In the latest patch notes for New World, titled The Empress of Ebonscale Reach the team at Amazon Game Studios introduces a new zone, and plenty of other new features and balance changes.
Ebonscale Reach is home to a forgotten Dynasty that battles past demons in the form of the “Fallen Empress”. In this zone, players will have to deal with corrupted enemies, such as musketeers, warriors, spear captains, summoners and even corrupted Tigers. It appears that Ebonscale Reach is going to be for more experienced players, as the area is intended for players of level 51 and above.
A New Expedition was also added, Garden of Genesis. This expedition will have two boss encounters, The Caretaker, and The Blighted Greenskeeper. While both sound-like glorified gardeners, AGS wants players to be wary that they don’t get taken care of, as the mysterious blight of the area has infected everything within the Garden.
Other notable changes to the game come in the form of 20v20 endgame PvP, new armor and weapon quests, and adjustments to drop logic so that weapons are more likely to drop with relevant attributes. See a short list of cherry-picked changes below:
General:
- Introduced the first version of Outpost Rush, a new 20v20 endgame PvP game mode. We’ll have more information on Outpost Rush in our next update.
- Main story quests updated through level 40.
- English voice over for the main story quests and starter beaches has been added.
Progression
- Decreased XP required to level from level 8 to 60 by 10%.
- Decreased XP from PvP Faction missions by 5% to 18%.
- Players killing weaker creatures now suffer diminishing returns on XP gains of 40% for creatures 10-19 levels below them and 80% for 20+ levels below them
Gear
- After level 10, Quest Reward Containers for Armor and Weapons will always result in an item of uncommon rarity or higher.
- Adjusted drop logic of large chests so they drop between 2-3 gear pieces.
- All equippable items are now either Bind-on-Equip or Bind-on-Pickup.
Consumables
- AI Combat Updates (part 3) – We’ve continued to tune and refine our existing AI combat experience. This release, we’ve updated another large batch of AI enemies.
- Potions now have a cooldown timer. Potions of the same type will share a timer when consumed (all health potions, all health regens, all mana potions), not allowing you to consume another potion of that type until the cooldown has expired.
These are just some of the many changes in the latest patch. New World has recently decided to expand Alpha testing to the EU later this month. It is set to release August 31st of this year.
