including The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion: Remastered, Doom: The Dark Ages, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle.

Overall, gaming revenue for Xbox was up 10% year-over-year and Xbox content and services revenue was up 13%, driven by growth in first-party content and yes, Xbox Game Pass. Hardware revenue was down year-over-year by 22%.

Despite these increases, Xbox recently laid off hundreds of workers across various parts of its gaming business and canceled multiple projects, including Everwild and Perfect Dark.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Starting today, Walmart has slashed the price of the 75" Sony X85K 4K Google TV down to only $648, a savings of $650 or 50% off. Free delivery is included. This is $150 less than the best deal during Black Friday or Cyber Monday and the lowest price I've seen so far for this particular size and model. The X85K is an older generation model, but it still has all the features you want in a current-gen gaming TV.

75" Sony X85K 4K Smart TV for $648

Xbox just had a great Q2...and it might have PlayStation to thank. Or is it PlayStation that should be thanking Xbox?

Per data shared from Circana analyst Mat Piscatella, six of the ten best-selling games on PlayStation consoles in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2025 (April through June) were published by Microsoft.

Most of those games were new. Forza Horizon 5 debuted at No.2 for the quarter (just behind Elden Ring Nightreign). The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Remastered was right behind it. Doom: The Dark Ages debuted at No. 6 and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle came in at No.8.

If you're looking to upgrade your gaming PC and want to keep your budget to under $1,500, then one deal stands out above all the rest. Walmart is offering the iBuypower Element Pro gaming PC equipped with an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU for just $1499 with free delivery. This was the best "high-end" gaming PC deal during Prime Day - better than anything I found on Amazon - and it's still the best deal I've seen so far at this price point.The Radeon RX 9070 XT is an outstanding graphics card that can comfortably run any game at up to 4K resolution.

iBuypower Element Pro Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming PC $1499

Developer NetEase Games has pulled back the curtain on Marvel Rivals Season 3.5, revealing a first look at Blade and many of the other additions coming in August.

The studio offered a breakdown for everything included in the mid-season refresh today, including how players will be able to use the legendary comic book Daywalker’s abilities to cut through the new content included in the upcoming August 8 update. It follows the launch of Season 3: The Abyss Awakens – and Jean Grey – just weeks ago and is a sign that NetEase intends to stick to its quick content release schedule.

Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 Adds Blade and New Team-Ups Next Week

Blade’s introduction into Marvel Rivals as an actual playable character and not just a creative bit or world-building has been a long time coming. The infamous vampire-hunting hero first made his debut all the way back in Season 1, but has been sidelined as an NPC since.

Now, players finally have the chance to control Blade for themselves, and NetEase didn’t hold back. He’ll arrive next week as a Duelist, using his shotgun as a mid-to-close-range weapon before going in for the kill with his Ancestral Sword. Finally, players can use the Sword of Dracula for Blade’s ultimate ability, allowing him to tear through entire enemy teams with style.

“Almost a century ago, Eric Brooks was born of two worlds: the light of his mother's embrace and the dark of the vampire that attacked her,” a description from NetEase says. “After embracing his existence as a dhampir, he became the Daywalker, the ultimate vampire hunter, combining unmatched combat skills and unwavering supernatural abilities.

“When Dracula reigned over New York City, it was none other than Blade who confronted him first. By then, however, it was too late. Dracula had mastered the almighty power of Chronovium, defeating the Daywalker and imprisoning him within the castle dungeon.

“After Dracula's fall, Blade was sent to Wakanda to recover, but his story is far from over. Now recruited by Shuri to save all existence, Blade stands awake and at the ready against the dark forces of Hela and Knull.”

With the launch of the Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 update next week comes changes to the team-up abilities. Guardian Revival and Atlas Bond are both being removed from the experience, and Loki is being removed from Ragnarök Rebirth. In place of these adjustments come two new team-ups: Duality Dance and Vibrant Vitality. The former includes Adam Warlock and Luna Snow, while the latter brings Mantis together with either Groot or Loki. Existing team-ups are also expanding, with Iron Fist joining Chilling Assault, Star-Lord joining Rocket Network, and Blade joining Lunar Force.

NetEase Is Making a Splash With Marvel Rivals in August

Also set to join NetEase’s popular hero shooter come August 8 are adjustments to how players can help maintain a positive environment in their matches. In what the studio calls “Operation: Shield the Community,” players will be able to utilize a custom text chat filter, allowing users to mute specific words. NetEase says it will monitor popular muted words, which may then be added to its official list, while also saying that it’s been able to monitor all in-game voice chat conversations since July 24.

Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 will also introduce increased penalties for players who leave in the middle of Competitive game modes. Examples include longer bans from Competitive play and larger point deductions, with remaining players gifted point compensation at the end of affected matches. Leaver penalties will be handled on a case-by-case basis, with NetEase promising to speed up the appeals process for those looking to appeal a ban.

Finally, the new Resource Rumble game mode and its Throne of Knull map will arrive later in the month alongside an August 22 update. NetEase stops short of detailing exactly what makes these additions stand apart from other maps and modes but teases more with plans to premiere a gameplay deep dive soon. Expect to see Resource Rumble first launch in Quick Match before it joins Competitive at a later date.

Marvel Rivals is chugging forward as NetEase works to maintain the two-month seasonal release schedule it promised back in April. It means more characters will be added faster as the team continues to address player feedback with frequent updates.

Marvel Rivals Season 3.5 launches next week. While we wait for full patch notes, you can see how the cast of The Fantastic Four: First Steps reacted to the Invisible Woman’s infamous Malice skin.

Michael Cripe is a freelance contributor with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).

Taron Egerton has the look and the swagger to be the next James Bond — but the Kingsman star isn’t actually interested in taking on the now-vacant iconic role. In fact, he doesn’t even think he’s right for it.

He flat out said no when asked in a recent interview with Collider if he would try to get the part in the next film and went on to explain: “I don’t think I’m a good choice for it. I think I’m too messy for that.”

Egerton, who played Elton John in the 2019 biopic Rocketman, is a huge Bond fan, “particularly Daniel Craig’s tenure” as the British spy, but that doesn’t mean he thinks he could take on the role.

“But I think I wouldn’t be good at it, and I think there’s so many cool, younger actors who would be great for it,” he said. “I think it would be wasted on me, probably.”

If you're looking for an affordable power bank that will fast charge your brand new Nintendo Switch 2, Steam Deck, or Apple iPhone 16, then check out this new deal that just popped up. Amazon is offering the Iniu 10,000mAh Power Bank with up to 45W of Power Delivery and a USB Type-C cable lanyard for just $13.36 after you apply coupon code "QPCSXPJR". This power bank will more than double your total Switch 2 playtime and has enough power output for you to play and charge simultaneously. Iniu power banks have solid reviews and are less expensive than Anker models.

Iniu 10,000mAh 45W Power Bank for $13.36

One of the best Audible deals of the year for Amazon Prime members is availabe now. Until July 31, new and returning Audible subscribers can sign up for three months of Audible Premium Plus absolutely free. You will need to be logged into your Amazon Prime membershp to see this promotion. Premium Plus is Audible's highest tier plan and normally costs $14.95/mo. As a additional subscription perk, you get a free audiobook of your choice for each of those three months and you get to keep them indefinitely.

3 Free Months of Audible Premium Plus