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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.