More details on the New World gear reset?

 With the New World Public Test Realm (PTR) up and running with the Season 2 patch there are quite a few things that testers are finding that were not in the patch notes.  Some of them may hint towards the gear reset that is assumed to be coming.  Let's jump in and take a look at what's been found.

 The main piece that tester's stumbled across is the addition of Artisans crafting recipes (example: Artisans Round Shield).  These are guaranteed 600 GS weapons and gathering tools that anyone can craft and look to be positioned to allow anyone to jump directly into 600 GS items.  

 There are also multiple changes to gypsum casts.  The cooldown now appears to be weekly (7 days) instead of daily.  So players can craft up to 7x of each cast once per week.  Also each cast is awarding more expertise bumps which will reduce the total needed to level expertise to 600.

 Combined these two items may be an indicator that AGS is looking to help players accelerate the 500-600 expertise which supports the gear score increase announced on the road map; thus players can get into the new end gear progression faster.  This will be needed if, like other major updates, a large number of players come back to check the game out and the last thing AGS needs is them being stuck behind a significant grind.

 Another piece of the puzzle are a new type of gypsum cast that reward guaranteed legendary gear.  These cost gypsum orbs and umbral shards (as opposed to rewarding shards) and result in a roll at a legendary item.  This along with other changes such as awarding gear creates for PvP arenas and more legendary items on the PvP reward track are bringing more and more legendary gear to the fingertips of players.  And the more they give out legendary gear the more you have to wonder if that's because they are about to hit the big ole' reset button (i.e. they are buttering us up with freebies so we'll be less mad).

 A gear reset in New World seems very likely at this point and to soften the blow it looks we are getting some possible hand outs as well as faster paths for players looking to catch up.  We still don't know what an increase to max gear score looks like or what it means for our 625 gear but the pieces are starting to come together.

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!

Best OPR Ever + Bonus

 Had my best Outpost Rush (OPR) match ever in New World.  Crushed it with my heavy armor Flamethrower build (Fire Staff/Sword and Shield).  

And another bonus OPR scoreboard; our team steam rolled them but very rare I go 10-0 on kill/death!

New World Inventory and Storage Search!

 Hot sexy news straight out of the New World PTR.  The new inventory search feature is here and its better than expected!  Grab a peak from this Twitch streamer.

 The best part is that it accepts text searches so will not require a lot of clicking like the current TP.  In the stream you see it accepting searches for certain perks.  For example; [abyss] found items with perks that have the word abyss in them.  And [abyss] + [keen] found items with perks that match both (screenshot at right).  Also from other chatting it sounds like it can accept gear score searches such as [keen] > 600 to find gear over 600GS.  Sexy.

 And actually the best best part is that it supports searching storage and inventory.  Let's freaking go!

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.

Diablo IV Best Build for launch?

 Want the best build for Diablo IV for launch?  Then why are you here?  I'm not playing Diablo IV.

Reddit Digg-ing

 Remember Digg?  No? Remeber your answer to this question because in a few years I am going to ask if you remember Reddit.  They are playing the full Digg card.  The best quote from that thread (bold added by me).

Some people might not be old enough to remember when digg.com made a bunch of changes during the transition to v4. Digg was huge at the time. They thought they were literally unstoppable, but just like myspace and many companies before them, their names are unknown to many.

It will be weird transitioning away from Reddit like the companies before, but I guess, in the tech world it eventually becomes inevitable…

The most boring New World Season 1 challenge

 Finally done watching paint dry to complete the season 1 challenge for capping forts.

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.