A short video teased the latest weapon in New World. It is Ice Gauntlets, which you can use to harness magical abilities.
Update April 21: In the meantime, New World has introduced the two skill trees of the new weapon:
- The Ice Storm tree focuses on dealing damage and restricting enemy movement.
- The Ice Wizard tree focuses on controlling enemy groups, protecting allies, and summoning an ice pillar that fights alongside the player and increases their power and efficiency.
Additionally, the attack values of the Ice Gauntlets are expected to scale with the attribute “Intelligence”.
More information about the new Alpha update can be found here: New World brings back open-world PvP with a new update, but differently
What kind of weapon is this? The Ice Gauntlets were introduced in a short teaser on Twitter. They can be equipped normally and allow you to attack enemies with ice attacks.
What the gauntlets can do exactly was not explained in the teaser. However, the approximate skills can be inferred from the video:
- The glove can summon an icicle that attacks enemies
- With another attack, icicles emerge from the ground and push enemies back
- The third ability seems to be a kind of “Ice Fire” that the character can summon in front of them
How was the weapon introduced? To be able to see the glove at all, a tweet had to be retweeted at least 200 times. This original tweet has now received over 2,300 retweets, and accordingly, the video of the Ice Gauntlets was released as promised:
What makes the weapon special? It is notable that the glove breaks a bit from the usual pattern of weapons. While there has been magic in the game before, most weapons have a more traditional style, such as hammers, swords, or bows.
Also, the associated abilities did not place much emphasis on special magical effects, but revolved around quicker attacks or jumping at enemies. So, effects were not expected in New World.
The only exception to this was the fire staff, which already created larger fire fields. The Ice Gauntlets are now the appropriate counterpart to that and increase the number of available weapons.
Many new weapons since the test in summer 2020
What weapons does New World offer? During the test in summer 2020, there were 7 weapons: hammer, sword, axe, bow, musket, fire staff, and life staff. Since then, four more weapons have been added:
- In October 2020, the developers announced the spear as a new weapon. It can be used both in melee and thrown
- In December, the war axe was added. It can hit an enemy multiple times directly or bring significant AoE damage.
- Another weapon was introduced in early 2021: the rapier. Here, bleeding damage and dodging are emphasized.
- The last new weapon is the Ice Gauntlets introduced here.
Together with the new weapons, the combat system has been significantly revised. Weapons no longer share cooldowns, and the dynamics have generally improved.
New World brings many new features: Those who follow the news around New World may have already stumbled upon some new features, including a new Asian territory, fishing, or the first dungeons that are now set to come.
Together with many adjustments to the combat system, crafting, quests, and the behavior of NPCs, New World now sounds particularly interesting on paper, especially for theme park fans. We at MeinMMO have also discussed this development in a column: New World is increasingly becoming a theme park MMORPG, and that is a good thing.
Whether the development is actually good and whether New World can convince will likely be revealed in July 2021. The beta is then set to start. The release of the MMO is planned for the end of August. We at MeinMMO will of course closely follow New World before and after the release.
