New World Season 2: Day 1

 New World Season 2 is dropping later today (7/6).  Hype!  Read the patch notes here.

A few lesser-known notes to call out:

PvP Trade Skill Perk Items
    Adjusted all PvP Trade Skill perk items to no longer bind on pickup:

 This is a great change.  It was irritating that the PvP perks were Bind on Pickup which required you to be a crafter to make use of them.  Now they can be sold to other players just like they should have been from the start!

 Next we have some faction store updates:

 The faction stores have had their weapons and armor prices and stats changed to make them more desirable. All previous weapons and armor have been removed from the store.

 But the armor/weapons are only 580 gear score so are effectively worthless as you can't upgrade anything that is not 590.  You are still better just buying cheap 590+ gear off the trading post.  This update makes no sense.

Component items that allow multiple Major trophies to be crafted into an Ultimate trophy.

 Basically my entire existence for the past few weeks has been  getting my major trophies ready for this update.  Now just to farm the gold (45k per) and faction tokens (100k per)!

Armoring
    Bag - Gear Score 600 and Bind on Pickup
        Artisans Satchel
        This bag features the Lasting Consumption, Luck and Azoth Attuned perks as well as a perk from the Burdened perk bucket to finish them off.

 This will be a good way to get Lasting Consumption now without breaking the bank!

Artisans Flatbread

    This meal has the same effect as Hearty Meal but lasts twice as long and has a default craft bonus amount of 120%

 Interesting meal; not sure what the purpose of this is but will check it out.  In general you aren't eating a hearty meal for its long term effect so duration is not a factor here except for maybe the craft bonus.

Steam Backlog: Way of the Hunter

This post is part of my running series: My Steam Backlog (see all MySteamBacklog tagged posts).

 Ever since I was a kid I have been a fan of "hunting" games on PCs.  There was a long period where I didn't play any, but that changed when I got into theHunter:Call of the Wild.  With a renewed interest in the genre I grabbed Way of the Hunter on Steam and added to my backlog.  Now I've gotten around to giving it a whirl!

 As most of the game reviews on Steam note it is impossible to evaluate Way of the Hunter (WotH) without making comparisons to theHunter.  The games are similar, if not almost exactly the same, at least at the surface.  WotH differs in some key areas and I've found myself enjoying it more.

 The first aspect of WotH that I found more enjoyable than theHunter is the story and missions.  I never spent much time on them in theHunter but in WotH I've found myself following along the main story line.  It is not anything to write home about, but it has a much better storytelling mechanism with it's comicbook-like cutscenes.

 Another aspect of WotH that helps with the story line is that travel feels much faster. Whether walking or taking a vehicle I feel like I get from A to B much faster than I did in theHunter.  There are still moments where you slow down to hunt, but between then it feels much faster.  WotH also gives you a vehicle from the start which is a welcome sigh!

 WotH also has a much larger render distance than theHunter.  In WotH you can spot animals and landmarks for what feels like thousands of yards/meters where as in theHunter it cuts off abruptly at 430.  Combined with faster travel I spend a lot less time "roaming" in WotH than I did in theHunter.  In WotH I can find targets at a distance and get there quickly.

 The inventory management in WotH is more straightforward and simplified.  While theHunter offers a ton of variety as far as load outs go the interface to manage all of it is a mess (better than it was in the past with recent patches but still a long ways off from what I expect in games made in the last decade).

 Speaking of variety that is one area that WotH lags behind theHunter.  theHunter has more reserves (aka maps) than I can remember and the variety of target species to hunt to go with them.  theHunter also has more weapons and hunting options such as bow that WotH does not have.  You can spend a lot of time with theHunter before you have to repeat content (if you pay up for the add on packs that is).

  As far as how the games play they are very similar.  Find animals, stalk, shoot, follow the blood trail, and harvest the animal.  Starting out both games felt the same, but the more I played (and paid for add ons) the theHunter became "arcade-like" as far as hunting went.  WotH has yet to get that "arcade" feel.  Hunts in WotH feel purposeful and engaging even if it sometimes takes a bit of time to track down an animal that you shot.  I shoot and kill less in WotH than I do in theHunter but somehow it feels better in WotH and unlike theHunter I never struggle to find animals in WotH.

 I am still early in WotH and I am enjoying it.  If asked I would recommend WotH over theHunter, but we'll have to see if that new-game sheen wears off and where the team behind WotH takes it.

 

Happy 4th of July!

 Crazy to think this is someone's last day with all of their fingers!

New World Gear Reset: More Details?

 As we've talked about before on this blog there is an impending gear reset in New World, but we are still waiting on any sort of detail related to the gear reset.  This leaves the community guessing and looking for any obfuscated details in other updates.  While I was out the last week there was exciting news that I think speak to part of the gear reset.

 In a recent Forged in Aeternum video (specifically the 6:12 mark) the team announced they are planning to get rid of the ward and bane system.  Resilient was also mentioned in the answer which leads us to believe that will also get axed.

 Not only is this delivering on one of the top community-requested changes, but I firmly believe this is the first major piece of the gear reset puzzle.  I cannot fathom they would make this level of change outside of a major release and as Season 2 is just around the corner (7/6) it makes sense that we will see these major changes with Season 3.

 As the road map already showed "gear score increase" for Season 3 and it was indicated to include a new gear progression system it makes complete sense we will see ward/bane/resilient changes during Season 3.  While making this logical connection doesn't unearth specific details it does show us that the developers are looking to make big changes.

 In conclusion: buckle up buttercup; it's about to get bumpy!

New World On Sale (60% off!)

 New World is on sale for the Steam sale.  Go grab a copy for $15.99 (60% off)!

No Vehicles in Starfield Confirmed

 Sadly it has been confirmed there will be no land vehicles in Starfield.

 Starfield front man, Todd Howard, was answering a number of questions when asked if there would be any land vehicles for getting around on a planet’s surface. “There is not,” he said. “We do design it, we’ve seen this with our other games where we wanna design it where it feels good on foot, but we do have the boost pack, you have skills for the boost pack, so the boost pack almost acts like this vehicle, super fun, where you can fly through, and then the low gravity planets are really something special.”

Bummer, but he did add in:

“We have a lot of biomes – we do look at temperature, we look at the radiation, and we look at all of those things on a planet so that your suit and your protection… you can get certain ailments if you’re not ready, and certain weather things can come through with all of that.”

Corrupted Finished

 I finished my 3x major corrupted combat trophies in New World.  I bought materials for two of them and then farmed shards for the third. 100 shards multiplied by the time between re-spawns of Pit Lord Daehi is more time than I care to think about having been spent on this.  Fortunately Pit Lord Daehi is in a spot where you can get topaz gypsum done easily and at the same time get a bunch of orichalcum ore.

 Now onto the real expensive ones: ancient, angry earth, and human!

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.

Mostly Positive on New World

For the First Time Since Launch, New World's Lifetime Review Rating Has Transitioned From "Mixed" To "Mostly Positive" On Steam
by u/randrogynous in newworldgame

Summer Camp

 Getting ready for summer camp with the oldest kiddo so expect some autoposts in the next week!