We're so excited!
New World: Aeternum published a huge dev update video on Monday, showcasing the work they have been doing on the Season 10 Nighthaven release. Before we get into all the juicy content, I just want to take a moment to note how calm and confident the Amazon Games team appeared in this video. It’s certainly a step away from the awkward nerves of earlier videos and follows the positive upward trend we’ve seen since Katy Kazinsky took over the leadership role. Nighthaven is an absolute treat for the starving, and honestly rabid in parts, gaming community, and I can’t wait to play it on October 13.
Season 10 will be released early in the morning Pacific time. For us Delosians, that’s likely to be evening or overnight on the 13th, so you’re probably going to want to book the 14th at the earliest if you’re staying home from work to play.
Contents
Gear Update
While there was some amazing footage of the gameplay, environments, and characters, I think most players want to know about the gear changes. They. are. huge! NW Joel has been in the official discord sharing additional details, so I’m going to try and incorporate all that here so you’re prepared for what’s coming.
Sockets and Charms
The new Charm system looks awesome. No more issues with weapon skill perks making items redundant – all skill perks are now charms that you can swap out for a more appropriate one.
- Charms are craftable using 3 of 11 new resources.
- They take Chromatic Seals, which now cost 2000 gold instead of 5k.
- Complete charms drop, but rarely.
- Three types of charm – Offensive, Defensive, Skill
- Four types of sockets – the above plus Gems
Attribute Changes
Attributes will be completely removed from gear, but instead they will be included in the levelling process. This will result in less overall attributes, to avoid powercreep and prevent tanky DPS builds.
- Total attributes around 530ish instead of max 735ish.
- Attribute consumables still work.
- Attributes are saved to gearsets.
- Weapon scaling with attributes has been reworked
This is going to be great for new players and for when you want to change to a new build. Quite often players will have Con on their gear, thinking its a practical choice, and are then unable to get their weapon scaling stat to a high damage output level. This change completely removes this problem, and while it will be an adjustment to start with, it’s worth it.
New Attribute Damage Scaling
The devs have also “adjusted the scaling on all the weapons. So all the weapons that previously only had one attribute that they scaled with now have two. And the ones that had two kind of have adjusted amounts of how much the two scales with.”(1:03:35).
This new system might take a bit of getting used to, but at least it’s not going to make any gear redundant, due to the removal of attributes. It looks like an S to F tier system. For the example below, it looks like Firestaff will still scale predominantly with Intelligence but will also scale a little bit with Dex.
Upgrading with Umbrals
The new method for upgrading gear looks so simple that I might not even have to write a guide on it! You just click on the item, choose Upgrade, then slide until you hit the desired gear score.
- You can upgrade items from 700GS+ up to 800GS.
- Only weapons, armour, and jewelry can be upgraded.
- Bags, trinkets, instruments cannot be upgraded.
- For named items below 700, old upgrade recipes exist.
- Artifact upgrade recipe 700-725 no longer needed and removed from the game.
- Umbral cap is 4000
- Weekly cap will allow 5 items to be upgraded from 730 to 800GS.
Examples of new gear
NW Joel shared some screenshots of the new gear in the official discord, to help us make sense of the changes. Crafting and M3 will both be relevant, with 3 and 4 socket gear, respectively. Both of these socketed examples have no gem slot and two skill slots and the devs mentioned that when socketed gear “rolls, it could be a gem slot, two offensive slots, and a weapon skill slot” (1:09:36).
It looks like there is a lot of flexibility in the new system and this will hopefully prevent the “best perk” combos that we currently have. Of course, I imagine people will want gear with gem slots, so I see some long-term grinding trying to get the perfect combo. I like the idea of one piece with mutiple skill perks on it, freeing up sockets on the other pieces.
Of note: crafted gear is tradeable, according to NW Joel. So looks like crafting will be valuable in the new season.
Also, Hearty is gone and stamina has been reworked so we still get three dodges (1:04:04). Rings are finally freeeeee!
Infixes
Infixes are special perks that only drop in certain areas of the game. NW Joel shared a normal piece with an Infix, 2 sockets, and 2 fixed perks. Infixes also appear on Set Bonus gear and are aligned to the Set, making it even stronger.
Artifact perks will remain unique.
Set Bonuses
We’ve been assuming that everyone will want set bonus gear, making everything else redundant. But it looks like AGS have solved this problem by providing a trade-off for the set bonus advantages. For example, the first Stifling set bonus perk applies Silence to yourself for 1 second as well as to your enemy for 2 seconds. There will be an opportunity for theory crafters to dig into all the different bonuses and possible combinations and potentially create new and interesting sets no-one has seen before.
Set bonus gear will come from:
- Isle of Night Raid – 3 unique sets
- Catacombs – 2 unique sets
- PVP Track – 3 unique sets
New and old content
There looks like a huge amount of new content in Nighthaven, and NW Aenwyn confirmed that Hive of Gorgons, Trial of the Devourer and Mutated Expeditions will be updated to level 75. Talk about learning from lessons of the past, this update just continues to impress. Another bonus is the removal of weekly drop limits on raid loot.
"... every single time I kill one of the three bosses in the Raid, I will get two set items."
(1:06:08)
Nightmares, Spiders, Underworld, and more
One of the most exciting things about this new zone will be exploring all the new content. The devs mention some pretty tough bosses that are level 80 who “don’t have a skull over the head, but they probably should” (33:53). There’s an underworld that is “a completely different experience from your usual newer POIs …” an “… almost soulslike journey” (6:05). Nightmares are shadowy creatures with no health bar and no names. And we’re also seeing footage of terrifying spiderwebs.
Isle of Night Raid
The Isle of Night follows a similar format to the Hive of Gorgons that we love so much, with three bosses and some puzzles in between.
- Enemy type: Lost
- Doesn’t require a strict group composition
- Benefit from having different roles – ranged, melee, debuffing, healer, tank, off-tank
- May need two shot-callers in parts
- Rare chase loot items from each boss – mounts that are tradeable so you can sell it if you already have one! Yes!!!!
Catacombs
Catacombs is a new PVE game mode for three players, and the devs have expressly said it’s not locked to the “holy trinity of archetypes”. (54:10) This is a dynamic dungeon mode that changes each time you play it and has the potential to provide a depth of repeatable content we haven’t seen before in New World.
Players will have 30 minutes to navigate the Catacombs, kill as many bosses as they can, and get out with the loot.
- Powerups to tweak your role
- Ascensions to increase health and damage
- Becomes harder as each boss is killed
- Six potential bosses
- Reward – crowns and sterling
- Spend in a reward shop, includes cosmetics
So much more
There’s too much to mention here and I can completely understand why the dev video needed to be almost an hour and a half long. I do encourage you to watch it yourself, but even more than that, immerse into playing the new zone and don’t rush through it. Some of the things I’ve missed include:
- Foxes and fox mount
- Generous Season Pass with 4 skin sets
- Continued Main Story Quest
- No pre-req for the MSQ, just level 65
- New creature types and animations
- Jump pad puzzles
- Tarot card collection system like Brimstone glyphs
"... do yourself a favour. Don't like try to rush to max level. Don't try to rush through it. Just enjoy the journey. None of us can help ourselves. We understand. But try just try try not to Google the answer."
(13:20)