Nighthaven Day 2 AKA WHAT IS UP WITH PERKS AND GEAR!?

A dream item!

 We are two days into the Nighthaven update for New World: Aeternum, and the community is lit up about the new gear system. There is confusion about how perks should work. There is excitement at the new possibilities. There are cooks in the kitchen, brewing up the next meta. And I'm just over here saying, “folks, this ain’t right.”

 The main thing that "ain't right" is that the old perks are showing up on new gear drops, allowing for super-stacking of old and new perks together. Then, with the new perk charm slots, where you can slot one of the new perk charms, you can pick the same perk that is already on the item. For example: I was able to stack four instances of Enchanted Ward on a single armor piece—a dream for a tank, but a setup that makes zero logical sense.

 I scoured for dev updates all day yesterday, and the only hint that something might be wrong was a note from Kay (the lead for New World) that the team was investigating the reports. Investigating—not "fixing a bug." I was worried this might be the new state of gear and was not excited about what it might mean.

 Fortunately, fast forward to today, and NW Joel posted that it was not working as intended and provided clarity on what should or should not be happening. The old perks should not be allowed on new gear, and the same perk should not be allowed twice on the same item. Other perk stacking, like having multiple magical resists on a single armor piece, was confirmed as "working as expected," which is fine.

 Now we wait for a fix to be rolled out, which will involve updating a lot of perks on gear drops and will no doubt ruffle some feathers for players who have invested upgrade materials into gear. The devs were clear they are not planning on refunding any materials or umbral crystals invested in crafting or upgrades (full text copy of the dev response pasted below).

 So I sit at level 70 still, with some slightly upgraded gear from my old gear set. I'll be waiting for the fix to be deployed before I jump into targeting my endgame build update.

 

Reddit thread discussing NW Joel's update

Text of what NW Joel posted: 

    Hey all,

    Wanted to give a couple updates on a few issues related to perks and gear that you may have encountered recently.

    Old Perks on new gear. This is unintentional. We are investigating this right now and a likely fix will be replacing old perks with new sockets if you end up in this scenario. Again this is still under investigation so the outcome may change here. For now have fun min/maxing these combos, but this gear will be subject to change for anyone that uses old perk mods on new gear and the mods will not be refunded if we decide to change this interaction.

    I have seen screenshots of multiple of the same charm on an item. Though it is intentional to have multiple of the same socket type it is not intentional to have multiple of the exact same charm itself. If you are in this state any duplicate charms do not stack and you are wasting perk space. An additional note that it is intended for multiple variant perks such as Void Protection II & Flame Protection II to roll on the same items. There is diminishing returns when stacking perks and its something we are watching.

    Spider Cave: There was a cave that was giving out a considerable volume of loot that attracted players to it. Overall much of this loot is what I would consider entry gear for endgame and much of the chase will be around sets and 4 sockets. If it werent for the performance concerns, we would have left it. With that being said I will look towards alternative paths long term like this without congregating every last one of you to the same spot.

    I added a known issue where upgrading artifacts final perk can revert your gs back down to 700 if you have spent umbral. We are working on a fix for this. For now I would recommend against it.

    Focused on getting fixes for gear and content ASAP so I am less active in here than the last week apologies.

    Sorry for the delay in responses from me, I have been busy working on fixes.

    Edit for clarity: Replace old perks with new perks not new sockets. Items would stay 3 socket. Sorry noticed that in the first paragraph.


    From above - An additional note that it is intended for multiple variant perks such as Void Protection II & Flame Protection II to roll on the same items. There is diminishing returns when stacking perks and its something we are watching. Yes this is by design currently. I cant speak to all the math behind it though thats more the combat teams deal.