How to increase your PvE damage in New World

 I wrote up this long reply on Reddit and figured I'd copy and paste it for the blog record. Here is my checklist for increasing PvE damage

UPDATED 4/17/2024 for Rise of the Angry Earth expansion changes and Season 5 changes to armor weights

• Bane weapon (increases damage against specific target type) - +15% damage melee weapons / +24% damage ranged weapons

  With the rise of the Angry Earth expansion and level cap rising to 65 and GS cap to 700 the Bane perks are no longer relevant.
   

• Powerful Honing Stone - +7% damage increase - applies to both weapons by using one stone

• Infused Corrupted/Lost/Angry Earth/Ancient/Beast/Human Coatings - +15% coating only applies to one weapon so need to apply to each weapon

• Minor/Basic/Major/Ultimate Combat Trophies - 3/4/5% x 3 (so up to 15% total) extra damage against specific types. Note: ultimate trophies simply combine major trophies together so are still the 5% per trophy increase as majors were.

• Equip load also impacts damage (changed with Season 5)
  

  • Light equip load = +15% bonus damage

  • Medium equip load = no bonus damage (default equip load as of Season 5)
    

  • Heavy equip load = -15% damage
    

• Runeglass gems on armor (not recommended; too expensive and you swap gems all the time for mutations - but noted here) - +2% per gem on armor; so in theory +10% damage increase if on all armor pieces

• Runeglass gems on weapon (also not recommended; expensive but unlike armor you rarely have to swap your weapon gems so it is at least OK to invest - though a regulary gem is more raw damage %) - many of the runeglass gems can apply a damage over time (DoT) ability so for some builds this can be a net gain in damage

Other tips

• Make sure damage attributes are maxed; eat max level food and you should be getting to a total of at least 500 attributes.

  • A common split for newer players is 300 in your main damage skill and 200 in CON.

  • Then over time you reduce CON and keep pumping damage attributes as you get comfortable with not dieing.

  • The end end end game is to be in the "5 CON club" where you have no CON other than the base 5 and all 500 invested into damage stats. Glass cannon.

Updated Banner

Old:

New:

Dropped Call of the Wild:the Angler and added Way of the Hunter to reflect current play habits.

Join me for Blaugust (please?)!

 I am a completionist.  I must. get. all. the. things.  This includes Blaugust achievements and I can get all of them done except I need another blogger to join me in this journey!  Drop a comment if you've signed up (sign up here) because of my begging post.

Recruit a Friend – Convince another blogger to participate in this year’s Blaugust event. This could be a brand new blogger but also could just be convincing another blogger out there to participate. Again much of the focus on Blaugust is to stir up activity in the community and get bloggers active again.

My Blaugust 2023 plan

 

 As I mentioned yesterday Blaugust is almost here!  The schedule is posted in the image above and here is what I am looking to feature each week (you can read more on the intention of the categories here).

Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 5th)

• I will do some rounds on other bloggers participating and kicking off the event so expect some linking out to other blogs and some heartless commentary to go with them
  

Introduce Yourself Week (August 6th – August 12th)

• We'll revisit my first blog post ever
• Expect some more "Games Made Me" posts

Creator Appreciation Week (August 13th – August 19th)

• I am going to dip into some adjacent-to-gaming creator spaces to inspire some posts this week
• I will probably feature some New World content creators
  

Staying Motivated Week (August 20th – August 26th)

• What better topic for a week about staying motivated than my steam backlog! 
  

Lessons Learned Week (August 27th – August 31st)

• A chance to reflect on Blaugust 2023
  

Blaugust 2023 is almost here!

 Excited to announce I'll be participating in Blaugust 2023!  I am looking forward to some outside driven topics to blog about!

What is Blaugust?

Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place in August each year that focused on blogging and other serialized content. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. For years blogging has been dwindling, and in part, Blaugust was my attempt and reversing that course by compiling a bunch of veteran bloggers in one place and making it super easy to ask questions and get answers. The idea is that this festival of blogging can help reignite dwindling fires for the next year and give folks a sense of kinship as a result. Each year has taken slightly different forms and shifted to include more than just blogs, but the core mission is always the same. In this year of corporate internet staples seeming a little less sturdy, it is all the more important that each of us carve our own homes that we can call our own… that gives us a sense of permanence. No matter what happens on whatever platforms I am on… my blog remains.

New World Daily Checklist (Updated for Season 2)

This post last updated 9/25/2023 for active event changes

 Recently I've seen more and more new or returning players to New World asking "what should I get done every day?".  New World has "daily chores" to a degree but not in a way of "daily quests" that other MMOs feature.  New World players have to have the knowledge of what to do as it is not well explained in game what daily rewards there are.  

Here is my checklist I play by every day:
Note: this list is geared towards a solo player that is level 60 and 600+ gear score.

• 3x Faction Missions
• Daily gypsum (up to 10 orbs a day which at 625 gear score is 4,000 umbral shards a day)
  
• 2x Emerald (refining/gathering)
  
• 15x Topaz (potion + kill level 55+ enemies)
  
• 6x Obsidian (kill named open world bosses)
  
• 3-6x Diamond (varies over time)
  
• 2x Garnet (pvp arenas)
  
• Daily legendary refining
• Asmodeum
• Runic Leather
• Phoenix Weave
• Glittering Ebony
• Runestone
  
• Event actions
• Update 8/17 - Luck of the Bones event - kill Rafflebones at a portal up to 3x times for shards and random drops.
   

For more details on these items read below.

Daily faction quests

The first 3 faction quests you complete each day grant bonus faction tokens, bonus gold, and experience.  To maximize the output each day I recommend:

• Get 3x bags with "Loyalty" which increases faction tokens earned (+14% tokens!)
  
• Dedicate 1 of your 3 houses to a town where you increase faction token gain rate with your town cards (for me it's Ebonscale Reach and I have 36%+ extra tokens)
• Don't be afraid to do the PvP faction missions.  
• They are generally the easiest to do and in many cities grant the highest returns (for example in Ebonscale I get 8,000 tokens per PvP mission vs at most 6,000 for PvE).
• The PvP missions are static so are the same mission each time.  2 of the 3 PvP missions will be in the same area and one at the fort's war camp.  I always do 4x a day; skipping the war camp/fort mission and taking the other two twice.  It takes me 10-15 minutes and I net 20k+ tokens, PvP experience, and 500+ gold.
  
• PLUS you gain PvP experience which can unlock PvP tracks that now have great rewards.

Daily gypsum

Gypsum is turned into gypsum casts.  Casts turn into either expertise bumps or after 600 expertise turn into umbral shards (a cast for a 625 expertise slot gives 400 umbral shards!). There are daily limits on the number of gypsum you can gain via certain activities.  Having a plan can maximize your daily umbral shard gain. As a baseline with 625 expertise across the board I am netting at least 4,000 umbral shards a day via solo play.  It takes me maybe an hour at most to cycle through these and many are done in conjunction with the other daily items I noted.

Here is the gypsum I target each day

• 2x Emerald (refining/gathering)
• As you are out doing other stuff make sure to gather.  If you are 200 gathering and gain an aptitude you get an emerald gypsum.
• The other way to get emerald is from refining at 200 and gaining an aptitude level.  You likely hit 2x of these a day doing legendary material refining.
  
• 15x Topaz (potion + kill level 55+ enemies)
• I drink a potion before I do faction missions in Ebonscale Reach.  Then I usually have to hit a couple hot spots to get to 15.
  
• 6x Obsidian (kill named open world bosses)
• I just hit the named bosses in Ebonscale reach as I do my topaz and faction missions.  If you do elite chest runs you likely will hit this as well.
  
• 3-6x Diamond (varies over time)
• Depends on the current event on where you get diamond and how much you get.  It is almost always the easiest of gypsum to get.
  
• 2x Garnet (pvp arenas)
• For a little bit of your time you an get 2x garnet from PvP arenas.  If you don't like arenas then don't do it.  
• +reward crate for the first two arenas daily
• +pvp experience
   

A couple other easy to get but require a group or more time:

• Level 66 portals - 14 gypsum = 2 orb
• Portals have increased rewards with S2 but I still find them very unrewarding for time spent; you can painfully -- slowly -- solo them if you really wanted
  
• PvE arenas - 2 gypsum = 2 orbs
• Outpost Rush (10-40 minutes required) - 3 ruby gypsum = 3 orbs
• +rewards crate with good PvP gear
• +faction tokens, gold, and PvP experience
• Expeditions (regular or mutation) = 2 gypsum = 2 orbs
   

Daily refining

If you have 200 refining you should be refining 10x of each legendary material per day (asmodeum, runic leather, phoenixweave, and glittering ebony -- runestone if you can swing the materials).  Since these are time gated and only 10 can be done per day per player they are always in demand.  You need to check prices and proactively place buy orders for materials so you aren't spending more on materials than the refined material is worth.  Or you can do it just when you've gathered materials yourself.  

You can also try to sell your daily cooldowns.  While not as popular as it once was there are still players out there that will buy your cooldowns and give you the materials + some gold to refine them.  You can usually keep any bonus refined items.

Bonus: if your faction owns Weaver's Fen fort you get +10% yield.  If time permits go over and cap it; most fort caps are uncontested.  I usually just run over and afk and it is capped when I get back.

Daily event

New World has events happening almost all the time.  

9/25/2023 Update - Luck of the Bones ended a couple weeks ago and the Siege of Sulfur event is live.  The event gives named and randomized item rewards as well as umbral shards and obsidian gypsum.  The first three times you do it per day grant a bonus rewards chest.

The event has been extended to end closer to the 10/3 expansion launch.

I have folded doing this event into my daily rotation even though the named items and umbral shards are not worth much.  The mean reason is because of dark matter that will become a central currency in Season 3 and beyond.  The purple rewards cache, if saved and opened after Season 3 is live, is rumored to drop dark matter instead of umbral shards.  Additionally the named items should auto update to 625 and thus when salvaged have opportunity at dropping more dark matter.

None of this is really hard confirmed but everything from the PTR data dumps says holding out for dark matter is the right call.

Old detail crossed out below: 

8/17/2023 Update - The Summer Medley Faire is over.  The new Luck of the Bones event is active.  See this Reddit post for the breakdown and what rewards are available.

Original:

Currently it is the Summer Medley Faire.  For this event the main item I take care of daily is to visit each town and get a basket.  Each basket comes with event tokens +  50-200 gold.  There are 11 towns to visit so that is an EASY 1,000+ gold per day every day of the event.  If you have no use for the tokens you can buy the event patterns (green or GS600) and sell them on the trading post.  This is easy money folks!

Also currently you can get 3x sportsman baskets from skinning animals.  This takes a few minutes at most and gets a bunch of cooking supplies which are easy to sell or useful if you cook your own supplies.  Additionally grants diamond gypsum if you didn't get that from the event.

Other events will be to kill a world boss which you need to evaluate if you want the rewards or if you can get something worthwhile from.

We won the war!

  We won.  Weaver's Fen is ours!

To War!

 I've been rolling with Evan's Empire in New World for the past few months and yesterday we successfully pushed Weaver's Fen (Castle of Steel) into WAR!  The war will be tonight so expect a report tommorow.

Love this man! YaBoiWilly!

 YaBoiWilly was a surprising find within the New World content creator universe.  He went ahead and took surprising to a new level with this tattoo.  Ya boi!

@playnewworld New World has changed my life. This game has done so much for me its hard to explain. Not only the game, but the amazing Community behind it. This piece means alot. I am forged in Aeternum! Shout-out Devan Smith from Mythical Wizard Tattoo in Indiana! pic.twitter.com/Tj6Yg5hDDt

— YaBoiWiilly (@YaBoiWiilly) July 24, 2023

"We are talking to Reddit now"

 The New World developers put out their most recent Q&A and as they stated in the video "we are talking to Reddit now".

This was a pretty tame set of questions and answers.  If you want to analyze all of it you can use this Reddit thread (zing!)!

 One area that they hit on that did interest me was the topic of azoth salt.  As I've mentioned it feels broken since the season 2 changes and ultimately it really serves no purpose in the game.  I posted this as a comment on the Youtube video.

Salt makes no sense as a currency.  There is nothing other than the tracks to spend it on and now we have to hold progress while waiting for salt to accumulate (I play a ton and it took me 3 days of play just to get salt to select rewards from one track; I easily lost multiple tracks worth of PvP experience holding it up).  And at the end of the day either salt is going to be meaningless like it was before or its going to be too little.  The game would be better if salt was removed. It makes no sense to have to do the PvP activity for XP first and then also accumulate a currency to select a reward: just let us select the reward.  Is 3x rewards per PvP track that game breaking?  

I earn far more rewards for a mutated expedition without having to earn a secondary currency... why insist on continually adding gate keeping to PvP.  While we are at it let's also get rid of the "only the first two arenas a day reward a crate".  If you wouldn't put a restriction like that on expeditions don't put it on a PvP mode.

 They said they are looking at the issue and I am hoping it is more than just adjusting the salt gain rate or cost of track rewards.  It just needs be removed.

 Outpost Rush (OPR) was also discussed in a couple questions.

 First; cross world OPR has brought more matches (a big win in my book) but also highlighted more one-sided matches.  The devs noted that matchmaking is a big complex system to work on so they are looking at what other options they have. Personally I don't want to see ranked OPR but wouldn't object to solo/duo vs group queue OPR now that we have cross world queuing.

 Secondly siege weapons in OPR were discussed.  With Season 2 they were "buffed" but I'd be hard pressed to say I saw any difference.  They are still worthless in my experience.  The question asked was about bringing in other siege weapons.  Ideally they'd figure out what, if any, role the siege weapons are meant to play in OPR before talking about others coming in.  As it stands they are pointless aside from dumping materials into when trying to top the contribution leaderboards for a single OPR match.

 The real spice of the video was the tail end with a preview on the next balance of power update.  They pretty much stated as a fact the one shot blunderbuss combos are getting removed.  Finally.

 

Screenshot

 2,000+ hours in New World, hundreds of hours in the zone Ebonscale Reach, and first time I've noticed this thing off in the distance.  This also reminds me how good this game looks if you pause for a second to look around.

 

Dumb

 How did this happen Max Summer Medleyfaire Rep FAST | New World Season 2?  Such a dumb design for an event.  

 However, I'm not going to complain as I made 7,000+ gold earlier today being one of the two musicians getting tipped on stage for a few hours of mindless music playing (no, I didn't macro it).

Update: They've disabled this part of the event.

New (World) Ideas: Gemstone Dust From Salvage

  New (World) Ideas is a series of posts in which I present small changes that New World could make that would improve the game.

 In New World players can break down gems into gemstone dust which can be used for brief protection from elemental damage.  Tier V gemstone dust is expensive as it comes from Tier V gems and Tier V gems are needed in a lot of areas in the game; mostly to slot into gear for whatever the weekly mutation rotation is.  Once a gem is turned into dust or locked into a piece of gear there is no getting the gem back.  Thus it is not smart to turn valuable gems into dust and dust is therefore expensive.

 New Idea: If a piece of gear has a gem slotted and that piece of gear is salvaged give players gemstone dust as a salvage reward.  This would make dust more widely available and ensure it doesn't feel like you are giving up a firstborn child's worth of gold for 20 seconds of elemental protection.

CPU+PSU Upgrade: Need Suggestions

 I have been rocking a Ryzen 5 3600X for a while and I think it's time for an upgrade.  My current thought is to go with a Ryzen 7 5800x3D. This upgrade path will take me to the top end of CPUs that my motherboard (Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite) can support and should improve performance in New World.

 The AMD x3D CPUs have been noted to improve gaming performance for many games and seem particularly well suited to gaming performance over other processing tasks.  However, there is a recommendation to upgrade to a 1,000W PSU (power supply) at the same time.

 I have a current 650W PSU that has followed me for multiple builds now.  It has been ole' reliable but with recent crashing issues requiring me to undervolt my GPU the PSU is showing its underpowered nature.  So I will be on the hunt for a 1,000W PSU and open to any suggestions.  I am hoping to find a modular PSU so I can swap the PSUs without having to redo cabling.

 I am having issues logging New World's performance (external tracking is now showing an average FPS of 0.1....).  I do want to figure this out so I can do some good before and after to share with the New World community so open to ideas here as well.

New World Ultimate Trophy Update

 This is an update of the journey started in this post.

 I am cruising on my Ultimate Trophies in New World.  I have now completed 3x ultimate combat trophies and 2x ultimate gathering trophies. I plan to finish the third gathering ultimate and call it quits on the ultimate trophies for now.  I don't craft enough, nor do I have the major crafting trophies, to justify the crafting ultimates.

 On the right is my house's porch in Brightwood with the ultimate gathering and ultimate combat trophy on display.

 

 

PSA: New World Daily Gypsum Season 2

 Just a quick note on some easily overlooked changes to daily gypsum limits in the Season 2 patch for New World.

Players can no obtain the following daily (with previous amounts listed):

• 15x Topaz Gypsum (previously 10x)
• Turns into 3 gypsum orbs (previously 2)
• 2x Emerald Gypsum (previously 1x)
• Turns into 2 gypsum orbs (previously 1)
• 3x Ruby Gypsum (previously 2x)
• Turns into 3 gypsum orbs (previously 2)
• 14x Amethyst Gypsum (previously 7x)
• Turns into 2 gypsum orbs (previously 1)
  

Any other changes I didn't list? 

Updated 7/18

Are PvP Tracks Broken in New World?

 New World made great changes to the PvP tracks for Season 2, but they may have broken them at the same time. The tracks reward great (seriously great - best in slot great!) gear now.  The only catch is the rewards cost a pretty pinch of salt (azoth salt specifically) and salt is hard to come by now so it's effectively broken the tracks.

 Here is what my current filled up (not complete!) track looks like.  

 Notice the amazing rewards?  Now look closer at the top right and you will see my current problem: I only have 12,212 azoth salt.  I want at least two of the rewards here; one for 12,500 and one for 20,000 for a total of 32,500 total salt needed.  I actually completed this track when I only had about 10,000 salt and therein lies the problem.

 I am now filling out PvP tracks far faster than I am getting salt to buy rewards.  Not completing a track (i.e. click the complete button after claiming rewards) means all future PvP experience earned goes into a blackhole and is lost. The track carries over the excess experience from the activity that finished the track but nothing past that.  I will likely do 2-3 tracks or more worth of PvP before I have the 32.5k salt to get the rewards here (chest + boots are what I'd love to have).

 Azoth salt is now just a frustrating limiter of my fun in the game.  It used to be a mostly worthless currency; something I had more than I could spend.  I've burned through a huge stockpile of it now and am effectively salt-broke.  I'd prefer it if they just removed salt from the game if I was being honest.

 Compare it to PvE expeditions that give rewards simply for doing the content.  Kill boss.  Loot chest.  Get the reward.  Imagine instead of it was kill boss, get materia (the closest PvE equivalent to azoth salt), and then repeat dozens of more times to be able to use the materia to claim a single randomly generated gear piece.  People would lose their minds.  Note: materia is used to craft specific named drops if you are unlucky in your drops in expeditions.

 Anyways; that will be me over in the corner screaming about a lack of salt or efficient ways to get salt.

New World Steam Error: No product information found, cannot initialize Game (Fixed!)

 I went to play New World today and I got an error launching the game in Steam: “No product information found, cannot initialize Game.”

 I went over some old forum posts talking about disabling IPv6 in my network settings, but that was not relevant to my situation.  I also tried to verify the game files in Steam and while it did download some new files it didn't fix the error.

 Then I remembered I've had this before and the fix was just a full PC reboot.  I rebooted and voila it was fixed.  Sometimes the simple step of "turn it off and back on" is the best first step to take.

Palia Beta!

 Palia dropped a surprise announcement that a Closed Beta is coming in August.  See the trailer below!  Also the game was announced for the Nintendo Switch console and stated it was coming out "this year".  It was not clear if that was just a Switch release or if we'd see the PC release.

 The game has been on my radar for it's developers pedigree from past projects (mainly Blizzard and World of Warcraft).  Palia is also aiming to be a "non-combat" MMORPG focused on life skills (crafting, gathering, building, etc) and social interactions.  It may just be right for this aging gamer and hoping to sneak into a beta slot!

New World Season 2 Keeping Me Busy

 New World Season 2 is full of stuff to do.  While there is the big stuff like the game's first raid, first 10-man trial, new PvP arena map and cross-server OPR I am finding myself busy with everything else.

 First the story quest line of season 2 is OK.  It is nothing to write home about but it's at least interesting enough to hold my attention.  It is dotted with a couple solo-trials (mini dungeons you go into by yourself) which were actually complex enough to make me pause and figure out the fight mechanics.  I will take more of these solo trials if anyone at AGS is listening!

 Next I have been working on ultimate combat trophies.  Each trophy requires one each of the six major combat trophies along with 45,000 gold and 100,000 faction tokens to purchase the ultimate upgrade component (+ your furnishing skill has to be leveled up).  Between major trophies and the 45k gold for the upgrade component; that is about 150k gold per trophy.  I have two the ultimate combat trophies done and just grinding the faction tokesn for the third.  Then I'll get started on ultimate crafting and refining trophies.

 The season journey is also full of tasks that my completionist-self must check off.  Currently working on capping 8 forts. 

 Azoth Salt is now a much needed resource.  This PvP currency used to be something I had at cap at almost all times, but now with the PvP track rewards updated I have found myself at close to zero salt multiple times now.  The new legendary gear rewards on the track are very enticing and cost a good bit of salt.  

 We've also been rocking the portals daily in my company.  The rewards are much improved (at least the gear that drops; still stingy on the materials for corrupted lodestones).

 I may get around to the 10-man trial, The Hatchery, but doubt I'll get to the 20 man sandwurm raid.  Seems it will be hard for organized groups let alone random pick up groups.  Maybe if the company I am rolling with gets around to it I'll give it a whirl but not sure yet.

7/9 New World Bug Fix Patch for Season 2

 Small bug fix patch last night for New World Season 2.  It fixed some Hatchery objectives being tracked properly and targeted healing hot keys should be back in working order.  I'd link to the patch notes but... reasons... can't.  Here is a screenshot.

New World First Light Storage Missing - Fix!

 The First Light settlement is no more in New World as the Angry Earth have taken it over (for a yet to be revealed purpose).  With it means players have lost a town storage slot (and let's be honest more storage is the real end game of New World).  The storage was meant to be available to retrieve items from, but due to a bug many players are not able to see their OLD First Light storage! Oh my! Oh no!

 The good(ish) news is there is an easy workaround.  The bad news is it's a momentary fix and requires repeating each time, so my recommendation is to do it once, empty First Light storage, and move on with your day.

 The workaround/fix is to log out all the way to desktop and log back in.  Once logged back in you will see OLD First Light storage the first time you open storage.  IMPORTANT: You will only see it the FIRST time you open storage.  If you close out of storage you have to log all the way back out to desktop again for it to re-appear.

 Hopefully this helps!