New World is shifting to a seasonal update model, and with it comes the Season Pass Feature! This breaks down how the Season Pass works and how you get the most out of it.
What is a Season Pass
A Season Pass is New World’s version of a Battle Pass system. Each Season will last three months, or right around 90 days, equivalent to a real-life season. During this time frame, you’ll be able to play and earn progress on your Season Pass.
Each Season Pass has 100 total levels to earn and a handful of ways to go about earning them. Each level rewards a variety of cosmetic and gameplay items, from Seasonal Cosmetic Armor to even Legendary Gear (Gearscore 600 Items).
The Season Pass system was introduced with New World Update 1.9 in April 2023.
How to Progress the Season Pass
There are four main ways to progress your Season Pass and one extra way that should be ignored:
- Seasonal Activity Card
- Seasonal Challenges
- Season Journey
- Gameplay
- Buying Levels
Each of these contributes to your progress in various ways and often have plenty of overlap that can make overall progression quite quick.
Below we’ll talk about each system and how it factors into the overall progression.
Seasonal Activity Card
In the UI for the Season Pass (Default F9), you can access the Activity Card section by clicking the Activity Card button in the upper left of the UI.
Here you’re given your Activity Card, which is basically a Bingo card.
This is displayed in the middle, with each of the Activities from the list on the left placed randomly.
On the left is the Activity List. This gives you a list of the action you need to complete to progress and earn Stamps for your Activity Card. These activities are a variety of PvE and PvP tasks that you take on at your own leisure.
Below this list, You’re able to spend Azoth to reset a card. The first reset is free, but the cost will scale up with the number of resets after, starting at 100 for the second reset. This will only reset the uncompleted tasks as you’ll need to fully stamp the card to get a new one.
The right side details how many Activity Cards you’ve completed, as well as the Season XP granted by completion of an Activity Card. For reference, each card has the following Season XP rewards:
- 250 XP per Activity Completed.
- 400 XP per filled line.
- 300 for full card completion.
- 8,300 total XP for fully completing a card
This amount of Season XP usually amounts to at least a few levels, with early leveling only being 2,500 XP.
Season Journey
The Season Journey is a series of set tasks that you can complete to progress the Journey list. This list will change each Season to match the new Season Pass, but is otherwise static.
Much like the Activity Card, this can also be accessed from a button on the upper left of the Season Pass UI (F9).
These are set tasks that never change, but they are also a very high source of Season XP when you claim them. We’ll talk about getting quick levels later on, but for now, make note that these aren’t automatically claimed.
As you complete Tasks, you’ll work towards completing a Chapter. Every Chapter has Milestones of five and ten tasks respectively. These giant additional rewards include huge chunks of Season XP. Each Chapter consists of ten tasks, with the next chapter being unlocked at the five-task milestone.
A lot of the tasks here are fairly generic, asking you to complete the Seasonal Questline, defeat certain types of foes, participate in PvP, or complete certain tasks with Lifeskills.
Between individual tasks and Milestones, each Chapter is worth the equivalent of several Season Pass levels.
Season Challenges
Season Challenges are a much more long-term version of the Seasons Journey. These are found at the bottom of the Chapter List on the left side of the UI under Challenges.
While these are also generic tasks, they’re not ones intended to be done in a single day or even a single week. Some of them could be done in a short time frame by a dedicated or hardcore player, but it’d definitely be a test to do so.
Gameplay
Alongside the major feature of the Season Pass, you’ll also gain Season XP from various gameplay elements. These will not reward a ton of Season XP, but there are a number of activities that provide Season XP. Consider these as passive Season XP gains, but things to keep in mind while you work on the bigger parts of the season pass, as there is quite a bit of overlap.
The activities that provide limited Season XP are as follows:
- Gypsum Cast Crafting
- Expedition Boss defeats
- Outpost Rush
- PvP Arenas
- War
- Invasion
- PvP kills
- Corruption Breaches
- Quests
- Faction Missions
- Aptitude Levels
- Trials
- Earning a set amount of Character Experience
Almost all of these overlap with the other systems in some way. Wars are the only outlier, as its means of interacting with other parts of this is limited to progressing your PvP Reward Track. Meanwhile, everything else is just bonus to the things you’ll already be doing for the Activity Card, Journey, or Challenges.
Buying Pass Levels
As with any “Battle Pass”-style system comes the option to buy levels. While the levels here are a modest 1,000 Marks of Fortune, that doesn’t make them particularly valuable; here’s why.
While the levels are much cheaper compared to those in similar systems; outside of the level containing cosmetics, the bulk of the items in the Season Pass are obtainable through gameplay. It’s mostly gear chests and resources, offering little value or substance.
Sure, you absolutely could get a couple if you find yourself near the end of the pass and something happens to where you’d otherwise not complete it. The Premium Pass does return 7,500 Marks of Fortune over the course of the pass, so they could be used in that way if desired.
Is the Premium Season Pass Worth It
The free track offers a fair bit of useful items to those that are both new or returning to the world of Aeturnum. With it being free, it’s hard to argue against it. You’ll still be able to earn a full set of cosmetic armor, but the matching weapons and tool skins are only available in the Premium pass. Additionally, you’ll be able to earn 2,500 Marks of Fortune for free across the full Season Pass.
For 20,000 Marks of Fortune ($20 USD, or regional equivalent) you’ll be able to get access to the Premium Track for the Season Pass, which in addition to the Weapon and Tool Skins, also has its own additional Seasonal Armor set for completing the pass.
There is also the Head Start Pass option, which while being a bit more expensive at 30,000 Marks of Fortune, jumps your progress forward by 20 levels from where you purchase it. If you’re considering Premium and are worried about not having enough time to complete it it can be valuable. Though the Pass itself doesn’t take much time to complete, which can take away from the potential value of the Head Start Pass.
If you’re all about cosmetics, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth if you complete the Premium Season Pass. Especially with the Premium pass returning 7,500 Marks of Fortune over the course of the pass, cutting the effective cost of the pass down to 12,500 Marks of Fortune, should you claim all the rewards.
Overall, I’d say the Premium Season pass is worth it if you’re an active player and you play New World almost daily. If you don’t have the time to put into it, you won’t get much out of it.
You can still however see how far you get on the Free Track and decide if the Premium or Headstart options will help out. The important thing is that the Premium offer multiple Season XP Booster, an additional four, compared to the single one you get on the Free Track. While Head Start Passes give +20 levels from where you are.
I do highly recommend against purchasing the Head Start Pass unless you’re really short on time. Specifically, there’s a way that even a free player can clear the pass with less overall hassle, given some patience. Though, it does give 20 levels at half the cost of buying the individually.
How to Quickly Finish the Season Pass
Now, most people, they’ll look at the Season Pass and assume this pass will take some time to complete. They wouldn’t be wrong, but there are a few things that you can do to accelerate your Season Pass completion.
The biggest thing that will impact how quickly you get through the Season Pass is how you use the Season XP Booster.
Despite the description of this item, it doubles ALL gains of Season XP, which when set up correctly, can see you blaze through the entire pass very quickly. While this can take a bit to do properly and get the most value out of a booster, if you’re on the Free Pass, it’s highly recommended.
The first step is obviously to get the Booster. If you’re on the Free Pass you’ll get exactly one for the full pass, at Level 18. If you’re going the Premium Route, you’ll get one immediately. If you opt for the immediate Headstart, you’ll have two. Regardless of the Route with Premium, you get a total of 5 spread out roughly every 20 levels of the Season Pass.
Now, it’s very important that we only use the Activity Card to Progress these early levels. I cannot stress enough, that we want to save as many of the one-time XP bonuses as possible. Focus on your activity Card, completing what you can manage and holding on to any Journey Objectives, or Challenge Objectives until you have a Season XP Boost in hand to turn in.
Next, we turn to the Activity Card. To start off we’ll need to have at least finished 6 cards, or at least to the point where we can click the “Finish Card” button. This is just setup for Season Journeys, for later. If you’re on the Free Pass, you’ll have likely done this already prior to getting the booster
You’ll want to get a set of objectives you can complete without much hassle. Get a Full card ready to be stamped, or at the very least as full as you can get it. We’ll be turning all of these in after we apply the booster. For Premium, You’ll be able to do this multiple times over the course of the Season
Then comes Season Journey. All of these will passively stack up over time, even if you’re not on the current chapter. You’ll want to get as many of these done and ready to turn in as possible. If you’re taking just the Free Route, I HIGHLY recommend you attempt to get all of these done before turning in any of them. If you’re Premium, you can get away with doing this one chapter at a time which will have similar results.
Finally, we have Challenges. These will be difficult to build up but can be worth it if we have the time, patience, or skill necessary. As most of these are high-level PvE or PvP challenges, there are only a few that are manageable within reason for new players for this, but that’s still an extra chunk of XP.
Now for the fun part, dumping all of that XP. With a full card, and ALL Season Journeys, that adds up to be a whopping 179,400 Season XP. If levels are a consistent 2,750 through the full pass, that’s a whopping 65 levels you’ll get. If you’re starting from Level 18 on the Free Pass, you’ll jump to Level 83.
If we add in all of the Challenges, that’s an additional 70,000 Season XP, and combined with the previous amount, we get 249,400 Season XP. Assuming the 2,750 per level again, that’s a full 90 levels and a completed pass if you were starting from Level 18. Even starting from Level 1, this is an absolutely insane boost.
Now if we account for only three challenges being within reason, that still brings us up to 200,400 Season XP. It’s still 72, almost 73 levels if they are 2,750 for the full pass. Even from Level 18, that’s bringing you to nearly the end of the pass (level 90) in a single burst.
Okay, so there’s a little time left on your booster(s), so what do we do with it? To round off the Booster and get the most out of it, assuming we’re not done already, we’re going back to the Activity Cards.
This time, however, we’re not looking to let it build up. We’ll be looking to churn through cards as quickly as we can. This means completing as many of the objectives as we can that allows us to “finish” the card and flip it. You should still look to complete lines at the very least and as many objectives that are not in the way, but we’ll want to get through as many quick and easy tasks as we can.
