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). 

Vehicles in Starfield?

Caught up to the recent gameplay deep dive for Starfield.  One missing piece for me was ground vehicles such as a rover.  Does anyone know if the game will feature vehicles?  How cool would it be to land your storage ship and drive off into the planet on your custom land cruiser!

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: Attribute Respecs

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

 It costs 200 gold to respec attributes in New World even if all you are doing is adjusting a few points.  This cost isn't much fun in a game where players are encouraged to change gear often for different content (for example: changing from one ward gear set to another inside a split ward expedition).

 There is a stark difference between hitting an attirbute bonus or not (i.e. if you make 299 CON you don't get the 300 CON perk).  For all practical purposes players have to respec attributes whether they need to just adjust 1 point or reset all 190 -- the bonuses are that important to hit.

 New idea: instead of attribute respecs costing 200 gold it should be a sliding cost based on number of points being changed.  This way if you just change one piece of gear out and need to adjust 10 points it's only a few gold vs 200 gold for a full reset.  This would make it feel less penalizing for having to change out gear.  Simply go into the attribute and change your attributes and a cost will be displayed on screen to save.

 Even better would be to tie attribute respec to azoth instead of gold so it is consistent with weapon skill respec, but let's not get crazy on ideas here.  This is an MMO after all and what MMO doesn't need a gold sink!

Bike stolen

What a great way to start vacation.  Sigh.

Vacationing!

On vacation.  A couple posts scheduled to go out but otherwise see y'all in a week 

New World 200+ Everything

 Checked off a personal goal today.  I hit 200+ in every gathering, refining, casual, and crafting skill in New World. The last one to finish out was music.

Note: the one's that show a number other than 200 indicate the 200+ aptitude level.  For example Weaving on the bottom left is level 27 aptitude (meaning I've leveled it up 27 more times since hitting 200).

All About Me

 I'm honored to have fallen on the field of battle!  Yoink!

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!