More details on the New World gear reset?

 With the New World Public Test Realm (PTR) up and running with the Season 2 patch there are quite a few things that testers are finding that were not in the patch notes.  Some of them may hint towards the gear reset that is assumed to be coming.  Let's jump in and take a look at what's been found.

 The main piece that tester's stumbled across is the addition of Artisans crafting recipes (example: Artisans Round Shield).  These are guaranteed 600 GS weapons and gathering tools that anyone can craft and look to be positioned to allow anyone to jump directly into 600 GS items.  

 There are also multiple changes to gypsum casts.  The cooldown now appears to be weekly (7 days) instead of daily.  So players can craft up to 7x of each cast once per week.  Also each cast is awarding more expertise bumps which will reduce the total needed to level expertise to 600.

 Combined these two items may be an indicator that AGS is looking to help players accelerate the 500-600 expertise which supports the gear score increase announced on the road map; thus players can get into the new end gear progression faster.  This will be needed if, like other major updates, a large number of players come back to check the game out and the last thing AGS needs is them being stuck behind a significant grind.

 Another piece of the puzzle are a new type of gypsum cast that reward guaranteed legendary gear.  These cost gypsum orbs and umbral shards (as opposed to rewarding shards) and result in a roll at a legendary item.  This along with other changes such as awarding gear creates for PvP arenas and more legendary items on the PvP reward track are bringing more and more legendary gear to the fingertips of players.  And the more they give out legendary gear the more you have to wonder if that's because they are about to hit the big ole' reset button (i.e. they are buttering us up with freebies so we'll be less mad).

 A gear reset in New World seems very likely at this point and to soften the blow it looks we are getting some possible hand outs as well as faster paths for players looking to catch up.  We still don't know what an increase to max gear score looks like or what it means for our 625 gear but the pieces are starting to come together.