AGS surprised us with an announcement of the New World December Winter Update. Even better - Patch 1.2 will be on PTR for testing very soon!
A big day for news in Aeternum it seems. AGS has announced their next PTR run on December 3rd for the upcoming 1.2 Update later in December. With holidays coming up soon in the US where AGS is located, this PTR likely this will run for 2 weeks or less. This would give them time to act on feedback before shipping and time after shipping to address critical bugs.
Before we get into the details of everything, this article will be covering both the PTR announcement and the AGS dev blog talking about their intended changes for end game that will be on the PTR for testing.
New World PTR FAQ
Starting off with their PTR FAQ, which talks about when and how to particpate.
How Do I Access the New PTR?
Everyone with a copy of New World will be automatically granted access to the secondary PTR app. The PTR is not compatible with the live game, so you will need to download a separate client (and have the hard drive space required to support it). From there, there will be special worlds available within supported regions. Not all regions will initially be supported. Access is on a first come, first served basis. There may be queues.
Can I Play With or Transfer My Live Characters to the PTR?
Unfortunately, no. These are separate ecosystems, so at this time it is not possible. However, to make testing easier, they occasionally provide testers with special accommodations such as instant levels, special gear, etc.
Can I Provide Design Feedback Regarding What’s Included on the PTR?
Preview game builds on the PTR are finished with their core development and are in their final phase of testing and bug fixing. The main focus at this phase is improving quality, although you can provide any feedback you have to share.
I Have A Problem; How Can I Contact Customer Support?
Due to the temporary and potentially unstable nature of the PTR, general Customer Service assistance through both Live Chat and through the Support Website will not be available.
I Don’t Want To Participate in the PTR; Can I Remove the App From My Library?
Players can manage visibility of the New World Public Test Realm Steam Library entry. Opening up the game options (right-click > Manage) offers the “Hide Game” function.
December PTR Announcement
Now we get to dig into the changes they have listed for the PTR, which aren’t fully reflective of the 1.2 Update Notes, but will cover the major things.
New Limited Time Content
Winter Convergence Festival
The holiday of the Winter Convergence has arrived in Aeternum! Marked by the appearance of increased snowfall and Northern Lights in the sky (ala Aurora Borealis) this is a time of duality and dichotomy as the Yeti, the Winter Wanderer, comes to the land. While in the settlements gifts are exchanged to mark the passing of the year, outside the safety of the walls there rages a wintry war between the positive forces of Winter (slumber, perseverance) championed by the Winter Wanderer’s positive side and the negative forces of Winter (death, stagnation) are championed by the Winter Wanderer negative side. The player takes on the cause of the Winter Wanderer to collect Winter Tokens from repeatable events across the island, able to turn them in to a Holiday Shop containing rare and cosmetic items. The Winter Wanderer’s positive aspect grows in power with each Token collected and turned in.
Icy winds and the Winter Wanderer bring with them new armors, weapons, furnishings, skins, consumables, and a delightful “present gifting” emote; all themed off the wonderful Aeternum holiday of Winter Convergence!
Winter Villages
The Winter Wanderer has set up four villages to facilitate the joy and cheer of Winter Convergence! Visit these villages in Everfall, Monarch’s Bluffs, Weaver’s Fen, and Brightwood to meet the Winter Wanderer and carry out his holiday quests!
Winter Convergence Activities
- The Convergence Spirit – Celebrate the spirit of the season by giving a helping hand in decorating your favorite Settlement.
- The Convergence Spirit is a special Town Project that allows players to complete special Town Project Quests to upgrade each Settlements Tree of Light for improved daily rewards!
- Lost Present Recovery – Those dastardly Frigid Folk are spreading their mischief and stealing present across Aeternum.
- Located throughout the world are Lost Presents to be recovered and turned in for Winter Tokens at the Winter Villages Holiday Huts.
- Gleamite Collecting – Bright, glittering, gleaming Gleamite meteors of a multitude of color fall from the nights sky during this time of the year; as destructive as they are beautiful.
- Gleamite Showers are a new random, dynamic event that occurs at night throughout Aeternum. Keep your eyes and ears open as you search for locations where the showers are most prevalent. Exchange the harvested crystals for Winter tokens at the Winter Village Holiday Huts. Happy hunting!
The Winter Convergence Festival sounds like it could be a fun event overall. I’m looking forward to seeing what all there is before getting hyped up over it, but i’m glad to see more in-game events going on. This is also following the Turkulon boss that got activated with the 1.1.1 Update without a single word.
The more festive appearance and extra daily quests and rewards sound promising as well. Hopefully the Gleamite rewards end up being worth the effort as well, but only time will tell with that. We’ll be following up with additional information regarding these events with our Patch 1.2 coverage when it goes live, so we can give you an idea what to expect then.
UPDATE: We now have a complete guide to the Winter Convergence Festival Event in New World! It includes all quests and activities, full list of rewards and how to get them and tip on how to increase your productivity while farming the event. Enjoy!
Ice Caves
Ice Caves are appearing all over Aeternum due to the Winter Warrior’s desire for a Forever Winter. They are snowy and icy caves that the yeti use their powers to freeze up and make snow fall. The rest of Aeternum will look like these Ice Caves if the onslaught of the Warrior is not stopped. These caves will remain behind after the event as scars on the land, sources of wintry magic that refuse to melt even if the Warrior is defeated.
These Ice Caves seem like the event’s alternative to the Turkulon encounter that’s currently ongoing. Hopefully these are additional caves that are being added, or temporary alternatives to existing ones. It may be a weird thing to tray and manage if you need a specific mob for a quest, but their cave is overrun by the event.
New Content
New Quests
In addition to the new quest series offered by the Winter Wanderer for the Convergence Festival, there are also several new “side story” territory quests offered in Restless Shore and Mourningdale. This update also introduces a new quest series associated with Housing. After you’ve completed the Main Story Quest “Encroaching Corruption,” seek out Architect Giacomo Altoviti near your starting settlement to begin the quest series. Further quests with Giacomo Altoviti will be unlocked as you level up and progress your Territory Standing.
New Journal Categories
New quest categories have been added to the Journal for “Epic Weapons and Armor” quests and for “Skill Progression” quests. This update is accompanied by new map pins for all quest types.
Seasonal quests can be a good way to give everyone something to do with the event, regardless of their level. I’m curious why they feel a need to have a Housing-related quest line, but hey more quests are always welcome to me.
The additional Journal Entries and pins could be a good Quality of Life change overall. Right now all quests are pretty much the same combination of a diamond and a chevron for markers. More variety will hopefully make it easier to pick them apart by thing other than just color.
New Features
Expertise & Gypsum System
Based on feedback on the High Water Mark system and our desire to have a compelling and diverse end game, we’ve made some major updates to the end game. We’ve added a new resource called Gypsum that can be acquired each day by doing a variety of activities (open world named bosses, expedition bosses, outpost rush, arenas, corrupted breaches, etc.). Each activity rewards a different type of Gypsum that can be crafted into a Gypsum Orb. These Orbs can then be crafted into Gypsum Casts of any weapon, armor or trinket type. Opening a Gypsum Cast will guarantee an expertise bump and gear of that type.
We’ve also renamed High Water Mark to Expertise and now display the current Expertise level of each slot on your avatar in the inventory, so players can easily track their progress. We also show a level up banner anytime your Expertise level increases.
Lastly we’ve added 2 new end game POIs were players can challenge themselves with difficult content and try to progress their Expertise with level 66 enemies and elite chests. Both Malevolence in Edengrove and the Imperial Palace/North Dynasty Shrine have been up-leveled to 66.
Expertise sounds like they want to essentially gate your power to what it currently your High Water Mark. This changes does not sound good in the slightest, as it also means you’re combat power can be increased via crafting or even buying gear to ease the grind a bit as you work on it personally. However, I do like the Quality of Life addition of the Expertise level being shown in your inventory.
UPDATE: We now have a great guide you can use to learn how to Quickly Increase Expertise in New World.
Gypsum and Gypsum Casts sound like they’ll be more steady progression that encourages you to do a variety of content daily, rather than (or in addition to) the same grinds we currently do. It does still sounds like there’s RNG involved, but hopefully, since this seems more selective, we can work on the armor slot or weapons we want to the most and save others for later.
With Malevolence and the Imperial Palace being upgraded to level 66 enemies, this gives alternative locations to grind at, as well are more sources of Legendary drops. The only downside to this, is that for a newer player, they now have to slip past a Level 66 zone to reach the Dynasty Shipyard Expedition. If they increase the level on that as well, that’d be a fitting change, but it’s currently not mentioned here which would mean it’s likely to still be level 55.
Trade Skill Aptitude
We want to continue rewarding the efforts you make to craft items for yourself, your friends, or to make a buck on the Trading Post, so we have introduced Trade Skill Aptitude!
- Upon reaching level 200 in a Trade Skill, the Leveling Circle will update to show 3 markers equidistant from each other on the circle.
- Earning Trade Skill XP will begin progressing you again, and when you reach one of these markers, you will be awarded with a container of useful items that are (mostly) trade skill relevant, such as Craft Mods, special ingredients, and even schematics and recipes!
- Each subsequent marker awards a more spectacular container with more rewards than the one before.
- Gaining enough XP to go all the way around the circle will increment the Aptitude Counter by 1. This counter will keep counting so you can keep track of how many times you’ve wrapped your progression around the top level.
- We have also introduced a new type of reward with this system: Equipment Patterns.
- Equipment Patterns are Crafting Artifacts that enable you to craft a guaranteed Gear Score 600 item that has a specific appearance.
- Patterns require a significant amount of powerful crafting resources to create, but guarantee a GS 600 item.
- Patterns still roll perks and players have the normal amount of control over their outcome with Craft Mods and Azoth.
- Equipment Patterns have a small chance to drop from Arcana, Weaponsmithing, Armoring, and Engineering Aptitude Reward Caches.
A form of I guess.. “Prestige” leveling for tradeskills. This seems like a good way to actively reward someone dedicating time to their craft, especially if they’d rather craft than have to go out and hunt all these schematics. With these specifically requiring high end materials, I also hope this will mean an increase to the limit of the crafting of higher tier materials like Phoenixweave, Runic Leather, Glittering Ebony, and Asmodeum.
Equipment patterns sound really nice, but if one of the changes they have in mind with the whole Expertise System plays out… It may fall flat as a “reward”. We’ll be talking about that a bit more shortly when we dive into the Dev Blog.
PvP Balance Changes
Due to an issue in our initial PvP damage formula that caused lower gear to be more beneficial in damage mitigation, we have updated our formula. We look forward to hearing your feedback on this update.
- PvP damage formula update
- We adjusted the way armor mitigation is calculated to use enemies gear score value instead of your average gear score.
- To adjust for the difference in armor mitigation we increased the damage low level players due to higher level players and reduced the damage the higher level players due to lower level players.
- Crit damage application
- Critical damage bonuses from masteries or perks are now applied additively instead of multiplicatively. On average, this will reduce the extra damage they provide by a small percentage.
- Buffer Windows: A general consistency pass has been done across all weapons to adjust the buffering windows for dodges, abilities and basic attacks. The updated buffer windows starts when the first frame of the attack that would deal damage or on the first casting frame in the case of abilities that do not deal damage.
Overall these changes to scaling sound fair, though they’ll need significant testing to ensure they’re fair. I’m worried we’ll just end up in the same boat we were in before launch, but I’ll wait to test it before saying it’s a negative change
Crit Damage changes are a small loss of damage, but I don’t like that this is being labeled as a PvP only change, when it affects everything. Thankfully, it’s a pretty limited change. For context this means Vicious is now a flat increase from a base 1.3 multiplier on damage, up to a 1.43 multiplier on damage, instead of 1.44 multiplier on damage. So at the top end, it’s cutting off 5% or less.
This change is also a slight nerf to Great Axe and Void Blade specifically. As they have innate Critical Damage buffs that push them a bit higher than other weapons. Which means with the relevant perks, their crits drop from a 1.58 multiplier, down to a 1.51 multiplier at the high end. This also means Resilient will also be more consistent with how much it reduces damage from every weapon.
End Game Update Dev Blog
This is a blog post they posted alongside the PTR announcement, which goes more into detail on the changes to the Endgame systems involving Expertise (previous High Water Mark), Gypsum and other changes outside of these these including Difficulty and Reward changes.
December End Game Update
Based on feedback on the High Water Mark (HWM) system and our desire to have a compelling and diverse end game, we are making some major updates in our December 1.2 patch.
Our goal for the end game is to provide a variety of activities that all provide compelling rewards and interesting challenges. In this article, I’ll discuss 3 big changes we’ll be making – improving our end game gear progression, increasing rewards for some end game activities, and tuning difficulty of end game content.
Expertise & Gypsum System
Since New World’s launch, we’ve heard the feedback from our community that the HWM system was not communicated effectively, promotes a single monotonous activity, had too much randomness, and was a bit too grindy. So, we are completely revamping the system to address these concerns. This new and improved HWM system is called Expertise.
In the December update, Expertise will govern the highest drops you can get per slot, much like HWM did. But starting in early 2022, it will also govern the effectiveness of your gear. This means if your War Hammer Expertise is 520, and you equip a 550 Gear Score War Hammer, the weapon’s effective Gear Score will be reduced to 520. While we understand to some players this may result in a temporary reduction in power, we believe in the long run this will result in more rewarding progression loop that can’t be bypassed by buying gear off the trading post.
A major improvement provided by Expertise is that a player’s Expertise per slot is displayed on the inventory screen, as well as the average Expertise of all equipped gear. Additionally, each time a player gets an Expertise bump, a level up banner will appear showing their new Expertise Level. Note that the Expertise system unlocks at level 60, so this information will not be shown until then.
The second major improvement we made is adding a way for players to control their gear progression. To achieve this we introduced Gypsum. Gypsum is a new resource that is found by doing a variety of activities. Gypsum can be crafted into Gypsum Orbs, which can then be turned into special caches called Gypsum Casts. Gypsum Casts are gear type specific and when opened guarantee an Expertise bump for that type of gear as well as an item of that type. So if you really want to increase your Bow Expertise, you can craft Gypsum Bow Cast. Players can earn Gypsum by doing 7 different end-game activities:
- Obsidian Gypsum – defeating level 60+ open world named bosses, typically found in Elite Landmarks
- Sapphire Gypsum – defeating the final bosses of The Lazarus Instrumentality and Garden of Genesis
- Ruby Gypsum – found in Outpost Rush Caches
- Emerald Gypsum – found in Trade Skill Aptitude Reward Containers
- Citrine Gypsum – found in Arena Caches
- Amethyst Gypsum – found in Breach Caches
- Topaz Gypsum – found on hostile creatures Level 55+, but only after consuming a special Attunement Potion that can be crafted at a Tier 5 Camp.
We believe that providing different ways to collect Gypsum will allow players to play a variety of content, while always finding at least a few activities they love to progress in their gear score. Engaging in these activities for 30-60 minutes a day will earn players enough Gypsum of that type to craft a Gypsum Orb (except for Topaz since the Attunement potion can only be crafted once a week). After players have earned sufficient Gypsum for an Orb, they won’t earn more for 23 hours. Gypsum Orbs can then be crafted into Gypsum Casts of any weapon, armor, or trinket type. Note you can only craft any type of Cast, once per day. Opening a Gypsum Cast will guarantee an Expertise bump and reward players with a random piece of gear of that type with Gear Score equal to the new Expertise level. We’ve introduced a new Kiln crafting station in all end game zones that allows players to craft Gypsum Orbs and the various Gypsum Casts.
Note that we’ve tuned down the general chances of getting an Expertise bump to compensate for the guaranteed bumps that were added with Gypsum. Elite chest odds were reduced a little, but open world named enemies were reduced a lot. But we have increased up the amount your Expertise increases with each bump to make Gypsum Casts and the random bumps feel more valuable.
Overall these changes sounds promising, but also miss the mark a little in my opinion. For starters, the switch to Expertise sounds like it’s going to be less than seemless from High Water Mark. Intentionally or not, it sounds like they may be resetting any grinding people have already done for the High Water Mark System.
The other thing that concerns me is that Expertise is also going to gate our gear’s effectiveness. I do not like the sound of this, since there are many enemies and locations that can drop gear that is fixed at 600GS, as well as the ability to craft gear at 600GS. While this is mostly named Weapons, it does mean their strength will reduced until you grind it out.
Having the option to be able to pay a crafter for your Best-in-Slot (BiS) gear to not have do to the grind all the way from the bottom up with barely functioning gear is nice. While it can still be BiS, it will lose that inherent value as you’ll still have to make the grind, which is still influenced by RNG for it to function at 600 GS.
Now, Gypsum does sound like a promising alternative to just a pure grind, offering a few way to get them. The big problem with this, is they slapped time gating on it to slow the progression.
There’s a total of Seven Gypsum that can be earned and made into Gypsum Casts. You can only earn enough of each of these Gypsum to craft each type once a day, with the exception of the Topaz variation which is locked behind requiring a special potion that can only be made weekly.
Despite that, it does state that each cast can be any specific weapon, armor slot or trinket type. So it will go a long way to offset any terrible RNG you get from the post-change Elite Chests and Elite Monsters. So they will help the grind quite a bit. It’ll all come down to how big the increase to Expertise they grant.
I expect Obsidian and Sapphire Gypsum Casts to give a higher increase, as they require harder content to be completed. While Topaz being almost entirely disregarded due to it’s weekly lockout, and likely a smaller increase. The other will likely vary somewhere between, but it’s hard to say at the moment.
The biggest thing to note is that they say it’ll take 30-60 minutes a day to earn enough Gypsum for a Orb. At which point that source will no longer give Gypsum for 23 hours. This just means if you want to do a daily grind, you could be looking at 3+ hours required daily to efficiently gather gypsum. It’ll also be important to stick to one task until you hit that lockout for the Gypsum drops, so you can keep a consistent schedule going into following days.
If you still want to go the pure grind route, just remember that they did tune down the Expertise bumps for items dropped from Open World Elites a fair bit and Elite Chests slightly. However all bumps, from both drops and Gypsum Casts provide a higher bump overall compared to current. So it’s an option to just purely grind, but you’ll likely want to get into as many Lazarus and Genesis runs as you can to build them up quickly by farming.
Reward Improvements
To ensure all our end-game activities provide compelling rewards for the effort and risk involved, we’ve reviewed them and made some adjustments. We will continue to audit our rewards for each activity and make further adjustments as necessary.
For this round we’ve focused on Expeditions. Our goal is that Expeditions are super rewarding experiences, since they require a time-investment to craft an Orb and are challenging content. We’ve made 4 adjustments to make them more rewarding:
- Each expedition boss will guarantee a random Expertise bump
- We fixed all chests in Lazarus Instrumentality and Garden and Genesis so they have a chance to provide end-game Expertise bumps
- Added Item Shards as a guaranteed drop for Expedition Bosses and as a chance to drop from Elite Chests
- Added guaranteed Sapphire Gypsum drops for each Expedition Boss
Items Shards are a new crafting ingredient that enables players to craft an item with a specific Attribute Bonus on it while still being able to use a Craft Mod to guarantee a perk. Item shards are guaranteed to drop from Expedition Bosses and have a chance to drop from Elite Chests in Expeditions and Elite Landmarks.
And as discussed above we’ve added Gypsum to a variety of our end game activities. This should make all those activities more rewarding, since they will result in gear progression and one guaranteed good drop from opening the Gypsum Cast. We felt that War and Invasion were already rewarding enough and due to their limited availability wanted to be careful about making them even more rewarding. Arena Bosses also guarantee an additional random Expertise bump, which along with the Citrine Gypsum hopefully make them rewarding activities now.
They’ve finally done it, they fixed the chests in Lazarus Instrumentality and Garden of Genesis. They’ve also made them much better overall, assuming these changes make it through.
Item Shards also sound like a fantastic (and much needed) addition to crafting. Being able to guarantee a perk and a single stat goes a long way. For example if you have a build in mind, you can guarantee your weapon perks and your preferred stats with each roll, and then hope for the additional perks while you roll each piece. My only hope is that you get these in decent quantities from these runs, as crafters will go through these incredibly fast.
It’s a bit sad that Wars and Invasion are already deemed rewarding enough that they also didn’t get a Gypsum or any Expertise-related changes to them. It sounds like they’re taking it cautiously though since only 50 people on a server can participate at any given time. Which is entirely fair. I’ve not recently participated in these, so I honestly can’t remember if hey are rewarding enough or not.
Difficulty Adjustments
We’ve made several adjustments in the end-game difficulty to compensate for some accidental overtuning we did in the November patch. We improperly set several enemies to a difficulty level above what we intended. With these changes we hope to find a middle ground between the too easy end game content we had pre-November and the overtuned HP sponges we had afterwards (the upcoming December release notes will provide more specifics on those changes). Remember level 66 Elite Landmarks are supposed to be really hard, requiring very optimized gear and consumables. With the changes to Expertise, players can progress their gear in a variety of ways before venturing to those end game areas.
We’ve also modified 2 other Elite Landmarks to become end-game POIs. The Malevolence Elite POI in Edengrove was upleveled to level 66 content and now has 6 Elite chests that can all provide end game Expertise bumps. And the Imperial Palace and North Dynasty Shrine Elite Landmarks in Ebonscale reach were also upleveled to level 66 content and 8 Elite chests were added. Now there will be an end game open world area in each of the end game territories (Ebonscale Reach, Shattered Mountain, Edengrove, and Reekwater).
I’m glad they’re stepping back some of the Elite POI changes. They realized the error that was made and are taking steps to correct it, so good on them. Really wish they would have detailed these in the PTR notes at least, so we know what they’re trying outside of reducing health scaling.
The change to existing Elite POIs are nice, more areas to farm means high pop servers are less likely to be crowded when it comes to farming there. The only downside is that they didn’t also bump Dynasty Shipyard up as well, because not to get the extra quests for or even access to a level 55 dungeon, you need to pass through a level 66 zone.
Hopefully, they’ve taken this into consideration already. If not, it’s definitely feedback that I’ll be including in what I send their way for PTR.
Conclusion
We’re sorry that the end game experience was not at par with the start of the game and hope these changes start to remedy that. We’re not done yet and will continue to refine, improve, and add to our end game over time. But hopefully these changes will create a better foundation to build off. Everything other than the Expertise’s effectiveness on gear (which will be released early 2022) will be available tomorrow to try out in our PTR. Please let us know your feedback on the Expertise and Gypsum system in the PTR feedback thread
The fact they’re delaying Expertise affecting gear strength is a good thing. It’ll keep the mentioned problem of power gating to a minimum, even if they do effectively reset Expertise. It will also give them time to reconsider and let the community point out how flawed of an idea that power gating part of the Expertise system actually is compared to the current High Water Mark system.
PTR Change List is sourced directly from the New World’s website. The devblog featured on this post can also be found on the New World’s forum.
Here at VULKK.com we have a great selection of New World Guides, including Beginner Guides, Weapon Guides and Builds and Expedition Guides. Check back regularly as we build our New World archives with more helpful content for you.
