Today, on April 4th, the patch “Comradeship and Fire” is released in New World. This not only brings the seasons, but also a lot of new content and some important balance adjustments. Those considering a return to the MMORPG will find some good incentives now.
What are the highlights of the update? The biggest innovation in the update is the season pass. This will be available in a free and a paid variant and includes skins, materials, and boosters.
To fill the pass, you can complete various tasks, including special seasonal challenges, but also faction missions, city quests, dungeons, PvP, and a stamp card that contains various daily tasks.
Also included in the patch are:
- New story quests around a group of mercenaries called “Silver Ravens”.
- The new expedition Empyreum Forge for level 60 players.
- The new mechanic “Equipment Set Storage”, which allows you to switch between equipment sets with just one click.
- A new heart jewel ability. The “Firestorm” creates a tornado that deals damage to multiple targets in its path.
- The overhaul of the main story for the regions Webermoor and Lichtholz. This will be provided with new content and surprises, get more dialogues and overall be made clearer.
- Important balance changes to ranged weapons. These should finally become useful in PvE, for example through an increased damage boost.
When will the update be released? The new patch will be deployed on April 4th at 2:00 PM. The server downtime is expected to be about two hours. By 4:00 PM, the maintenance should therefore be over.
Until then, you can watch this developer video about the new update (in English):
The new update brings much old content back to life
What makes the update so interesting? With the new seasons, many old contents are “revived”. For the pass, one has to complete tasks that have played a lesser role for veterans, such as faction missions or city quests. The daily tasks on the stamp card also include tasks in the old areas.
The overhauls in the regions Webermoor and Lichtholz are also interesting. These adjustments had already been made for the story from level 1 to 25. In the Fresh Start, we tried them out and were positively surprised. The cutscenes, the weaving in of the villainess Isabell, the overhaul of the quest for faction joining with their own camps and the adjustments of the paths are very successful.
New World felt much more like a story MMORPG after the adjustments. It is even worth starting over completely with a new character, as the leveling process overall goes much faster now.
What’s the deal with the balance? A major problem recently was the ranged and magic weapons in PvE. The best builds for dungeons dominate with greatsword, axe, battle axe and spear. Therefore, the developers have made some adjustments:
- The ban power (special scaling against enemy types) has been increased for ranged weapons (10% more than for melee weapons).
- Light attacks with magic weapons no longer consume any mana.
- The fire staff has been completely reworked.
- For the mutators, special effects that reduced elemental damage have been removed.
- Some abilities of magic and ranged weapons can now provoke, which should offer tanks more options in weapon choice.
Balance in PvP has also been adjusted. Especially the damage from skills that also include crowd control has been massively reduced. This should make PvP content like the outpost rush enjoyable again.
What does the equipment storage bring? A major innovation in the update is also the equipment storage. Anyone who is very active in the mutations will have several armor sets on their character. These can now be packed into a special storage and switched with one click.
However, at the start, there are only two storage slots available for free. Another 8 storage slots can be purchased for real money.
This change finally makes the inventory neater.
What do you think about the first major patch of the new year? Does the update make New World more interesting for you or have you moved on?
By the way, two more major updates and the first expansion are planned for 2023 in the fall. You can find more about this in this overview:
MMORPG New World is bringing new seasons, an expansion, and mounts in 2023 – Sounds absolutely great
