Checked off a personal goal today. I hit 200+ in every gathering, refining, casual, and crafting skill in New World. The last one to finish out was music.
Note: the one's that show a number other than 200 indicate the 200+ aptitude level. For example Weaving on the bottom left is level 27 aptitude (meaning I've leveled it up 27 more times since hitting 200).
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.
 |
New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.
Heartrunes of Grasping Vines in New World require 1,000 thorny vines to upgrade meaning 3,000 thorny vines are needed in order to craft the three legendary heartrunes. Thorny vines are gathered from briars which don't fall into any of the gathering skills so gathering rate is not influenced by gathering luck or yield increases (buffs, potions, etc). So players gather one vine at a time.
New idea: move briar (and any other "general" node) into a gathering profession. This way gathering effects can make the activity of gathering briar for thorny vines more efficient and expedite the rate at which they can be gathered. This is especially important if 1,000 of something are going to be needed to upgrade a heartrune!
Had my best Outpost Rush (OPR) match ever in New World. Crushed it with my heavy armor Flamethrower build (Fire Staff/Sword and Shield).
And another bonus OPR scoreboard; our team steam rolled them but very rare I go 10-0 on kill/death!
The best part is that it accepts text searches so will not require a lot of clicking like the current TP. In the stream you see it accepting searches for certain perks. For example; [abyss] found items with perks that have the word abyss in them. And [abyss] + [keen] found items with perks that match both (screenshot at right). Also from other chatting it sounds like it can accept gear score searches such as [keen] > 600 to find gear over 600GS. Sexy.
And actually the best best part is that it supports searching storage and inventory. Let's freaking go!
Azoth is supposedly what makes Aeternum the magical place that it is. It is the essence that allows players, monsters, and animals to continually come back to life in New World. It is used in all sorts of activities (fast travel, crafting, etc), but with a cap of 1,000 azoth at any one given time it is also a resource player's never seem to have enough of when it is needed most.
Fortunately players can buy and sell Vials of Bottled Azoth which when salvaged grant 50 azoth. Unfortunately players do not do the actual bottling of the azoth. Bottled azoth is randomly dropped from enemies or given as rewards for quests and opening various chests.
New idea: let players bottle their own azoth. When a player hits 1,000 azoth they start losing out on future azoth gains and for many players who don't craft there is little use for azoth so they end up hovering around 1,000 azoth. Ideally players could bottle up that azoth and sell it. Then the developers can remove vials from various drop tables and the main avenue is from players bottling azoth.
Bonus idea: let players obtain a housing item that slowly bottles azoth out of thin air and they can get a little bonus for having a house and an azoth bottler.
Want the best build for Diablo IV for launch? Then why are you here? I'm not playing Diablo IV.
Remember Digg? No? Remeber your answer to this question because in a few years I am going to ask if you remember Reddit. They are playing the full Digg card. The best quote from that thread (bold added by me).
Some people might not be old enough to remember when digg.com made a bunch of changes during the transition to v4. Digg was huge at the time. They thought they were literally unstoppable, but just like myspace and many companies before them, their names are unknown to many.
It will be weird transitioning away from Reddit like the companies before, but I guess, in the tech world it eventually becomes inevitable…
Finally done watching paint dry to complete the season 1 challenge for capping forts.
There is nothing more annoying than running all the way out to a fort in the open world in New World and realizing you forgot to enable your PvP flag. Back to town to set your flag, back to the fast travel point, and then the joy of running back to the fort (mounts please!).
The new idea: how about the fort and the area around the fort is always PvP? Upon entering players get a warning about being flagged automatically and can back out if they choose. Otherwise after a few seconds they are flagged and go about their business of watching paint dry capping the fort. If a player leaves the area they return to their previous flag or unflagged status.
For players that like playing a variety of builds in New World there are a couple barriers to switch too much. First is acquiring gear; it can take years to get the right piece(s) of gear for a build with the random gear system. Second; even if you have the gear it is prohibitive to have it all upgraded to 625 gear score via umbral shards.
The good news is for those that like playing a lot of builds you don't need perfect 3-perk legendary gear. You can get elite 2-perk gear that is more than sufficient for many builds. The bad news is that 2-perk elite gear still costs the same to upgrade as legendary gear so it is a feel bad everytime you pump some precious umbral shards into a purple item.
The idea for today: reduce the umbral shard cost to upgrade gear based on it's rarity. Legendary gear stays the same as it is today but 2-perk purple gear could be reduced to 50% of the current cost and even blue/green gear could be reduced to something like 25%/10%.
This would encourage players to try more builds and increase the use of the non-legendary items in the game.
RIP Throne and Liberty. It was good knowing you while you were just an exciting possibility. I will still give it a try but the video from the beta test in Korea is not looking good. The game looks like it plays like a decade old game with a fresh coat of current generation graphical paint.
I can barely play this game with the damn watermark text spamming my screen. I also can't talk about the game because its under NDA.
But here is a video of someone that was allowed to share the first few minutes of the game:
Big news from New World today! Season 2 is coming and with it a bunch of game changing features: transmog, cross-world OPR, new arena map, raid groups and content, seasonal event, and more! New World is continuing to deliver on it's road map and make big exciting changes.
Anyone that was doubting the commitment to New World after the recent Lord of the Rings MMO announcement should not have any lingering doubt. This next season is jam packed with cool stuff and no doubt many other small tweaks and balance changes under the hood. I am personally looking forward to this!
Also hidden away in the announcement was a change that was not on the Road Map. Some shenanigans will be afoot in First Light.
First Light Retraction
First Light has fallen to the might of Artemis and her Angry Earth horde! The Settlement, Fort, and Trading Post in First Light are now closed. A wall of thorns has erupted along the border, barring all access into the territory until further notice.
All Housing related items will return to Storage and can be found under the “Old First Light” tab in any Storage shed.
All Trading Post orders in First Light will eventually expire, but no new orders can be made in the territory.
Companies controlling First Light at the time of Retraction will be refunded for their losses.
First Light’s Faction Control Point (FCP) buff has been moved to Weaver’s Fen, and Weaver’s FCP buff has been discontinued for now.
We have big plans for the territory. This is only the first step. Stay tuned for more news about the future of “Old First Light.”
They are basically wiping out First Light and all citizens housed therein. This is a pretty big change not to have outlined in any sort of road map. I am very curious to see where this goes! Nothing shakes up the mundane like a full-fledged city in an MMORPG being taken out of play!
There is so much in this update and probably much more hiding under the fine details such as balance tweaks and changes. For a summary you can dive into the May developer update.
What am I up to in New World? Farming glyphs! Specifically: Above Glyph Stone and Sun Glyph Stone. Why? So I can craft some Runeglass Case of Igniting? Why? So I can make Runeglass Gems of Igniting for my heavy armor Flamethrower build!
So if you need me I'll be solo inside "The Wall" or Solarium Khepri farming away. As a note: I both dread the wall for being a maze but also for it's little escape rooms. There is no feeling like opening the glyph doors, quaffing some potions, and rumbling with a few elites in a room that barely fits the chest you are about to loot. The best part is when the door locks behind you and either you are leaving in body bag or with the loot.
What are you up to in New World these days?
Just sharing this sweet scoreboard from a 3v3 arena match in New World. Playing as my Heavy Armor Flamethrower build.
New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game. Ranged damage in New World end game PvE is a problem. Here's an idea to fix it!
New World recently changed the Bane perks on ranged weapons to do more % damage than the % damage increase bane gives on melee weapons. This was meant to "fix" that ranged damage was under-powered compared to melee in PvE content. This was a poor "fix".
My idea for a true fix would be to nerf the crap out of melee. Seriously!
The reason melee is so good in PvE for the most part it hits multiple targets on normal attacks (light and heavy) while ranged does not. Ranged hits a single target on normal attacks (yes there are a few upgrades where there is some splash but its not default like it is with most melee).
It seems like the better approach for melee would be that it does high damage to the first target hit but reduced damage to any additional targets hit. The game has the tech to do this; it already understands first vs additional targets hit for perks like Trenchant Recovery.
This would create more value for true area-of-effect abilities instead of the default melee attack being area of effect. It would also balance damage between ranged and melee as they would both be primarily single target damage.
And if this sort of approach was taken the response would be apocalyptic from the New World community. Good. We need a little drama. If this idea sounds as dumb as you think it does; leave a comment!
The studio behind New World has announced it is starting work on a new MMO set in the Lord of the Rings universe. The natural question is: who's gonna start digging New World's grave?
Amazon Games has announced it’s making a new massively multiplayer online game based on The Lord of the Rings. Development is being led by New World studio Amazon Games Orange County. This is an all-new production, separate from an earlier attempt to make a Lord of the Rings MMO that was canceled by Amazon in 2021.
First I want to say my inner geek chafes when these announcements say "Lord of the Rings" when really the setting is Tolkien's Middle-earth. If the announcement had read "Middle-earth MMO" my interest would have been doubly peaked. So I am long term hoping
Of course this announcement hit the New World community with many now jockeying for position to be the first one in line to get a shovel for the grave digging. Clearly Amazon Game Studios is going to starve New World to focus on this new game.
Combine this with the "gear reset" fears and we all should just stop playing New World I guess.
RIP: New World 2021 - 2023
New World can't stay out of the crosshairs of the content creators. This time answers to a Discord Q&A are making the rounds (sorry don't know if/how I can link to Discord posts). Specifically comments regarding the Season 3 road map item around a gear score increase and what that means for player's current gear . The answer was short and sweet, but lacked clarity on what it really meant so of course the community is taking it as "New World full gear reset! Stop playing now!".
If you want a larger summary of the Q&A along with the tidbit stoking the gear reset discussion watch the video I linked (embedded below as well).
The gear reset tidbit is screenshotted below (along with Jay Oddity's spectacular noggin top).
As I said in the intro: short and sweet, but lacking clarity. On one hand it is saying 625 (max gear level currently) gear is not upgradeable and then saying some sort of new system is coming for gear progression (which is assumed the Season 3 road map bullet item for "gear score increase).
At face value a level-headed reader is walking away with "player's won't upgrade gear that is 625". A less-than-level-headed reader walks away with "625 gear will be worthless! Don't waste time playing the game!".
Unfortunately MMORPG history is sort of on the side of the less-than-level-headed readers here. When World of Warcraft launched its first expansion many players (a lot who were brand new to MMORPGs) were shocked to find out that a green item from the expansion trumped some of the best gear gained in original World of Warcraft. Every expansion since has reset gear in a similar manner so the assumption is this is where New World is headed.
Personally I take the statement as an indication they are increasing gear score and coming up with a new system for adjusting gear score. The key word I hit on there is "adjust". That reads like gear may not be upgraded in the future and may have other methods for adjusting to meet gear score requirements. I am hopeful this means a more horizontal approach than a strict vertical approach. Or possibly automated scaling up and down based on other factors which would allow
New World already has a gearing problem. There is no real way to ensure you get the gear you need excepting for some farmable named gear sets that have niche use cases (such as the Harbringer gear sets for Angry Earth content; useless elsewhere). If players want best in slot gear in New World it's basically a lottery system. Either they get a drop from a high level mutation, an Outpost Rush crate, or through the mystic toilet that is crafting.
Knowing that there is an underlying gearing problem I am hopeful this statement is AGS taking a good look at the problem and working towards new and exciting solutions instead of bandaid fixes over the top of what we have. If this is intended to coincide with Season 3 then we are likely to find out more details a few months from now. And months are like years in MMOs; so if you are questioning if you should play New World and upgrade your gear then all you need to ask yourself "are you having fun?". If yes; then upgrade away. If you answered no; stop being a troll and go somewhere else.
Changes to the specialist Irish are coming to Battlefield 2042. EA DICE announced the changes on their latest Inside Battlefield podcast. The big change is a significant NERF to Irish's APS-36 Shootdown Sentry.
Irish's sentry, as it stands currently, takes effect immediately once deployed (i.e. it starts shooting down explosives) and intercepts all explosives until such time that the sentry is destroyed. Basically it is an infinite explosive defense if it is not destroyed.
The upcoming changes are:
Oh boy!
These are significant nerfs to Irish's sentry and I have some reservations. One of the long standing problems with Battlefield games is "explosive spam". Trying to defend a point? Trying to defend the little bit of ground you took over on attack? Prepare for a never ending flood of explosives being lobbed into your general area; especially in game modes like breakthrough.
Irish's sentry is critical in the current state of the game to combat explosive spam. Without the sentry confined spaces or bottlenecks would be unplayable. Anyone that has played a round of breakthrough without anyone playing Irish know how miserable the experience can be.
Pushing players into open areas exposes them to other Battlefield detractors such as vehicle campers and snipers. In modes like breakthrough it may become impossible to either defend or attack some points (attackers rely heavily on Irish's sentry to push forward and hold areas; resetting the sentry position a few feet forward as the push makes progress).
While the sentry is great for combating explosive spam it also has some areas where it can be abused. The most egregious abuse is vehicles camping just off the main battlefield protected from any long range anti-vehicle attacks since the rockets are considered explosives. In modes with out of bounds areas for defenders; attacking vehicles could park, drop a couple sentries, and be impervious to attack.
What confuses me most about the changes is that it hurts defending against explosive spam in close quarters but is not much of a deterrent against the abuse by camping vehicles. Vehicles are often far enough away that even with a cool down period the sentry is still a near-impervious defense. Outside of multiple players coordinating attacks there isn't much risk to vehicle campers still.
The developers also stated they wanted to improve the pick rate of Irish (and Dozer who they also covered in the podcast). As I see it there is even less of a reason to select Irish now than there was before. As an Irish fanboy; I can't see myself picking him if his sentry is gutted.
So in conclusion: what'd they do to my boy!? The only change needed was to make it so the sentry didn't stop rockets so vehicle campers couldn't sit untouched, but instead we are getting changes that will actively encourage more explosives spam...
I call this game mode "Open New World". The key changes:
The big change here is "no instanced content". I really enjoy New World's open world content. I love looping around the open world and doing stuff. I don't dislike the instanced content but wish there was more content in the open world and more players there doing it. Removing instanced content will force players into the open world.
Now that we have players forced into the open world let's enable PvP by making it so joining a faction is electing to be always-on for PvP. Players can remain faction-less if they don't want to PvP and companies can be either factionless or faction (if faction; all members must be in the same faction).
Some other changes to go with this:
I'd play this version of the game in a heartbeat :) Would you? Leave a comment.
While I was away New World decided things needed to be less challenging. Update 1.9.3 is on the live servers as of 5/10 and with it numerous season pass challenges and activities were dialed back making them challenging no more.
As an example; this challenge was reduced:
Outpost Rush Domination
Reduced required Outpost Rush wins from 100 to 30
The season is approximately 97 days long (Apr 3 - July 6). For this challenge at its original goal of 100 it would mean a player would need to net at least one win a day if they play every day. That seems like a good challenge. It is not something everyone will get and feels like an accomplishment if you do make it. But moved to 30; that isn't much of a challenge and many more players will hit the challenge complete.
If you follow the release notes an axe was taken to many of the challenges. This is unfortunate for anyone that was pushing for the original targets in the hopes of gaining the coveted "look at what I did!" feeling. In my own experience I logged into several challenges and season journey steps being completed; netting me 5 pass levels (putting me at 90+; cruising to 100).
On one hand I am a fan of when things are made easier on players, but at the same time I like actual challenges. So I'm on the fence with all these changes; though considering I am pretty much done with the season pass and journey it doesn't really matter much.
My hope is the New World dev team learns from Season 1 and makes future season's and their challenges actual challenges. Tie unique rewards to them so that players can feel rewarded for hitting the challenges. These don't have to be game changing rewards, but there is nothing wrong with throwing out some unique housing items or cosmetics or titles.
With that said I do want to give credit to the devs on other changes that made things less challenging for the better. My favorite is the reduction of Flame Cores required for a cast; down from 10 to 3. Also you can now create 6 casts per day - up from 3. Also the gear you get from the casts is much improved. This will make the "craft X casts" season challenge really easy now, but there is some great benefits from this.
The change opens another path to turn gold into umbral shards as you can just buy 18x flame core each day, craft 6 casts, and each one rewards up to 400 shards for up to 2,400 shards a day (not to mention you get improved Human Ward/Bane gear from the casts as well). Combine these shards with shards you can "buy" via infused fragments and there is a good path for converting gold into umbral shards for those players that don't want to get them via other means (players like me!).
Anyways; I am off to grind more named gear drops which is my current kick in New World.
What a week. My phone died (original Google Pixel was 7 years old) and then my youngest ended up in the Emergency Room. No gaming this weekend. My youngest is good though; just had to rule out something more serious than a common stomach bug.
May the 4th be with you! You'll need the force if you are trying to run Star Wars Jedi: Survivor.
With my Infernus farm build resulting in acquiring Infernus I wanted to look at what else I could farm up using the build. Fortunately there is plenty of stuff to farm in the general vicinity. Specifically I am now on the hunt for parts of the Corrupted Rage set: specifically the gloves and helmet (as I have Chardis pieces for my other Ancient tank gear set).
And the helmet dropped for me last night so just need to nab the gloves!
So I will be in The Tangle farming away if you need me! If you have any other recommendations on items to farm for drop me a comment.
Ashes of Creation featured the mage class in their most recent monthly update. This was the most promising look at the game in a while.
First, I want to highlight the format to this archetype preview was better than it's predecessors. There was structure and thought behind what was shown and why it was shown. Details of abilities accompanied the on screen display. Abilities were showcased before jumping into content. I walked away understanding the direction they are headed with the mage. In past archetype previews I didn't walk away with an understanding of the class.
Second; USER INTERFACE! We saw USER INTERFACE! Finally. The UI is critical to understanding the game. We saw two stacked hot bars, some indication of equipped weapon, cool downs, and a little bit of the inventory. UI needs to be featured more. It is the biggest missing piece to help drive confidence the game is making more progress than just being able to show off animations and basic combat.
We also got to see a few other things. Most notably was the gliding (flying?) mount (23:12 in the video). The animation from take off, gliding, to landing were awesome. Enemies also aggro'd as the mount glided or walked past and there was quite the train of enemies gathered up. I am not sure if this is how aggro is intended in long run, but definitely some early-days MMORPGs vibes there!
Also numerous times in the video we got to see the character traverse various world obstacles. The traversal looked smooth and gave me confidence that they are headed in the right direction for movement and how it feels to the player (i.e. I can climb that rock in front of me vs it being an invisible wall).
This is the first class preview where I can give a solid "thumbs up". The more of the various game aspects that are mixed into these previews the more confident I will be that the game is heading towards a test!
New World's new spring event is live: Springtide Bloom. The event has players zipping around the world killing wasps and picking flowers. There is a trick to killing the wasps you can harvest the flowers and that trick is having Wispy Spritz on hand. While plenty of Wispy Spritz is given away in the event the crafting recipe is a head scratcher as it requires fire motes; the most expensive motes in the game... so the price... as expected... is going up (2 to 2.48 gold per on my server).
This highlights this weird imbalance New World has with some components. Some are overused in many different recipes and then get scooped into event recipes like this situation; and other resources in the same family have significantly less use. In the mote example; Fire Motes are the most used mote and now is the most-most used because of the event kicking off. Why New World? Why!?
 |
| Why!? |
New World is shuttering their forums and moving their community interaction to Discord. I would link to that forum post but whats the point when it won't be there in the future so here's a screenshot instead.
Maybe I am just an Internet boomer but I liked forums and I am going to miss the New World forums. I thought the forums were well organized and functionally strong. I really liked the dynamic timezone conversion capability so that I was always seeing event times in my local time. It was also easy to search via search engines.
I enjoy Discord as a voice comm platform but I really have not liked it as a means for replacing a game's website and forums. I just don't find Discord functional in the way a web sites are. It is also "yet another" program I need open on my computer. I get it that many gamers live in Discord but I am not one of them; I live in my web browser (yes... I know you can use Discord in your browser... but that doesn't mean it works like a normal website).
Either way I didn't spend much time in the forums. The main use was when I am encountering a bug or connection error and seeing if others were in the same boat. Discord should be good for this as I am sure folks will pile in with any widespread issues. So I'll give Discord a try and lament not having the forums anymore.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment.
 |
| Funniest Battlefield ever sir! |
I am too obsessed with Battlefield 2042 currently to jump back into Bad Company 2 so this post will just be about my fond memories of destroyed battlefields! This is one of my all time favorite Battlefield titles!
Not only did this game have great multiplayer, but it also featured a great single player game. In fact its the only single player campaign in the entire franchise that I can remember playing. The characters were memorable and I can still hear "Rainbow Sprinkles"!
Just watching that video brought back so many funny memories from this game's dialogue. I would even go as far to say that if Battlefield gamers were turned into virtual soldiers these yahoos would be the result.
And talking about the rainbow sprinkles on the top: not only was Bad Company 2 amazing but so was it's Vietnam campaign. For years I returned to play the Vietnam multiplayer. Great maps and even better features! Ever see a helicopter airlift a tank into the middle of the battlefield? Well guess what you can do in BFBC2 Vietnam! Oh and the river patrol boats were overpowered... just saying.
Regardless of Vietnam or the game proper the underlying gameplay was spot on. Guns felt great. Map destruction was top notch. Vehicles felt balanced. And one of the most controversial changes was removing the prone position. If you wanted to snipe you had crouch as your best bet.
So many good memories here and this spot in the backlog is also timely as, unfortunately, EA is desisting Bad Company 2.
This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts).
The rumor mills are in full motion this morning after a "accidentally" posted Slack message tweet hit the Twitter from Rod Fergusson. It suggest a secret announcement is coming with the upcoming Diablo 4 End Game stream.
Note: I am opting NOT to link to Twitter; so screenshots is all you get!
Infernus dropped! Woot! The Infernus farming build and guide I put together paid off.
 | ||||||
| Look at that bad boy (the sword; not bunny face)! |
 |
| It dropped! It dropped! Woot! |
Seriously! New World developers... this is so frustrating. To go with yesterday's picture; now I have four completed activities I can't get rewarded for. This design is so dumb!
