To War!

 I've been rolling with Evan's Empire in New World for the past few months and yesterday we successfully pushed Weaver's Fen (Castle of Steel) into WAR!  The war will be tonight so expect a report tommorow.

Love this man! YaBoiWilly!

 YaBoiWilly was a surprising find within the New World content creator universe.  He went ahead and took surprising to a new level with this tattoo.  Ya boi!

@playnewworld New World has changed my life. This game has done so much for me its hard to explain. Not only the game, but the amazing Community behind it. This piece means alot. I am forged in Aeternum! Shout-out Devan Smith from Mythical Wizard Tattoo in Indiana! pic.twitter.com/Tj6Yg5hDDt

— YaBoiWiilly (@YaBoiWiilly) July 24, 2023

"We are talking to Reddit now"

 The New World developers put out their most recent Q&A and as they stated in the video "we are talking to Reddit now".

This was a pretty tame set of questions and answers.  If you want to analyze all of it you can use this Reddit thread (zing!)!

 One area that they hit on that did interest me was the topic of azoth salt.  As I've mentioned it feels broken since the season 2 changes and ultimately it really serves no purpose in the game.  I posted this as a comment on the Youtube video.

Salt makes no sense as a currency.  There is nothing other than the tracks to spend it on and now we have to hold progress while waiting for salt to accumulate (I play a ton and it took me 3 days of play just to get salt to select rewards from one track; I easily lost multiple tracks worth of PvP experience holding it up).  And at the end of the day either salt is going to be meaningless like it was before or its going to be too little.  The game would be better if salt was removed. It makes no sense to have to do the PvP activity for XP first and then also accumulate a currency to select a reward: just let us select the reward.  Is 3x rewards per PvP track that game breaking?  

I earn far more rewards for a mutated expedition without having to earn a secondary currency... why insist on continually adding gate keeping to PvP.  While we are at it let's also get rid of the "only the first two arenas a day reward a crate".  If you wouldn't put a restriction like that on expeditions don't put it on a PvP mode.

 They said they are looking at the issue and I am hoping it is more than just adjusting the salt gain rate or cost of track rewards.  It just needs be removed.

 Outpost Rush (OPR) was also discussed in a couple questions.

 First; cross world OPR has brought more matches (a big win in my book) but also highlighted more one-sided matches.  The devs noted that matchmaking is a big complex system to work on so they are looking at what other options they have. Personally I don't want to see ranked OPR but wouldn't object to solo/duo vs group queue OPR now that we have cross world queuing.

 Secondly siege weapons in OPR were discussed.  With Season 2 they were "buffed" but I'd be hard pressed to say I saw any difference.  They are still worthless in my experience.  The question asked was about bringing in other siege weapons.  Ideally they'd figure out what, if any, role the siege weapons are meant to play in OPR before talking about others coming in.  As it stands they are pointless aside from dumping materials into when trying to top the contribution leaderboards for a single OPR match.

 The real spice of the video was the tail end with a preview on the next balance of power update.  They pretty much stated as a fact the one shot blunderbuss combos are getting removed.  Finally.

 

Screenshot

 2,000+ hours in New World, hundreds of hours in the zone Ebonscale Reach, and first time I've noticed this thing off in the distance.  This also reminds me how good this game looks if you pause for a second to look around.

 

Dumb

 How did this happen Max Summer Medleyfaire Rep FAST | New World Season 2?  Such a dumb design for an event.  

 However, I'm not going to complain as I made 7,000+ gold earlier today being one of the two musicians getting tipped on stage for a few hours of mindless music playing (no, I didn't macro it).

Update: They've disabled this part of the event.

New (World) Ideas: Gemstone Dust From Salvage

  New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 In New World players can break down gems into gemstone dust which can be used for brief protection from elemental damage.  Tier V gemstone dust is expensive as it comes from Tier V gems and Tier V gems are needed in a lot of areas in the game; mostly to slot into gear for whatever the weekly mutation rotation is.  Once a gem is turned into dust or locked into a piece of gear there is no getting the gem back.  Thus it is not smart to turn valuable gems into dust and dust is therefore expensive.

 New Idea: If a piece of gear has a gem slotted and that piece of gear is salvaged give players gemstone dust as a salvage reward.  This would make dust more widely available and ensure it doesn't feel like you are giving up a firstborn child's worth of gold for 20 seconds of elemental protection.

CPU+PSU Upgrade: Need Suggestions

 I have been rocking a Ryzen 5 3600X for a while and I think it's time for an upgrade.  My current thought is to go with a Ryzen 7 5800x3D. This upgrade path will take me to the top end of CPUs that my motherboard (Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite) can support and should improve performance in New World.

 The AMD x3D CPUs have been noted to improve gaming performance for many games and seem particularly well suited to gaming performance over other processing tasks.  However, there is a recommendation to upgrade to a 1,000W PSU (power supply) at the same time.

 I have a current 650W PSU that has followed me for multiple builds now.  It has been ole' reliable but with recent crashing issues requiring me to undervolt my GPU the PSU is showing its underpowered nature.  So I will be on the hunt for a 1,000W PSU and open to any suggestions.  I am hoping to find a modular PSU so I can swap the PSUs without having to redo cabling.

 I am having issues logging New World's performance (external tracking is now showing an average FPS of 0.1....).  I do want to figure this out so I can do some good before and after to share with the New World community so open to ideas here as well.