new-world New World January Update: Mutators and a Lot More

[Staff 1,489]

 

A massive update has arrived to New World as the January patch brings the new Mutator system to expeditions, as well as the new Umbral upgrading system that takes gear to level 625, in addition to many, MANY fixes and improvements you can read below.

January Update (Source)

Expedition Modifiers: Mutators

We are introducing a new end-game feature: Expedition Mutators! Mutators change the familiar by augmenting “Normal” and “Named” Enemies found within expeditions, changing the way encounters play out and what strategies players should consider before battle. And as combat changes, so do the rewards! New bespoke gear and resources can be found, providing additional means to increase your power level.

This system is intended to rotate through a unique combination of Expeditions and Mutations each week, with 10 difficulty levels per Expedition Mutation. Players will be challenged to climb the ladder, with the aim of eventually reaching the max difficulty.

Please be advised that “Recommended Gear Score'” levels for a Mutated Expedition is important, as it directly factors into enemy scaling — and by consequence, your chances of success. Please note: This combat scaling is individual per player and separate from the base difficulty increases in health and damage.

Entering a Mutated Expedition

• Players will require a codex for opening a Mutated version of the expedition. On completion of a Regular Difficulty Expedition, players will receive the Codex for that Expedition and a one time reward of a Mutated Expedition Tuning Orb.

  • Note:

  • Players that are invited to a group that already has a codex and orb will be rewarded with both items upon completion.

    • The Mutated Expedition Tuning Orb will not be rewarded on additional playthroughs of Regular Difficulty Expeditions.

• Upon approaching and interacting with the Expedition Menu, players will be able to see the type of mutator available, the mutation level, Gear Score recommended to advance, and lastly if they meet qualifications for entry.

  • Mutator Orbs are universal. Players can craft 1 per week and will be able to purchase additional orbs in the Faction Shop.

• Scoring & Advancement

  • Score is performance based, taken from a combination of categories. Score is also a shared value for group members.

  • The following categories count towards the group’s overall score value:

    • Time: The better the time, the better the score. Calculated at the end of a run.

    • AI Kills: A target value for killing a predetermined amount of enemies within the expedition.

    • Takedowns: A target value for killing “Named Enemies” within the expedition.

    • Team Wipes: Each team wipe during a boss fight reduces the score by a significant amount.

    • Respawns: Each respawn reduces the score by a moderate amount.

  • There are also Bonus Multipliers for run efficiency, minimal respawning/wiping, speed, and taking down all targets. These are calculated at the end of the Expedition run. The score ranks are Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

  • Advancement through each Mutator difficulty level requires reaching a predesignated level of proficiency within the highest achieved level. Higher scores mean advancement to higher difficulties, which in turn lead to bigger rewards.

• Mutation Effects

  • Elemental

    • Elemental mutations infuse enemies in the Expedition with a specific elemental damage type, increasing their resistance to that damage type, converting a large portion of their damage to that type, and giving them powerful elemental-based abilities.

    • Hellfire: Hellfire infuses enemies with fire, allowing them to burn players who oppose them.

    • Eternal: Eternal infuses enemies with void, granting them them abilities that debuff players or buff their void-infused allies.

  • Promotions

    • Promotion mutations grant creatures in the Expedition powerful new abilities.

    • Savage: Savage AI apply healing reduction and cast damaging beams around themselves.

    • Indomitable: Indomitable creatures persist through damage with life-stealing abilities and are able to summon a phalanx, blocking all incoming player projectiles.

  • Curses

    • Curse mutations apply dangerous effects to players, forcing them to work together to overcome the curse’s power. At the highest difficulties, Curses become Empowered, creating additional tactical challenges.

    • Desiccated: Desiccated players will occasionally combust with elemental energy. When the curse is empowered, players will need to cleanse themselves by approaching the combusting player.

    • Censored: Censored players will find their abilities turning against them. After players in the group have used a certain number of activated abilities, explosive silence zones will appear on all players. When the curse is empowered, players will lose natural mana regeneration and must enter the silence zones to regenerate their mana.

 

End Game Update Part 2 & Umbral Upgrade System

Umbral Upgrade System

• Players can upgrade individual gear pieces from GS 590 to GS 625, by spending Umbral Shards. Note we reduced this requirement from GS 600 to GS 590 based on PTR feedback and the desire to require Legendary items to engage in the Umbral System.

• The ability to upgrade items of any type is unlocked when players hit 600 Expertise for that item type.

• Players can acquire Umbral Shards via three methods:

  • Expedition Mutators are the most efficient way to earn Shards. The higher the difficulty level and the higher the Score Rank achieved the the more Shards a player will earn.

  • Opening Gypsum Casts, once the expertise of that type has reached at least 600 Expertise.

  • Crafting 600 GS items, once the expertise of that type has reached at least 600 Expertise.

• Upgrading any item via Umbral Shards binds the item to player.

Expertise System Updates

• Players raise their Expertise from 590 to 600 through the current means; Gypsum Casts and random open world bumps.

• Expertise is increased from 600 to 625 via the Umbral System.

• Expertise Gear Scaling

  • Any item that is purchased from the trading post or acquired through P2P after the January patch will have its effective gear score scaled down to the mid point of players Expertise and the items gear score if their Expertise is lower than the item’s gear score.

General Enhancements & QoL Improvements

• Whenever you craft a GS 600 item, if your Expertise for that item type is under 600 it will trigger an Expertise bump. This will be another great way for crafters to get their expertise to 600 (in addition to the already released Emerald Gypsum from Trade Skill Aptitude Reward containers).

• If you get an Expertise bump from random drop in the open world, the loot ticker will now show which item gave you the Expertise bump.

• If you get an Expertise bump from opening a reward cache, the opening sequence will highlight which item gave you the bump.

• You can now craft the Topaz Gypsum Attunement Potion at any Arcana Station as well as any T5 Camp.

• Increased the odds of getting Topaz Gypsum when killing enemies and attuned.

• We addressed an issue where Gypsum casts were only providing +1 bonuses when opening above gear score 585 for an item. Now, upgrades from Gypsum Casts from 585 to 600 should be at least +2 except when expertise is 599.

• To allow players more access to use Gypsum more freely as they acquire it we’ve removed the crafting cooldowns on Gypsum Orbs.

 

World Experience

Expeditions Changes

• With the release of Expedition Mutators, we’ve made some balance changes and updates to existing content.

• We’ve made expeditions more enticing by updating rewards and drop-rates, bringing them in-line with other end-game activities:

  • Drop rates for “Named Enemies” in expeditions have been significantly increased.

  • T5 gear have been added to Dynasty Shipyard loot-tables when playing in the mutated expedition.

• We’ve adjusted certain enemies counts:

  • Lazarus Instrumentality: Reduced the number of enemies when sealing the Ancient Azoth Portals in the Ostium.

• Expedition Tuning Orbs

  • Expedition Tuning Orbs for Amrine Excavation, Starstone Barrows, The Depths, and Dynasty Shipyard can be purchased from the Faction Shop once a day. Expedition Tuning Orbs for Garden of Genesis and Lazarus Instrumentality can be purchased once a week.

  • To increase access to crafting Expedition Tuning Orbs we made the following materials able to be tradable which were previously bound to players:

    • Blight Seeds

    • Corrupted Lodestones, Crystals, Fragments, Shards, and Slivers

    • Chisels

• We’ve made significant reductions to crafting costs for Expedition Keys. Global Key Crafting Changes:

  • Reduced Starmetal Chisel coin cost to 150 down from 200.

  • Reduced Orichalcum Chisel coin cost to 200 down from 400.

  • Reduced Asmodeum Chisel coin cost to 250 down from 500.

  • Eternal Heart: Reduced all elemental mote costs to craft. Now costs 10 of each mote down from 30.

  • Elemental Heart: Reduced all elemental mote costs to craft. Now costs 10 of each mote down from 30.

  • Undying Heart: Reduced all elemental quintessence costs to craft. Now costs 2 of each quintessence down from 6.

  • Dynasty Tuning Orb: Reduced the amount of Corrupted Crystal required to craft. Now costs 1 down from 2.

  • Dynasty Tuning Orb: Reduced the amount of Obsidian Voidstone required to craft. Now costs 8 down from 10.

  • Lazarus Tuning Orb: Reduced the amount of Corrupted Lodestone required to craft. Now costs 1 down from 3.

  • Genesis Tuning Orb: Reduced the amount of Corrupted Lodestone required to craft. Now costs 1 down from 2.

• Mutated Tuning Orb changes from PTR:

  • Reduced the amount of Runestone required to craft. Now costs 5 down from 10.

  • Reduced the amount of Powerful Gemstone Dust required to craft. Now costs 5 down from 10.

  • Reduced the amount of Chisels required to 1 down from 2.

Fast Travel Costs

• We’ve heard your frustrations with the cost of Fast Travel, and this release includes an update that dramatically reduces the distance factor in the amount of Azoth required for each trip. Accordingly, the Faction Control Point bonus associated with Fast Travel now reduces the distance factor to zero.

• New Fast Travel shrines have been unearthed!

  • Excavated Shrine added at the Amrine Excavation

  • Starstone Shrine added to the North East wall of the Shattered Obelisk Complex

  • Shiresad Shrine added just outside the entrance to The Depths.

  • Genesis Shrine added in front of the Garden of Genesis entrance

  • Melpomene's Shrine added below the Siren's Amphitheatre

  • Lazarus Shrine added next to the entrance to the Lazarus Instrumentality

Open World

• Fixed an issue with the following Elite Strongholds not consistently applying the appropriate affliction to players that enter visually afflicted areas:

  • Mangled Heights

  • Ambusti Inferior/Superior

  • Mykgard

  • Malevolence

• Siren's Stand: Revised chest placements of several Elite Chests to be closer to their associated named enemy.

• Mangled Heights: Slightly moved one Elite Chest at Mangled Pox Gate.

Notable Fixes

• Fixed inconsistent spelling for the player facing name of Eridanus.

• Fixed an issue with Windsward Patrol Faction Missions displaying incorrect values.

• Added a fix to prevent duplicate objectives from being given to players.

• Yetis converted from Elite Boss to Elites after the Winter Convergence event.

• Added enemies to an abandoned camp site in Restless Shore.

• Increased spawn times to level 35+ POIs to account for longer time to kill enemies.

• Fixed an issue found in PTR where a tree flies into sky after being chopped down.

• Fixed an issue where the Disciple of Disorder only spawned once in Myrkgard.

• Decreased some load times.

• Fixed an issue where a fence was not rendering for all players in Weaver’s Fen.

• Removed a small patch of invisible water in Everfall, North of Orion, that can slow player movement or cause the player to drown.

• Fixed an issue with an elite chest clipping through an Orchicalcum vein making it difficult to loot in Myrkgard.

• Various fixes to gatherables and vegetation below or inside world collision.

• Various fixes to holes in world collision.

Combat & AI

AI

General AI

• Bears

  • Increased the hit volumes for Bipedal bears so that players can more consistently damage them.

• Skeletons

  • Reduced the amount of health that Skeletons will revive with from 70% to 40%.

• Villagers

  • Reduced the amount of healing that is granted from Villager potions from 35% to 20%.

  • Increased the cooldown on the Potions.

• Varangian Knights

  • The Varangian Knights celebrated the Winter Convergence by laying down their weapons and painting them to match the color of their armor.

• Tendrils (Corrupted and Angry Earth)

  • Reduced damage of Sweep attack by 40%, reduced frequency of this attack, but increased reaction to a knockdown.

  • Reduced damage of Stab attack by 50% and removed stagger reaction.

  • Reduced damage of Thrash attack by 40%.

  • Reduced damage of Projectile attack by 50% and removed stagger reaction.

• Swamp Beast Arena Boss

  • Fixed an issue preventing the Swamp Beast from properly consuming minions.

Expedition AI

• Garden of Genesis

  • Fixed an issue preventing enemies from despawning after failing to defend the sapling.

  • Alluvium Marl - Removed the unintended ability for minions to apply a debuff against Alluvium Marl on their death.

  • Blighted Greenskeeper - Reworked the VFX on the Blighted Greenskeeper to be more visible.

 

Combat

Mutator Perks added

• Weapon Perks

  • Flame Attunement - Attacks deal an additional 15% weapon damage as Fire. (Cooldown 2s)

  • Frost Attunement - Attacks deal an additional 15% weapon damage as Ice. (Cooldown 2s)

  • Arboreal Attunement - Attacks deal an additional 15% weapon damage as Nature. (Cooldown 2s)

  • Abyssal Attunement - Attacks deal an additional 15% weapon damage as Void. (Cooldown 2s)

• Armor Perks

  • Flame Conditioning - After being hit with Fire damage, gain 4% Fire absorption for 5 seconds. Each piece of armor with this perk increases the potency of the effect.

  • Frost Conditioning - After being hit with Ice damage, gain 4% Ice absorption for 5 seconds. Each piece of armor with this perk increases the potency of the effect.

  • Arboreal Conditioning - After being hit with Nature damage, gain 4% Nature absorption for 5 seconds. Each piece of armor with this perk increases the potency of the effect.

  • Abyssal Conditioning - After being hit with Void damage, gain 4% Void absorption for 5 seconds. Each piece of armor with this perk increases the potency of the effect.

PvP damage formula update

• We adjusted the way armor mitigation is calculated to use enemies gear score value instead of your average gear score.

• To adjust for the difference in armor mitigation, we increased the damage low level players do to higher level players and reduced the damage the higher level players due to lower level players.

Outpost Rush

• Increased the Azoth cost of Brute tokens from 500 Azoth to 750 Azoth.

• Summoning Stones are now dropped on death.

• Summoning Stones now have a rarity associated with them. Epic for Bear and Wraith Tokens, and Legendary for Brute Tokens. This should make it clear to players when they are dropped by other players.

• Outpost Rush Alpha Wolf will no longer summon minions.

• Outpost Rush gatherables no longer have weight.

• Baroness Hain’s Ice Mines now slow the player by 30% for 3s instead of staggering the player.

• Water can no longer be gathered in Outpost Rush.

• Added two additional gate points on the sides of each team’s spawn.

• Increased the cooldown on the Outpost Rush Brute’s Corrupted Ball.

• Outpost Rush Brutes will now be much less likely to use their Corrupted Ball spell when players are inside of the fort.

Notable Fixes

• Fixed an issue that allowed Musket and Bow light attacks to be activated underwater.

• Fixed an issue that blocked Bow from entering aim down sights if swapping to Bow while in Musket Sniper Zoom.

• Updated the Rapier Tondo Ability and the Bow Barbed Arrows Rain of Arrows upgrade tooltips to state the damage per second instead of overall damage for the damage over time effects.

• Fixed issue where player movement speed was sometimes increased while placing a camp.

• Fixed tooltip for the fine corrupted sigil incorrectly stating lightning damage instead of strike damage.

• Removed text that flies out when triggering Quick Shower.

• Fixed exploit where players could combine multiple ammo return benefits and refund ammo using attacks that hit multiple times per use. Added a cooldown to ammo refunds so that it can not trigger more than once every 2 seconds per ability/perk/attribute bonus.

• Fixed issue where if shift was being held while aiming down sights with a bow or musket, or if a player used any navigation action, the animations would stutter.

• Fixed issues with player becoming stuck after interacting with NPCs.

• Fixed issue that would cause you to cancel out of Poison Shot or Penetrating shot if you were holding RMB while activating the ability.

• Fixed issue where various status effect removals were resulting in the buff applying indefinitely.

• Fixed issue where the Bow Concussion ultimate was applying to all attacks and not just headshots.

• Fixed issue where Mending Protection wasn’t functioning properly. To fix the issue the following changes were made:

  • Updated Mending Protection be able to be re-applied by any Orb Of Protection heal, even the recovery form Protector's Blessing.

  • To compensate for that the duration has been shortened and the effect of it has been reduced. Previously it was 5%-40% for 5s that only applied as the ability was initially used, now it is 5%-25% for 3s. That duration can be refreshed with each tick of recovery and additional applications of Orb of protection.

• Fixed issue where the great axe Reap ability was not dealing damage when both The Collector Modifier and the Gravity Passive were unlocked.

• Fixed issue that was prevalent in the PTR where the void gauntlet’s cooldown reduction was being triggered by DoT ticks.

• Fixed bug that did not allow Ancient Bear Paw to be used in crafting.

• Fixed an issue causing desyncs when using shield bash while moving.

• Fixed a desync issue that would occur when homing through Ice Shower ability.

• Fixed an issue causing desyncs on Reap when fully upgraded with the Blood Lust Passive.

• Fixed an issue where the damage ticks from bleeding sweep on the Spear were triggering cooldown reduction.

• Fixed an issue with the Void Gauntlet that caused Baleful Tether's status effect to be nullified by crouching or going prone.

Economy, Progression, & Loot

Housing Tax

As a make good for the players impacted by the server clock issues experienced last year, we reduced housing tax costs for all players by 90% based on the tax % set by companies that owned the territories. We communicated alongside that change we would revert those taxes back in a future update. In the time the tax break has been active, it has brought to light an imbalance in wealth disparity which was punishing for home owners, and we have decided to tighten the housing tax band. We will continue to examine player reception and data around this issue. We are adjusting them to be more fair for home owners and companies. We are focused on evaluating and continually tuning the overall wealth distribution and impact of the territory tax system. In this patch we have:

• Reverted the make good 90% housing tax reduction.

• Updated housing tax minimum band to 2.5% down from 5%.

• Updated housing tax maximum band to 10% down from 20%.

• Updating default housing tax to 5% down from 10%.

Aptitude Rewards

With the introduction of trade skill aptitude we imbalanced the gain of Azoth Vials which made them too plentiful, and the excess of these items for some players was causing damage to the overall value of Azoth Vials as a reward. Since these can be traded we want to make sure they stay rare and special. We will continue to watch player sentiment and data here to see if further adjustments are needed.

• Removed Azoth Vials from T1 Aptitude gathering chests.

• Reduced Azoth Vials from T2 Aptitude gathering chests to 1-2 down from 2-3.

• Reduced Azoth Vials from T3 Aptitude gathering chests to 1-3 down from 3-5.

• Reduced Azoth Vials from T1 Aptitude crafting & refining chests to 0-1 down from 2-3.

• Reduced Azoth Vials from T2 Aptitude crafting & refining chests to 1-2 down from 2-3.

• Reduced Azoth Vials from T3 Aptitude crafting & refining chests to 2-3 down from 3-5.

Rewards

• Fixed a bug where players under level 60 were able to get gypsum from darkness events. Players must be level 60 now to start earning gypsum from those events.

• The Surgeon, Pit Lord Daehi, Baines, and Mordici The Mortician previously did not drop battle trophy materials. This has been fixed!

Crafting

• Fixed an issue where Timeless Shards were not being consumed while crafting.

• Fixed an issue causing the Maker's Mark Hatchet to incorrectly display as legendary with an extra perk in the crafting menu.

• Updated art for Energizing Light Ration and Energizing Travel Ration to better represent the ingredients used to create them.

• Fixed "Blackened Mandje Mandje with Corn Succotash" recipe that requires a Lava Barb. The recipe title now references the correct fish.

• Fixed a bug that was preventing players from crafting GS 600 arcana items using Winter Patterns.

• Fixed an issue that prevented the use of Onyx when crafting earrings using Timeless Shard.

Gear and Loot

• To stimulate the post-holiday economy, we’ve added a limited-time rare drop called “Bag of Juniper Berries” which gives players coin and Juniper berries. It has the potential to reward between 50-150 coin per acquisition and you can only find 3 per day.

• Fixed an issue where Rothoard Alligators were dropping an excessive amount of rawhide.

• Fixed an issue where certain 600 gear score named items were increasing your Expertise.

• Fixed an issue where the Lazarus Bow had less dexterity than other bows at its tier and gear score. It now has an equivalent amount of dexterity.

• Fixed an issue where the earring "Pedal" could not be repaired.

• Fixed an issue causing Egwene’s Cloak to stretch with certain animations.

• Fixed an issue causing the Dynasty Shipyard Mutator ring to display an incorrect name and description. It now displays the proper name and description.

• Fixed an issue preventing players from socketing gems into Mutator Accessories.

• Fixed an issue preventing players from socketing gems into Old Ring, Old Earring, and Old Amulet.

Progression

• Sped up leveling for the mid game levels of 23 - 45 by 20%. We saw that mid game leveling was taking a bit long and did not match pacing of the content we had.

Expedition Tuning Orbs:

• Materials used to craft Expedition Keys: Chisels, and Corrupted Fragments, Shards, Crystals, and Lodestones are now tradeable.

• Expedition Mutator Tuning Orbs can be crafted once per week and also have been added to the Faction Shops and can be purchased there once per week.

• To keep parity with Expedition Mutator Tuning Orbs, normal Expedition Tuning Orbs for Dynasty Shipyard, Garden of Genesis, and the Lazarus Instrumentality have been added to Faction Shops and can each be purchased once per week.

• To reduce the cost of all items in inventory taking durability damage on death, we made a change so that only Bound items take durability damage on death.

• We fixed an issue that was causing players to lose progress when switching back to a Faction they previously had been a part of. Now, when players switch back to a Faction they will retain their Faction Rank Reputation as well as the balance of their Faction Tokens. Unfortunately, we can not restore players to their previous state for players who switched back to a Faction they were are a part of prior to this update.

UX, UI, & Social

• Game Entry Navigation Assistance added to the game.

  • This system will help visually impaired players enter the world of Aeternum, through voice narration of some of critical steps needed to create a character and get to the starting beach

• Removed ability to give gold to individuals outside of the player-to-player trading system.

• Added a new loading screen tooltip to help explain how the strong against / weak against mechanics work.

• Players must now play the game for a minimum of 2 hours and have owned the game for a minimum of 72 hours before they can use chat. This should help eliminate some more of those pesky gold sellers.

In-Game Store

• Décor Packs now display number of furniture items included in pack.

• Store items can now simultaneously display that they are on sale and that they are available for a limited time.

• Currency symbols now correctly display in all regions.

Trading Post

• Fixed an issue that caused the Trading Post’s “Sort by Time” function to function incorrectly.

• Inventory should no longer scroll back to the top after closing the sell window (whether you sell or cancel) on the Trading Post.

Notable Fixes

• Fixed an issue where group chat could break after exiting a house.

• Fixed an issue where companies who own more than one territory were not getting merge reimbursements. Companies are now compensated depending on the number of territories they own (rather than a flat amount).

• Fixed an issue where Outpost Rush reward screen would only showed one reward even if multiple were awarded.

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused Corrupted Breach icons to not appear on the map.

• Fixed a bug that caused the Territory Standing Upgrade UI to stay on screen if a player starts a trade while its visible.

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused items to not appear repaired after a player repairs all.

• Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the incorrect items to trade when trading from a split stack.

• Adjusted Void Gauntlet icons to match the gauntlets model color.

• Fixed a number text overlapping issues in the UI.

• Fixed an issue with sorting by time on the Trading Post.

• Fixed an issue causing some Timeless Shard icons to display the incorrect weight.

• Fixed a bug where Eternal Pool Arena boss music could be heard right outside of the Eternal Pool Arena.

• Fixed a bug where sounds were not always playing at Navarro’s Kitchen.

• Adjusted the way mission tooltips dock (they now dock to the side of the tiles), to make it easier to read detailed info on missions.

• Added a sound for when players capture points during an Outpost Rush.

• Fixed a bug where players could not always hear Snap the Wolf when accepting the Snap’s Blessing quest.

• Fixed server crash that likely stemmed from territories abandoned by their governors.

• Fixed a discrepancy between server, client, and system clock timing in war declaration screen.

• Fixed an issue where the map was reporting that there was an Upcoming Invasion when there was actually an Upcoming War.

 

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Thanks for your support! We'll see you in Aeternum.