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.

New (World) Ideas: Music Sheets

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

 Getting music sheets as a drop in New World is irritating.  No one buys them and you can't do anything with them if you already learned that piece of music.  This clogs up inventory and requires players to drop them or stick them somewhere.

New Idea: Just get rid of music sheets.  Instead just have them unlock when they would have otherwise dropped.

OR

New Idea: Keep music sheets but let me salvage music sheets for music experience.  Now players will actually want to buy and trade them.

New (World) Ideas: Honing Stones and Coatings

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

 Honing Stones and weapon coatings are a key element to maxing your character's damage in New World.  Forgetting to apply them (or re-apply them) is a rookie mistake that many veterans make as well and forgetting is easy to do as they are often buried in your inventory waiting for you to remember to use them.

 New Idea: allow players to attach honing stones and coatings directly to their weapons via slots on the inventory and gear sets.  Player's can put a pile of stones or coatings in these slots which will then automatically be consumed (or not; it can be a player controlled setting). 

New (World) Ideas: Buy/Sell Umbral Shards

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

 Umbral Shards in New World are the main currency for upgrading gear to a max gear score of 625.  They are also now part of multiple crafting recipes and in the Season 2 patch more uses are being brought forward.  The only problem: umbral shards are bind on pickup so you have to earn them yourself.

 New idea: Let players buy and sell umbral shards for gold directly.  There are already numerous ways that gold is converted into shards (shard selling via mutated expeditions, buying flame cores to use at the forge, infused salvaging scraps turned into gypsum orbs and then casts, etc) so it's not a leap to just let the shards themselves be traded amongst players.

New (World) Ideas: Briars and Thorny Vines!

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

 Heartrunes of Grasping Vines in New World require 1,000 thorny vines to upgrade meaning 3,000 thorny vines are needed in order to craft the three legendary heartrunes.  Thorny vines are gathered from briars which don't fall into any of the gathering skills so gathering rate is not influenced by gathering luck or yield increases (buffs, potions, etc).  So players gather one vine at a time.

 New idea: move briar (and any other "general" node) into a gathering profession.  This way gathering effects can make the activity of gathering briar for thorny vines more efficient and expedite the rate at which they can be gathered.  This is especially important if 1,000 of something are going to be needed to upgrade a heartrune!

New (World) Ideas: Azoth Bottling

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

 Azoth is supposedly what makes Aeternum the magical place that it is.  It is the essence that allows players, monsters, and animals to continually come back to life in New World.  It is used in all sorts of activities (fast travel, crafting, etc), but with a cap of 1,000 azoth at any one given time it is also a resource player's never seem to have enough of when it is needed most.

 Fortunately players can buy and sell Vials of Bottled Azoth which when salvaged grant 50 azoth. Unfortunately players do not do the actual bottling of the azoth.  Bottled azoth is randomly dropped from enemies or given as rewards for quests and opening various chests.

 New idea: let players bottle their own azoth.  When a player hits 1,000 azoth they start losing out on future azoth gains and for many players who don't craft there is little use for azoth so they end up hovering around 1,000 azoth.  Ideally players could bottle up that azoth and sell it.  Then the developers can remove vials from various drop tables and the main avenue is from players bottling azoth.

 Bonus idea: let players obtain a housing item that slowly bottles azoth out of thin air and they can get a little bonus for having a house and an azoth bottler.

New (World) Ideas: Fort PvP Zones

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

 There is nothing more annoying than running all the way out to a fort in the open world in New World and realizing you forgot to enable your PvP flag.  Back to town to set your flag, back to the fast travel point, and then the joy of running back to the fort (mounts please!).

 The new idea: how about the fort and the area around the fort is always PvP?  Upon entering players get a warning about being flagged automatically and can back out if they choose.  Otherwise after a few seconds they are flagged and go about their business of watching paint dry capping the fort.  If a player leaves the area they return to their previous flag or unflagged status.

New (World) Ideas: Upgrade Costs

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

 For players that like playing a variety of builds in New World there are a couple barriers to switch too much.  First is acquiring gear; it can take years to get the right piece(s) of gear for a build with the random gear system.  Second; even if you have the gear it is prohibitive to have it all upgraded to 625 gear score via umbral shards.

 The good news is for those that like playing a lot of builds you don't need perfect 3-perk legendary gear.  You can get elite 2-perk gear that is more than sufficient for many builds.  The bad news is that 2-perk elite gear still costs the same to upgrade as legendary gear so it is a feel bad everytime you pump some precious umbral shards into a purple item.

 The idea for today: reduce the umbral shard cost to upgrade gear based on it's rarity.  Legendary gear stays the same as it is today but 2-perk purple gear could be reduced to 50% of the current cost and even blue/green gear could be reduced to something like 25%/10%.

 This would encourage players to try more builds and increase the use of the non-legendary items in the game.

Idea: Fix to balance New World range DPS in PvE?

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

 Ranged damage in New World end game PvE is a problem.  Here's an idea to fix it!

 New World recently changed the Bane perks on ranged weapons to do more % damage than the % damage increase bane gives on melee weapons.  This was meant to "fix" that ranged damage was under-powered compared to melee in PvE content.  This was a poor "fix".

 My idea for a true fix would be to nerf the crap out of melee.  Seriously!

 The reason melee is so good in PvE for the most part it hits multiple targets on normal attacks (light and heavy) while ranged does not.  Ranged hits a single target on normal attacks (yes there are a few upgrades where there is some splash but its not default like it is with most melee).

 It seems like the better approach for melee would be that it does high damage to the first target hit but reduced damage to any additional targets hit.  The game has the tech to do this; it already understands first vs additional targets hit for perks like Trenchant Recovery.  

 This would create more value for true area-of-effect abilities instead of the default melee attack being area of effect.  It would also balance damage between ranged and melee as they would both be primarily single target damage.

 And if this sort of approach was taken the response would be apocalyptic from the New World community. Good.  We need a little drama.  If this idea sounds as dumb as you think it does; leave a comment!